‘We’ll need to get a tram,’ I said. ‘It’s quite a long way from here. Or we could get a taxi.’
‘Distance,’ said Frenkel, giving me another slap on the back to move me along. ‘In a sense it is a subjective quality, is it not? Distortions in the space-time continuum. For what you describe as a long way, reachable only by taxi, I would call just across the road.’ He pointed at the entrance to our hotel. ‘The very building from which I saw you and Saltykov come out not half an hour ago.’
Another push, and I stumbled a few more steps. ‘It’s really not a very nice hotel,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we find somewhere nice for a drink? We can continue our conversation. I was enjoying our conversation.’
‘Come on,’ he said, giving me another shove. ‘I have something special for you. You can still serve the greater good.’
The road was not busy, which was fortunate since it took me a long time to shuffle across to the far side. I felt enormously decrepit. I felt this because it was true. And there I was, standing in front of the main entrance to the hotel, with Frenkel’s wrestler’s torso pressed up against my back. I could feel the sharp point of his knife against my kidney. ‘Straight through the lobby and into the lift,’ he said, into my ear.
‘The key.’ I said. ‘I’ll need to collect the key from the concierge.’
‘You really think I’m a fucking idiot,’ said Frenkel, not unkindly. ‘That I should fall for such a thing? You didn’t leave the key with the concierge. She’s still up there in the room. You can just knock on the door, and she’ll let you in.’
The lift door opened as soon as I pressed the button, and closed as soon as we were inside. I could smell Frenkel’s body odour, shrimpy and dense. That I could smell it suggested that it was a potent stench indeed. The blade he was holding against my back had poked through the cloth of my coat, and my shirt, and my vest, and was a sharp point of hurt on my skin. The upward motion of the lift in motion made my stomach quail.
At the top the lift door opened, and Frenkel shoved me out, and into the corridor. It was ten yards, at most, along the dingy thread-bare carpet to our door. I was trying to think on my feet, but my bashed old brain was not functioning well. ‘This isn’t the right floor,’ I said.
‘Yes it is. Go along and knock on the door,’ he told me.
I stepped towards the wrong door and lifted my fist, but Frenkel ‘a!-a!’ -ed me, and angled my body in the right direction.
I was carried inevitably towards the door.
‘I don’t understand why you want to kill her,’ I said. It was, to a degree, infuriating to me that I felt so little by way of fear. But I had a bone-deep sense of the intellectual and emotional wrongness of any harm coming to Dora.
‘What’s she to you?’ he snapped. ‘A foreigner. A stranger. You barely know her.’
‘I barely know Ms Norman,’ I conceded.
‘So you’ll be barely upset when I kill her.’
‘I know almost nothing about her,’ I said, slightly stiffly. ‘I have spent only a few days in her company. She is from a different nation, and a different generation, to me. I would have to say that the word that best describes the relationship between herself and myself would be engaged.’
‘Engaged?’
‘Yes.’
‘To be married?’
‘Certainly not engaged to be stabbed,’ I said.
‘Konsty!’ gasped Frenkel. But I saw at once that he was not gasping, but laughing. ‘You never cease to amaze me. You old goat!’
‘In the circumstances…’
‘In the circumstances it’s a great shame she has to die,’ he said. ‘Before she’s been able to enjoy the conjugal delight of your wheezy old body humping about on top of her!’
I flipped through the pages of my mental notepad, but there was almost nothing there. I had to do something. I couldn’t permit this man to murder the woman I loved. ‘Ivan,’ I said, ‘we’ve been through a lot together. You said you considered me a friend. I am asking you as a friend — do not kill her. I’ll help you do what you want to do. I’ll do anything you tell me. There’s no need for her to die.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Frenkel. ‘Do as I say, and I’ll not kill her. Engaged! You getting married again? And to an American! Hey — you could claim US citizenship! Assuming the authorities ever let you go there.’
‘That’s not why I’m doing it.’
‘No? Why, then?’
‘I love her.’
And Frenkel laughed like a barking seal. ‘Splendid! Splendid! Well, knock on the door, introduce me properly to your wife-to-be. ’
‘You promise not to kill her?’
‘I promise. On the understanding that you promise to do everything I tell you.’
‘It’s understood.’
‘Go on then.’
I knocked. Almost at once Dora opened the door. The light was behind her and her face was enshadowed, though I could see enough to see that was smiling. More, I could see that she was looking past me to the man behind expecting to see Saltykov. But there was no mistaking burly Frenkel for scrawny Saltykov. Her expression darkened.
With a hefty push Frenkel threw me into the room, straight past her. There wasn’t even time for me to reach out and touch her as I shot in. I tried to balance myself on my rickety legs, staggered several steps and began to fall, striking the back of the settee with my hip and collapsing over. Then I was on the ground, moaning with the pain, and struggling ineffectually to get up. Dora stepped back, her dainty feet moving with characteristic nimbleness to balance her large body. Frenkel came in. The blade flashed in his hand, and went into Dora’s side. It came out bloody, and then it went in again.
She did not cry out. She danced back another two steps, with her head cocked to the side and her face crumpled with pain, or surprise, or the combination of the two; and she rolled down onto the floor with a thud. Hungry knifeblade — to take the life first of Saltykov in the park, and yet not to be satiated! Straight away to take the life of gracious, beautiful Dora Norman in that hotel room! How strange it was that an old and feeble man, such as I, could be blown to pieces by a grenade and yet survive; where a young and vigorous woman, such as she, could be killed by a few inches of polished metal.
I cried out, ‘Dora!’
Frenkel was shutting the door to the room. ‘Get up,’ he said to me. ‘Get off the floor. This is no time for lounging about.’
It’s a mistake to talk about being full of grief, as if grief were a tumour, or a full stomach, or some manner of swelling. Grief is an absence. It doesn’t push, it sucks. To make a metaphorical cut or slice in the sealed membrane of the grieving self is not to permit matter to gush out. On the contrary, it is to permit the unbearable world to come surging in. I had lain there and watched as Frenkel stuffed a knife blade into the pliant flesh of the woman I loved. ‘What have you done?’
He was hauling me to my feet, and shoving me over towards the window. ‘Sacrifices have to be made,’ he said. He still had the knifeblade in his right hand. There was blood.
‘You promised me you wouldn’t kill her,’ I observed, nearly falling over my own feet.
‘A KGB officer not keeping his promises? You amaze me.’
He shoved me.
‘I can’t believe it!’ I cried. ‘[Dora? My love?]’ Shove, and shove, and I was at the window. ‘[Dora, can you hear me?]’ I was calling. ‘Dora!’ I could see her, over Frenkel’s shoulder, a heap of flesh piled motionless on the floor.