We drove all afternoon. At some point, with the sun low and elderly in the sky, Saltykov turned off the highway and made his way into a village to try and buy some diesel. The place possessed one solitary petrol station, and its owner told us that he had none to sell. He directed us to a second village. So we left the village, and Saltykov manoeuvred his taxi very slowly along a one-track road whose surface was suffering the tarmac equivalent of psoriasis. It was thirty minutes before we rolled into the next village along: a set of concrete cubes and boxes distributed upon and amongst cold green fields. The petrol station there was shut, and nobody seemed to be about. We bought some sausage and bread from a shop owner. When I asked for directions to the nearest petrol station the owner offered to sell us some diesel himself. In a yard at the back of the store he had a pile of jerry cans, and after sniffing at the uncapped mouth of one of these, and insisting a portion of the stuff be poured into a cup for him to inspect, Saltykov agreed to the purchase.
We drove back to the main road, Dora and I eating bread and sausage quietly on the back seat, and Saltykov — who seemed to need no solid sustenance at all — complaining peevishly about the quality of the diesel he had just bought. ‘It is making my engine knock.’
‘Is it distracting you from driving?’ I asked.
‘It’s distracting the engine from functioning optimally.’
I dozed for an hour or so. When I awoke we were still in motion, and the sun was going down in rural splendour, laminating the horizon with two dozen shades of alien reds and beetle-iridescences, and aqua-yellows and Jupiter-oranges. There are no sunsets finer than those in the level country of western Russia.
The road ran along the edge of a vast forest, and for a long time we skirted the gloom.
‘[I can’t sleep,]’ said Dora. ‘[I keep thinking about James.]’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to this, so we sat in silence for a while. The sky deepened, and grew darker: thrush-coloured; crow-coloured; then finally an ice and transparent blackness.
‘[The stars!]’
I craned to peer through the glass. ‘[There they are,]’ I agreed.
For a while she was silent, and then she said, ‘[I’ve been trying to find a way of raising this subject.]’
‘[What subject?]’
‘[I hope you won’t mind. But James said that you are a science fiction writer.]’
Now it was my turn to bark with laughter. ‘[Indeed! I used to be.]’
‘[You have not mentioned the fact. Perhaps I trespass upon your privacy by talking about it.]’
‘[By no means. It is simply that I have not written science fiction for a long time.]’
‘[Might I ask?]’ she said. ‘[Why did you stop writing it?]’
‘[I,]’ I started. But I did not complete the sentence.
We rolled along the road. Saltykov was humming something to himself in the front seat. The radio was playing, but the volume was turned down so very low that I hardly believed he could hear it.
‘[I apologise,]’ said Dora. ‘[I feel I have touched upon a tender spot.]’
‘[It’s not that, it’s not that,]’ I said. ‘[I simply have not thought about it for a long time. My life seemed to—]’ But again the sentence fell away. I had been going to say die, but that seemed an absurd and melodramatic thing to say. I tried again. ‘[Science fiction was my passion when I was young. Because science fiction is about the future, and when we are young we are fascinated with our future worlds. That’s natural, since when we are young we possess no past, or none worth mentioning; but we possess an endless future stretching before us. But I am no longer young. When we are old, the future vanishes from our life to become replaced with death. Accordingly we become intrigued, rather, with the past. We have the same escapist urge we had as youngsters, but it takes us back, into memory, instead of forward into science fiction]’
‘[You’re not so old,]’ she said. I was about to contradict her, scoffingly, when I realised that her words were intended not as a statement but as a reassurance to me. So instead I said. ‘[Do you read science fiction?]’
‘[I love it,]’ she said, gazing through the glass at the evening sky. ‘[Those stars ! Who would read about ordinary things when they could read about extraordinary ones? Of course, I am a Scientologist.] ’
‘[I confess to my ignorance about your religion.]’
‘[Sometimes it is mocked,]’ she said, ‘[Because people don’t understand it. And because it is a relatively new religion. But it is rooted in the faculty of humanity to unlock our imaginative potential. The founder, our leader, is, was, a writer of science fiction. That’s not a coincidence.]’
‘[The truth is,]’ I said, feeling the urge to confide in Dora — an urge I had felt with nobody for many decades. ‘[The truth is the war bashed the science fiction out of me. The war and after the war. The things that happened. The imagination is like any other part of the body; it can be healthy and strong, or it can be broken, or diseased, and it can even become amputated. Science fiction is the Olympics Games of the imaginatively fit. After the war I was too injured, mentally, to partake.]’
‘[Like an amputee?] she said, looking at me. ‘[But it need not be like that. I mean, if we were talking about another sort of writing, then of course I would see what you mean. But science fiction…]’
‘[I’m afraid I don’t follow.]’
‘[I only mean — it’s science fiction! If your science-fictional imagination is broken, you can rebuild it with imaginary high technology! If your writer’s soul is amputated, then because we are talking of science fiction you can fit it with a robotic prosthesis! You can write again, and write better, stronger, as a cyborg.]’
‘[Wonderful,]’ I said, my face aching again as I tried to smile. ‘[I have not previously considered it in that light.]’
We drove through the darkness. ‘Shall I take a turn driving now?’ I said to Saltykov.
‘Do not distract me!’ he snapped.
‘I am only offering to…’
‘Talking to the driver! Distracting the driver!’
‘You may be getting tired. Why not let me drive for a few hours whilst you sleep?’
‘You are distracting me!’ he complained. ‘I told you not to distract me! Do not talk to me!’
I gave up on that approach. Instead Dora and I talked about Scientology. She explained aspects of her faith to me, and I sat meekly and listened. Then we talked a little about science fiction, and the contrary impulses in the human spirit; to dedicate itself to the past, which is to say (because the past is by definition dead and gone) to death; or to dedicate itself to the future, and to possibility, and to a better world. ‘[Communism,]’ I said, ‘[is the same desire. For the future. For a better future.’]
‘[Communism is science fiction,]’ said Dora, gravely.
‘[And vice versa.]’
‘[I can think of many American writers of science fiction who would be insulted to think so.]’
‘[Perhaps they do not fully understand the genre in which they are working.]’
Eventually we both slept, or tried to. I dozed uneasily at first, in the back seat with Dora. I sat facing forward and simply closed my eyes; she moved her bulk with a surprising grace and ease, almost felinely, to settle herself into a more comfortable position. Saltykov was humming: he still had the radio on at low volume, and the intermittent wash of band music, folk music and the occasional Western song formed a fractured lullaby. I drifted in and out of sleep.