*
‘Mind if I interject a question here regarding the immaculate Gail?’ Hector inquired. ‘Not a tough one. Medium soft.’
Tough, medium soft – Perry was on his guard.
‘When you two arrived back in England from Antigua,’ Hector began – ‘Gatwick, wasn’t it?’
Gatwick it was, Perry agreed.
‘You parted company. Am I right? Gail to her legal responsibilities and her flat in Primrose Hill, and you to your rooms in Oxford, there to pen your immortal prose.’
Also correct, Perry conceded.
‘So what sort of deal had the two of you struck between you at this point – understanding is a prettier word – as regards the way forward?’
‘Forward to what?’
‘Well, to us, as it turns out.’
Not knowing the purpose of the question, Perry hesitated. ‘There wasn’t any actual understanding,’ he replied cautiously. ‘Not an explicit one. Gail had done her part. Now I would do mine.’
‘In your separate stations?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without communicating?’
‘We communicated. Just not about the Dimas.’
‘And the reason for that was … ?’
‘She hadn’t heard what I’d heard at Three Chimneys.’
‘And was therefore still in Arcadia?’
‘Effectively. Yes.’
‘Where, so far as you’re aware, she remains. For as long as you can keep her there.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you regret that we asked that she attend this evening’s meeting?’
‘You said you needed both of us. I told her you needed both of us. She agreed to come along,’ Perry replied, as his face began to darken in irritation.
‘But she wanted to come along, presumably. Otherwise she would have refused. She’s a woman of spirit. Not someone who obeys blindly.’
‘No. She’s not,’ Perry agreed, and was relieved to be met by Hector’s beatific smile.
*
Perry is describing the tiny space where Dima had taken him to talk: a crow’s-nest, he calls it, six by eight, stuck on the top of a ship’s staircase leading up from a corner of the dining room; a gimcrack turret of wood and glass built on the half-hexagon overlooking the bay, with the sea wind rattling the clapboards and the windows shrieking.
‘It must have been the noisiest place in the house. That’s why he chose it, I suppose. I can’t believe there’s a microphone in the world that could have heard us over that din.’ And in a voice that is acquiring the mystified tone of a man describing a dream: ‘It was a really talkative house. Three chimneys and three winds. And this box we were sitting in, head to head.’
Dima’s face no more than a hand’s width from mine, he repeats, and leans across the table to Hector as if to demonstrate just how close.
‘For an age we just sat and stared at each other. I think he was doubting himself. And doubting me. Doubting whether he could go through with it all. Whether he’d chosen the right man. And me wanting him to believe he had, does that make sense?’
To Hector, all the sense in the world apparently.
‘He was trying to overcome an immense obstacle in his mind, which I suppose is what confession’s all about. Then finally he rapped out a question, although it sounded more like a demand: “You are spy, Professor? English spy?” I thought at first it was an accusation. Then I realized he was assuming, even hoping, I’d say yes. So I said no, sorry, I’m not a spy, never have been, never will be. I’m just a teacher, that’s all I am. But that wasn’t good enough for him:
‘“Many English are spy. Lords. Gentlemen. Intellectual. I know this! You are fair-play people. You are country of law. You got good spies.”
‘I had to tell him again: no, Dima, I’m not, repeat not, a spy. I’m your tennis partner and a university lecturer, on the point of changing my life. I should have been indignant. But what was should have? I was in a new world.’
‘And absolutely hooked, I’ll bet you were!’ Hector interjects. ‘I’d have given anything to be in your shoes! I’d even take up bloody tennis!’
Yes. Hooked is the word, Perry agrees. Dima was compulsive viewing in the half-darkness. And compulsive listening above the wind.
*
Hard, soft or medium, Hector’s question was delivered so lightly and kindly that it was like a voice of comfort:
‘And I suppose that, despite your well-founded reservations about us, you rather wished for a moment that you were a spy, didn’t you?’ he suggested.
Perry frowned, scratched awkwardly at his curly head of hair, and found no immediate answer.
*
‘You know Guantánamo, Professor?’
