Today the lieutenant said to me, I’m going to do you a favor. I don’t answer him. I don’t want his favors. I’m not supposed to do it. he said. If I were caught I’d be in trouble.
He looks at me as though he wanted me to say something, and I could have said, that’d break my heart, but I don’t say it. I don’t speak unless I think it will pay me. That’s my one fast rule.
Don’t you want me to do you a favor? he asks. I don’t care, I said, if you do me a favor or you don’t. But if you want to do it, that’s your own affair.
You’re a stubborn devil, aren’t you? I don’t answer that, but I watch him. I have been watching Caspar for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that he has a grudging respect for me. If the major knew his job, he’d take Caspar away, give me someone more exciting, more dangerous.
Don’t you want to get out? I don’t answer. There are two kinds of questions I don’t answer, and he knows it. One is the kind he needs the answers to. The other is the kind to which he knows the answers already. Of course I want to get out, away from those hard staring eyes, whose look you can bear only if your own are hard and staring too. And I want to eat some tasty food, and drink some wine, in some place with soft music and hidden lights. And I want . . . but I do not think of that. I have made a rule.
How many days have you been here? I don’t answer that, because I don’t know any more. And I don’t want Caspar to know that I don’t. When they took away the first Bible, it was 81. By an effort of will that exhausted me, I counted up to 105. And I was right, up to 100 at any rate. For on that day they came to inform me, with almost a kind of ceremony, that duly empowered under Act so-and-so, Section so-and-so, they were going to keep me another 100, and would release me when I “answered satisfactorily.”
That shook me, though I tried to hide it from them. But I lost my head a little, and called out quite loudly, “Hooray for the rule of law.” It was foolish. It achieved exactly nothing. After 105 I nearly went to pieces. The next morning I couldn’t remember if it were 106 or 107. After that you can’t remember any more. You lose your certitude. You’re like a blind man who falls over a stool in the well-known house. There’s no birthday, no trip to town, no letter from abroad, by which to remember. If you try going back, it’s like going back to look for something you dropped yesterday in the desert, or in the forest, or in the water of the lake. Something is gone from you that you’ll never find again.
It took me several days to convince myself that it didn’t matter all that much. Only one thing mattered, and that was to give them no access to my private self. Our heroic model was B.B.B. He would not speak, or cry out, or stand up, or do anything they told him to do. He would not even look at them, if such a thing is possible. Solitude did not affect him, for he could withdraw into a solitude of his own, a kind of state of suspended being. He died in one such solitude. Some say he withdrew too far and could not come back. Others say he was tortured to death, that in the end the pain stabbed its way into the solitude. No one knows.
So far they haven’t touched me. And if they touched me, what would I do? Pain might open the door to that private self. It’s my fear of that that keeps me from being arrogant. I have a kind of superstition that pride gets punished sooner than anything else. It’s a relic of my lost religion.
You’re thinking deep, said Caspar, I’ll come tomorrow. I expect to bring you interesting news.
Caspar said to me, Rafael Swartz has been taken in. It’s all I can do to hide from him that for the first time I stand before him in my private and naked self. I dare not pull the clothes round me, for he would know what he had done. Why doesn’t he bring instruments, to measure the sudden uncontrollable kick of the heart, and the sudden tensing of the muscles of the face, and the contraction of the pupils? Or does he think he can tell without them? He doesn’t appear to be watching me closely. Perhaps he puts down the bait carelessly, confident that the prey will come. But does he not know that the prey is already a thousand times aware? I am still standing naked, but I try to look as though I am wearing clothes.
Rafael Swartz. Is he brave? Will he keep them waiting 1,000 days, till in anger they let him go? Or will he break as soon as one of them casually picks up the poker that has been left carelessly in the coals?
He’s a rat, says Caspar. He has already ratted on you. I say foolishly, How can he rat on me? I’m here already.
You’re here, Caspar agreed. He said complainingly, But you don’t tell us anything. Swartz is going to tell us things that you won’t tell. Things you don’t want us to know. Tell me, doctor, who’s the boss?
I don’t answer him. I begin to feel my clothes stealing back on me. I could now look at Caspar confidently, but that I mustn’t do. I must wait till I can do it casually.
I don’t know when I’ll see you again, he said, quite like conversation. I’ll be spending time with Swartz. I expect to have interesting talks with him. And if there’s anything I think you ought to know, I’ll be right back. Goodbye, doctor.
