I heard the sound of the piano coming from the house, background music to the river and the trees, to the garden and to Wheeler’s voice. A Mozart sonata perhaps, or it could be by one of the Bachs, Johann Christian, one of Mozart’s teachers and the poor, brilliant son of the genius, he lived in England for many years and is known there as ‘the London Bach’ and his music is often remembered and performed, an English German like those who worked at the Warburg Institute and like that admirable Viennese actor who was known first as Adolf Wohlbrück, and who also abandoned his name, and like Commodore Mountbatten, who was originally Battenberg, bogus Britons all of them, not even Tolkien was free of that. (Like my colleague, Rendel, who was an Austrian Englishman.) Mrs Berry must have finished all her chores and was amusing herself until it was time to call us in for lunch. She and Wheeler both played; she played with great energy, but I had rarely seen or heard him playing at all, I remembered one occasion when he wanted to introduce me to a song entitled Lillabullero or Lilliburlero or something rather Spanish-sounding like that, the piano was not in the living-room, but upstairs, in an otherwise empty room, there was nothing you could do there except sit down at the instrument. Maybe it was the contrast of the present cheerful music with his own mournful words, but Wheeler seemed suddenly very tired, he raised one hand to his forehead and allowed the full weight of his head to fall on his hand, his elbow resting on the table with its full-skirted canvas cover. ‘And so the centuries pass,’ I thought, while I waited for him to go on or else put an end to the conversation, I feared he might opt for the latter, he had become too conscious that he was lecturing, and I saw him close his eyes as if they were stinging, although they were hidden by the fingers resting on his forehead. ‘And so the centuries pass and nothing ever yields or ends, everything infects everything else, nothing releases us. And that “everything” slides like snow from the shoulders, slippery and docile, except that this snow travels through time and beyond us, and may never stop.’
‘Andreu Nin lost his life,’ I said at last, my improvised studies of the long previous night still floating in my head. ‘Andres Nin,’ I said, when I noticed Wheeler’s confusion, which I noticed despite the fact that he had still not moved, and remained motionless and apparently drained. ‘He didn’t talk, he didn’t answer, he gave no names, he said nothing. Nin, I mean, while they were torturing him. It cost him his life, although they would probably have taken his life anyway.’ But Wheeler still did not understand or perhaps he simply did not want any more bifurcations.
‘What?’ he managed to ask, and I saw that he was opening his eyes, saw a gleam of stupefaction, as if he thought I had gone mad, what’s that got to do with anything. His mind was too far from Madrid and Barcelona in the spring of 1937, maybe what he had experienced in Spain, whatever it was, had dwindled in importance compared with what came afterwards, from the late summer of 1939 to the spring of 1945, or possibly even later in his case. And so I tried to return to the country we were in, to Oxford, to London (sometimes I forgot that he was well over eighty; or, rather, I forgot all the time, and only occasionally remembered):
‘So the campaign was counterproductive, then?’ I said.
He slowly uncovered his face and I saw that he was looking refreshed again, it was extraordinary how he recovered or recomposed himself after those moments of low spirits or of weariness or inability to speak, it was usually interest — his scheming mind, or the desire to say or hear something, something more — that revived him. Or else humour, a flash of irony, charm, wit.
