Kolymsky Heights Read Free Page A

be no time off for her. Ach !
    Brasenose passed, and Oriel and All Souls. She turned in at the close as the clocks all began chiming nine. The little forecourt was airless and deserted, no bicycles in the bicycle stand. She chained her own and went wearily inside. The caretaker had sorted the post and separated the professor’s with an elastic band. She took her hat off, and sneezed.
    The air in her room was stale but chill. She tried to turn the air conditioner off but couldn’t, and opened the window instead. Then she switched the electric kettle on and looked for the post. She could not see any post. But she had somewhere seen some post. Her head was so thick she couldn’t remember where. In the hall, perhaps, where it had arrived? She went out and searched the hall. No post.
    The kettle was whistling, so she went back in and made herself a cup of coffee and hung up her hat. Underneath the hat, on the chair, was the post. She gazed dully at it, and blew her nose. Then she drank some coffee and started work, and almost at once was interrupted by the telephone. She answered it, continuing to straighten out letters and toss the envelopes into the bin; and had completed them all before hanging Up. This was when she realised that something else was wrong with the post. There were six foreign envelopes. There were only five foreign letters.
    She shuffled the letters blankly about, and then looked on the floor and in the bin. In the bin were the six foreign, envelopes, and ten British ones, all empty. She saw this was going to be a totally bad day. She also saw that her boss had arrived. His long stooping form had tramped past the glass panel of her door. She sat back on her heels and considered her sister’s advice. Then she pulled herself together and in an addled way began matching letters and envelopes to find out which was missing.
    There were ten British envelopes and ten British letters; three American envelopes and three American letters; two German envelopes, two German letters; one Swedish envelope, no Swedish letter. She looked at this envelope again. It was a tatty one. The address was written on a slip of tissue paper and stuck on with Sellotape. Nothing was in it. After a while, unable to understand anything any more, she merely took everything in to the professor and told him they were a letter short.
    The professor looked up at her, mystified.
    ‘A letter short, Miss Sonntag?’
    This envelope has no letter.’
    He had a look at the envelope.
    ‘Goteborg, Sverige,’ he said. ‘What is there at Goteborg, Sverige?’
    ‘The university, perhaps?’
    ‘With absent-minded professors, perhaps?’
    This thought occurred to her just as he said it, and she cursed the cold in her head. At another time she would have had the thought first and left the envelope where it was (as, it was later thought, she had probably done at least once before). Thick-headedness had sent her hunting through the accursed bin.
    Her head was no less thick but she said stolidly, ‘This does not seem to me a professor’s letter. I mean, naturally there is no letter, but –’
    ‘That’s all right, Miss Sonntag.’
    The professor took his jacket off. His unusual head, large and knobbly and extending in various unexpected directions, was bald as an egg. It was glistening now. ‘It’s awfully hot in here,’ he said. ‘Is the air conditioning going?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ Miss Sonntag sneezed defensively into a Kleenex. ‘It is keeping my cold going.’ She watched him wind his glasses round his ears and examine the envelope more closely.
    The address was written in ballpoint in shaky block letters:

    PROF G F LAZENBY
OXFORD
ENGLAND
    Professor Lazenby looked at the back of the envelope and then at the front again. Then he held it up to the light. It was a flimsy airmail envelope and he looked through it. Then he looked inside and after a moment withdrew a tiny strip of tissue paper partially stuck to the bottom.
    ‘Well! I did not see