Dr Berlin (4 page)

He turns to the camera. ‘The propaganda has failed. The poster platitudes urging you to sacrifice the present in return for the promise of a better future are no longer believed. How long before the GDR acts? Can the authorities close the border? Can those who want to leave be stopped by force? These are the questions preoccupying both the East and the West. The answers, when they come, could prove dangerous for us all.’

The programme’s theme music rises as the image of Gerry Pountney fades under the closing credits. He stretches in his chair. Not bad. Not bad at all, even though he says it himself. He looks at his watch. Time for lunch. A good morning’s work. He smiles to himself. He is indeed a fortunate man.

‘I have to tell the committee that I’m not happy with the choice of Andrei Berlin,’ Bill Gant said, making his first contribution to the afternoon’s discussion. ‘I’m not disputing his academic reputation. That, as we all know, is well established. It’s simply that I find myself unable to shift the feeling that he’s not the right man.’

Until his intervention, Marion Blackwell had assumed Bill Gant’s brooding silence signalled assent, and that the meeting was going her way. After all, he’d supported her proposal when they’d talked about it last Wednesday, and she’d had no reason to suppose he’d shift his position in the days that followed. His sudden change of heart was unexpected and the damage to her case potentially great.

‘You were in favour when we talked before, Bill. What’s changed your mind?’

The hint of intimacy in her reference to a previous conversation was a slip that Michael Scott’s sensitive antennae would not miss. He gave her a sidelong look. She must be more careful in future. Especially where Bill was concerned.

‘When all’s said and done, the man’s a communist.’ Gant was looking down at the table. Was he deliberately avoiding catching her eye? ‘He stands for everything we oppose. That’s what I’m wrestling with. Berlin’s a risky choice.’

‘Isn’t that the point?’ Marion addressed her appeal to the other members of the committee. ‘We want to revive these lectures, not send them to an early grave, which is where they’ll end up if we don’t do something about them. Let’s have a speaker who’ll stir up a bit of controversy. Let’s have someone whose ideas will make us sit up and test our own beliefs. Isn’t that why we’re all here? To kick some life into this event?’

‘Bravo, Marion.’ Michael Scott smiled mockingly at her. ‘Very passionate, dear. Very con brio.’

She’d known all along that Michael Scott would be difficult. She hadn’t expected him to take pleasure in her discomfort. She felt herself colouring. Her neck always went red and blotchy when she was angry. She should have worn a scarf with her shirt.

‘Am I alone in being sceptical of his academic distinction?’ Scott continued. ‘I see it as a smokescreen intended to obscure the fact that Berlin is a loyal apologist for a vile regime. We’re fooling ourselves if we imagine his hands are clean.’

‘How can you say that, Michael? Berlin’s an academic with a growing reputation who’s not regarded as an apologist for anyone.’

‘A successful historian in the Soviet Union who is
not
in thrall to the regime is a paradox, Marion, and as you know better than most, having attended my lectures when you were an undergraduate, paradox became a casualty of Soviet society in 1917 along with irony, compassion, freedom of expression, truth and so many other attributes of the civilised world that Lenin took exception to. Bill’s got it right for once. Berlin is as much a part of that obnoxious regime as the head of the KGB or the governor of one of their slave camps. Why should we invite a spokesman for a political system we openly condemn and provide him with a platform to preach Bolshevism to our impressionable young? It’s asking for trouble.’

Her scheme was disintegrating before her eyes. It wasn’t difficult to do the mathematics. Two definite votes against. She had to get Bill to change his mind or her position was desperate. Her candidate would be voted out.

‘You’re keeping your counsel close to your chest, Peter,’ the chairman said, turning to Peter Chadwick. ‘Where do you stand on this issue?’

Chadwick drained his cup of tea with a theatrical gesture. She didn’t know him well enough to be sure of his support. He was an elusive man, a medievalist, with a couple of good books to his name. Their paths had hardly crossed. Where he stood on the Berlin issue was hard to predict.

‘Michael’s theory about contaminating the young doesn’t hold water for a moment,’ Chadwick replied dismissively. ‘I think we can trust our pupils to know their own minds and judge Berlin accordingly.’

