Unforgiving Years

by Victor Serge

  Daria said, “I’m sorry. You’re right, and it makes me indignant to hear you. You talk like a symbolist poet:

  Hearts once full of enthusiasm

  Have nothing left but fatal nothingness … 1

  “And there’s another poet, a Frenchman who betrayed every one of his promises, who wrote:

  Traitors are saints

  And the purest hearts are those of murderers … 2

  “He was onto something there. I wonder if literature notwithstanding, we don’t deserve to be ostracized or shot as much as anyone. Are you sure the Master doesn’t have good reason for the killing, some higher reason we don’t know of?”

  He watched her twist her gloved fingers as though twisting her own arm. His answer was blunt.

  “You’re ten years younger than I am, Dacha, and so the Master means more to you. We of the old guard, we were trained to depend upon ourselves, we had no use for masters, except those anointed by trust … But to the snot-nose brats of the next generation, intoxicated by the loudspeakers, no doubt he seemed a kind of god. Those youngsters will only sober up inside the grave he’s digging for them, or on the very edge of it, like us for that matter … I met him twenty years ago. There was no genius about him, there was no more to him than to any of us — something less, in fact. This deficiency served him well, as scruples and high-flown ideas can only interfere with the practice of tyranny, while a sense of the ridiculous might have prevented him from deifying himself. Remember how he rose to the top: it wasn’t particularly forceful or successful, and, above all, not even all that cunning. Historians fabricate greatness, as they call it, because they are mediocrities with lame imaginations who can only plod along the beaten track, and they’re cowed by the cudgel and their own mediocrity into shoring up the cult of established power … Power has the same hold over the tyrant as over anybody, because he has seized the levers of power just like a burglar making off with the Grand Seal of State. The burglar must lie low, the tyrant must defend himself even before he’s attacked, because he feels the reproof … Oh, the Master has his reasons all right — the worst!”

  Behind Daria’s chilly hostility her panic was discernible, much like Nadine’s. (Women are more damaged than we are. This world is crueler to women …)

  “How profoundly you’ve detached yourself,” she said slowly. “You speak like the enemy.”

  “Whose enemy, Dacha? The enemy of all that we longed for, that we built, that we served? Of everything I still want? Of everything we were? Of the Party? But what has the Party turned into?

  “The worst of reasons can never completely escape reason … I’ll suggest several. Treachery, ensconced somewhere among us at the top of the structure. You see, I’m quite capable of reasoning like him, because I share his concern. But I’ll discard that hypothesis as too far-fetched. What remains is a kind of madness of suspicion and fear, born of the sense of a crushing mission that is too heavy for those unexceptional shoulders … There is some of that within us too, a vast psychosis of the threat that has hung over us ever since we began to exist … A psychosis that battened on the stifling atmosphere of dictatorship … Salvation lay in opening the windows and letting in the air. Lastly, a reasonable reason, by which I mean an intelligible one, as in certain straightforward cases of insanity: war. This well-fed Europe, smugly wallowing in its pleasures, is so astoundingly mindless that the only people who have half a notion of what they are doing — and half is enough in the circumstances — are a handful of methodical lunatics like the addled visionary Hitler, or the fat beribboned Göring. And what they’re doing is driving their machinery over the brink. For me, the war never ended, I’m a soldier of the invisible war, the war of transition; I see the sappers’ tunnels ramifying with my own eyes, I see them packed with explosives while parliaments babble on above in blissful ignorance; give me my statistics sheets and a pencil and I’ll tell you how long we’ve got before the fireworks begin. Because mines are designed to blow up, and the fuses have been lit. There’s no other way out for this aberrant world. The Master knows it better than anyone. All the cards of the fiendish poker game are on the table, and they rear up, huge, in colors of fire, to taunt him in dreams every night. And he’s losing his head. We’ll be dragged into the war whatever we do, we’ll be stormed, grabbed by the throat, stabbed. So he wants to stand alone over the abyss; he can’t tolerate the presence of more talented rivals, because they too might lose their heads (less than him, mind you) … He doesn’t want to feel another precipice behind him, the little personal abyss into which he would assuredly be pushed by greater men … His true madness is to believe in his mission.”

  Daria wondered: “Don’t you have the feeling of deserting?”

