She was frowning. She had drawn in her lips and seemed to be moistening them inside her mouth. 'I do not regard such personal questions as appropriate to an artist. Some writers can work only in obscurity. Talent is talent. It does not require explanations.'

'Well I wasn't talking so much about explanations, you see, as about authenticity,' Barley explained. A path of down followed the line of her cheekbone but unlike the hair on her head it was gold. 'I mean, you know publishing. If a fellow's written a novel about the hill tribes of Northern Burma, for instance, one's entitled to ask whether he's ever been south of Minsk. Specially if it's a really important novel, which this one is. Apotential world-beater, according to my chum. In a case like that, I reckon you're entitled to insist that the writer should stand up and declare his qualifications.'

Bolder than the others, the senior lady was pouring boiling water into the samovar. A second was unlocking the regimental cash box. A third was scooping rations of tea into a handscale. Searching in his pockets Barley came up with a three-rouble note. At the sight of it the woman at the cashbox broke into a despairing tirade.

'I expect she wants change,' Barley said stupidly. 'Don't we all?'

Then he saw that Katya had put thirty kopeks on the counter and that she had two very small dimples when she smiled. He took the books and bag. She followed him with the teacups on a tray. But as they reached their table she addressed him with an expression of challenge.

'If an author is obliged to prove that he is saying the truth, so also is his publisher,' she said.

'Oh, I'm for honesty on all sides. The more people put their cards on the table, the better off we'll all be.'

'I am informed that the author was inspired by a Russian poet.'

'Pecherin,' Barley replied. 'Looked him up. Born 1807 in Dymerka, province of Kiev.'

Her lips were near the brim of her cup, her eyes down. And though he had plenty of other things on his mind, Barley noticed that her right ear, protruding from her hair, had become transparent in the evening light from the window.

'The author was also inspired by certain opinions of an Englishman concerning world peace,' she said with the utmost severity.

'Do you think he would like to meet that Englishman again?'

'This can be established. It is not known.'

'Well the Englishman would like to meet him ,' said Barley. 'They've got an awful lot to say to each other. Where do you live?'

'With my children.'

'Where are your children?'

A pause while Barley again had the uncomfortable sensation of having offended against some unfamiliar ethic.

'We live close to the Aeroport metro station. There is no airport there any more. There are apartments. How long are you staying in Moscow, please, Mr. Barley?'

'A week. Any address for your apartment?'

'It is not convenient. You are staying all the time here at the Hotel Odessa?'

'Unless they chuck me out. What does your husband do?'

'It is not important.'

'Is he in publishing?'

'No.'

'Is he a writer?'

'No.'

'So what is he? A composer? A frontier guard? A cook? How does he maintain you in the style to which you are accustomed?'

He had made her laugh again, which seemed to please her as much as it did him. 'He was manager of a timber concern,' she said.

'What's he manager of now?'

'His factory prefabricates houses for rural areas. We are divorced, like everyone else in Moscow.'

'What are the kids? Boys? Girls? How old?'

And that put an end to laughter. For a moment he thought she would walk out on him. Her head lifted, her face closed and an angry fire filled her eyes. 'I have a boy and a girl. They are twins, eight years old. It is not relevant.'

'You speak beautiful English. Better than I do. It's like well water.'

'Thank you, I have a natural comprehension of foreign languages.'

'It's better than that. It's unearthly. It's as if English had stopped at Jane Austen. Where did you learn it?'

'in Leningrad. I was at school there. English is also my passion.'

'Where were you at university?'

'Also in Leningrad.'

'When did you come to Moscow?'

'When I married.'

'How did you meet him?'

'My husband and I knew each other from childhood. While we were at school, we attended summer camps together.'

'Did you catch fish?'

'Also rabbits,' she said as her smile came back again to light the whole room. 'Volodya is a Siberian boy. He knows how to sleep in the snow, skin a rabbit and catch fish through the ice. At the time I married him I was in retreat from intellectual values. I thought the most important thing a man could know was how to skin a rabbit.'

'I was really wondering how you met the author,' Barley explained.

He watched her wrestle with her indecision, noticing how readily her eyes reflected her changing emotions, now coming to him, now retreating. Until he lost her altogether as she stooped below the level of the table, pushed away her flying hair and picked up her handbag. 'Please thank Mr. Landau for the books and the tea,' she said. 'I shall thank him myself next time he comes to Moscow.'

'Don't go. Please. I need your advice.' He lowered his voice and it was suddenly very serious. 'I need your instructions about what to do with that crazy manuscript. I can't fly solo. Who wrote it? Who's Goethe?'