Yes, Perry knows Guantánamo. He reckons he has campaigned against Guantánamo every which way he knows. But what’s Dima trying to tell him? Why is Guantánamo suddenly so very important, very urgent, very critical for Great Britain – to quote Tamara’s written message?
‘You know secret planes, Professor? Goddam planes those CIA guys hire, ship terrorist guys Kabul to Guantánamo?’
Yes, Perry is familiar with these secret planes. He has sent good money to a legal charity that intends to sue their parent airlines for breaches of human rights.
‘Cuba to Kabul, these planes got no freight, OK? Know why? Because no fucking terrorist ever fly Guantánamo–Afghanistan. But I got friends.’
The word friends seems to trouble him. He repeats it, breaks off, mutters something in Russian to himself, and takes a pull of vodka before resuming.
‘My friends, they talk these pilots, do deal, very private deal, no comebacks, OK?’
OK. No comebacks.
‘Know what they fly in these empty planes, Professor? No customs, freight on board, direct to buyer, Guantánamo–Kabul, cash up front?’
No, Perry has no suggestions for a likely cargo out of Guantánamo bound for Kabul, cash up front.
‘Lobster, Professor!’ – slapping his hand on his great thigh in a fit of savage laughter. ‘Couple thousand goddam lobster from Bay of Mexico! Who buy goddam lobster? Crazy warlords! From warlords, CIA buy prisoners. To warlords, CIA sell goddam lobsters. Cash. Maybe also a few K heroin for prison guards at Guantánamo. Best grade. 999. No shit. Believe me, Professor!’
Is Perry supposed to be shocked? He tries to be. Is this really sufficient reason to drag him to a rickety lookout bombarded by the wind? He doesn’t believe so. Neither, he suspects, does Dima. The story sounds more like some kind of sighting shot for whatever lies ahead.
‘Know what my friends do with this cash, Professor?’
No, Perry does not know what Dima’s friends do with the profits from smuggling lobsters from the Bay of Mexico to Afghan warlords.
‘They bring this cash to Dima. Why they do that? Because they are trusting Dima. Many, many Russian syndicate trust Dima! Not only Russian! Big, small, I don’t give a shit! We take all! You tell your English spies: you got dirty money? Dima wash it for you, no problem! You wanna save and conserve? Come to Dima! Out of many little roads, Dima make one big road. Tell this to your goddam spies, Professor.’
*
‘So how are you reading the bugger at this stage?’ Hector asks. ‘He’s sweating, bragging, drinking, joking. He’s telling you he’s a crook and a money-launderer and he’s boasting about his bent chums – what are you really seeing and hearing? What’s going on inside him?’
Perry considers the premise as if it has been set for him by a higher examiner, which is how he is beginning to see Hector. ‘Anger?’ he proposes. ‘Directed at a person or persons yet to be defined?’
‘Keep going,’ Hector orders.
‘Desperation. Also to be defined.’
‘How about honest-to-God hatred, always good?’ Hector insists.
‘To come, one suspects.’
‘Vengeance
?’
‘Is somewhere in there, definitely,’ Perry agrees.
‘Calculation? Ambivalence? Animal cunning? Think harder!’ – spoken in jest, but received in earnest.
‘All of the above. No question.’
‘And shame? Self-disgust? None of that about?’
Taken aback, Perry ponders, frowns, peers about him. ‘Yes,’ he concedes in a long-drawn-out voice. ‘Yes. Shame. The apostate’s shame. Ashamed to be dealing with me at all. Ashamed of his treachery. That’s why he had to boast so much.’
‘I’m a goddam clairvoyant,’ says Hector with satisfaction. ‘Ask anyone.’
Perry doesn’t need to.
*
Perry is describing the long minutes of silence, the conflicting grimaces of Dima’s sweated face in the half-darkness, how he pours himself another vodka, chucks it back, mops his face, grins, glowers indignantly at Perry as if questioning his presence, reaches out and grabs him by the knee in order to hold his attention while he makes a point, relinquishes it, and forgets him again. And how finally, in a voice of deepest suspicion, he growls out a question that must be squarely answered before any other business can be conducted between them:
‘You see my Natasha?’
Perry has seen his Natasha.