He stops at the door. There’s one thing you might like to know. Swartz thinks you brought him in.
He looks at me. He thinks that, he says, because we told him so.
John Forrester always said to me when parting, Have courage. Have I any courage?
Have I any more courage than Rafael Swartz? And who am I to know the extent of his courage? Perhaps they are lying to me. Perhaps when they told him I had brought him in, he laughed at them and said, It’s an old trick but you can’t catch an old dog with it. Don’t believe them, Rafael. And I shan’t believe them either. Have courage, Rafael, and I shall have courage too.
Caspar doesn’t come. It’s five days now.
At least I think it’s five. I can’t even be sure of that now. Have courage, Rafael. It must be ten days now. I am not myself. My stomach is upset. I go to and fro the whole day, and it leaves me weak and drained. But though my body is listless, my imagination works incessantly. What is happening there, in some other room, like this, perhaps in this building too? I know it is useless imagining it, but I go on with it. I’ve stopped saying, Have courage, Rafael, on the grounds that if he has lost his courage, it’s too late, and if he hasn’t lost his courage, it’s superfluous. But I’m afraid. It’s coming too close.
Who’s your boss? asks Caspar, and of course I don’t reply. He talks about Rafael Swartz and Lofty Coombe and Helen Columbus, desultory talk, with now and then desultory questions. The talk and the questions are quite pointless. Is the lieutenant a fool or is he not?
He says to me, You’re a dark horse, aren’t you, doctor? Leading a double life, and we didn’t know.
I am full of fear. It’s coming too close. I can see John Forrester now, white-haired and benevolent, what they call a man of distinction, the most miraculous blend of tenderness and steel that any of us will ever know. He smiles at me as though to say, Keep up your courage, we’re thinking of you every minute of the day.
What does Caspar mean, my double life? Of course I led a double life, that’s why I’m here. Does he mean some other double life? And how would they know? Could Rafael have known?
Can’t you get away, my love? I’m afraid of you, I’m afraid for us all. What did I tell you? I can’t remember. I swore an oath to tell no one. But with you I can’t remember. And I swore an oath that there would never be any woman at all. That was my crime. When I first came here, I allowed myself to remember you once a day, for about one minute. But now I am thinking of you more and more. Not just love, fear too. Did I tell you who we were?
Love, why don’t you go? Tell them you didn’t know I was a revolutionary. Tell them anything, but go.
As for myself, my opinion of myself is unspeakable. I thought I was superior, that I could love a woman, and still be remote and unknowable. We take up this work like children. We plot and plan and are full of secrets. Everything is secret except our secrecy.
What is happening now? Today the major comes with the lieutenant, and the mere sight of him sets my heart pounding. The major’s not like Caspar. He does not treat me as superior or inferior. He says Sit down, and I sit. He says to me, So you still won’t co-operate?
Such is my foolish state that I say to him, Why should I cooperate? There’s no law which says I must cooperate. In fact the law allows for my not cooperating, and gives you the power to detain me until I do.
The major speaks to me quite evenly. He says, Yes, I can detain you, but I can do more than that, I can break you. I can send you out of here an old broken man, going about with your head down, mumbling to yourself, like Samuelson.
He talks to me as though I were an old man already. You wouldn’t like that, doctor. You like being looked up to by others. You like to pity others, it gives you a boost, but it would be hell to be pitied by them. In Fordsville they thought the sun shone out your eyes. Our name stinks down there because we took you away.
We can break you, doctor, he said. We don’t need to give you shock treatment, or hang you up by the feet. There are many other ways. But it isn’t convenient. We don’t want you drooling round Fordsville. He adds sardonically, It would spoil our image.
He looks at me judicially, but there’s a hard note in his voice. It’s inconvenient, but there may be no other way. And if there’s no other way, we’ll break you. Now listen care-fully.
I’m going to ask you a question.
He keeps quiet for a minute, perhaps longer. He wants me to think over his threat earnestly. He says. Who’s your boss?
After five minutes he stands up. He turns to Caspar. All right, lieutenant, you can go ahead.
