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.Perhaps they would cross over to the Kazan Cathedral; perhaps Nikolaev knew some empty store-room on one of the floors above (the House of Books was huge: it contained publishers’ offices, busy translators of geology textbooks into Mansi, Chukchi, Evenk and Eskimo, thirty-million-copy editions of a zoology primer awaiting forty railway vans).Still, it was all very queer.In the meantime, the best thing to do was to sit, watching the open door for a short man with a cap on (so Alex had, perhaps insufficiently, described Nikolaev), and try to read the titles of the English classics in the Foreign Books section.Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Three Men in a Boat (let Belinda dream or read those; he just couldn’t make the hospital today; he might perhaps ring up later; all he wanted was a good sleep in a hotel bed and later some borshch and perhaps a nice hot plate of beef Stroganov; she could wait till tomorrow); Oliver Twist; Angel Pavement; Martin Eden; the Complete Works of A.J.Cronin.He watched, too, the people queueing up at counters as patiently as Englishmen had recently queued in English bookshops for those cognate bestsellers The New English Bible and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.The West wanted sex and avatars; Russia the opium of progress.Ah, nonsense.The State was a twisted wire coronal a child would wear on its head.People were people.Outside the front door a man in a cap stopped, looked round in a burly way, then thrust a papiros with a twisted stem into his mouth.He used up five bad Russian matches to get it alight, and Paul watched him cautiously.He was short all right, also neckless.He stood there quite patiently, looking into the passing crowds with pale eyes, occasionally stamping his feet as though it were cold.That would undeniably be Nikolaev.Now that the moment had come Paul found himself paralysed; he sat on his two cases huddled up, as before a fire with the knowledge that bone-cutting cold awaits outside.He waited till Nikolaev had finished his cigarette and thrown the crushed-up cardboard stem to the pavement.Then he slowly walked out, a case in each hand.He and Nikolaev looked at each other in a slack hopeless sort of way.Then Nikolaev said, ‘Mr Gussey?’‘Ah, you speak English,’ said Paul.He put the cases down.There was no sense, with all these people passing up and down the Prospekt, of naked danger.It was a good idea, after all, to meet here.‘Not match English,’ said Nikolaev sadly.‘We do this quick, yes? How much you want?’‘Surely,’ said Paul, frowning, ‘you want to know how many … What I mean is, you haven’t even seen——’‘I know, I know,’ said Nikolaev crossly.‘Like Mizinchikov.Fifteen rouble for one, yes? Clothes, how many?’‘Let’s say,’ said Paul, ‘nineteen dozen.Nineteen dozen at fifteen roubles each …’ He should really have worked all this out before.‘Let’s call it twenty and then we can subtract.Let me see …’But Nikolaev was impatient.He took a thick envelope from the side-pocket of his old jacket, which was the colour of rather mouldy brown bread.‘Here,’ he said, ‘is …’ He shut his eyes tight; his lips computed rapidly; the higher numbers of a foreign language are always the hardest thing to learn.‘… Is tree tousand, is tree tousand …’ He cursed; he couldn’t manage the other numerals.It was money.It was well over a thousand nicker.Paul put his hand out greedily, then he stopped.‘Wait,’ he said.‘What’s all this about Mizinchikov? How do you know of my connection with …’ Then he spotted them, across the road in front of the Kazan Cathedral—a parked Zis, two men, his old friends Karamzin and Zverkov.‘Why,’ said Paul, ‘this is a put-up job, this is bloody treachery …’‘Quick, quick, you take.’ And Nikolaev tried to thrust the bundle into Paul’s hand.Karamzin and Zverkov were just starting to cross the road.Paul cracked, burst, went mad.As lithely as in a PT exercise, he bent to one of his suitcases.He opened it up, disclosing brilliant drilon—gold, crimson, lime, cinnamon.He dipped in, he drew out, he shoved three or four dresses into the arms of a staid and astonished middle-aged couple who were about to enter the Dom Knigi.‘A present,’ he said, ‘a podarok.’ The couple would not take: infected, infected, their shooing arms seemed to say.But two plain teenage girls in deplorable summer dresses came up swiftly to examine the offerings.They chattered eagerly to each other.‘Skolko?’ They wanted to know how much.‘Podarok,’ repeated Paul, ‘a gift.’ Though in the land of Baba Yaga and sputniks, they gaped incredulously.‘It’s the truth,’ said Paul.‘Pravda.’ Queer that pravda should mean the truth, this sort of truth.The girls took daringly, thanked like mad, then went off chattering round the corner towards the canal.Paul dipped in for more.Nikolaev tried, as Paul bent, to thrust the money down the back of his shirt, but Paul was too quick for him.Urgency and excitement were curing his hangover fast.He pushed away Nikolaev’s hand, at the same time kicking Nikolaev’s foot, which had come down on the unopened suitcase.A crowd was collecting; there were some murmurs against Nikolaev.Here, it seemed, was a mad but good-hearted foreigner giving things away; it was hardly decent of this native-born one to attempt first to buy, second to steal.Paul’s inspiration boiled up into the words ‘I give to the Russian people …’ Translation into Russian was difficult; he flicked through declension tables as a thumb flicks comb-teeth, then decided, ‘To hell with grammar.’ ‘… On behalf of their comrades the British people.’ And then, dipping, throwing gorgeous colours into still bewildered faces, he called, ‘Angliyskiy narod dayet!’ Nikolaev had been pushed back by the women and was hitting, trying to get through, waving his envelope of money, shouting angry words.An inward tram and an outward tram seemed to have converged and stopped: Karamzin and Zverkov were not yet across.‘Gifts, gifts,’ called Paul, ‘from the British people to the citizens of Leningrad.’ He had an old image of children’s eyes full of wonder, gaudy balloons in their arms like new-born babies.He dipped and threw.Men and women were momentarily turbaned, sashed, cloaked and bibbed in hurled streaks of primrose and vermilion.One little old woman tugged at Paul’s shirt, saying, ‘Moya doch, moya doch—svadyba zavtra.’ So her daughter was getting married tomorrow, was she? Paul piled her arms with gentian, maroon, lemon, midnight blue.Then he threw daffodil, gold, orange, a lone virginal white at the crowd—he threw them like benedictions in a ceremony of aspersion.It was the most satisfying orgasm he had ever known: spilling this stuff of life in what only appeared to be an altruistic act, he revelled in and was ashamed of his total nakedness; he felt a frightful embryo guilt.But, seeing the dark Slav eyes reflect brilliance from the colours they drank and the well-shaped lips move and move in excitement, he thought, ‘Why don’t we do this more often?’ That was an old song: the tune ran through his head gaily.He tried to remember the rest of the words and was still trying to puzzle them (—‘Just what we’re doing today’—) out when Karamzin and Zverkov at last pushed their way through and confronted him.He did not at first recognize them and said, ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, I mean vinovat.There aren’t any more.’ And, as if this were the end of some Russian film, ‘Konyets.’ Then he separated their faces out from the rest of the now diminishing crowd and said, ‘Ah, gentlemen.Treachery, eh? And now, presumably, dear little Alexei Prutkov doesn’t get his cut after all
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