  “Deserting what, the secret execution cellar? If I thought I had five chances in a hundred of surviving until the war, I’d swallow the disgust, the horror, the remorse, and I’d stay, I would! Can you honestly give me those five chances?”

  “No.”

  Her tension had subsided.

  “What about me, Sacha, what do you think will happen to me?”

  “Let me ponder that a moment. Would you like some port, a vermouth?”

  They were two peaceful customers in a small brown café, a reconciled couple preparing to go home and resume everyday life. Madame Lambertier, who couldn’t abide histrionics, glanced over from behind the till and felt reassured. You see, when you truly care for each other all it takes sometimes is to have things out, candidly, in good faith … Madame Lambertier also maintained that a decent, well-kept establishment with a family atmosphere, so to speak, encourages marital reconciliation (at least at the times when ponces, tarts, cops, spivs, and other lowlifes who bring in the serious money are not around …). “Marie,” she hissed, “give them the good vermouth, for heaven’s sakes!” Meanwhile D was not pondering so much as letting the problem resolve itself in his mind.

  “You’re compromised, Daria, by your long-standing relationship with me and a few others … But who isn’t, these days. Krantz more than you. Fifty-fifty, I’ll give you that much.”

  “Then I’m staying. I wasn’t sure before, I was going to beg you to take me away no matter where. Because I also run out of strength sometimes. I cry, I smoke, I’ve tried to drink. I tried picking up a lover in a nightclub: it was gruesome enough to keep me chaste for a long time … I take tranquilizers and sleeping pills. I have this elderly doctor, a very good man for whom I’ve had to make up the most hair-raising love affairs, with constant twists worthy of a film … He must think I’m deranged. His advice is hopeless, but his pills do the trick. But you’ve steadied me. You’ve convinced me I must stay.”

  D felt a pang of joy, as though this proved that he himself was no traitor … He listened to Daria’s affectionate voice “ … and let’s keep a possibility of contact, I have no right to know where you’re going, but please make sure that if I feel frantic and lost, if I’m all alone in the world, I can come and find you both …”

  “I will, Dacha.”

  (It’s dangerous, but I will …)

  They parted with a brief, friendly hug, in the midst of the racket made by an incoming brewer’s truck. The boulevard stretched before them, stark and bright under the milky sky.

  * * *

  On reaching the hotel desk, Monsieur Bruno Battisti felt a sickening jolt. There was a letter in the pigeonhole of room 17. IMPOSSIBLE since the addressee had no existence for anyone! A summons from the French Sûreté? A message from Krantz, meaning they’ve got me? Monsieur Battisti took the letter from Gobfin’s fingers, affected to barely glance at it, laid it on the desk, and said, with some exaggeration of his courteous manner so as to gain a little time with himself, “Please be so kind, Monsieur, as to prepare my bill, we’re leaving in an hour.”

  At this, Monsieur Gobfin showed such surprise that he instantly appeared even sallower, knobbier, and more shifty-eyed than before.

  “You don’t say, Monsieur Battisti!”

  “I’ve
just said so. We’re catching the fast train to Nice.”

  “Ah, what a pity,” Monsieur Gobfin sighed, looking deeply put out. He half bowed, for a lady was coming down the stairs. Confidentially: “Could you not delay your departure — only till tomorrow morning, Monsieur Battisti?”

  Monsieur Battisti, who would gladly have driven his heavy fist right between Quince-Face’s turbid eyes, merely muttered, “Whatever for?” in a low growling that said “bugger off.” Even more intimately now, Monsieur Gobfin filtered “serious accident” words through his clenched teeth: “The police were here …” There’s no mistaking that voice. Monsieur Battisti took it without blanching, taut as a bow already (and with the envelope of the IMPOSSIBLE letter under his palm). Play close to your chest — for what it’s worth!

  “What of it?”

  “You’ll miss the arrest.”

  To double up with full-throated laughter, if that were allowed, what a relief! A madman! In this mad world, madmen pretend to be calm even at the reception desks of small hotels! So yesterday’s fat man really was there for me. The dame in the tit-crushing corset, whom he brought, was there for a sight of me. A brilliant piece of tailing, a prodigious feat! And now this crackpot lamenting my absence at the arrest — or pulling my leg! No future, a dark hole. Upstairs Nadine, suspecting nothing, poor Nadine … Now that the game was as good as up, Monsieur Battisti switched to puzzlement, so awkwardly that Gobfin, who had been scrutinizing his client’s tie, was taken aback.