He was on her side. She could have kissed him for it. Michael Scott was furious. He leaned across the table in his anxiety to put Chadwick right.

‘If you’d been at this university as many years as I have, Peter, you wouldn’t fall into the trap of making a generalisation that can be so easily refuted. The point to remember about the young is that that is precisely what they are. To be young is by definition to lack judgement. Take them too close to the fire and they will always burn themselves.’

‘Marion’s position is valid, Michael,’ Chadwick replied. Beneath his unemotional demeanour, she sensed his deep dislike of Scott. ‘We must either have a speaker who’ll put the Blake-Thomas lectures back on their feet, or we must drop this event from the university calendar, dissolve this committee and call it a day. Berlin’s a courageous choice and I commend Marion for proposing him. I don’t agree with his ideas but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be heard. Surely we’re all strong enough to cope with a challenge to our beliefs, particularly from a Marxist historian? You make it sound as if we’d crumble after a paragraph, Michael. I can only assume you’re being mischievous.’

‘Bill?’ The chairman turned to Gant. Marion could tell from Gant’s expression that he hadn’t been swayed by Chadwick’s arguments. Her heart sank.

‘Nothing I’ve heard makes me want to change my mind,’ Gant said nervously.

‘I think we know where you stand, Michael.’

‘I’ve said all I need to say, Chairman.’

They were split down the middle. Two for, two against. The casting vote would go to Eastman as chairman. This was an outcome she hadn’t banked on. Well, if you’re going to go down, better to go down fighting.

‘Andrei Berlin would be a splendid choice,’ she said, addressing her remarks to Professor Eastman. ‘Michael and Bill are showing a great lack of imagination. I think we’d find undergraduates queuing all the way up Mill Lane to get in to hear him. Why not create a little controversy for once? Why not challenge a few beliefs? Where’s the harm in that? Perhaps some of us have become too comfortable in our habits of thought’ – this looking at Michael Scott – ‘and a bit of stirring up might be good for the system.’

Bill wouldn’t like that, but so what? She’d show him she wasn’t going to be crushed by the reactionary opinions of men like Michael Scott.

‘Marion’s right,’ Chadwick said. He was doing his best to get Eastman into Marion’s camp. ‘It would do the Department good to have such a controversial speaker. Show the world that historians are not all deaf to contemporary issues.’

The clock in First Court struck four. Eastman reached for the leather-bound minute book which lay in front of him. He opened it and flicked through the pages. Marion knew he was looking for the Articles of Association.

‘Well, Chairman,’ Michael Scott said sourly, ‘it looks as if the future of the Blake-Thomas lectures lies in your hands. What do you say to that?’

Professor Eastman was approaching eighty. He remained chairman of the committee because he was the last surviving member of the university to have known Blake-Thomas’s daughters. They had lived in spinsterly splendour in a sandstone mansion in Madingley Road, devotedly protecting their father’s reputation. They had entrusted their father’s bequest to Eastman’s care because, before his death more than fifty years ago, Blake-Thomas had declared that the then youthful Eastman was the best historian of his generation, which meant he was nominating Eastman as his heir. Time had not been kind to Blake-Thomas’s approach to social history, nor to Eastman’s reputation. He was now regarded as
unfashionable. Therefore hardly likely to support Berlin. Marion felt depressed.

Eastman took his pipe out of his mouth and looked thoughtful.

‘The Blake-Thomas lectures are an important platform from which over the years men of all creeds and beliefs have spoken their mind. In this university we are rightly proud of our traditions of independence of thought and freedom of speech. We have the intellectual courage to listen to unfamiliar arguments with an open mind, submit them to rigorous scrutiny and to judge them on their merits. I’ve followed your positions with great care this afternoon. It cannot be denied that Berlin is a Marxist, nor that he is one of the leading younger historians in the Soviet Union. His work is coloured by the dubious philosophy, not to say dogma, of a regime to which we are totally opposed. Although I don’t agree with much of it, I consider Dr Berlin’s
Legacies
of
History
to be a major interpretative work, and I am not alone in my verdict.’

