The Russian Interpreter

His sense of isolation and unrelatedness was increased because he did not know where the prison was. He was fairly certain that it was not the Lubianka, where foreign prisoners were usually taken. The outside of the Lubianka was like a large office block, and people said the cells were underground. His own cell was on the first floor, and so far as he could see from the exercise yard the building was more like some sort of old-fashioned penitentiary. He was not even sure that he was still in Moscow. The car ride had seemed to last an eternity. All he could remember about it was being repeatedly, shamefully sick.

He asked the warders who came to unlock him, or to inspect him through the peep-hole, where the prison was, but they never answered. He asked them if Proctor-Gould was in the same prison. They ignored that, too. He asked them what he was charged with. He asked to see someone from the British Embassy. He asked for paper to write to his mother. He asked for a towel. The warders went on with what they were doing as if they had not heard. The questions began to sound foolish even to Manning.

He wondered if the Embassy knew about their arrest. Unless the police had notified them, he thought probably not – at any rate, not yet. There was no one who could have told them. Sasha or Konstantin might have been prepared to, but Russians would not normally be able to communicate with a Western embassy. It was possible, anyway, that Konstantin had been arrested himself at the end of the Faculty dinner. As if from a dream Manning could remember him standing in a corridor … shaking his head at something Manning was saying….

Proctor-Gould’s disappearance would soon be noticed, of course, even if his own was not. Manning tried to remember if he had mentioned any appointments with Embassy people, or with people who might be expected to inform the Embassy if he failed to turn up. Proctor-Gould had too many links and contacts for his absence to go unremarked for more than a day or two at most. Then the Embassy would take action. It was the sort of job they would give to Chylde, who used to invite Manning to his parties. Manning tried to imagine Chylde taking action. He pictured Chylde’s face, all pink and smooth, and heard Chylde’s voice, humbly distributing the alms of his benevolent interest to all those less fortunate creatures in the world who through some unfortunate deficiency of taste, education, nationality, or character had not been selected for the British Foreign Service. It was not an entirely reassuring thought.

Manning struck up some sort of acquaintance with the warder on night duty. He was older than the other warders, and he had sagging shoulders, with a crumpled face set in an expression of permanent apology. When he came on duty in the evening he would slide back the peep-hole and ask:

‘All right, son?’

Manning was encouraged by these few words in the silence. He took to asking to be let out to the lavatory each evening; constipated by the impersonal stares of the day warders, he found he could manage to empty his bowels in the night man’s more sympathetic presence. One evening, as he sat on the lavatory, the night man took a cigarette out of his tunic pocket, cut a third of it off with his pocket-knife, lit the two pieces in his own mouth, and gave the smaller one to Manning.

‘Stop the smell,’ he said. ‘Always light up in the lavatory myself.’

‘Thanks,’ said Manning. He was moved by the gesture.

‘What have they got you for, son?’ asked the night man.

‘I don’t know.’

The night man chuckled humourlessly.

‘“I don’t know”,’ he mimicked.

They smoked in silence. The night man stood with his head turned to one side, as if listening for some faint, distant sound. Manning took the opportunity to repeat his various requests. ‘Mother,’ ‘Embassy,’ ‘towel,’ – the words echoed away ridiculously down the corridor from the doorless lavatory, under the weak, bare bulbs in their wire guards. The night man did not even look at Manning. Whatever the sounds were that his ear was cocked to catch, they were not Manning’s complaints.

But one point had got through, at any rate. When Manning had reached the stage of washing his hands, and drying them on the sodden handkerchief, the night man took the end of his cigarette out of his mouth between his second finger and thumb, and flushed it carefully away down the lavatory. Then he said:

‘Should have a towel. To dry yourself.’

‘Can you get me one?’

‘Not my job, son.’

‘Couldn’t you tell someone …?’

‘No one to tell on this shift.’

Some of the time, as Manning sat on the bed in his cell, watching the patch of sunlight from the window creep millimetre by millimetre across the wall, lengthening, then at last reddening, fading, and disappearing, he felt despair. He was abandoned. No one knew where he was. He had fallen off the edge of the world.