‘She beautiful?’
Perry has no difficulty assuring Dima that Natasha is indeed very beautiful.
‘Ten, twelve book a week, she don’t givva shit. Read them all. You wanna get a few student like that, you be goddam happy.’
Perry says he would indeed be happy.
‘Ride horse, dance ballet. Ski so beautiful like goddam bird. Wanna know something? Her mother. She got dead. I loved this woman. OK?’
Perry makes noises of regret.
‘Maybe I fuck too many women once. Some guys, they need a lotta women. Good women, they wanna be the only one. You screw around, they go a bit crazy. That’s a pity.’
Perry agrees it’s a pity.
‘Jesus God, Professor!’ He is leaning forward, stabbing at Perry’s knee with his index finger. ‘Natasha’s mother, I love that woman, I love her so much I explode, hear me? Love like make your guts on fire. Your prick, balls, heart, brain, your soul: they live only for this love.’ He makes another pass of the back of his hand across his mouth, mutters ‘like your Gail, beautiful’, takes a shot of vodka and continues. ‘Her bastard husband kill her,’ he confides. ‘Know why?’
No, Perry does not know why Natasha’s mother’s bastard husband killed Natasha’s mother, but he is waiting to discover, just as he is waiting to discover whether he really is in a madhouse.
‘Natasha she my child. When Natasha’s mother tell this to him because she cannot lie, the bastard kill her. One day, maybe I find this bastard. Kill him. Not with gun. With these.’
He holds up his improbably delicate hands for Perry’s inspection. Perry dutifully admires them.
‘My Natasha go to Eton School, OK? Tell this to your spies. Or no deal.’
For a brief moment, in a violently rotating world, Perry feels himself on firm ground.
‘I’m not absolutely sure that Eton takes girls yet,’ he says cautiously.
‘I pay good. I give swimming pool. No problem.’
‘Even so, I don’t think they’ll change the rules for her.’
‘So where she go?’ Dima demands recklessly, as if it’s Perry and not the school who is making the difficulties.
‘There’s a place called Roedean. It’s supposed to be the girls’ equivalent of Eton.’
‘Number one for England?’
‘People say so.’
‘Kids of intellectuals? Lords? Nomenklatura?’
‘It’s a school for the high end of British society, put it that way.’
‘Cost lotta money?’
‘A great lot.’
Dima is only half appeased.
‘OK,’ he growls. ‘When we make deal with your spies. Number-one condition: Roedean School.’
*
Hector’s mouth is wide open. He gawps at Perry, then at Luke beside him, then at Perry again. He passes his hand through his unkempt mop of white hair in frank disbelief.
‘Holy fucking cow,’ he murmurs. ‘How about a commission in the Household Cavalry for his twin sons while he’s about it? What did you tell him?’
‘I promised I’d do my absolute best,’ Perry replies, feeling himself drawn to Dima’s side. ‘It’s the England he thinks he loves. What else was I supposed to say to him?’
‘You did marvellously,’ Hector enthuses. And little Luke agrees, marvellous being a word they share.
*
‘You remember Mumbai, Professor? Last November? The crazy Pakistani guys, kill the whole goddam world? Take orders over their cells? The goddam café they shoot up? The Jews they kill? Hostages? The hotels, train stations? The goddam kids, mothers, all dead? How the fuck they do that, those crazy bastards?’
Perry has no suggestions.
‘My kids cut a finger, bleed a bit, I wanna throw up,’ Dima protests indignantly. ‘I done enough death in my life, hear me? Whadda they wanna do that for, the crazy fucks?’
Perry the unbeliever would like to say ‘for God’ but says nothing. Dima steels himself, then takes the plunge:
‘OK. You tell this once to your goddam English spies, Professor,’ he urges with another lurch into aggression. ‘October two thousand eight. Remember the fucking date. A friend call me. OK? A friend?’
OK. Another friend.
‘Pakistani guy. A syndicate we do business with. October 30, middle of the goddam night, he call me. I’m in Berne, Switzerland, very quiet city, lot of bankers. Tamara she’s asleep beside me. Wakes up. Gives me the goddam phone: for you. It’s this guy. Hear me?’