What can Caspar go ahead with? Torture? for me? or for Rafael Swartz? My mind shies away from the possibility that it might be for you. But what did he mean by the double life? Their cleverness, which might some other time have filled me with admiration, fills me now with despair. They drop a fear into your mind, and then they go away. They’re busy with other things, intent on their job of breaking, but you sit alone for days and think about the last thing they said. Ah, I am filled with fear for you. There are 3,000 million people in the world, and I can’t get one of them to go to you and say, Getout. this day. this very minute.
Barbara Trevelyan, says Caspar, it’s a smart name. You covered it up well, doctor, so we’re angry at you. But there’s someone angrier than us. Didn’t you promise on oath to have no friendship outside the People’s League, more especially with a woman? What is your boss going to say?
Yes, I promised. But I couldn’t go on living like that, cut off from all love, from all persons, from all endearment. I wanted to mean something to somebody, a live person, not a cause. I am filled with shame, not so much that I broke my promise, but because I couldn’t make an island where there was only our love, only you and me. But the world had to come in, and the great plan for the transformation of the world, and forbidden knowledge, dangerous knowledge, and ... I don’t like to say it, perhaps boasting came in too, dangerous boasting. My head aches with pain, and I try to remember what I told you.
You are having your last chance today, says Caspar. If you don’t talk today, you won’t need to talk any more. Take your choice. Do you want her to tell us, or will you?
I don’t know. If I talk, then what was the use of these 100 days? Some will go to prison, some may die. If I don’t tell, if I let her tell, then they will suffer just the same. And the shame will be just as terrible.
It doesn’t matter, says Caspar, if you tell or she tells. They’ll kill you either way. Because we’re going to let you go.
He launches another bolt at me. You see, doctor, she doesn’t believe in the cause, she believes only in you. Tomorrow she won’t even do that. Because we’re going to tell her that you brought her in.
Now he is watching me closely. Something is moving on my face. Is it an insect? Or a drop of sweat? Don’t tell them, my love. Listen my love, I am sending a message to you. Don’t tell them, my love.
Do you remember what Rafael Swartz used to boast at those meetings in the good old days, that he’d follow you to hell? Well, he’d better start soon, hadn’t he? Because that’s where you are now.
He takes off his watch and puts it on the table. I give you five minutes, he said, and they’re the last you’ll ever get. Who’s your boss? He puts his hands on the table too, and rests his forehead on them. Tired he is, tired with breaking men. He lifts his head and puts on his watch and stands up. There is a look on his face I haven’t seen before, hating and vicious.
You’re all the same, aren’t you? Subversion most of the time, and women in between. Marriage, children, family, that’s for the birds, that’s for our decadent society. You want to be free, don’t you? You paint Freedom all over the town. Well you’ll be free soon, and it’ll be the end of you.
Lofty and Helen and Le Grange. And now Rafael. Is there anyone they can’t break? Does one grow stronger or weaker as the days go by? I say a prayer for you tonight, to whatever God may be ...
Did I say Rafael’s name? I’m sorry, Rafael, I’m not myself today. Have courage, Rafael. Don’t believe what they say. And I shan’t believe either.
Five days? Seven days? More? I can’t remember. I hardly sleep now. I think of you and wonder what they are doing to you. I try to remember what I told you. Did I tell you I was deep in? Did I tell you how deep? Did I tell you any of their names? It’s a useless question, because I don’t know the answer to it. If the answer came suddenly into my mind, I wouldn’t know it for what it was.
Ah, never believe that I brought you in. It’s an old trick, the cruellest trick of the cru-ellest profession in the world. Have courage, my love. Look at them out of your gray honest eyes and tell them you don’t know anything at all, that you were just a woman in love.
Caspar says to me, You’re free. What am I supposed to do? Should my face light up with joy? It might have done, only a few days ago. Do you know why we’re letting you go? Is there point in not answering? I shake my head.
Because we’ve found your boss, that’s why. When he sees I am wary, not knowing whether to believe or disbelieve, he says, John Forrester’s the name. He doesn’t know what to believe either, especially when we told him you had brought him in. Doctor, don’t come back here any more. You’re not made for this game. You’ve only lasted this long because of orders received. Don’t ask me why. Come. I’ll take you home.
Outside in the crowded street the sun is shining. The sunlight falls on the sooty trees in Trebizond Street, and the black leaves dance in the breeze. The city is full of noise and life, and laughter too, as though no one cared what might go on behind those barricaded walls. There is an illusion of freedom in the air.