Dr Berlin Read online

  Viktor Radin is sitting in a wheelchair under an oak tree, apparently asleep, a rug around his knees. Always small, he is now a diminished, childlike figure, the pale waxy skin on his face barely concealing the sharp outline of his skull.

  ‘He’s been looking forward to your visit,’ the nurse says as they walk across the grass. ‘Don’t be upset at his condition. This is not a good day. But then no day is good now. We see that he suffers no pain.’ She bends down to whisper in Radin’s ear. ‘Your visitor is here, Professor.’

  ‘Who?’ Radin awakes with a start, uncertain where he is.

  ‘It’s me, Viktor. Andrei.’

  ‘Andrei. At last. I’ve been waiting for you.’

  A parody of a hand reaches out to his, the fingers swollen, misshapen and apparently boneless. Berlin takes it briefly, hating the soft spongy feeling that serves as an awful reminder of what Viktor suffered so many years ago. The skeleton breaks into a smile revealing pale gums and worn, yellow teeth between dry, flaky lips. ‘Welcome to the last station on the line.’

  The nurse settles him, adjusting his pillows, altering the position of his wheelchair so that it remains out of the sun. She looks at her watch. ‘Half an hour,’ she says to Berlin. ‘He tires easily.’

  ‘How are you, Viktor?’ Berlin takes off his jacket and sits down on the grass. It is a question he hardly needs to ask. There is no doubt about Radin’s condition.

  ‘You find me as you see me, a man on the edge of the greatest mystery of life. As a scientist, I can say there is a certain interest in observing the process of dying at such close quarters. My only regret is that when it is all over I will not be able to write up my experience for the benefit of those who die after me.’

  Berlin is shocked at his frailty. Since he last saw him he has wasted to nothing. He seems lighter than air. One breath of wind and Radin would disappear.

  Radin reaches for Berlin’s arm. ‘The truth is, Andrei, I do not like to witness my own decline. I wish it were over. But I am glad you are here. Thank you for answering my plea so quickly.’ He struggles to change his position in his chair. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  Berlin offers one to Radin, who grasps it with both hands and carefully places it between his lips, where it will stay until he has smoked it down to a sodden butt.

  ‘How are you, where have you been?’ Radin smiles again, the skin stretching thin and transparent across his face. ‘Tell me everything about yourself.’

  ‘There’s little to tell,’ Berlin says. ‘I teach, I lecture, I do research. What else does an academic historian do?’

  ‘He writes articles in learned journals, he publishes books, and if he is lucky he goes abroad for conferences. Occasionally, I hope, he dreams.’

  Berlin smiles. ‘Leipzig in May. Since then, nothing, and nothing planned. No luck and no dreams either. Very barren in all departments.’

  ‘No dreams? What’s come over you?’

  ‘What is there left to dream about, Viktor?’

  ‘In my situation, I agree, there is only time for memories and regrets. But you’re young, Andrei, you have a future to look forward to. Or are you afraid to dream about what may be?’

  This is dangerous territory. The state of his mind is not a fit subject for a dying man’s curiosity, even when that man is as close to him as Viktor. If he reveals that he has not dreamed for longer than he can remember, that he has written nothing for months, worse, that he has no desire to write anything, he will be subjected to a merciless interrogation. That must be avoided.

  ‘You didn’t get me here to talk about myself, Viktor.’ For his own protection, he must steer Radin’s interest back to the reason for his visit. ‘Your note said we had matters to discuss.’ He cannot bring himself to use the phrase ‘last things’.

  Radin nods in agreement.

  ‘I want you to tuck in my blanket.’ This is more like the Radin he knows, giving instructions, reordering the world. ‘As you bend over me, I shall give you an envelope. You are to conceal it at once and you must show it to no one. Is that understood?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Berlin gets to his feet and hovers over Radin’s wheelchair. He might be dying but he hasn’t lost any of his reckless determination to outwit the system when it stands in the way of what he wants to do.

  ‘Now.’

  Berlin bends forward, tucks in the rug and receives the envelope. He slips it into his pocket. ‘There – that wasn’t difficult, was it?’ He is humouring the old man out of respect for their years of friendship.

