I can't do this, Barley thought. I'm not equal to these dimensions.

'What year was his father shot?' he asked. Be a hamster. It's about the only thing you're fit for.

'I think it was the spring of 1952. While Yakov remained silent, everybody at the table began to talk vehemently about Czechoslovakia,' she continued in her perfect archaeological English. 'Some said the ruling gang would send in the tanks. My father was sure of it. Some said they would be justified in doing so. My father said they would do it whether they were justified or not. The red Czars would do exactly as they pleased, he said, just as the white Czars had done. The system would win because the system always won and the system was our curse.This was my father's conviction as it later became Yakov's. But Yakov was at that time still determined to believe in the Revolution. He wished his own father's death to have been worthwhile. He listened intently to what my father had to say but then he became aggressive. "They will never send in the tanks!" he said. "The Revolution will survive!" He beat the table with his fist. You have seen his hands? Like a pianist's, so white and thin? He had been drinking. So had my father and my father also became angry. He wished to be left in peace with his pessimism. As a distinguished humanist, he did not like to be contradicted by a young scientist whom he regarded as an upstart. Perhaps also my father was jealous, because while they quarrelled, I fell completely in love with Yakov.'

Barley took another sip of Scotch.

'You don't find that shocking?' she demanded indignantly as her smile leapt back to her face. 'A girl of sixteen, for an experienced man of thirty?'

Barley wasn't feeling very quick-witted, but she seemed to need his reassurance. 'I'm speechless but on the whole I'd say they were both very lucky,' he said.

'When the reception ended I asked my father for three roubles to go to the Café Sever to eat ice-cream with my companions. There were several daughters of academics at the reception, some were my school comrades. We made a group and I invited Yakov to join us. On the way I asked him where he lived and he told me: in the street of Professor Popov. He asked me, "Who was Popov?" I laughed. Everyone knows who- Popov is, I said. Popov was the great Russian inventor of radio who transmitted a signal even before Marconi, I told him. Yakov was not so sure. "Perhaps Popov never existed," he replied. "Perhaps the Party invented him in order to satisfy our Russian obsession with being the first to invent everything." From this I knew that he was still struggling with doubts about what they would do concerning Czechoslovakia.'

Feeling anything but wise, Barley gave a wise nod.

'I asked him whether his apartment was a communal or a separate one. He said it was a room which he shared with an old acquaintance from the Litmo who was working in a special night laboratory, so they seldom met. I said, "Then show me where you live. I wish to know that you are comfortable." He was my first lover,' she said simply. 'He was extremely delicate, as I had expected him to be, but also passionate.'

'Bravo,' said Barley so softly that perhaps she didn't hear.

'I stayed with him three hours and took the last metro home. My father was waiting up for me and I talked to him like a stranger visiting his house. I did not sleep. Next day I heard the news in English on the BBC. The tanks had gone into Prague. My father, who had predicted this, was in despair. But I was not concerned for my father. Instead of going to school I went back to look for Yakov. His room-mate told me I would find him at the Saigon, which was the informal name of a cafeteria on the Nevsky Prospekt, a place for poets and drug-pedlars and speculators, not professors' daughters. He was drinking coffee but he was drunk. He had been drinking vodka since he heard the news. "Your father is right," he said. "The system will always win. We talk freedom but we are oppressors." Three months later he had returned to Novosibirsk. He was bitter with himself but he still went. "It is a choice between dying of obscurity or dying of compromise," he said. "Since that is a choice between death and death, we may as well choose the more comfortable alternative."'

'Where did that leave you?' Barley asked.

'I was ashamed of him. I told him that he was my ideal and that he had disappointed me. I had been reading the novels of Stendhal, so I addressed him like a great French heroine. Nevertheless I believed that he had taken an immoral decision. He had talked one thing and done the opposite. In the Soviet Union, I told him, too many people do this. I told him I would never speak to him again until he had corrected his immoral choice. I reminded him of E. M. Forster, whom we both admired. I told him that he must connect. That his thoughts and actions must be one. Naturally I soon relented and for a while we resumed our relationship, but it was no longer romantic and when he took up his new work he corresponded without warmth. I was ashamed for him. Perhaps also for myself.'

'And so you married Volodya,' Barley said.

'That is correct.'