He paused for moment, drawing as much drama as he could out of the situation.

‘I am persuaded that Berlin is a serious candidate. Asking him to speak is in the true Blake-Thomas tradition. Therefore I cast my vote, which under Article Twelve of the Rules and Regulations I am constitutionally allowed to do’ – here he held up in full view of the committee the minute book – ‘in support of Marion Blackwell and her candidate, Andrei Berlin.’ He looked round the table, pleased with his judgement. ‘And that, I think, takes care of the business of the day, does it not?’

Berlin sat enclosed in a pool of light cast by the reading lamp on his desk, his mind floating in an unfamiliar world of acronyms, technical terms and baffling scientific calculations.

Engineer Kuzmin had painstakingly assembled information on each incident that had occurred in the construction of Radin’s rocket: spring clips that did not spring, hatches that did not close, sealants that did not seal, screws that did not fit flush as they were designed to do, engine clips that broke under stress. He had logged every fault, the date and time of its discovery; he had described the nature of each malfunction and marked the failure of each test; he had recorded estimates of the time needed for repairs or the process necessary to get the equipment to work. He gave the dates for his submission of each of many reports detailing his findings.

Reports of these malfunctions, Kuzmin wrote, had been persistently ignored by senior officials in Baikonur. Requests for re-testing when vital components had failed were rejected so often that his staff no longer considered such requests worth making. Repeated appeals to extend the launch schedule to allow more time for the completion of essential tasks had been dismissed out of hand. The Ministry in Moscow had issued its instruction. The launch was to take place on time as planned. Kuzmin’s fear was that it would be a disaster.

Even in Kuzmin’s flat scientific style, Berlin could trace his deep dejection at a situation over whose solution he could
have no influence. His response was mirrored by his account of the reaction of his staff, their initial concerns rapidly turning to incredulity at the indifference of those in authority to what they reported, then despair as the list of untended faults grew larger, and finally resignation at the impossibility of doing what they knew needed to be done. What was the point of reporting anything? Kuzmin asked helplessly, when the pleas of his team went unanswered because no one in authority was prepared to listen to voices from below, except to damn them unjustly as reactionary saboteurs.

‘Unless some action is taken to reinstate essential control procedures and recognise the difficulties of working on new technologies that cannot always be made to perform faultlessly on time,’ he warned finally, ‘and unless we allow ourselves more time for testing, we will put our space programme in jeopardy. We will suffer disasters in future as we have done in the past, and we will lose our lead in space technology to the Americans.’

He was writing this account solely for the Chief Designer, who, he knew, would be disheartened by the evidence of the decline in standards that had set in so quickly since his ill-health had taken him away from Baikonur. Had he still been present, Kuzmin was sure that none of this would have happened. The new directorate appeared to have little understanding of or sympathy for the complexities of building a rocket on this scale. In desperation, Kuzmin was begging Radin to use his influence to intervene to ensure that the launch was postponed until every detail had been fixed.

Berlin admired the man’s courage. Such outspoken remarks were rare. No wonder he had written the report only for Radin. Who else would believe him? It was a bitter irony that the disaster he had predicted had taken his life.

Only one mystery remained. Why had Radin given him this report? Information of this kind was an unwelcome gift. It could prove dangerous to know too much. A warning bell rang in Berlin’s head. He may have known Radin for years, he
may have loved him like a father, but he must still be careful. Viktor did nothing without a purpose. Even on his deathbed he was capable of ensnaring Berlin in some hare-brained scheme.

Where
are
the
voices
of
truth
, Viktor had asked,
the
men
and
women
with
the
courage
to
tell
us
what
we
know
in
our
hearts
to
be
true?
If Viktor was appealing to some better self that he imagined lived within him, then he was mistaken. Berlin was a historian. Historians recorded events, analysed motives, made judgements, debated their importance. They were not actors in their own drama.

