The Society of Others

by William Nicholson

  “You want me?” whispers Petra in my ear.

  “Yes.” It’s not like I can hide it.

  “Desire is power.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I too feel desire. I use my desire to make myself strong. We must be strong, all the time. This is how we will win.”

  Now she’s kissing me again. I don’t follow her reasoning but I am picking up the general idea that I’m not about to get lucky.

  She whispers in my ear again, very softly.

  “Only the free can love.”

  With that, she turns and goes. She walks right past Ilse without a word or a glance. Ilse acts as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe this is Petra’s party trick and she does it twice nightly. That could explain Egon’s long face.

  Now Ilse is coming into the bedroom and pushing the door shut behind her. For a panicky moment I think she too plans to contribute to the power of my desire, but it turns out she has a book for me.

  “I think you like it,” she says.

  It’s Leon Vicino’s book, in English. The Society of Others. “Thank you.”

  She fixes me with her eyes and says in her little-girl voice, “Use your power gently.”

  Then she too goes.

  I’m astonished. Her words are of course familiar to me, since they were my words first. I said them to the mother of the screaming children in the motorway service station somewhere in southern England, some time that seems a whole lifetime ago. Arnie Marker heard me, bent over his all-day breakfast, and wrote them in his notebook. And now here they are again. There’s a connection here somewhere, a common thread linking me and Marker, this book that he was smuggling into the country, and Ilse who has just given me an English copy.

  The book has a paper bookmark in it. I let it fall open, and read: Use your power gently.

  So Ilse is quoting Vicino, not me. This removes one part of the puzzle. But how come Vicino is stealing my lines? I check the publication date of the book, and find it was first published thirty-two years ago, ten years before I was even born. So I’ve been stealing his lines.

  I turn to the opening page. The first paragraph is a single line of print.

  Life is hard and then you die.

  I start to feel giddy. I have never read this book before. I’d never even heard of Leon Vicino until yesterday. Yet it’s like I’m reading my own mind. I read the second paragraph.

  Do not expect to be happy. Happiness is your horizon. It will retreat before you if you pursue it.

  At least I never said that. I might have said it, if I’d been a lot smarter. I certainly agree with it. I decide not to go to sleep yet, but to read on. After all, I’ve already done some sleeping earlier in the day, if you can call it sleeping when it’s combined with assassinating security agency chiefs.

  Observe other people closely. Contrary to your expectations, they see, feel and think differently to you. They inhabit undiscovered countries on the far side of lost oceans. Your life is a voyage of discovery. You are an explorer.

  On I read, deep into the night. Somewhere around page ninety I feel myself falling asleep. I close the book and slip fully dressed beneath the bedcovers, suddenly aware how cold my body has become. For a few moments, as I wriggle in the bed to create warmth, Vicino’s ideas and phrases dance in my head.

  Imagine that you have a beloved ghost brother, who is always by your side. Every move you make to hurt others hurts your ghost brother too. Every blow you strike against an enemy causes your ghost brother to flinch in pain. And when at last you meet your enemy face to face and kill him, you slay your ghost brother also. From that day on you will carry his unseen corpse with you, until your life in turn also comes to an end.

  As sleep creeps over me this ghost brother of Vicino’s merges in my mind with the man who will hunt me and kill me. He is well trained. I am in very great danger. I must jump and run and hide. But first I will sleep.

  SEVEN

  Stefan wakes me. How long have I slept? It feels like no time at all, but my watch tells me five hours have gone by. The others are up. Coffee is brewing. We are to go shortly. I look out between the curtains. The last of the night.

  Downstairs in the kitchen Petra and Egon are huddled together in a fog of cigarette smoke studying some sheets of paper covered with type. The guns have been gathered up into a large canvas hold-all. Ilse pours me a mug of hot black coffee and cuts me a slice of white cheese. As I sip the coffee I see an envelope lying open on the table. It looks familiar. I turn, and see that my coat is no longer hanging on the hook behind the door. It’s spread out on a bench, and the contents of the pockets are laid out as if on display. I find this humiliating.

