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electricity.’
    Bernard wore a wrist-watch, but it was unreliable and he hadn’t bothered to alter it on the plane because he couldn’t remember whether they were supposed to gain hours or lose them, nor how many. Nina felt it couldn’t possibly still be daytime. She had risen at six o’clock that morning, in the dark, and when she had stepped out of the plane it had appeared to be dusk. They had probably arrived at tea-time and now it was supper-time, though she wasn’t in the least hungry. It had been altogether the sort of evening that had she been on home ground she would have terminated by winding up her alarm clock and going to bed. She bumped wearily against Ashburner as, preceded by Enid and the interpreter, they followed the luggage trolley.
    Clutching his bouquet of flowers in one hand and his fishing rod in the other, Ashburner stared straight ahead. Now that he was on the move he felt less jittery. He could do nothing more about his lost suitcase; it was up to God and the Artists’ Union to find it. Above all, he resolved to abandon any notion of prudence in his dealings with Nina. Those silver moments in the air, when she had stroked his cheek, were but a prelude to the golden hours that still remained. If he was returning home to calamity and penury, the next twelve days must be lived with all the fervour of which he had once been capable.
    Bernard, who was walking at Nina’s side, said something to her that Ashburner didn’t quite catch. He did hear her shout ‘Oh Christ’ in response. They were always, it seemed, having mysterious little conversations that either angered or surprised them both, though in this instance he thought they were probably being rude about his tulips.
    Trotting three abreast and starting to smile apologetically, they advanced to greet Mr Karlovitch.

6
    They were driven from the airport in a black limousine suitable for weddings. Though introductions had been clearly made and hands grasped in friendship, it was obvious from the beginning that the identity of Ashburner was shaky. It was a question of his name, half of which was the same as Bernard’s and the rest apparently difficult to pronounce, and of his misunderstood relationship to Nina. Mr Karlovitch, conversing mostly through Olga Fiodorovna, asked Ashburner, first of his missing suitcase contained any valuable instruments, and secondly, when they were driving through a landscape of birch trees piled with snow, what opinion he held of the engravings of Dürer. Both times, Bernard laughed aloud.
    They were fortunate enough to glimpse, before the single-track road merged into a motorway with six lanes of traffic, several old dwellings built of logs, with one or two hardy old persons wrapped in rugs on chairs on the rustic verandas.
    ‘How healthy,’ cried Nina, and she asked Mr Karlovitch if many such houses survived. Mr Karlovitch was sitting in the front of the car, wedged between Bernard and the driver. He spoke English, haltingly, but at this first meeting wasn’t inclined to use it. Small and square, with gingerish eyebrows perpetually raised in concentration under his grey fur hat, he wore a blue knitted scarf so tightly wound about his throat that each time he swivelled in his seat to talk to the interpreter his eyes bulged in their sockets.
    Olga Fiodorovna explained to Nina that, picturesque as they might seem to foreigners, Mr Karlovitch would assure them that log cabins were no longer to the liking of the people. Mr Karlovitch’s father had been born in just such an izba in Siberia. There had been a stove of baked clay and at night the children slept on top of it. Outside the house was a river; the temperature in winter was sometimes minus forty degrees and for eight months of the year the river was frozen to a depth of six feet. No one would wish a return to such conditions. Centrally heated accommodation in blocks of flats was available for everyone at low cost. Mr Karlovitch himself was lucky enough to