That was a concept Viktor could never understand because his life was a perpetual drama and he was its leading player. He was driven by a vision that never released him from its grasp. His imagination might soar to the stars but it never stretched far enough to accept the plain fact that not everyone was like him – had it done so, Berlin believed, his achievements would have been much less. If Viktor was appealing to him to do something, he had chosen the wrong man. Berlin felt relieved. He could not respond because he had no ability to do so. Action lay outside his competence. Therefore he should feel no guilt for ignoring a dying man’s appeal. He was off the hook.

At first Kate had hated Moscow. In those early days, a week in that gloomy, heartless city seemed an eternity, a year a sentence without reprieve, even though the Moscow she found was not what she had expected. The heart of the city was not ugly concrete blocks as she’d imagined: its buildings were well proportioned, there were wide avenues and parks, churches, museums and libraries. The metro stations were like underground temples. What depressed her was the neglect, the disrepair, the tawdriness of the place. Was she the only one
who longed for restoration and a coat of paint? Did the citizens of Moscow really need the ever-present icons of Stalin and Lenin and the ubiquitous red stars perched on the top of building after building to remind them they lived in the Soviet Republic? Wouldn’t they respond to other colours in their lives, other icons?

If the path to socialism brought universal benefits, why were there daily queues of women and old people outside the shops? Why were there so few goods for sale? One week you might be able to buy milk but not butter, the next some scraggy meat but no vegetables. And fruit – how infrequently she found any fruit. She was not surprised by the sad demeanour of the people in the street, but why were they reluctant to look you in the eye – what did they think she might do to them? Why were their clothes so shabby, their skin so pallid? When she went on the tram, why did the old women point at her blonde hair and move away? In her letters home she concealed her unhappiness from her father. Every day she wondered how she would see out the month, let alone the year.

*

‘That wasn’t right. I’m sorry.’ Kate breaks off before he can say anything, her voice petulant and troubled. ‘I’ll play it again.’

She is playing the second movement of Dvo
ř
ák’s Cello Concerto. She knows she should let Vinogradoff comment on her performance but in her irritation at the quality of her playing she can’t help herself. Better that she should tell him she knows she hasn’t got it right than let him assume she thinks any different. She goes back a couple of bars and repeats the phrase, but the effect is no better. Despondently, she waits for his comment. She is sure it will be critical.

‘The mistake was in your head, Kate. You play fine the first time. Sometimes, I think you are hard on yourself without reason.’

Her lessons with Vinogradoff take place each week either
alone in his cramped apartment, where they are now, or with other students at the Conservatoire. To her surprise he refuses to play the cello with her. He prefers to make his points on the piano.

‘If I play for you on the cello,’ he explained at their first lesson, ‘perhaps I will then hear myself in your performance. That is not why you are here, is it?’

Just as well, she thinks. I can copy anything you do, I can mimic you to perfection. One night in her third week at Malaya Gruzinskaya Street she had drunk more than she should have and made the other students laugh by giving a ‘Vinogradoff performance’. Not only had she played like him, but she had reproduced his physical mannerisms as well, the nervous pull at the lips, the way he bowed forward over the instrument one moment and then leaned away from it the next. Afterwards, she was ashamed of what she’d done, and she hoped it would never get back to Vinogradoff. But it had made her life a little easier, and had diminished the suspicion with which the other Eastern Bloc students regarded her.

‘Just for an evening,’ she wrote to her father, remembering the laughter and applause, ‘the ice between us seemed to thaw a little.’

‘I don’t seem able to make it sound the way I hear it in my head.’

The admission is made with more passion than she has intended. Will he understand her irritation with her own performance? She is desperate to show him what she is capable of. Why can’t she feel at ease in his presence? In the few weeks since her arrival in Moscow, Vinogradoff has not heard her play as he did when he came to London. Something is lacking and it frustrates her, making her lose confidence. She blames this on the strange city she has chosen to study in, so very different to anything she has encountered before.

‘You are trying too hard to show us what you can do, Kate,’ he tells her in his slow, accented English. ‘Please understand, you have nothing to prove. You would not be
here if we did not believe that you could become a true musician. Have confidence in yourself. Trust the musicianship you carry inside you. When you play, you must release this gift you have been given so we may all share in it.’

‘It is so much harder to play here than at home,’ she tells him in a sudden moment of confession. In this alien city, the familiar certainties of her life have deserted her. Her mind is permanently in turmoil.