  The envelope is the one Marker gave me. They’ve opened it. They’re reading the contents.

  I recall the terrible urgency in Marker’s voice as he cried to me, Got the envelope? Got the envelope? Eat it! Burn it!

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

  Petra looks up in surprise.

  “You have a problem?”

  “Yes, I have a problem. What gives you the right to go through my pockets?”

  “I don’t understand.” It’s there on her face, she truly doesn’t understand. “We work together.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can do what you want with my belongings.”

  “Your belongings? You have no belongings. I have no belongings. All we have belongs to the movement.”

  “It’s not my movement.”

  They all stare at me in silence. I’ve shocked them. Petra speaks in their language, I guess repeating my words for the sake of Stefan and Egon. Then Petra says to me:

  “Please understand. Only the movement can save you. Alone, you will die.” A pause, and she adds, just in case I don’t get the full picture, “First you will suffer. Then you will die.”

  “Oh, well, then. Fine. I’ll join.”

  I mean my words to have a bitter ironic ring, but Petra takes them literally. “That is good.”

  They return to their discussion. I see now that Marker’s papers are a list of names and addresses.

  I eat my piece of cheese. Then I get up and one by one put all my belongings, which I still consider to be my property, back into the pockets of my coat. As I do so I try to decide what to do. I feel angry and helpless. I feel guilty because I didn’t destroy the envelope. In fact, I forgot all about it. Then I tell myself Marker had no right to expect me to carry out any kind of assignment for him. He never told me what he was doing. It’s not as if we were linked in any other way than by chance. My guilt, I now see, is generated by the fact that he was killed. But dying in itself has no special merit, does not validate a cause. A man can be misguided, and still suffer a painful death. Look at the suicide bombers.

  There’s another aspect to this train of thought. This group, this cell of the movement, is currently protecting me. I am, it seems, on their side. But this too is chance. How do I know they have right on their side? This isn’t my country. Why must I choose a side anyway?

  Then I see again Marker’s face after the goons have finished with it, and I know there’s no argument after all. I can never be on the side of the torturers. Therefore I’m against them. I have joined the movement.

  I go to the group round the table and indicate the list they’re all studying.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Yes,” says Petra. “These are local area leaders. The people to whom he was to deliver the books.”

  I look blank.

  “Vicino was the leader of a political party. That of course was banned. So the party became a society, a network of so-called reading groups. The reading groups are not banned. But the police watch them closely. They suspect them of political activity.”

  “Reading groups?”

  “Reading, yes. And discussing. Debate as a substitute for action.”

  She lights another cigarette from the glowing butt of the last one, and speaks to the othe
rs in their own language. It seems from her tone of voice that she has reached a decision, and is inviting them to endorse it. One by one, they raise their hands. I suspect this is for my benefit: democratic decision-making in action. It looks more to me like a teacher instructing a class of small children.

  Petra folds up the pages of names and addresses and returns them carefully to the envelope. I see now that the envelope has been opened without being torn.

  “What will you do with the list?”

  “Egon will give it to his contact in the interior ministry.”

  Now I’m lost.

  “The security police?”

  “Egon feeds them harmless information. In return, he learns of their operations. This is how we have avoided capture. This is also how we knew the movements of the man you killed. But now, because of the assassination, Egon will come under suspicion. The handing over of the list will be a proof of his continuing loyalty and usefulness.”

  My head is swimming. I try to follow this tangle of motives, but something here smells bad.

  “What will they do with the list?”

  “There may be names here they did not previously know were active in the society. That is of value to them.”

  “Does it put the people named in danger?”

  “Of course.” She has a look on her face I’ve not seen before: fixed, almost expressionless, but serene. “They will be interrogated. They will disappear.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The authorities never permit those who’ve been interrogated to make public their methods of interrogation.”