  Radin ignores him. ‘You now have in your possession a report from the senior flight engineer at Baikonur. You will find that its technical content lies far beyond the competence of a historian like yourself, but even a brief glance will confirm its importance as a historical document. Engineer Kuzmin describes more than a hundred faults in the equipment of my rocket, not one of which had been attended to by the time of the launch on 24 May. On that day my rocket did not fly to the stars as I had planned, it exploded on the launch pad, killing two hundred scientists, engineers, senior military and government officials, as well as the director of the Cosmodrome at Baikonur. Kuzmin was one of those who lost their lives.’

  ‘This is the first I’ve heard of such an event.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Since when does bad news travel well in this country?’ Radin coughs harshly. ‘It was a disaster of huge proportions that was wholly avoidable. This rocket was twice as powerful as that which took Gagarin into space. It is the source of power that will take men to the moon well before this decade is out. The consequences of this failure are catastrophic for our space programme, which has been set back by well over a year, probably two. I will not be around to guide it to success. Are you surprised I am fearful of the future?’

  ‘Has there been an investigation into the causes of the accident?’

  Radin shakes his head. ‘The official report, if such a thing exists, will blame the failure of this launch on mistakes of judgement by Engineer Kuzmin, to which he will have conveniently confessed before he died. That is a complete fabrication. Kuzmin is being made to shoulder the blame because he is unable to answer for himself. If I were not in the state I am, I would defend his memory. He was a good engineer, one of the best. Once more the guilty escape censure while the innocent stand unjustly condemned.’

  The effort of speaking is visibly exhausting Radin. He slumps forward, his chin on his chest, his eyes closed, all his energies concentrated on the relentless need to finish what he has so carefully prepared.

  ‘Kuzmin knew that the level of risk had long passed any point I would have considered acceptable. Had I known then what I know now, I would have delayed the launch, probably by weeks. But he and his team, all experienced professionals, did nothing. Why? That is the question to which we must find the answer. They could not come to me because I was in hospital in Moscow. They appear not to have raised their concerns with Ulansky. Was it because they knew the only voices he would listen to were his political masters in Moscow, who have no understanding of the processes of scientific development? Ulansky paid for his ignorance by dying in the disaster, but that does nothing to restore the balance. He should never have been there in the first place. For all I know, his successor may be equally inept.’

  Radin falters. His mouth opens but no words come. He looks momentarily panic-stricken, as if he has lost the power of speech. Then his faltering voice returns.

  ‘How many times have good men known the truth and failed to act because they were afraid? How many times have men with no talent risen up our hierarchy of power to positions for which they are hopelessly ill-equipped? Answer those questions honestly and you will know how far we have allowed ourselves to be corrupted.’

  Is this the madness of the dying who, as they slip beyond the sanctions of the reach of the world, no longer have any need of caution? Or is Viktor seeing the truth with the sharp clarity of a mind no longer troubled by the daily struggles of life?


  ‘If we conceal what we know to be true because we are afraid to declare it,’ Viktor is saying, ‘then we are allowing self-deception to threaten our present and our future. We live and breathe lies because we are too tired, too cynical or too fearful to do otherwise. If lies are all we teach our children, then we will perpetuate the cycle. Where are the men and women with the courage to tell us what we know in our hearts to be true, that if we are to avoid disasters like the one I witnessed, we must change our ways or we will destroy ourselves?’

  ‘Have you had a good talk, Professor?’ The nurse, a smiling, motherly woman, has returned.

  ‘My friend is tired of my ramblings, nurse. He has been waiting impatiently for your arrival.’

  ‘You’ve been out in the sun long enough.’ She stands behind the wheelchair and turns it towards the house. ‘Time for your rest.’

  ‘I will have long enough to rest when I am dead.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ the nurse says. ‘You’re not to talk like that. We’ll have you back on your feet in no time.’

  ‘We will not meet again, Andrei.’ Radin extends his hand in a gesture of farewell. ‘Goodbye, my friend. Goodbye. I have enjoyed our friendship. Remember my words when I am gone.’

