The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  Unfortunately, his ideas were corrupted almost immediately. After the take-over of power, it appeared that the majority of members of the committee had by no means been guided by idealistic and national motives, but had acted from motives of private profit and had been poisoned by confused and deeply reprehensible thoughts, based on immorality, ungodliness and anarchy. This naive but dangerous philosophy was soon to lead to tragic national complications which were hard to overcome. One of the earliest and most grotesque expressions of this was in a preposterous doctrine, according to information prepared by Janos Edner and Aranca Peterson several years before the national liberation. This was the so-called Method, a phenomenon which was cynical and against all human values, which led not only its originators but also the whole nation into self-debasement and defeat. I will now go over to …

  Major von Peters: Are you going to stand there and read the whole blasted volume to us, Brown?

  Colonel Orbal: Books are the devil. It’s no better when someone else does the reading.

  Captain Schmidt: I would now like to draw the President’s attention to Appendices V 1/24 and V 1/42xx, page three hundred and eighty-six in the first volume.

  Colonel Orbal: Do we have to take them now?

  Captain Schmidt: I have been asked to answer the question of how the accused came to be a soldier and the circumstances surrounding the formation of the militia. As I understand it, this material I am referring to from the preliminary investigation is of vital importance, in this case, the matter of recruitment.

  Major von Peters: Mr Haller here was in on all that himself. Wouldn’t it be better if he told us? Just let him testify.

  Captain Schmidt: Do you wish to testify now or later, Justice Haller?

  Tadeusz Haller: I would prefer to make any comment I have to make and testify on these matters some time further on during the session.

  Captain Schmidt: The appendix I am now referring to is of a unique character. It consists of a fragment of Janos Edner’s memoirs, which were found and confiscated and which he clearly never completed. The fragment consists of two parts, of which the first is a short description written with something which seems to be an attempt at a more literary flavour. It reflects the atmosphere in which Janos Edner found himself exactly a week before the day of national liberation. It is manifestly a reconstruction, written many years later somewhere abroad. The other part of the appendix consists of several pages from a notebook. Originally the text was in code and there seems to be no doubt that it was written before the liberation, that is, over ten years ago. Presumably it is an extract from some kind of diary. The document was found fastened with a paperclip to the typed sheets which made up the original of the first part of the appendix. It is probable that Edner used these notes to assist his memory and for source material for writing his memoirs.

  Colonel Orbal: God, how involved.

  Captain Schmidt: It has been definitely ascertained that Janos Edner wrote this in his own hand. The decoding has been carried out by the cipher department of the General Staff. The original documents have been kept for about a year in the archives of the secret police. They are marked Secret.

  Major von Peters: Read loudly and clearly, now, Brown. In an even voice. As if you were on duty on the barrack square, but slower.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendices V 1/42 and V 1/42xx. Reference to National Liberation. Confiscated documentation written by the traitor, Janos Edner. Marked Secret according to paragraphs eight, nine, eleven and fourteen to twenty-two. The text is as follows:

  The plane is an Ilyushin 18 turbo-prop from CSA. It is flying at four thousand metres height and the air in the cabin is dry and smells of cloth and leather. You are sitting leaning forward with the brown brief-case on your lap and you have placed your right arm over it so that no one shall see the chain between your wrist and the handle.

  You turn your head to the left and look at the woman in the seat beside you. She has short dark hair and is wearing a red costume with blue lapels. She is sitting slightly hunched, her left elbow on the foam-rubber padded arm-rest, her head resting on her hand. On her lap lies an open notebook and a page of stencilled tables and she is smoking as she reads. When she pokes a flake of tobacco off her mouth with her little finger, you can see that her nails are bitten to the quick and that she has no make-up on and there is a thin downy shadow on her upper lip, and you think that most women see to such details with a little razor or electrolysis. There’s nothing remarkable about her. She would remain anonymous in the crowd on any European city street and if she had been sitting a few yards farther away, it is not likely that you would have noticed her. But although you have never met her before and have not even had time to find out what her name is, you know her, and you know that she would not be sitting there if she hadn’t qualities which you appreciate and understand. She is one of the two thousand five hundred on which everything depends, later, and above all in a week’s time. When she turns her head and looks at you with her light grey-blue eyes, you know you are right. She smiles, faintly and tranquilly.

  You look at your watch and turn away, leaning your forehead against the window-pane and staring down. You don’t want to miss this opportunity, which should be the last.

  The island lies below you. Although it’s late in the year, the air is clean and bright and you see everything very clearly, as if on a large-scale map.