‘Not exactly,’ he replied, slightly screwing up his eyes, as if they were still stinging. ‘It would be both facile and unfair to say that. There was very little malice in people, not really, not even amongst the most indiscreet and boastful of blockheads.’ And this last word he said in Spanish, ‘botarates,’ sometimes you could tell that he hadn’t visited my country for quite some time, because you never hear that word there now, or, for obvious reasons, other similar words: after all, when a society consists largely of imbeciles, halfwits, blockheads and oafs there is no point in anyone calling anyone else names. ‘And there were others, too, who remained silent as the grave. I’m not referring to the dead, but to certain scrupulous, strong-willed, tenacious people with a keen sense of duty, who unhesitatingly sealed their lips, even though no one would ever know of their obedient response or congratulate them on it. There were many such people, although perhaps not that many, it was a very difficult order to carry out, almost absurd really, “Don’t speak, not a murmur, not a whisper, nothing, because they can read your lips, so forget your language.’” (‘Keep quiet, then save yourself, was what crossed my mind and, also, just for a second, I wondered whether my Uncle Alfonso would have talked or kept silent, we would never know.) ‘The reason I say that the campaign failed overall is not because people were not prepared to comply, the majority were; and it served a purpose, it served to give us a general awareness that we were not alone, but had as many companions as actors in a theatre; and that beyond the spotlights, in the penumbra, in the shadows or the darkness, we had a packed and very attentive audience, each member of which was endowed with an excellent memory, however invisible, unrecognisable and scattered that audience might be, and was made up of spies, eavesdroppers’ (again that word which is so difficult to translate into Spanish), ‘fifth columnists, informers and professional decoders; that each word of ours they heard could prove fatal to our cause, just as those we stole from the enemy were vital to us. But at the same time, this campaign — and this was where it was bound to fail despite its indisputable benefits and successes — increased, inevitably and incredibly, the numbers of the verbally incontinent, the out-and-out blabbermouths. And although many people who had previously always talked freely and unconcernedly did learn, as one of these cartoons recommends, to think twice before speaking, there were many others who had always tended to be silent or, at least, laconic, inhibited or taciturn, not out of choice or prudence, but because they felt that anything they might say or tell would be dull, unworthy of anyone’s interest and utterly inconsequential, but now they found themselves unable to resist the temptation of feeling dangerous and reprehensible, a threat, and thus deserving attention, to feel, in a way, that they were the protagonists of their own small world, even though, for the most part, that protagonism was mad, unreal, illusory, fictitious, mere wishful thinking. Whatever the reason, they began to talk nineteen to the dozen; to give themselves airs and pretend they were in the know, and anyone who pretends that usually ends up trying to be genuinely in the know, within their capabilities, of course, and thus becomes yet another entirely gratuitous spy. And whether they succeed or not, it is also true to say that everyone knows something, even when they don’t know that they do, even when they imagine that they know absolutely nothing. But even the shyest and most solitary of men who merely grunts at his landlady if he should happen to meet her during the day, even the scattiest or most obtuse of women with barely an ounce of intellect, and even the least curious or sociable and most self-absorbed child in the kingdom, all know something, because words, that fierce contagion, spread without any need for help, they overcome all obstacles and proliferate and penetrate more, much more, unspeakably more than you, or indeed anyone, could ever imagine. All it takes is a sharp, detective’s ear and a malicious, associative mind to capture and make the most of that something and to express it. The people in charge of the campaign were aware of this, that all of us know some effects and some causes, however unconnected. As I said, what valuable information could those two ladies on the Underground possibly know, or that very ordinary man in the cap, saying: “What I know — I keep to myself”? And yet the campaign was also directed at them, at people like them, trying to persuade them to forget their language. A vain endeavour, don’t you think, trying to encompass everyone? And a pretty pointless task given that a partial result was no use at all.’
Wheeler stopped and indicated my pack of cigarettes. I held it out to him,
offered him a cigarette, and immediately lit it for him. He took a few puffs and looked with bemusement at the lighted end, thinking perhaps that it had not taken, doubtless unaccustomed to the feeble, insipid cigarettes I usually smoke.
‘And what did you have to do with all that?’ I finally asked.
‘Nothing. With that, nothing at all, or, rather, I was just one of many, albeit in a privileged position. As I told you, for most of that time, I was in far less uncomfortable places than London, something that still weighs on my conscience. But I was involved in what the campaign indirectly brought with it: the formation of that group. When MI6 and MI5 realised what was tending all too frequently to happen, what we would nowadays call the collateral effect, which, indeed, ran counter to the initiative, it occurred to someone that we should take advantage of that, or at least turn it a little in our favour, place it at our service. Someone, whoever it was (Menzies, Vivian, Hollis or even Churchill himself, it doesn’t matter), saw that just by listening attentively and allowing people who wanted to talk and wanted to be heard (sometimes not even that much was necessary), and observing them with a mixture of shrewdness, deductive ability, interpretative boldness and a talent for making associations, that is, with precisely the skills that we assumed and even conceded in the German experts who were infiltrating us and in the hidden pro-Nazis who were on our territory from the start — just by doing all this, we could get to the depths or the bottom, almost to the essence of people; to find out what they would and wouldn’t be capable of doing and how far they could be trusted, their characteristics and qualities, their defects and limitations, if they were by nature strong or fragile, corruptible or incorruptible, cowardly or intrepid, treacherous or loyal, impervious or susceptible to flattery, egotistical or generous, arrogant or servile, hypocritical or candid, resolute or hesitant, argumentative or docile, cruel or compassionate, everything, anything, everything. One could also find out beforehand who would be capable of killing in cold blood or who would submit to being killed, should that prove necessary or were they ordered to do so, although the latter is always the most difficult thing to be sure of in anyone; who would turn tail and who would go forward, however insane such a decision might seem; who would betray, who would support, who would fall silent, who would fall in love, who would feel envious or jealous, who would abandon us to the elements and who would always cover us. Who would sell us down the river; and who would do so dearly or cheaply. It might be that the people who rarely spoke would have nothing very grave or interesting to say, but they always ended up revealing almost everything about themselves, even if they were pretending. That is what they discovered. That is what continues to happen today, and that is what we know.’
