Last Call for Blackford Oakes Read Online Free Page A

learned about human equality from Josef Stalin.”
    â€œUrsina!”
    â€œJust teasing. Can your fiancé read American English? Or just English English?”
    Rufina paused. “Yes. Yes, he knows American quite well.”
    â€œWell, ask him, dear. Ask him about Mark Twain.”
    â€œYou ask him, dear. Andrei is very approachable.”

CHAPTER 5
    Ursina Chadinov looked down lasciviously at the telephone. A private telephone! After years of having to walk downstairs to the building concierge to make a call, or receive a call. “If that phone wanted to make love to me,” she said to Rufina the first time she used it, “I would happily cooperate.”
    Rufina was also pleased. She felt herself entitled to a private phone, as an employee of the Economics Institute, but gave credit to Ursina for prevailing over the Soviet bureaucracy. “There are perquisites in being named professor of urology at the University of Moscow, on top of having published a book on urological research,” Rufina acknowledged, fondling the telephone.
    â€œYes, dear Rufina. And one of those perquisites is the party you are giving for me on Wednesday. I am really looking forward to it.”
    â€œIt’s hardly a party. There’ll be just six of us at dinner.”
    â€œI prefer to think of it as a party. And I will get to meet your mysterious fiancé, Andrei Fyodorovich Martins.”
    â€œOf course. Only please, Ursina, don’t start teasing Andrei about his past. It’s this simple: He does not talk about it.
    â€œNow, we’ve invited two students he’s especially taken with in his senior seminar. They are the Gromovs, Maxsim—Maks—and Irina. They are very attractive, and, by the way, you can speak with them in English—they are thoroughly schooled.”
    â€œDoes Andrei Fyodorovich lecture to his seminar in English?”
    â€œYes, it is a part of the school discipline.”
    â€œWhat exactly does he teach, in his senior seminar?”
    â€œThat is another forbidden topic.”
    â€œI understand. Anyway, I’m to talk to Andrei in English. That is a part of his discipline.”
    â€œWhen he and I are alone together we use both languages. My English is quite advanced, as you well know. In fact, you have my permission to converse with me in English from now on, Ursina, if you wish.”
    â€œCan I use the language of Mark Twain?”
    â€œOr switch back to the language of Aleksandr Pushkin. Suit yourself.”
    â€œWhat can I bring to the party?”
    â€œBring along a sedative, Ursina, something that will keep you non-argumentative for a couple of hours. Urologists use sedatives, don’t they?”
    â€œThey certainly do when I am operating on them.”
    Ursina would bring, as her guest, Vladimir Kirov, a senior professor in the urology department. He had studied under Ursina’s uncle and had in turn taught Ursina at the medical school. She knew him as teacher, colleague, and devoted friend.
    Kirov happily pursued studies in non-medical fields and was now taking courses in English literature at the university. He had introduced Ursina to works by Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Malcolm Muggeridge. “The first two are Roman Catholics, but even so, they write very well. Muggeridge was once an admirer of the Soviet Union, though he turned against us. But he is a very witty writer. Evelyn Waugh is a critic of manners, and Graham Greene writes mostly about the soul.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œThe soul. If you said ‘the soul of man,’ you’d be talking about the noncorporeal side of man.”
    â€œYou don’t have to explain that, Volodya. For instance, you could say, ‘Lenin caught the soul of Marxism,’ couldn’t you?”
    Kirov chuckled, and confirmed the time of the party on Wednesday. “I’ll come by in a cab at 1930.”
    Ursina had only once before visited Andrei’s