Perry hears him.
‘“Dima,” he tell to me. “Here is your friend, Khalil.” Bullshit. His name’s Mohamed. Khalil, that’s a special name he got for certain cash business I’m connected with, who givva shit? “I got hot market tip for you, Dima. Very big, very hot tip. Very special. You guys gotta remember it was me who tell you this tip. You remember for me?” OK, I say. Sure. Four o’clock in the goddam morning, some piece shit about the Mumbai stock market. Never mind. I tell him, OK, we remember it’s you, Khalil. We got good memory. Nobody stiff you. What’s your hot tip?
‘“Dima, you gotta get the fuck outta the Indian stock market or you catch big cold.” “What?” I say, “what, Khalil? You fucking crazy? Why we gonna catch a big cold in Mumbai? We got a shitload respectable business in Mumbai. Regular, squeaky-fucking-clean investments, took me five years I clean – services, tea, timber, hotels so fucking white and big the Pope could hold a mass in them.” My friend don’t listen. “Dima, hear me, get the fuck outta Mumbai. Maybe a month after, you take strong position again, make a few million. But first you get the fuck outta those hotels.”’
A fist again passes across Dima’s face, punching away the sweat. He whispers Jesus God to himself and stares around their tiny box for help. ‘You gonna tell this to your English apparatchiks, Professor?’
Perry will do what he can.
‘Night October 30 two thousand eight, after this Pakistani arsehole wake me up, I don’t sleep good, OK?’
OK.
‘Next morning October 31 I call my goddam Swiss banks. “Get me the fuck outta Mumbai.” Services, timber, tea, I got maybe thirty per cent. Hotels seventy. Couple week later, I’m in Rome. Tamara call me. “Turn on the goddam television.” What do I watch? Those crazy Pakistani fucks shooting the shit outta Mumbai, Indian stock market stop trading. Next day, Indian Hotels are down sixteen per cent to 40 rupees and falling. March this year, they hit 31. Khalil call me. “OK, my friend, now you get the fuck back in. Remember it’s me who told you this.” So I get the fuck back in.’ The sweat is pouring down his bald face. ‘End of year, Indian Hotels are 100 rupees. I make twe
nty million profit cold. The Jews are dead, the hostages are dead and I’m a fucking genius. You tell this to your English spies, Professor. Jesus God.’
The sweated face a mask of self-disgust. The cracking of the rotten weatherboards in the sea-wind. Dima has talked himself to a point of no return. Perry has been observed and tested and found good.
*
Washing his hands in the prettily decked-out upstairs lavatory, Perry peers into the mirror and is impressed by the eagerness of a face he is beginning not to know. He hurries back down the thickly carpeted staircase.
‘Another nip?’ Hector asks, flapping a lazy hand in the direction of the drinks tray. ‘Luke, lad, how’s about making us a pot of coffee?’
7
In the road above the basement, an ambulance tears past, and the howl of its siren is like a scream for the whole world’s pain.
In the wind-beaten, half-hexagon turret overlooking the bay, Dima is unrolling the satin sleeve from his left arm. By the changeful moonlight that has replaced the vanished sun, Perry discerns a bare-breasted Madonna surrounded by voluptuous angels in alluring poses. The tattoo descends from the tip of Dima’s massive shoulder to the gold wristband of his bejewelled Rolex watch.
‘You wanna know who make this tattoo for me, Professor?’ he whispers in a voice husky with emotion. ‘Six goddam month every day one hour?’
Yes, Perry would like to know who has tattooed a topless Madonna and her female choir on to Dima’s enormous arm, and taken six months to do it. He would like to know what relevance the Holy Virgin has to Dima’s quest for a place at Roedean for Natasha, or permanent residence in Britain for all his family in exchange for vital information, but the English tutor in him is also learning that Dima the storyteller has his own narrative arc and that his plots unfold with indirection.
‘My Rufina make this. She was zek, like me. Camp hooker, sick from tuberculosis, one hour each day. When she finish, she die. Jesus Christ, huh? Jesus Christ.’
A respectful quiet while both men contemplate Rufina’s masterpiece.