  “Arrest, what arrest?”

  The burly ginger-haired Englishman from room 6, wearing a narrow-brimmed felt hat and a gray shiny overcoat — the kind popular with sailors on leave — was handing in his key.

  “No letters?”

  “No, sir. Will you take your evening meal in your room like yesterday, Monsieur Blackbridge?”

  Monsieur Blackbridge’s gullet emitted a sound like chains screeching over a rusty pulley … A scene out of a third-rate melodrama with a noir ending, Blackbridge, Black Bridge, just the name to slug me from behind precisely in the next instant. The chain over the pulley — the chain, the cell — how easily we’re scuppered! Frau Lorelei Hexenkrantz, Madame Lorelei “the Witch” Krantz will step out of the lift … The world’s lunacy is artistically organized down to the smallest detail.

  “No.” (The Englishman swallowed back a half laugh, like a chain rattling down a well.) “I’m going to Tabarin.”

  “A wonderful show, Monsieur Blackbridge,” uttered Gobfin suavely.

  The narrow-brimmed hat, the iron-gray overcoat were sucked out into the street. The witches carried off this ruddy man who imagined he was sauntering down rue de Rochechouart toward a sabbath of naked thighs … Battisti unclenched his jaws to repeat, as though landing a punch, “What arrest?”

  And Monsieur Gobfin lit up, with a drowned man’s smile: “The Negro’s, of course!”

  What Negro? Surely you’re not about to tell me I’m black? Anything is possible when madmen start to babble.

  “It’ll be most discreetly done, in his room or in the corridor. We don’t expect any trouble. Two inspectors are already standing by in the dining room.”

  Things slide mysteriously back into place; what was spinning out of control returns to equilibrium; you thought the plane was nose-diving right into the hard rim of the mountains, but the wings level off, the journey continues …

  “Oh, quite right,” said Monsieur Battisti, “a great pity as you say. But time is money, my friend. Won’t this mean unwelcome publicity for the hotel?”

  “Far from it!” Monsieur Gobfin said. “The crime was not committed on our premises, you understand.”

  I’d like to know what crimes haven’t been committed here, you smarmy rat, was what Monsieur Battisti almost replied — but now the plane was diving down again toward a carpet of Paleozoic rocks: Monsieur Battisti picked up the IMPOSSIBLE letter. Curtly: “The bill, please, and fast. We’re off in half an hour.”

  We’ll soon see whether that creep doesn’t grab the telephone! Battisti withdrew to the rattan sofa; Gobfin, on cue, unhooked the ear trumpet. Battisti kept an eye on him while dazedly reading the envelope again. Interior Ministry … No, what? Vatella and Misurini, Pasta Wholesalers … “Monsieur César Battistini …” Triple blockhead! Or is it a deliberate put-on, the better to gauge my reactions? Gobfin was talking through the receiver to a laundrywoman: “ … and a mistake, Madame, in the linen count … We make it twenty pairs of double sheets, sixteen pairs of single sheets, forty-four pillowcases, six dozen napkins …” Monsieur Battisti’s ear listened for figures that might be a code … A news vendor pitched his falsetto into the lobby, “Speeee-cial edition! Ministerial criii-sis …” The Negro gentleman ambled in, stylish in his way, with the smooth suppleness of a dancer, the murderer nearing the scaffold, awaited on the first floor by two inspectors drinking red wine, what else. Monsieur Gobfin murmured, “Just a moment, don’t hang up …” and handed the Negro his room key, his key to the other world where you might arrive pulling a basket on a string containing your head which is no longer attached to your shoulders. “For pity’s sake, porter, put it back on now that I’ve paid for my sins.” You’d have to be a ventriloquist to say it, waving your distracted hands about … Gobfin was beaming with an air of pleased obsequiousness — at the counter of the imagined other world. “Thank you,” the Negro said without moving his lips, a ventriloquist already! Ready for his fate. Monsieur Battisti pushed his brief reverie aside.