  I stare back at her, profoundly shocked.

  “Why?”

  “What is your question?”

  “Why are you handing these people over to torture and death?”

  She blinks a little at my direct language, but is not otherwise disturbed by my question.

  “It’s necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “The followers of Vicino are very many. Add together the active members, and their families, and their friends, and you have almost the entire educated class of our country. Many thousands. At present this class does not understand the need for radical action. They refuse to open their eyes to the reality of state oppression. When their leaders begin to disappear, their eyes will be opened. They will understand that there is only one way to resist, and that is the movement’s way. The movement will grow, until it achieves critical mass. Then we will sweep away the oppressors.”

  She pauses, drawing on her cigarette, watching me to see if I have followed her so far. She softens her tone, aware that I’m new to this line of thinking, and need reminding of the final goal.

  “It is a great sacrifice. But it will bring liberation.”

  I say nothing. The truth is I’m confused. I feel like I’m in a class and I’ve just had a theory explained to me and I know something’s wrong with it but I can’t tell what. It reminds me of this argument I had with an American boy once, about capital punishment. He just couldn’t see what was wrong with executing murderers. I said it didn’t work as deterrence, because America has the death penalty, but still has a much higher murder rate than countries that don’t. He said it was a matter of simple justice. I said you can never be sure you’ve got the right man. He said, suppose you were sure, suppose there were video shots of the murderer murdering, would it be okay to execute him then? I said no, it wouldn’t, but I couldn’t say why. It was only later that I worked it out. If the state kills a man, the state is saying killing is a legitimate tool for achieving a good end, and it just isn’t.

  On this point I have Vicino on my side.

  The curious fact about violence is that each act of aggression is believed by the aggressor to be defensive. He strikes to make himself safe. But in striking, he makes his opponent afraid. That fear generates a violent retaliation. The aggressor, finding himself attacked in his turn, becomes more afraid, and more convinced that only greater violence will protect him. So it goes on: two ageing boxers trapped in a bout that has no end, condemned to punch each other until they can no longer see or stand or lift their fists. At last they fall, these battling heroes, and in falling achieve the peace for which they fought, simply because they no longer have the resources left to fight.

  Naturally none of these lines spring readily to my lips. Petra’s beautiful eyes disconcert me with their gaze. Smoke curls from her beautiful mouth. All I can think of is that no one will give up the habit of smoking cigarettes so long as the act of exhaling smoke is so sexually alluring.

  “Please ask me any time any questions you need to ask,” she says. “But now we must go.”

  Lesson over. I’m not sorry. I need time to think about all this.

  The group is taking everything, leaving the house empty of all signs of human habitation. Stefan has a big black plastic bin-bag with all the rubbish. Ilse scours the room to make sure nothing has been overlooked. Egon shoulders the hold-all with its arsenal of guns.

  In the little hallway, Egon offers me his hand once more, and his doleful gaze.

  “For the children,” he says. “We make the good world for the children. Not for us.”

  “You have children, Egon?”

  “How I wish.”

  There’s an idealist for you. Suffer for the next generation, then die childless. Walk the lonely road of destiny. What can I say? I feel for the guy, but he asked to be here and I didn’t. Me, I’d sooner make the good world for myself and let the children do what they have to do when their turn comes. I’m with the movement all the way till the music swells, then I’m out of the door before they roll the first credit. That’s my tip for survival. Be the first to leave. Go without making any fuss.

  Outside in the silent suburban street we split up. Petra, Stefan and Ilse, me, the guns and the garbage all go in a waiting pick-up. It has a double cab. Stefan takes the driver’s seat, with Ilse beside him in front. I sit in the row of seats behind, with Petra.

  Egon and the envelope go in the VW with the cracked windscreen. He leaves first, heading into town. Then we too set off, turning in the other direction, down a road that leads to a bigger road and takes us out into open country.

