Stone's Fall полностью

'Can I help you?' A cautious voice, heavily accented; a small man, jacketless and collarless, stood beside me, looking at me cautiously. Not surprisingly. I was hardly dressed fashionably, but it was obvious from my healthy complexion and unpatched clothes that I was both English and not a natural member of this place.

'I was hoping to meet a friend,' I said. 'Stefan Hozwicki. Do you know him?'

'I do, but he isn't here,' the man replied, relaxing a little. It seemed Stefan's name was a sort of passport, a guarantee of my good intentions. Which was kind of him, although mysterious. If I did not exactly slip into the background here, I couldn't imagine Hozwicki doing so either.

'You've not been here before,' the man said. 'My name is Josef, by the way. Welcome.'

'Thank you. My name is Matthew Brad . . .'

He held up his hand. 'We do not have second names,' he said with a smile. 'It is uncomradely and also there are far too many people who do not wish to give them. So Matthew will do nicely.' His mouth twitched with amusement as he watched me try to look comradely.

I quite took to him. He was short, only about five foot four high, weedy and underfed, badly dressed and looked less than healthy. His hands twitched nervously all the time, as though he was trying to pull rings off his fingers, but the rest of him was totally still and calm. His eyes watched me through thick lenses, and they were kindly and a little sad.

'You have come for the talk?'

'Ah, yes. I suppose so. I'm not sure why I'm here, to tell the truth.'

'Comrade Stefan no doubt has his reasons.'

'I'm sure Comrade Stefan has,' I said, and was quite proud of myself for suppressing the twitch of amusement. It was only because I was quite touched; Hozwicki, as I have mentioned, was not exactly the most friendly of people. He trusted no one, and liked even fewer. To tell me to come here, where he must have realised I would hear him being referred to as Comrade Stefan – thus exposing him to ridicule if not worse if I ever repeated it in the King & Keys – was a gesture. Not exactly an open offer of friendship, but probably the closest to it I or anyone else would ever get. 'Who is the speaker, might I ask?'

'Ah,' he said. 'It is Comrade Kropotkin.'

The anarchist aristocrat. The Russian revolutionary. The Anarchist Prince. All titles dreamt up by the headline writers on the Daily Mail, who excelled at such things. He was an odd fellow, by all accounts; a genuine Russian prince who had turned to rural collectivism and revolution. He had been imprisoned in Russia, thrown out of Switzerland, France and America, and came to rest in a comfortable part of Brighton, where he went for long walks with his dog and was perfectly sweet to the neighbours when not advocating stringing them up from the nearest lamp post.

'And what is he talking about?'

'The evils of Darwinism.'

'Is it evil?'

'Comrade Kropotkin has argued in the past that Darwinism is but a reflection of capitalism because it emphasises competition and struggle over co-operation and co-existence. It justifies the exploitation of man by man, and strengthens the class ideology of the oppressors.'

'Excellent. So what will be new today?'

'That we must find out. If we can understand him. There are so many people of so many different nationalities here, with so many languages, that English is the only one everybody has a chance of understanding. I don't suppose you speak Serbo-Croat?'

'Not really.'

'A pity. I would have pressed you into service to give a running translation. Our Serbs are very bad at languages.'

'Who else – I mean, what other languages are represented?'

Josef screwed up his eyes to think. 'Well, there are Russians and Germans. Many Latvians and Lithuanians and Poles. A few Serbs. One Dane, although he comes only rarely. Many English, although for some reason few Irish, which I find strange as they are the most oppressed of all. Some Ukrainians and a few Belgians. The French tend to stay in France. And of course we have many, many people who speak only Yiddish.'

'A veritable Internationale,' I said, with what I hoped was a tone of approval. 'And how many policemen?'

He gave me an odd look, but realised full well that I was lighth-eartedly broaching a serious point. 'That is Serge, who hasn't arrived yet.'

'You aren't tempted to throw him out?'

'Oh, no. Obviously the police are going to infiltrate, so why bother? We do nothing here that is of great interest to them. It is not as if we hold open meetings on bomb-making.'

'Those are by invitation only?'

'Precisely,' he said with a twinkle in his eye. 'Seriously, the authorities here are stupid and coercive, but somewhat milder than their counterparts abroad. As long as we do not frighten them, they leave us alone, more or less. And nothing frightens authority more than not knowing what is going on. Then they fantasise about plots and evil, and react. So we show there is nothing to be afraid of.'

'And this Serge knows you know about him?'