  For one brief moment, their fingers touch.

  2

  If Kate has slept at all, she is unaware of it. She has long ago lost count of the number of times she has looked at her watch. It is now ten past two. In twelve hours, she calculates, she will be on a plane, Moscow will be disappearing in the September haze and with it a whole year of her life will come abruptly to an end. It is hardly credible that by the evening of this day, whose dawn will shortly appear, she will be back at home in York, and the time she had fought so hard for will be no more than memories, and with each day that passes those memories will fade.

  The body beside hers stirs, mutters a few incomprehensible words and turns over. She looks at his face, his pale skin, the blue veins on his closed eyelids, his fair hair that never behaves, the soft lobes of his ears. In her mind she sees them together at the departure gate, clinging to each other, holding on to that last warmth of contact before the terrible winter of parting, saying the only words that can offer any comfort – their lives are bound together for ever, their love is indissoluble, it will overcome any barrier that tries to keep them apart – distance, time, even the power of political ideology. Their love will never die, they will tell each other again and again in those last desperate seconds. It will never ever die.

  Whatever she may say to convince herself now, she knows that the moment she says goodbye her heart will break and her life will be over.

  *

  ‘Moscow? I’m not sure I like that idea, Kate.’

  That was where it had begun, in York, almost eighteen months ago. Her father had been dubious about the notion of Kate studying in Moscow, just as he had once been dubious about Kate leaving the local grammar school and enrolling in the Northern Musical Academy. Other people’s children played musical instruments, but their ambitions went as far as a place in the school orchestra. None of them wanted to be a professional musician. Why should his daughter be different to other girls her age? What was so special about Kate? Over a lifetime Dick Buchanan had developed the habit of opposing what he couldn’t understand and Moscow, like his daughter’s musical ability, was well beyond the limits of his comprehension.

  ‘I wouldn’t go there unless I was pushed,’ he said gloomily, in the hope that his response might put her off. He was afraid to oppose her wishes more openly. ‘And it would have to be a mighty hard shove even to get me to think about it.’

  The Moscow Conservatoire was superior to any similar music school in the West, Kate’s teachers at the Academy had argued patiently on her behalf, after a tearful interview with Kate, who had made them well aware of the obstacles she faced at home. The closed society of Stalin’s time was long gone, they added, in an effort to gain Mr Buchanan’s support for their star pupil. The Soviet Union was beginning to open up. Western pupils were welcomed at the Conservatoire. Yevgeny Vinogradoff, who had heard Kate play in London and had expressed his wish that she become his pupil, was one of the leading cellists of the younger generation. He taught only a few specially chosen students each year. To be invited to become his pupil was a rare honour, a genuine recognition of Kate’s talent. It was an opportunity she couldn’t let pass, not if she was serious about her ambition to play professionally.

  ‘It’s not the teachers I’m against, I am sure Mr Vinogradoff knows what he’s doing,’ her father told Kate. ‘It’s the location. Moscow’s a bloody awful place.’

  ‘Not if you aren’t Russian,’ Kate had replied, her optimism invented that moment in response to her father’s ignorance of a city she knew he had never visited, only imagined with his prejudiced eye. ‘Anyway, I won’t be away for long, just a few months, less than a year.’

  Wasn’t anything bearable for a year, particularly if you were working with a musician as outstanding as Vinogradoff?

  The argument had ground on during the spring and early summer, Kate sticking single-mindedly to her wish to go to Moscow. In the end her father had relented because he didn’t want to hinder the development of an ability he found so difficult to understand but of which secretly he was proud. It was unlikely, he maintained to her teachers when she was out of earshot, that his daughter would be good enough to become a concert performer, but if her heart was set upon it, then he didn’t want to be the one to oppose her. Better she find out the hard way that she wasn’t up to it.

  ‘If you don’t like Moscow,’ he said after telling her of his change of mind, ‘you can always pack it in and come home.’

  Later, as they said goodbye at the airport, he had briefly held her hand and said: ‘I shall miss you, Kate. Take care of yourself.’

  It was the closest he had come since her mother had died to expressing affection for her, and she had tears in her eyes as she boarded the aircraft.