  As the day begins to break, I see mile upon mile of flat mud-coloured land broken by dark bands of trees. Squat red-roofed farm buildings huddle here and there beside the road. We pass farm workers trudging on foot towards their day’s labour. For a while, a sluggish river runs on our left. But mostly there’s nothing to see but the land and the trees and the heaped clouds that crowd the enormous sky.

  My gaze lingers briefly on an overgrown ruin, beside a farmhouse on the right of our road. The structure is fronted by a great arch, like the entrance to a railway tunnel, but there’s no railway to be seen. This arch, half hidden among dark-leafed trees, stays in my memory as it disappears into the distance behind us. For what purpose was it built? What long-lost glories does it recall? And why do I feel that there’s some information here that is eluding me?

  Petra asks me if I still have my gun. I do.

  “There may be road blocks,” she says. “If we’re stopped, stay silent. Stefan will do the talking.”

  I nod.

  “If things go wrong, don’t let them take you alive. Save a bullet for yourself.”

  Oh sure. Like I’m a martyr with a dream of paradise. However, this is not the place to explain that if faced with a choice between a painful death and revealing all I know I lean towards singing like a choirboy.

  “Don’t hesitate. It’s your duty. To the movement, and to yourself. If they take you alive, you will not like it.”

  So here I am, being driven over badly repaired roads to somewhere I don’t know, where I don’t wish to go, and there’s a reasonable chance that someone who doesn’t know me will try to kill me.

  Little by little the flat farmland gives way to a wilder terrain, and the road starts to climb up into mountains. There is snow here and there, lying where rocks or trees shade the
ground. The cab is not well heated, and I start to feel cold. Petra senses this.

  “Share warmth,” she says.

  We huddle close together on the back seat. She puts an arm round me, and I put an arm round her. She smells of smoke and longing. I want her admiration. I want her body. I want her warmth.

  Some vehicles pass us, travelling at speed: a closed truck, and a big grey old-model Mercedes. As the car goes by, I catch a glimpse of a tall dark-haired man sitting alone in the back. All I register is his silhouette against the snow. Petra sees him too. She curses softly to herself. Ilse starts pulling guns out of the hold-all and handing them out. They confer, in short decisive phrases. They wind down all the windows. Petra hands me an automatic pistol.

  “You’ll get in more shots with this.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We think they will stop us. If so, we come out shooting.”

  I feel the weight of the automatic pistol. I’ve never used a weapon like this in my life, and don’t intend to now. This doesn’t seem the time to say so.

  We round a bend and there ahead is the truck, pulled up on the side of the road, with the grey Mercedes behind it. The tall man is still sitting in the back of the car, his driver still at the wheel. Half a dozen men of the kind I have seen before stand by the truck, guns dangling, watching us approach. One of them waves his arm up and down, to tell us to pull up. Stefan slows to a crawl and stops a few metres short of the truck. He pulls some papers out of his breast pocket and hands them up for the men with the guns to see. The one who waved him to a stop now gestures for him to get out, and sets off towards him. Stefan opens the door on his side, puts down his papers, takes the gun Ilse has pushed across the seat towards him, and shoots the man dead.

  Petra and Ilse start shooting out of the windows. Stefan rushes the truck, pumping bullets. Petra breaks out of the cab and stands rock steady on the road shooting from the hip. Ilse stays in the front seat, picking off her targets shot by shot. The men round the truck are hit and falling, but they’re also shooting back. A bullet slams into the cab roof close to my head. A man runs towards me, his gun reached out before him. He stops, and staggers, and falls. I feel an unfamiliar vibration in my clenched hands. Men are bleeding on the road, trying to crawl on their elbows. Petra takes careful aim, and they jerk, and lie still. The grey car pulls out and races away, abandoning the truck and the dead and dying men. Stefan fires at the car as it accelerates down the mountain road. When he stops firing, there is silence.