THE WINTER CITY Read online

  She looked around her. She was not familiar with the Eastern Church, and there was a quality here which baffled her. Obscurely, she missed the long, directional impulse of the Western churches that she knew, their sense of movement and aspiration. The Greek cross, with its four identical arms, had a static perfection to which she was unable to respond; and this cathedral, built in the form of that cross, had a purity which was beyond her comprehension. She felt small and irrelevant.

  ‘Wonderful, don’t you think?’ Doyle’s voice floated out of the gloom. ‘No argument or persuasion; no evangelism; it is fixed, finite, utterly self-contained.’

  Kate did not answer, but she got up and walked across to him, anxious for the physical comfort of his nearness. They stood together looking at the mosaic. The gold and purple glowed in the dim light; Kate loved the colours but the figures, depersonalized, without emotion, repelled her.

  ‘It’s not human,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Doyle agreed with enthusiasm. ‘It’s certainly not human.’

  She looked at him. He was studying the mosaic, his face shining, not with the humility which she associated with religious feeling, but with a hard, flinty exaltation.

  ‘The figures are so stiff,’ she said, almost angrily. ‘So static, so . . .’

  ‘Eternal?’ he suggested.

  Kate was not very happy with eternity. She stood beside Doyle, tired and wretched, and dimly aware of a distance which separated them. Ever since she first met him she had been convinced that by loving him she could make him the person that she wanted him to be; she had no desire to destroy his personality, she simply believed that the person she wanted to create was in fact the real Doyle, imprisoned within him, waiting for release. Now for the first time, she began to feel uneasy.

  ‘I’m feeling better,’ she said loudly. ‘So we can go.’

  He moved away reluctantly. When they came out into the open, she said:

  ‘That place made me feel quite morbid.’

  ‘Poor little Kate!’ He squeezed her arm; he was laughing and his face looked boyish and irresponsible. She was comforted.

  But the wind, flicking the bitter air against their faces, was barbed as a thorn.

  Inside the cathedral the darkness had descended again, broken here and there where rays of moonlight filtered through narrow windows. Behind a pillar at the back Maria Anas knelt so still that her body might have been carved out of the stone. On the wall opposite to her a myriad pieces of coloured glass, each with its individual lustre, were unified in a picture of the Madonna holding the dead body of her Son; the figures were adamant and as sharp in outline as the fragments of which they were composed. Maria Anas raised her head and stared at the Madonna and Son, fixed for all time in their tableau of love and agony.

  When finally she went out, her face was calm, devoid of hope or despair.

  Chapter Six

  WEDNESDAY

  I

  The next morning there was a change in the sky, the cloud was lower and grey had darkened to violet. In a country house some seventy miles from the city a man stood at a window, drawing on his coat as he prepared to leave.

  ‘More snow is on the way,’ he said casually. And then, a little less casually: ‘You should have those trees taken down.’

  The man sitting by the fire made no reply but a tired smile flickered across his face. He was an unattractive bundle, hunched up in his chair, a gnome of a man with a wizened face and dark, deep-set eyes that looked consumptive.

  ‘The trees should come down. Don’t you agree?’ The man at the window turned to Matthias. ‘They seem to wall this place off from the world.’

  ‘You forget how long I have lived behind bars, Rakov.’ The words were spoken drily, but without resentment. ‘The trees don’t trouble me in the least, I can assure you.’

  ‘It would be good to have a view, nevertheless. You must feel so . . . out of touch, here.’

  The dark eyes were raised from the fire, they rested on the man’s face and waited for him to continue. Rakov’s thin mouth twitched impatiently as he said:

  ‘The climate has changed considerably, you know.’

  ‘Does the wind blow from a different direction?’ The tone was one of intentional parody and there was a hint of malice in Matthias’ smile. Rakov lowered his eyes for a moment to conceal his hatred.