'Unfortunately I have to return to my children.'

'Isn't somebody looking after them?'

'Naturally.'

'Ring up. Say you're running late. Say you've met a fascinating man who wants to talk literature to you all night. We've hardly met, I need time. I've got masses of questions for you.'

Gathering up the volumes of Jane Austen she started towards the door. And like a persistent salesman Barley stumbled at her side.

'Please,' he said. 'Look. I'm a lousy English publisher with about ten thousand enormously serious things to discuss with a beautiful Russian woman. I don't bite, I don't lie. Have dinner with me.'

'It is not convenient.'

'Is another night convenient? What do I do? Burn joss? Put a candle in my window? You're what I came here for. Help me to help you.'

His appeal had confused her.

'Can I have your home number?' he insisted.

'It is not convenient', she muttered.

They were descending the wide staircase. Glancing at the sea of heads Barley saw Wicklow and his friend among them. He grasped Katya's arm, not fiercely but nevertheless causing her to stand still.

'When?' he said.

He was still holding her arm at the bicep, just above the inside of the elbow where it was firmest and most full.

'Perhaps I shall call you late tonight,' she replied, relenting.

'Not perhaps.'

'I shall call you.'

Remaining on the stair he watched her approach the edge of the crowd then seem to take a breath before spreading her arms and barging her way to the door. He was sweating. A damp shawl hung over his back and shoulders. He wanted a drink. Above all he wanted to get rid of the microphone harness. He wanted to smash it into very small pieces and trample on them and send them registered and personal to Ned.

Wicklow, with his crooked nose, was skipping up the stairs to him, grinning like a thief and talking some bilge about a Soviet biography of Bernard Shaw.

She walked quickly, looking for a taxi but needing movement. Clouds had gathered and there were no stars,' just the wide streets and the glow of arc-lights from Petrovka. She needed distance from him and from herself. A panic born not of fear but of a violent aversion was threatening to seize hold of her. He should not have mentioned the twins. He had no right to knock down the paper walls between one life and another. He should not pester her with bureaucratic questions. She had trusted him: why did he not trust her?

She turned a corner and kept walking. He is a typical imperialist, false, importunate and untrusting. A taxi passed, not heeding her. A second slowed down long enough to hear her call her destination then sped away in search of a more lucrative assignment – to ferry whores, to carry furniture, to deliver black-market vegetables, meat and vodka, to work the tourist traps. The rain was beginning, bigdrops, well aimed.

His humour, so ill-placed. His inquisitions, so impertinent. I shall never go near him again. She should take the metro but dreaded the confinement. Attractive, naturally, as many Englishmen are. That graceful clumsiness. He was witty and without doubt sensitive. She had not expected him to come so close. Or perhaps it was she who went too close to him.

She kept walking, steadying herself, looking for a taxi. The rain fell harder. She pulled a folding umbrella from her bag and opened it. East German, a present from a short-lived lover she had not been proud of. Reaching a crossroads she was about to step into the street when a boy in a blue Lada pulled up beside her. She had not hailed him.

'How's business, sister?'

Was he a taxi, was he a freebooter? She jumped in and gave her destination. The boy started to argue. The rain was thundering on the car roof.

'It's urgent,' she said, and handed him two three-rouble notes. 'It's urgent,' she repeated and glanced at her watch, at the same time wondering whether glancing at watches was something people did when they were in a hurry to get to hospital.

The boy seemed to have taken her cause to heart. He was driving and talking at breakneck speed while the rain poured through his open window. His sick mother in Novgorod had fainted while picking apples from a ladder and woken up with both legs in plaster, he said. The windscreen was a torrent of gushing water. He had not stopped to attach the wipers.

'How is she now?' Katya asked, tying a scarf round her hair. A woman in a hurry to get to hospital does not exchange small talk about the plight of others, she thought.

The boy hauled the car to a halt. She saw the gates. The sky was calm again, the night warm and sweet- smelling. She wondered whether it had rained at all.

'Here,' said the boy, holding out her three-roublc notes. 'Next time, okay? What's your name? You like fresh fruit, coffee, vodka?'

'Keep it,' she snapped, and pushed themoney back at him.

The gates stood open, leading to what could have been an office block with a few lights dimly burning. A flight of stone steps, half-buried in mud and rubbish, rose to an overhead walkway.The walkway led across a sliproad. Looking down, Katya saw parked ambulances, their blue lights lazily rotating, drivers and attendants smoking in a group. At their feet lay a woman on a stretcher, her smashed face wrenched to one side as if to escape a second blow.