  It’s ninety-eight miles long and thirty-five miles across and you’re just flying over it, from west to east.

  You see its abrupt coastline with the continuous sandy shore below, like a trimmed edge or an imaginary borderline between sea and land, and you see the chequered pattern of fields and occasional farms and small white churches.

  You see all this and at the same time everything that no one else can see. The towns, the hotels, the airports, the grey ribbons of roads and the three harbours with their white hovercraft. And you feel for the first time: all this is mine. This is my country.

  The plane’s vibrations are transmitted from the window-pane through your forehead and …

  This part of the appendix ends in the middle of a sentence.

  Major von Peters: Funny bastard calling himself ‘you’.

  Lieutenant Brown: I will now go over to the second part, the one marked V 1/42xx. The text is as follows:

  We agreed on the following. To gain power is meaningless if the only aim in gaining power is to gain power. It’s just as futile to gain power in the belief that one would be able to create an ideal state—after the words ideal state there is a question mark in brackets—with the help of something from existing so-called political systems, for they are all essentially based on the same type of society. All forms of state have the same fundamental structure and not one of them can be said to be successful. When we in our foolishness occupy ourselves with comparisons and appraisements, it is suggested that we are operating with a scale which simply consists of symbols for different grades of failure. Ergo: It is also meaningless to gain power and apply some newly constructed system or apply some previously unknown or misinterpreted ideology, because so long as the structure of society, that is, the circumstances of the individual, is not radically changed at the same time, the result will in all certainty become more or less identical with what one was opposing in the first place. If we take over the island—none of us really doubts that we can and will do so—and if we manage to build the society we want, then nevertheless, this progress cannot make the basis for any norm-forming reasoning. We would know in that case precisely as much as we knew before: that this was possible to achieve—and in addition right—for us in particular in that place at that particular time. Ergo: a handful of people create for themselves, and on behalf of a relatively speaking small number of like-minded others, a society according to a certain very simple method, which in this particular connection has the advantage of being infallible. The Project is totally dependent on the Method and the Method is worthless without the Project. On the one side the Pro
ject is built on complete internal unity and understanding, and on the other naturally on an equally destructive cynicism and egoism in all external matters of cohabitation. And—and this is the most important—on radical simplifications of the conventional but never thoroughly tested rules for living and structure of society. We have—pro prim o—the object, that is, the island. True, it is not yet at our disposal, but we know the ways in which it can and will be taken over. Against this O, astonishingly enough, suddenly protests that on the mainland they can mobilise an army of three hundred thousand men plus planes and ships. How many? He quoted figures, but I forgot them at once. We talked about this for a while. Uninteresting.

  On the other hand we have not yet completed the human initial capital. We are still agreed that two thousand five hundred is definitely the minimum figure. A and I discussed the Method again a few days ago—despite her optimism, she is just as ready to raise objections. Good. It is—A said—certainly true that with our international contacts we can easily together make a network of two thousand five hundred people, who even if they don’t know each other, are still alike in principle—each other and us—and move them to a certain place at a certain time without previously having to account for where and why, and there we have our human initial capital.

  Anyhow—A went on—we could just as well let the chain reaction continue and go on and get hold of twenty-five thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand at once. A said: Why not a hand-picked élite consisting of less than a quarter per thousand of the population of the world?

  Where would she get the élite from? A’s main objection is however still the same. Can’t we even rely on each other? Answer: Naturally, first and foremost as we’ve gone into this for years and know that it’s only a matter of agreeing on a few main points; once we’ve started, our successes and mutual respect will mean that the rest will come by itself.

  A: Of course we can rely on each other today, but what will it look like in a few years’ time. Even I don’t know that I will be the same then as I am now; our cells are said to be renewed every seven years and then one’s character perhaps will suddenly be different? Answer: Shit. And also it wouldn’t matter. See above.

  A: L is drinking even more than before, but that doesn’t matter. Answer: Perfectly correct observations, both of them. This about A.