  *

  Ten to three. Kate turns over restlessly, the sheet tangled and uncomfortable.

  If the man I love is in Moscow, her night mind suddenly proposes, then I should follow my heart and stay here with him.

  Her more rational self, caught unawares by this unexpected idea, takes time to regain control. She has promised her father she will return home. There is no escaping that obligation. Her visa will run out soon. To pretend she could have a life here is self-deception, if not madness. The authorities will never let her stay, however hard she pleads. There is no more stony heart than the bureaucrat acting under instructions that allow no deviations from the rulebook, and in Moscow there are regiments of such heartless men and women. She dries her eyes on the corner of the sheet.

  No, she must count herself lucky that in this year that is almost over she has discovered the love that will sustain her all her life. She will celebrate it in every note she plays, every concert she gives. She will dedicate every hour of practice to this man who is sleeping beside her. Every day her music will call to him across space and time and somehow – how? – he will hear her message. Even if she cannot speak to him or touch him, he will hear in the sound of her cello that she loves him still, loves him always. She will work tirelessly so that they can be together, even if only fleetingly for a day or two in some foreign city. Better a life of brief moments of intense happiness than to live without love.

  In the darkness he reaches out and holds her. Her tears spill over onto his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘Please don’t cry.’

  The tumult in her mind means she is unable to hear a word.

  *

  Moscow, she imagines as the plane lumbers heavily out of Heathrow Airport on a rainswept September morning and sets its course east, will be a dark and hostile city. The thought fills her with anxiety. She has in her bag a guide to the city that she has not dared look at, an unopened Russian phrasebook and a potted explanation of Marxist-Leninism, whose first pag
e she has found incomprehensible. What the rest is like she daren’t imagine. But she has brought them with her none the less. As the plane bumps its way through the last ragged edges of cloud and levels out, she stares at the brightest of blue skies, her preconceptions of the country she is heading for nourished by familiar images from films she has seen, books she has read, ideas she has accumulated from newspapers and the radio.

  Will the buildings be ugly concrete boxes so huge that the Streets are always cast in shadow? Will there be signs of industrialisation everywhere, vast factories, chimneys belching smoke, the boom and roar of the thunderous march of Soviet heavy industry? Will she see on all the buildings brightly coloured posters illustrating happy, smiling workers milling steel or digging coal miles underground? Fulfilment in the Soviet Union is derived from finding one’s true identity through working for the great process of building a socialist state. What is good for the masses is good for the individual. She has learned that much, at least. Will the people walk by in the street, eyes averted, the women’s heads covered in faded scarves, their children pale and subdued, a population walking on tiptoe, under the vigilant eye of the KGB, who watch aggressively for signs of errant behaviour that betray the malign intentions of the enemies of the state?

  Sheremetevo Airport, an ugly building rising up out of the dusk as the plane taxies towards it, confirms her fears. It is a cliché of communist architecture, just what she has been expecting. An army officer comes on board the plane to collect passports – she feels immediately nervous giving up, even for a short time, the only proof of her identity. The officer senses her reluctance and snatches her passport from her. His angry expression makes Kate feel she has already committed some crime by wishing to enter the country. Her anxiety mounts.

  Once through customs, her instructions are to look for a man holding a placard with her name on it. Nervously she searches the jostling crowd in the arrivals hall. Why do they stare at her so? Not many names are being held up – the plane was half-empty – but not one of them is hers. Has she been forgotten? What will she do if she cannot find him? Eventually she spots a piratical figure with a black beard and moustache, a cigarette stuck to his lips. He carries a small card on which someone has spelled her name incorrectly. He looks hopefully in her direction. Can she trust him? She has a sudden vision of being kidnapped, taken gagged and bound to an apartment in Moscow where she is drugged and forced to become the mistress of a bloated drunken communist official more than twice her age. For a moment she is paralysed, unable to move. She takes control of herself again and follows the pirate to the car. He neither smiles nor speaks English. She tries her elementary Russian but he chooses not to understand. It is growing dark, and the night air stings her cheeks with cold. Autumn in Moscow is already well advanced.