Our Game полностью

It happens to be the Ingush (and not the Marsh Arabs or the Common Whale, as Tim kindly suggested) because I've seen them, in their little valley towns and in their mountains, and like Negley Farson I saw a kind of Paradise and must take it in my care. In life, as we both know, it's the luck of the draw, who you meet and when and how much you have left to give, and the point at which you say, To hell with everything, this is where I go the distance, this is where I stick. You know those photos of old fellows in their great big mountain capes, their bourkas? Well, in an uneven fight, when a North Caucasus warrior is surrounded by enemies, he will throw his bourka to the ground and stand on it to show he will not retreat one step from the surface covered by his bourka. Me, I throw down my bourka somewhere on the road to Vladikavkaz, on a perfect winter's day, when the whole of creation is sitting up ahead of you, inviting you to come in, whatever the risk and whatever the cost.

* * *

Outside the tower, bats squeaked, owls hooted. But the sounds I was listening to were within my head: the drumbeat of revolt, the cry to arms.

* * *

It happens to be the Ingush because they exemplify everything most shabby about our post-Cold War world. All through the Cold War it was our Western boast that we defended the underdog against the bully. The boast was a bloody lie. Again and again during the Cold War and after it the West made common cause with the bully in favour of what we call stability, to the despair of the very people we claimed to be protecting. That's what we're up to now.

* * *

How many times had I been forced to listen to these turgid expositions? And closed my ears to them: my mind as well? So many, I supposed, that I had forgotten their effect upon ears as wide open as Emma's.

* * *

The Ingush refuse to be rationalised out of existence, they refuse to be ignored, devalued, or dismissed. And what they are fighting against, whether they know it or not, is a whorehouse alliance between a rotten Russian Empire marching to its old tunes and a Western leadership that in its dealings with the rest of the world has proclaimed moral indifference to be its decent Christian right.

That's what I'll be fighting against too.

Dozing off in my tutorial this afternoon, I woke with a jerk three hundred years later. Helmut Kohl was Chancellor of all the Russias, Brezhnev was marching the Bosnian Serbs into Berlin, and Margaret Thatcher was at the checkout counter, taking the cash.

Which is all to say, I love you, but look out for me, because where I'm heading, there isn't a lot of turning back. Amen and out.

L.

* * *

Standing, I positioned myself in front of Larry's green raincoat, which I had hung from a wooden hook in the wall. The mud-caked boots lay beneath it on the floor. In my mind's eye he was smiling his Byronic smile.

"You mad bloody Pied Piper," I whispered. "Where in God's name have you taken her?"

I have locked her in a hollow mountain in the Caucasus, he replied. I have seduced her in accordance with my blood feud against the infidel Tim Cranmer. I have swept her away on the white stallion of my sophistry.

* * *

I was remembering. Staring at the green raincoat and remembering.

"Hey, Timbo!"

Just the appellation grates on my nerves.

"Yes, Larry."

It's a Bloody Sunday and, as I realise now, our last one. Larry has driven Emma down from London. He just happened to be in town, he just happened to have a car. So instead of driving himself to Bath he has driven Emma to me. How he found her out in London I have no idea. Neither do I know how long they have been together.

"Great news," Larry announces.

"Really? Oh, good."

"I've appointed Emma our Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Her parish will include the Americas, Europe, Africa, and most of Asia. Won't it, Emm?"

"Oh, great," I say.

"I've found her a duplicator. All we need now is some headed notepaper, and we can join the United Nations. Right, Emm?"

"Oh, marvellous," I say.

But that is all I say, because that is how Cranmer's part is written for him. To look down kindly. To be tolerant and unpossessive. To leave the children with their idealism and remain on my side of the house. It is not an easy part to play with dignity. And perhaps Larry sees something of this in my face and is moved, if not to guilt, at least to pity, for he flings an arm around my shoulder and squeezes me against him.

"Pair of old queens, aren't we, Timbers?"

"Talk of the town," I agree, as Emma takes her turn to smile on our friendship.

"Here. Read all about it," says Larry, delving in his scuffed Gladstone bag. And he hands me a white booklet called "A People's Calvary." Which people is not clear to me. Our Sunday seminars have addressed so many insoluble conflicts over the last months that the Calvary could have occurred anywhere between East Timor and Alaska.