'And you kept Yakov going on the side?' he suggested, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

She was blushing and scowling at once. 'For a while, it is true, Yakov and I maintained a clandestine relationship. Not often, but sometimes. He said we were a novel that had not been finished. Each of us was looking to the other to complete his destiny. He was correct, but I had not realised the strength of his influence over me or of mine over him. I thought that if we met more we might become free of each other. When I realised this was not the case I ceased to see him. I loved him but I refused to see him. Also I was pregnant from Volodya.'

'When did you get together again?'

'After the last Moscow book fair. You were his catalyst. He had been on vacation and drinking very heavily. He had written many internal papers and registered many official complaints. None of them had made any impression on the system, though I think he had succeeded in annoying the authorities. Now you had spoken into his heart. You had put his thoughts into words at a crucial moment in his life, and you had related words to actions, which Yakov does not find easy. The next day, he telephoned me at my office, using a pretext. He had borrowed the apartment of a friend. My relationship with Volodya was by then disintegrating, although we were still living together because Volodya had to wait for an apartment. While we sat in the room of Yakov's friend, he spoke very much about you. You had made everything come clear for him. That was his phrase to me. "The Englishman has given me the solution. From now on, there is only action, there is only sacrifice," he said. "Words are the curse of our Russian society. They are a substitute for deeds." Yakov knew that I had contact with Western publishers, so he told me to look for your name among our lists of foreign visitors. He set to work at once to prepare a manuscript. I should give it to you. He was drinking a great deal. I was scared for him. "How can you write if you are drunk?" He replied that he drank to survive.'

Barley took another nip of whisky. 'Did you tell Volodya about Yakov?'

'No.'

'Did Volodya find out?'

'No.'

'So who does know?'

It seemed she had been asking herself the same question, for she replied with great promptness.

'Yakov tells his friends nothing. This I know. If I am the one who borrows the apartment, I sav only that it is for a private matter. In Russia we have secrecy and we have loneliness, but we have no word for privacy.'

'What about your girlfriends? Not a hint to them?'

'We are not angels. If I ask them for certain favours, they make certain assumptions. Sometimes it is I who provide the favours. That is all.'

'And nobody helped Yakov compile his manuscript?'

'No.'

'None of his drinking friends?'

'No.'

'How can you be certain?'

'Because I am certain that in his thoughts he is completely alone.'

'Are you happy with him?'

'Please?'

'Do you like him - as well as love him? Does he make you laugh?'

'I believe that Yakov is a great and vulnerable man who cannot survive without me. To be a perfectionist is to be a child. It is also to be impractical. I believe that without me he would break.'

'Do you think he's broken now?'

'Yakov would say, which one is sane? The one who plans the extermination of mankind, or the one who takes steps to prevent it?'

'How about the one who does both?'

She didn't reply. He was provoking her and she knew it. He was jealous, wanting to erode the edges of her faith.

'Is he married?' he asked.

An angry look swept across her face. 'I do not believe he is married but it is not important.'

'Has he got kids?'

'These are ridiculous questions.'

'It's a pretty ridiculous situation.'

'He says that human beings are the only creatures to make victims of their children. He is determined to provide no victims.'

Except yours, Barley thought: but he managed not to say it.

'So, you followed his career with interest,' he suggested roughly, returning to the question of Goethe's access.

'From a distance, and without detail.'

'And all that time you didn't know what work he did? Is that what you're saying?'

'What I knew, I deduced only from our discussions of ethical problems. "How much of mankind should we exterminate in order to preserve mankind? How can we talk of a struggle for peace when we plan only terrible wars? How can we speak of selective targets when we have not the accuracy to hit them?" When we discuss these matters, I am naturally aware of his involvement. When he tells me that the greatest danger to mankind is not the reality of Soviet power but the illusion of it, I do not question him. I encourage him. I urge him to be consistent and if necessary brave. But I do not question him.'

'Rogov? He never mentioned a Rogov? Professor Arkady Rogov?'

'I told you. He does not discuss his colleagues.'

'Who said Rogov was a colleague?'

'I assumed this from Your questions,' she retorted hotly and yet again he believed her.

'How do you communicate with him?' he asked, recovering his gentler tone.

'It is not important. When a certain friend of his receives a certain message, he informs Yakov and Yakov telephones me.'

'Does the certain friend know who the certain message is from?'

'He has no reason. He knows it is a woman. That is all.'

'Is Yakov afraid?'

'Since he talks so much about courage, I assume he is afraid. He quotes Nietzsche. "The ultimate goodness is not to be afraid." He quotes Pasternak. "The root of beauty".'