“We’re a centre for Russian studies,” she was saying. “A lot of analysts, a lot of historians, a lot of experts. And yes, before you ask, that includes Moscow watchers.” The phrase they used at the Park, back in the O.B.’s day. “But if you were expecting a basement where they test exploding sandwiches and invisible cars, you’re in for a disappointment.”
“Shame. I’ve often wondered what an exploding sandwich tastes like.”
“It’s the last thing I’d eat.” She delivered this so deadpan, he wasn’t sure a joke was intended.
She led him into a vestibule equipped with coat hooks and notice boards and a set of pigeonholes. A poster for an evening of Ukrainian folk music, and another for a lecture series, also on a Ukrainian theme. A corridor stretched ahead; the floor tiled in a soft brown colour, the various doors on either side new looking. It was cool, bordering on chill, and there was no obvious noise until he moved, to discover his shoes percussive on the tiles.
“You’re not the actual librarian, are you?” he asked.
“God, no. I’m doing a master’s, but I was roped in to help with your grandfather’s collection. Maybe because I was at the Park not long ago.”
“Yeah, you said. I remember. Sorry.”
“No, I’ve enjoyed it. It felt like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Also, there are free meals involved.”
He’d been apologising for forgetting her backstory, but it didn’t seem worth picking up on. Too often, lately, he’d found himself on the wrong side of a social miscue. Hard to tell if this was a symptom of his brush with a destabilising nerve agent or just who he was, his occasional gaucherie writ larger post-pandemic, in common with most everyone else.
“We’re in here.”
They’d come to the end of the corridor, having passed a set of doors into what looked like the main library: a tall room, book lined, with carrels round the edge, though none of this as leather-bound or oak-lined as his imagination had expected. Instead, it was all glass and blond wood, with high windows through which the upper limbs of trees could be seen, lazily weaving patterns out of sunshine. He hadn’t noticed any readers, though it had been a quick glance. Calm, though. Peaceful. That behind him, he was shown through another door into a room that was smaller but nevertheless punched him when he entered. He had to hide an intake of breath and hope Erin hadn’t noticed.
It wasn’t the O.B.’s study—no
He pulled himself back. “Blimey . . . I mean, I knew what you’d done. I just hadn’t thought it’d be so . . .”
He hadn’t thought it would be so like time travel.
The room, yes, was smaller than the O.B.’s study, the rows of shelves packed more closely together. Not the exact configuration, then, but unnervingly similar, and as he stepped towards the books, he found himself remembering their titles, or at least, finding the touchstones when he looked for them—there was Churchill, there was Beevor; there, among newer volumes, were Macintyre, Andrew and Aldrich. Biographies and histories and analytical studies, with the occasional frivolity thrown in, in the shape of a smattering of paperbacks kept low down, where the casual gaze wouldn’t encounter them—not an embarrassment, but a private pleasure: Deighton, Ambler, Price, Littell. The le Carrés in hardback on a shelf above, next to Dickens.
That was it for fiction, though. More prominent was the shelf of almost spineless pamphlets; samizdat material, and fugitive releases from the presses of long-defunct academic institutes, or roneo’d in garages by bearded dissidents—impossible to escape that detail: They all had beards, in River’s experience. He couldn’t swear to this particular rag-tag, dog-eared collection being in the identical order it had been back home, but he couldn’t discern a difference. Perhaps they’d been jammed together so long they’d moulded into place, each pamphlet squeezed against the next so snugly it was all but glued there, the whole shelf-load demanding to be viewed always in the same order, one way and one way only.
She said, “We made good use of your film, as you can see.”