‘But people aren’t all of a piece,’ I said. ‘It all depends on the circumstances, on what happens to turn up, people can change, they can get worse or better or stay the same. My father always says that if we hadn’t gone through a war like our Civil War, most of the people who acted despicably during the War or afterwards, once it was over, would probably have led perfectly respectable lives, or lives, at least, that were relatively unbesmirched; and they would never have found out what they were capable of, fortunately for them and for their victims. My father, as you know, was one of the latter.’
‘No, people aren’t all of a piece, Jacobo, and your father is right. And no one is ever always this way or that, which of us hasn’t seen some alarming or unexpected streak appear in someone we love (and then your whole world collapses); you must always remain alert and never imagine that anything is definitive; although there are some things on which there is no going back. And yet, and yet … it is also true that, right from the start, we see much more in others and in ourselves, much more than we think we do. As I said before, the biggest problem is that we don’t usually want to see, we don’t dare to. Almost no one really dares to look, still less to confess or tell themselves what they really see, because often it isn’t very pleasant what one observes or glimpses with that undeluded gaze, with that profound gaze which, not content with penetrating every layer, keeps going beyond even the very last one. That, generally speaking, is how it is, both as regards others and oneself; and most people, in order to go on living with a degree of calm and confidence, need to delude themselves and to be slightly optimistic, and that’s something I can understand, and something which, throughout the many days of my life, I have missed greatly, that calm and that confidence: it’s harsh and unpleasant having to live in that knowledge and expecting nothing else. But that was precisely what the group suggested or proposed, finding out just what individuals, independent of their circumstances, would be capable of and thus being able to know today what face they would wear tomorrow, if I can put it like that: to know right now what their face would be like tomorrow; and, to use your or your father’s words, to try and ascertain if a respectable life would have been respectable anyway or was only on loan to them because no opportunity to tarnish that life had yet presented itself, no serious threat of some indelible stain.’ (‘I still haven’t asked him about the bloodstain,’ I thought suddenly, ‘the stain I cleaned up last night from the top of the stairs’; but I immediately realised that this was not the moment, nor could I now see the stain so very clearly in my mind.) ‘But that is knowable, because men carry their probabilities in their veins, and it’s only a matter of time, temptation and circumstance before these, at last, lead those probabilities to their realisation. So it is knowable. You can get it wrong, of course, but more often than not you get it right. Besides, it still provides you with some sort of basis to work on, even though the main cornerstone is always something of a gamble.’ (‘He’s right about that,’ I thought, ‘if another Civil War ever broke out in Spain, I have a pretty good idea who would come and shoot me — I cross my fingers and touch wood, or touch iron as the Italians say; I know who wouldn’t think twice before putting a bullet in my brain, just as they did with my Uncle Alfonso. Too many friends have destroyed the trust I placed in them, and when someone is disloyal to you, they never forgive you for their having failed you; and — at least in my country — the greater the betrayal, the greater the offence committed by the betrayed, the greater the traitor’s sense of grievance. When it comes to enemies, they are perhaps the one thing of which there has never been any shortage there, almost all us have a few.’) ‘What proved unexpectedly difficult was finding people who were able to see, interpret and apply that gaze with sufficient dispassion and serenity, without flailing blindly, or even half-blindly, about.’ (Wheeler kept resorting more and more frequently to Spanish words and expressions, he doubtless enjoyed making these lightning visits to a language that he had few opportunities to speak any more.) ‘Even then it was a rare gift, and it soon became clear that such people were far rarer than one might at first have thought, when the group was thrown together or created in that impromptu, ad hoc fashion, their initial, urgent mission (it later changed direction or broadened out) was to uncover, while the war still raged, not just spies and informers but also possible spies and informers of our own (I mean men and women who might be suitable for that purpose), as well as people who would prove easy or propitiatory prey for the former, the chatterboxes who could not resist temptation and who always showed an imprudent predisposition for talk; and that applied as much to our territory as to other places in the rearguard or places that were neutral, for there were spies and informers and dupes and blabbermouths everywhere, even, I can assure you, in Kingston, by which I mean Kingston, Jamaica, not Kingston-upon-Hull or Kingston-upon-Thames. And in Havana too, of course.’ (‘So the Caribbean meant Cuba and Jamaica,’ I stopped to think for a moment, unable to avoid consciously registering the fact. ‘What would they have sent Peter there to do?’) ‘At the time, an awful lot of British people had developed an inquisitorial spirit or a paranoid mentality or both, and their suspicious nature drove them to denounce almost anything that moved, to see Nazis in the mirror before realising they were looking at their own reflectio
n, and so they were no use at all. Then there were the great distracted masses, who tend to see little and observe nothing and to distinguish still less, who seem to be permanently wearing tight earflaps over their ears and a blindfold over their eyes, or, at best, a mask with eye-slits that were very narrow or virtually stitched shut. Then there were the impetuous and the frivolous and the gung-ho, who were so eager to be involved in something useful and important (not all of them, poor things, were ill-intentioned), they would gaily come out with the first bit of nonsense that popped into their heads, so having them passing judgement was like throwing a dice, since their opinions lacked all validity and foundation. Then there were the many who, exactly as happens now, had a real aversion, no, more than that, a terror of the arbitrariness and possible unfairness of their own views: the sort who prefer never to declare themselves, hamstrung by responsibility and by their invincible fear of making a mistake, the ones who anxiously asked themselves when confronted by a face: “And what if this man whom I believe to be honest turns out to be an enemy agent, and my incompetence leads to my own death and that of my compatriots?” “And what if this woman whom I consider to be suspicious and devious turns out to be entirely harmless and my hasty judgement leads to her ruin?” They couldn’t even point us in the right direction. So, foolish though it may seem, it immediately became apparent that there wasn’t much to choose from, not, at least, with any confidence. It was necessary to comb the country for recruits as quickly as possible, there were no more than twenty or twenty-five here in England, plus a few others where we happened to be, and we joined when we came back. Most were from the Secret Services, from the Army, a few from the former OIC, which you’ve probably never heard of,’ Wheeler caught my blank look, ‘the navy’s Operational Intelligence Centre, there weren’t many of them, but they were very good, possibly the best; and, of course, from our universities: they always turn to the studious and the sedentary when it comes to difficult, delicate tasks. It’s almost unimaginable the debt they owe us since the war, which is when they first began using us seriously, and they should have respected Blunt’s immunity and their pact until the day he died, even until Judgement Day’ (‘We died at such a place,’ I thought or quoted to myself), ‘even if only out of gratitude and deference to the profession. Obviously we all had to get used to the job, and work to improve, refine and hone our gaze and attune our listening, practice is the only way to sharpen any sense, or gift, which comes to the same thing. We never had a name, they never called us anything, not during the war or afterwards. You can only convincingly deny or conceal the existence of something if it doesn’t have a name; that’s why you’ll find nothing in books, not even in the really thoroughly researched ones, at most, hints, conjectures, intuitions, the odd isolated case, loose ends. It was better like that: we even wrote reports on the trustworthiness of the top brass, Guy Liddell, Sir David Petrie, Sir Stewart Menzies himself, and I think someone drew up a report on Churchill based on newsreels and which was, therefore, not entirely to be trusted. In a way, we placed ourselves above them all, it was an experiment in audacity. Of course, they never found out about our excesses, it was semi-clandestine. That’s why it seems a grave mistake on Tupra’s part, this tendency of his to speak in private (only amongst ourselves I trust, but that already constitutes a risk) of “interpreters of people” or “translators of lives” or “anticipators of histories” and suchlike; rather smugly too, given that he’s in charge and is therefore including himself among them. Names, nicknames, sobriquets, aliases, euphemisms are quickly taken up and, before you know it, they’ve stuck, you find yourself always referring to things or people in the same way, and that soon becomes the name they’re known by. And then there’s no getting rid of it, or forgetting it.’ (‘And yet so many of us abandon even our own name.’)