  ‘You know very well what I mean,’ he said, when he had recovered his composure. ‘The ideas which you held, and which led to your difference with the Party, are becoming more respectable. Soon . . .’

  ‘Just what was it that caused that difference?’ Matthias mused. ‘I really can’t remember now.’

  He was being deliberately provocative, and yet he was speaking the truth. His quarrel with the Party had taken place seven years ago and he had travelled so far since then that the original dispute no longer seemed important; it was sufficient to know that the distance which separated him from the Party was now too great for reconciliation to be possible. Rakov, however, did not realize this and he went on:

  ‘There are reforms which are somewhat overdue. It would be difficult for the Party members who are connected with the more restrictive measures of the last few years to carry these reforms through alone. A certain confidence has been lost and needs to be restored.’

  ‘Does Keltner agree with this?’

  ‘He hasn’t admitted it yet, but you can take it from me that he is beginning to see the need.’

  ‘The situation must be dangerous indeed!’

  ‘All that is required is a little surgery. And, of course, a surgeon whom the people trust.’

  Matthias turned away and looked into the fire. The memory of pain harrowed his face. It seemed hard that now, when he had thought himself safe . . .

  Rakov was drawing on his gloves. ‘It may not come to anything, of course. There is no reason why the trouble should not die down as suddenly as it flared up; provided no one makes a false move.’

  But the false move has already been made, Matthias thought, otherwise Rakov would not be here.

  II

  That morning the official Party newspaper contained a paragraph referring to an attempt by a group of reactionaries to incite a riot in Government Square. One of them, it was reported, had been found to be carrying a time-bomb which he planned to leave in the buildings of the Ministry of Food. Thanks to the prompt action of the police, and the good sense of the crowd who refused to be swayed by these foreign-employed agitators, serious trouble had been averted. This was yet one more instance of the solidarity of the people behind the Party leadership.

  In another newspaper a small fable appeared. It told how the wolf had been able to outwit a plot by the lambs, who were known to be cunning and dangerous animals, to seize power for themselves and terrorize the animal kingdom.

  At eleven o’clock a large party of workers congregated outside the main Party headquarters. This time they were orderly and well-organized. They respectfully commended certain measures to the Party officials; namely, that the men arrested in Government Square on the previous day should be released, that Matthias should be reinstated, and that Archbishop Mexces, who had not hitherto found himself linked with Matthias, should be released from prison.

  There were sporadic outbreaks of lawlessness in various parts of the city.

  In the afternoon the Party leaders met in an atmosphere of considerable strain, and the British and American Embassies sent out for a supply of blankets.

  III

  Later in the afternoon the boy Stefan hurried down the steep road which led to the river. He hurried because the air had a new clarity which he found exhilarating; and also because he had just placed a roughly-made wreath at the foot of the broken monument on the hills. He had enjoyed the gesture, which had been made with great ceremony in front of a handful of youths of his own age; but he did not want to be caught. He had lived too long in a city conditioned by fear to be wholly irresponsible.

  When he reached the bridge he felt sa
fe. He leant against the parapet, breathing quickly, his face scarlet where the wind caught his cheeks. The ice beneath the bridge was black and hard, and a small boy was playing with a dog, holding its paws and trying to teach it to skate. Children were wonderful, Stefan thought. He leant over the bridge and watched for a time. When he looked up again he was struck by a change in the landscape. The pattern of light was reversed, so that the sky was darker than the land. Already a few flakes of snow were falling.

  ‘You had better be careful!’ he called out to the child. ‘The ice is going to melt.’

  The child snatched up the dog, holding him tight to his breast, and stared at Stefan.

  ‘Oh, not immediately,’ Stefan assured him. ‘But soon. The snow means that the temperature will rise, and there will be a thaw.’

  The child began to cry.

  ‘Never mind,’ Stefan said soothingly. ‘Soon it will be summer and you can teach your dog to swim.’

  The little boy, whose memory was short, did not understand about summer. He stumbled away, wailing despairingly.

