Our Kind of Traitor Read Online Free PDF

it.
    ‘You like the guy?’
    ‘Admire him.’
    ‘ Charlotte Brontë? You like her too?’
    ‘Very much.’
    ‘Somerset Maugham?’
    ‘Less, I’m afraid.’
    ‘I got books by all those guys! Like hundreds! In Russian! Big bookshelves!’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘You read Dostoevsky? Lermontov? Tolstoy?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I got them all. All the number-one guys. I got Pasternak. Know something? Pasternak wrote about my home town. Called it Yuriatin . That’s Perm . Crazy fucker called it Yuriatin. I dunno why. Writers do that. All crazy. See my daughter up there? That’s Natasha, don’t give a shit about tennis, love books. Hey, Natasha! Say hello to the Professor here!’
    After a delay to show that she is being intruded upon, Natasha distractedly raises her head and draws aside her hair long enough to allow Perry to be astonished by her beauty before she returns to her leatherbound tome.
    ‘Embarrassed,’ Dima explained. ‘Don’t wanna hear me yelling ather. See that book she reading? Turgenev . Number-one Russian guy. I buy it. She wanna book, I buy. OK, Professor. You serve.’
    ‘From that moment on, I was Professor. I told him again and again I wasn’t one, he wouldn’t listen, so I gave up. Within a couple of days, half the hotel was calling me Professor. Which is pretty bloody odd when you’ve decided you’re not even a don any more.’
    Changing ends at 2–5 in Perry’s favour, Perry is consoled to notice that Gail has parted company from the importunate Mark and is installed on the top bench between two little girls.
    *
    The game was settling to a decent rhythm, said Perry. Not the greatest match ever but – for as long as he lowered his play – fun and entertaining to watch, assuming anybody wanted to be entertained, which remained in question since, other than the twin boys, the spectators might have been attending a revivalist meeting. By lowering his play , he meant slowing it down a bit and taking the odd ball that was on its way to the tramlines, or returning a drive without looking too hard at where it had landed. But given that the gap between them – in age and skill and mobility, if Perry was honest – was by now obvious, his only concern was to make a game of it, leave Dima with his dignity, and enjoy a late breakfast with Gail on the Captain’s Deck: or so he believed until, as they were again changing ends, Dima locked a hand on his arm and addressed him in an angry growl:
    ‘You goddam pussied me, Professor.’
    ‘I did what ?’
    ‘That long ball was out. You see it out, you play it in. You think I’m some kinda fat old bastard gonna drop dead you don’t be sweet to him?’
    ‘It was borderline.’
    ‘I play retail, Professor. I want something, I goddam take it. Nobody pussy me, hear me? Wanna play for a thousand bucks? Make the game interesting?’
    ‘No thanks.’
    ‘Five thousand?’
    Perry laughed and shook his head.
    ‘You’re chicken, right? You chicken, so you don’t bet me.’
    ‘I suppose that must be it,’ Perry agreed, still feeling the imprint of Dima’s hand on his upper left arm.
    *
    ‘Advantage Great Britain!’
    The cry resonates over the court and dies. The twins break out in nervous laughter, waiting for the aftershock. Until now Dima has tolerated their occasional bursts of high spirits. No longer. Laying his racquet on the bench, he pads up the steps of the spectators’ stand and, reaching the two boys, presses a forefinger to the tip of each of their noses.
    ‘You want I take my belt and beat the shit outta you?’ he inquires in English, presumably for the benefit of Perry and Gail, for why else would he not address them in Russian?
    To which one of the boys replies in better English than his father’s: ‘You’re not wearing a belt, Papa.’
    That does it. Dima smacks the nearer son so hard across the face that he spins halfway round on the bench before his legs stop him. The first smack is followed by a second just as loud, delivered