here? They knew as well as he did that nine-tenths of the best material was still locked up, and to see most of the rest required a bribe. He'd heard that the going rate for a captured Nazi file was $1,000 and a bottle of Scotch.
He whispered to Adelman, 'I'm getting out of here.'
'You cant.
'Why not?'
'It's discourteous. Just sit there, for pete's sake, and pretend to be interested like everyone else.' Adelman said all this out of the side of his mouth, without taking his eyes off the platform. Kelso stuck it for another half minute.
'Tell them I'm ill.'
'I shall not.
'Let me by, Frank. I'm going to be sick.'
'Jesus...'
Adelman swung his legs to one side and pressed himself back in his seat. Hunched in a vain effort to make himself less conspicuous, Kelso stumbled over the feet of his colleagues, kicking in the process the elegant black shin of Ms Velma Byrd.
'Aw, fuck, Kelso,' said Velma.
Professor Askenov looked up from his notes and paused in mid-drone. Kelso was conscious of an amplified, humming silence, and of a kind of collective movement in the audience, as if some great beast had turned in its field to watch his progress. This seemed to last a long time, for at least as long as it took him to walk to the back of the hall. Not until he had passed beneath the marble gaze of Lenin and into the deserted corridor did the droning begin again.
KELSO sat behind the bolted door of a lavatory cubicle on the ground floor of the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism and opened his canvas bag. Here were the tools of his trade:
a yellow legal pad, pencils, an eraser, a small Swiss army knife, a welcome pack from the organisers of the symposium, a dictionary, a street map of Moscow, his cassette recorder, and a Filofax that was a palimpsest of ancient numbers, lost contacts, old girlfriends, former lives.
There was something about the old man's story that was familiar to him, but he couldn't remember what it was. He picked up the cassette recorder, pressed REWIND, let it spool back for a while, then pressed PLAY He held it to his ear and listened to the tinny ghost of Rapava's voice.
Comrade Stalin’s room was a plain man's room. You've got to say that for Stalin. He was always one ofus...
REWIND. PLAY
and here was an odd thing, boy - he had taken off his shiny new shoes and had them wedged under one fat arm...
REWIND. PLAY
Know what I mean by Blizhny. boy?...'
by Blizhny. boy?...'
byBlizhny...
THE MOSCOW AIR tasted of Asia - of dust and soot and eastern spices, cheap petrol, black tobacco, sweat. Kelso came out of the Institute and turned up the collar of his raincoat. He walked across the rutted concourse, skirting the frozen puddles~ resisting the temptation to wave at the sullen crowd
- that would have been 'a western provocation'.
The street sloped southwards, down towards the centre of the city. Every other building was encased in scaffolding. Beside him, debris hurtled down a metal chute and exploded into a fountain of dust. He passed a shady casino, anonymous except for a sign showing a pair of rolling dice. A fur boutique. A shop selling nothing but Italian shoes. A single pair of handmade loafers would have cost any one of the demonstrators a whole month's wages and he felt a stab of sympathy. He remembered a line of Evelyn Waugh's he had used before about Russia: 'The foundations of Empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.'
At the bottom of the hill he turned right, into the wind. The snow had stopped but the cold blast was hard and unyielding. He could see tiny figures bent into it, across the road, beneath the red rock-face of the Kremlin wall, while the golden domes of the churches rose above the parapet like the globes of some vast meteorological machine.
His destination lay straight ahead. Like the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the Lenin Library had been renamed. It was now the Central Library of the Russian Federation, but everyone still called it the Lenin.
He whispered to Adelman, 'I'm getting out of here.'
'You cant.
'Why not?'
'It's discourteous. Just sit there, for pete's sake, and pretend to be interested like everyone else.' Adelman said all this out of the side of his mouth, without taking his eyes off the platform. Kelso stuck it for another half minute.
'Tell them I'm ill.'
'I shall not.
'Let me by, Frank. I'm going to be sick.'
'Jesus...'
Adelman swung his legs to one side and pressed himself back in his seat. Hunched in a vain effort to make himself less conspicuous, Kelso stumbled over the feet of his colleagues, kicking in the process the elegant black shin of Ms Velma Byrd.
'Aw, fuck, Kelso,' said Velma.
Professor Askenov looked up from his notes and paused in mid-drone. Kelso was conscious of an amplified, humming silence, and of a kind of collective movement in the audience, as if some great beast had turned in its field to watch his progress. This seemed to last a long time, for at least as long as it took him to walk to the back of the hall. Not until he had passed beneath the marble gaze of Lenin and into the deserted corridor did the droning begin again.
KELSO sat behind the bolted door of a lavatory cubicle on the ground floor of the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism and opened his canvas bag. Here were the tools of his trade:
a yellow legal pad, pencils, an eraser, a small Swiss army knife, a welcome pack from the organisers of the symposium, a dictionary, a street map of Moscow, his cassette recorder, and a Filofax that was a palimpsest of ancient numbers, lost contacts, old girlfriends, former lives.
There was something about the old man's story that was familiar to him, but he couldn't remember what it was. He picked up the cassette recorder, pressed REWIND, let it spool back for a while, then pressed PLAY He held it to his ear and listened to the tinny ghost of Rapava's voice.
Comrade Stalin’s room was a plain man's room. You've got to say that for Stalin. He was always one ofus...
REWIND. PLAY
and here was an odd thing, boy - he had taken off his shiny new shoes and had them wedged under one fat arm...
REWIND. PLAY
Know what I mean by Blizhny. boy?...'
by Blizhny. boy?...'
byBlizhny...
THE MOSCOW AIR tasted of Asia - of dust and soot and eastern spices, cheap petrol, black tobacco, sweat. Kelso came out of the Institute and turned up the collar of his raincoat. He walked across the rutted concourse, skirting the frozen puddles~ resisting the temptation to wave at the sullen crowd
- that would have been 'a western provocation'.
The street sloped southwards, down towards the centre of the city. Every other building was encased in scaffolding. Beside him, debris hurtled down a metal chute and exploded into a fountain of dust. He passed a shady casino, anonymous except for a sign showing a pair of rolling dice. A fur boutique. A shop selling nothing but Italian shoes. A single pair of handmade loafers would have cost any one of the demonstrators a whole month's wages and he felt a stab of sympathy. He remembered a line of Evelyn Waugh's he had used before about Russia: 'The foundations of Empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.'
At the bottom of the hill he turned right, into the wind. The snow had stopped but the cold blast was hard and unyielding. He could see tiny figures bent into it, across the road, beneath the red rock-face of the Kremlin wall, while the golden domes of the churches rose above the parapet like the globes of some vast meteorological machine.
His destination lay straight ahead. Like the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the Lenin Library had been renamed. It was now the Central Library of the Russian Federation, but everyone still called it the Lenin.
Similar Books