  Stefan strolled across the bridge. He remembered that, in the days when he was a very small boy, there was an old man who had a stall near the river, and in the winter he used to bake potatoes on a brazier. Stefan could feel the potatoes now, their skins furrowed and so hot that they burnt his hands. Life, he thought solemnly, had been much more exciting in those days.

  But he became cheerful again when he remembered that things were going to change soon. He had heard, on his way home from the Technical College where he was studying, of the demands which the workers’ association had made to the Party leaders; demands which were a little too moderate to appeal to him, but which, nevertheless, represented a step in the right direction. He wondered what Matthias would do if they brought him back. The thought of Matthias did not inspire him; it was difficult, from the pictures he had seen, to imagine Matthias, who was a small, frail man, leading an assault on the City Hall, or organizing a raid on the ammunition depot. The possibility of a bloodless victory did not occur to Stefan; it was, for one thing, a conception quite alien to his country; and, which was more important, he felt a strong physical desire for violence. If only the General were to recover. There was the man that the country needed now!

  He decided to visit the General again. The streets were emptying; in one or two windows anxious faces peered out; he met policemen, walking three abreast, looking eager for trouble; he saw an old man standing in front of a wall white-washing words which had been scrawled there. He grew more excited as he walked.

  Luka was not glad to see him. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, breathing heavily, while he went up to the General’s room.

  ‘You’d better be studying your lessons than wasting your time with him,’ she said.

  ‘But I learn a lot from him,’ he answered mockingly, and was amused to see the fear in her face. She came lumbering up the steps, the breath rasping in her throat.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she snatched at his coat. ‘What do you mean by that? He doesn’t even move. I know, because I go in and watch him every few hours. He doesn’t even move an eyelid.’

  ‘I just learn by looking at him.’

  She peered at him uncertainly; then her eyes disappeared in the folds of fat, her body began to shake and shudder, and she stumbled down the stairs, clutching at the banister rail and choking with laughter.

  Stefan went into the narrow room. As he crossed to open the window, he held his handkerchief across his mouth and nose because the smell was so bad. The wind whipped into the room as he released the handle, and a few flakes of snow spattered the greasy bedclothes. The light was fading and there was no lamp in the room: the General did not need one now. Stefan knelt on the floor, looking at the old man’s face.

  The skin was like yellow parchment, except on the cheeks where there was a faint waxen flush. It had been true, what he had said to Luka; the old man’s face was a book which he could read. His whole life showed in his face; a life of violence, cruelty and lechery. Stefan’s eyes moved to the still hands folded on the bed, the blunt fingers with the dirty, broken nails. He envied the old man. He envied him because he was branded by the marks of a life lived with extreme virility in a world outside the grey contours of the Party’s régime.

  For the past year, sitting in this room, he had lived vicariously through the General. But now his desires were growing more urgent; he felt physical pain which could only be relieved by violence. But what could he do? He looked at the General and asked: what would he have done? One thing appeared to be certain: if there was fighting required, of whatever kind, whether it was sabotage or massacre, rearguard defence or pillaging, the General would have got on with it. But then the General would have had an army, or at least a brigade. You couldn’t fight alone, Stefan reflected bitterly; yesterday’s events in the square had proved that.

  He remembered suddenly that the boy Ilya Anas had once bragged that his father, who worked in a radio factory, did a good deal of ‘spare-time work’, and he had hinted that the people for whom he worked were ‘liberal’. Later, when Stefan had tried to reopen the conversation, Ilya had flown into a temper and denied everything. Of course, Ilya might have been showing off. But Stefan decided that it would be worth while to call on Ilya’s father. He was not sure what he was going to say, or exactly what he expected to happen; but he wanted to act, provided he had something to do he did not care greatly about the outcome. He closed the door softly on the General and ran down the stairs.