  “This letter, it’s not for me …” He couldn’t refrain from adding, absurdly, “It’s for the black man …”

  “Really?” started Gobfin. “Did you see him? He’s done for now! But no, the letter’s not for him.”

  An ingratiating, ghoulish grin split his face.

  “Not for him nor for you either … My mistake, Monsieur Battistini, begging your pardon.”

  “Ba-ttis-ti,” D stressed. “No ‘ni.’ Battistini chopped short.”

  “Chopped short,” echoed Gobfin, coming down sharp with the side of his hand, and winking at the thought of the Negro.

  In the marketplace of Samarkand, white-haired storytellers still chant the tales of the Thousand and One Nights as they jerk the strings of a puppet theater. Fingers move in the mystery box and out pops the Wicked Black Prince from the subterranean depths of Evil. Another movement, and the scimitar of Righteousness is brandished … The third plainclothes inspector appeared in just such a fashion. Monsieur Battisti immediately identified him by his boar-like neck and shriveled face. “Going up?” Gobfin inquired, with hidden passion. The shriveled face answered with a sinister “Not yet” as it turned to take in Monsieur Battisti. “The main thing is to get out of here,” thought D.

  “Quick, Nadine! We’re off in ten minutes …” “This place is awful,” Nadine answered in a low voice. “But do we really have to leave?”

  * * *

  We are made in such a way that our fears subside and our obsessions vanish by virtue of a rhythm we don’t understand: often a change of scene is enough. The Battistis felt good in Le Havre. The air was salty and damp; light mists blew in from the Channel and floated over the avenues of the prosperous, peaceful city. The trees themselves, though bare of leaves, looked nourished by a richer sap, a healthier breeze, than those of Paris. The big cafés displayed a prosperous dignity. Bruno Battisti was unconcerned to find no reference to the Negro’s arrest in the papers. “They might very well keep it quiet for days,” he said to Noémi. (“Let’s get used to our new names.”) The green, foam-flecked, heavily churning sea instilled in them the carefree sense of having completed their escape, as though their connection to insoluble problems would be broken by crossing the ocean.

  We live by memories accumulated within the unconscious, thought Bruno. We breathe more freely among mountains, because they arouse a quivering reminder of the primeval forest; caverns oppress us, echoing the age of fear and primitive magic — while oceans promise escape, adventure, discovery. For as lo
ng as humans have been persecuting and killing one another, hunted men have sought salvation on the seas, in such numbers that their flight must have contributed to the peopling of the earth; and it is surely fugitives, rather than conquerors, who led the way to new worlds … Even the legend of the Argonauts is that of Jason’s banishment and flight, the Golden Fleece perhaps no more than a symbol of escape. Modern man could usefully return to the study of ancient myths in the light of his recent experience … And what of our feeling that the sea is beautiful, when it is actually an inhuman, featureless mass of an enormity to appall the thinking insect standing on the beach? The expanse of it, the aimless movement, the elementary power … shattering concepts! And yet the promise of an imagined safety is stronger still.

  Now that cablegrams, police descriptions, secret orders, lies can circle the globe in a matter of hours and there are no more islands to discover, no more hideaways in which to slip the net of the special services, the urban labyrinth is a safer bet than any distant archipelago; which means we are the dupes of a memory wired to our instincts, when we listen to the millenarian song that hums in our breast in communion with the ancestors, paddling out to sea in their canoes … The city is our admirable prison, outside which we now find it almost impossible to live. We long to escape it, just as we involuntarily wish — in horror — for the deaths of our nearest and dearest, no doubt because through their extinction we aspire to our own …

  “Nadine-Noémi, I’ve worked out beautiful plans, like an engineer applying himself to a construction problem. We have very little money, and that merely by chance. They controlled us through that as well, it hadn’t occurred to me. (Disregard for money was one of our strengths and it’s turned against us.) “We still have our hands, and our heads, useless now … I’ve decided on definitive liberation, goodbye to Europe, Asia, cities, the coming war … Tolstoy was on the right track in some ways. How much earth does a man need? Enough to feed him and to bury him … We’ll have that much in a country that’s hot and violently alive. Because in losing everything, we should at least recover the primordial sensation of life.”