‘It never ceases to be hard for any of us,’ Vinogradoff says, assuming her comment is philosophical. ‘You must work at the talent you have. You are among friends here. That is important. We are your musical friends.’ He smiles encouragingly at her. ‘Do you feel ready to play this at your recital?’

Each student is encouraged to play in the informal recitals that take place in the Conservatoire every fortnight. So far she has avoided performing before an audience on the grounds that she has not yet settled in. Vinogradoff has endorsed her refusal. She must play only when she feels she is ready. She knows he does not want her to play in public until she has overcome the inhibition he senses in her. This is the first time he has brought up the subject.

‘Do you think I should?’

‘It’s a difficult piece; it demands courage,’ he replies. ‘Why not show them you are brave enough?’

‘I’m not sure I am at the moment,’ Kate replies, knowing this isn’t the answer he wants. ‘My courage seems to be in short supply these days.’ Vinogradoff says nothing. He looks at her with his sad, hooded eyes. How she hates to disappoint him. ‘May I think about it?’

‘Please,’ he says, ‘think positively. It is an important step.’

Whatever encouragement he gives her, she is not yet the master of this music. Something in it still escapes her. Vinogradoff is right. She must find the courage to play before an audience if she is to win his approval. First, she has to overcome her own fears.

‘He was smiling, Gerry.’ Julius Bomberg was working himself up into a rage of indignation. ‘The bastard was actually
smiling
as he said it.’

They were lunching in the staff canteen. In his passion to express his views, Bomberg had upset his glass of water with a flamboyant wave of his arm. The plate of shepherd’s pie that he had hardly touched now appeared to be floating on his tray. He seemed not to notice. He cared little for food and he resented the time it took to eat it. His energies, fuelled by cheroots and his own noxious brew of black coffee, had greater ambitions to satisfy than filling his stomach.

‘He wasn’t smiling, Julius. He was grimacing.’

‘Same thing,’ Bomberg said dismissively. ‘A colonel in the British Army sat there in front of the camera, cool as you like, and said that if we have to go to war with the Soviets over Berlin, we will do so and damn the consequences.’ Bomberg looks for a response but Pountney says nothing. ‘You can’t deny he said that, can you, Gerry?’

‘How can I? It’s there on film.’

‘The man
wants
to go to war, Gerry. He
wants
to fight. He’s typical of the military on both sides. Bursting to get their hands round each other’s throats and damn the rest of us. How can you possibly drop something as good as that? You’re crazy. You’re cutting the best bit.’

When he had shown his film to Bomberg that morning, he had not received the endorsement he expected. He was dismayed to discover Bomberg’s determination to make him include the quote from the officer in the British Zone of Berlin. Changing his mind was going to be difficult.

‘The context is wrong, Julius. My piece is about economic migration, not the risk of war with the Soviets. How the GDR will survive if this exodus continues. Talking about the likelihood of a conflict is out of place. The quote doesn’t fit.’

‘Sooner or later their government has to put a stop to this migration. They can’t sit back and do nothing while the country empties, can they?’ Bomberg was in full flow now, arms flailing, voice loud, caught up in the energy of his own indignation. ‘So they swallow Berlin into East Germany. Then what happens? The Western presence in Germany is challenged by the Soviet Union. Threat and counter-threat. Neither side will budge. East and West bid each other up in a war of nerves, each side pours in tanks, troops and high-powered generals, until armed to the teeth they stare at each other across a street in Berlin. Meanwhile, the world holds its breath. Someone sneezes. A trigger is pulled, and within seconds a shooting match begins. Each blames the other for starting the war. By the end of the first day one side threatens to explode a nuclear bomb if the other doesn’t pull back. Neither yields an inch. Next day a nuclear bomb is exploded and that’s it. There isn’t a third day because the world came to an end the day before. In a matter of moments and without thinking about it, a thousand years of European civilisation has been reduced to dust and millions are dead. And this smiling officer says keeping our troops in Berlin is worth the risk of destroying Europe and murdering its citizens. The man’s insane.’