  The Anases lived quite near. But Stefan stopped on his way for a glass of hot chocolate and a biscuit. The chocolate was muddy, but at least it was warm. He wondered, as he drank it, exactly what it was, if anything, that Anas did in his spare time. No rumours of sabotage or attempted assassinations had ever reached him; he hoped nevertheless that it was something which required physical energy.

  There was a short cut from the café to the road where the Anases lived, but it was narrow and cramped, and Stefan chose to go the long way through Government Square. He enjoyed walking in the city which had suddenly become transformed for him; he exulted in the baroque splendour of the opera house, the thrust of its curved walls challenging space; he paused before the sculptured group of horses in the centre of Government Square, thrilled at the power of the whirling bodies, his own body trembling beneath the thrashing hooves; he lingered near the cathedral, his memory of the mosaics was dim, but imagination provided a vision of a richness beyond belief, a dazzling reminder of a golden, and more lusty, age. He was very excited by the time he reached the Anases.

  IV

  On the Wednesday evening of each week, Helen went for a language lesson with Maria Anas. She had begun the lessons when she first came to the country over a year ago, because she was lonely and needed something to occupy her mind. Now she continued them for another reason. Maria Anas fascinated her. The woman, too, seemed to derive great pleasure from Helen’s visits. Sometimes, after the lesson had finished, they would sit talking in careful, stilted phrases, one on either side of the small, wooden table while the light from the oil lamp flickered and grew dim. On these evenings Maria’s husband and the boy, Ilya, would go down to the room below which was occupied by a young couple who were friends of the Anases.

  On this particular evening, Kate said to Helen:

  ‘You’re not going to your lesson tonight, are you?’

  ‘Of course. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just that the special police are doing a lot of rounding up, and Doyle says it’s a bad neighbourhood.’

  ‘The Anases aren’t bad,’ Helen answered. She was obstinate and disliked being given advice; moreover, she never took anything that Doyle said seriously. She went on her way.

  She noticed that there were more soldiers about and fewer civilians. There was glass on the pavement outside the offices of the official Party newspaper. But it seemed quiet now. She crossed Government Square and made her way to the old part of the city. She walked q
uickly and was surprised to find that she was no longer conscious of the cold. The snow had stopped, but the wind, which had been increasing steadily all day, was blowing strongly; it whipped round the corners of the twisting street and as Helen bent her head before it, she wondered whether it was just the nearness of the river which made the atmosphere seem damp suddenly.

  Usually there were a few children playing in the dismal alleyways, but tonight the street was quiet and almost empty. The lamps had not been lit although it was dark. Helen could smell food, strong and spicy, but not appetizing. It was a stale smell that seemed always to hang in the air here and it was mixed with the odour of bad drains. Pieces of paper fluttered on the pavement and outside one of the crumbling terraced houses a dustbin overflowed into the street.

  The houses leant forward across the street and looking up Helen could see only a narrow strip of sky between the crooked roofs. At many windows the shutters were closed, giving the houses the withdrawn look of a blind person. Here and there, however, she could see into rooms, small and bare, with no other furniture than a table, a bed and a few wooden chairs. Like a poor child’s doll’s house, she thought sadly, and immediately there were tears in her eyes. The sight of these rooms, with their evidence of meagre lives starved of joy, disturbed her unreasonably. But then everything lately was unreasonable; she seemed to have become rather unstable, her emotions fluctuating feverishly between joy and despair.

  The door of the house in which the Anas family lived was open. Helen could see the flight of wooden stairs which twisted upwards into the darkness of the first floor landing. There was the sound of voices and the rattle of crockery from one of the downstair rooms. She began to climb the stairs, slowly, because the banisters were rotten and the treads worn and slippery. The walls were damp and badly cracked. As she came to the second floor landing, a door slammed and a figure loomed above her. She stood back against the wall while he rushed by; he did not look at her, but she recognized the gypsy boy who had laughed with Kate. He was not laughing now. She hesitated, obscurely distressed, and listened as his footsteps died away in the cobbled street.