  Discussed with H and O again the in itself insignificant matter of why we feel more repugnance and distaste for this well-behaved country in which we happen to have landed, than if it had been a Catholic Fascist feudal state or a pure dictatorship, on the lines of Stalin’s in the thirties. The answers were the same old ones; but happily we now say it instead of we: it is collapsing from well-being and galloping democracy. It understands everything except for the fact that human individuals do not necessarily have to be looked after and treated as if they were leek plants. It maintains continuously and in all connections that it is best and everyone likes it very much there, despite the fact that everyone knows that everyone dislikes it, to a degree of deadly boredom. Exhausted by its own futility, it lulls itself to sleep by boasting about order and numbing welfare. In its nightmares it boasts about abolishing war two hundred years ago and, in the same snore, about its powerful and extremely expensive armed forces, élite defences with warships and tanks, which naturally are also the best in the world, not to mention the soldiers. Then it wakes up with a belch and lies there with its suicidal thoughts, with its simulated socialism, on its home-made bed of nails of mindless laws and meaningless regulations, regretting that the rest of humanity cannot enjoy the fruits of the same rich life. It is the kind of state which can be bluffed and caught unawares by anyone who wants to. It will be a pleasure to do it.

  H has once again taken up the question of the militia and arming it. The thought is abominably objectionable. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. But I see that he is right. So does A.

  L and O seldom talk about this. Who will look after it? Who could do it? A suggested a kind of guard service for everyone; it would only mean a day a month for each person. A bit like organising a rota. Something for the future?

  Lieutenant Brown: The notes end there.

  Colonal Orbal: What in the world was all that about? I didn’t understand a thing.

  Major von Peters: There’s just one small point I’d like to know about. What are those incomprehensible letters and figures in front of each paper?

  Captain Schmidt: That’s easy to explain. V 1/42xx means, for instance, Velder Investigation/Volume 1/forty-second item/second appendix.

  Major von Peters: Easy to explain? Is that supposed to be an insinuation that I ought to have understood such a simple thing by myself?

  Captain Schmidt: Not at all. I apologise for expressing myself so badly.

  Captain Endicott: Does the accused still have to stand to attention?

  Colonel Orbal: What? Of course. We shall be adjourning shortly, anyhow.

  Major von Peters: Well, Kampenmann, you’re just coming to, are you? Presumably you like all this literary stuff just about as much as I do. Bet you didn’t hear much of Brown’s reading exercises.

  Commander Kampenmann: Yes, I was listening, as a matter of fact. But it wasn’t really necessary for me to do so. Actually, I’ve already read through my copy of the preliminary investigation.

  Major von Peters: All of it?

  Commander Kampenmann: Yes.

  Major von Peters: That says a lot for service in the Navy. Must be tremendously busy.

  Colonel Orbal: I was just wondering about one thing.

  Major von Peters: Captain Schmidt, you’re in the Navy, aren’t you?

  Captain Schmidt: Yes, but for the moment I am posted to the General Staff Judicial Department.

  Major von Peters: Why aren’t you in uniform?

  Captain Schmidt: There is no such instruction in the regulations.

  Major von Peters: That’s possible. All the same, we would appreciate it very much if you would do so.

  Colonel Orbal: Yes, there was something that interested me. The woman with a moustache who was mentioned at the beginning. Who’s that? Do you know?

  Captain Schmidt: Yes, she has been identified. She was called Rodriguez and was Janos Edner’s secretary and closest personal collaborator. Most of the journey that fragment deals with is also known about. It took place on the day a week before national liberation. Janos Edner was on his way to Prague to hasten the ratification of a secret agreement on arms deliveries to the militia.

  Colonel Orbal: Did she really have a moustache?

  Captain Schmidt: I don’t know, but I can investigate the matter. In the decoded diary notes, in all likelihood L stands for Joakim Ludolf, A for Aranca Peterson and H for Justice Tadeusz Haller, who is present. O is presumably General Oswald.

  Captain Endicott: Excuse me, but … Brown, give me a hand here, will you …

  Colonel Orbal: What now? Has he died? That mustn’t happen.

  Captain Endicott: Unconscious, probably fainted from the strain of standing upright for so long. Better call in the guard.

  Major von Peters: The parties may leave the room. You stay, Lieutenant Brown, but see to getting the men with the stretcher out first. This extra-ordinary court martial will now deliberate in private.

  Colonel Orbal: What a day!

  Major von Peters: Yes, and we’re not a step further on, either. This will go on for months. I’m also very dissatisfied, very dissatisfied, with Schmidt and his way of presenting the prosecution. Too bloody soft.

  Colonel Pigafetta: On that point, I’m prepared to agree with you.

  Major von Peters: We’ll have to do something about it. It wasn’t exactly the interrogation that made that swine pass out … if he fainted at all.

  Commander Kampenmann: I’m sorry if I openly question the method, but is there really any point in making the accused stand to attention for so long?

  Colonel Orbal: Damn it all, standing to attention never hurt anyone, did it? On the contrary, go
od for a man’s bearing.

  Commander Kampenmann: Considering the man’s physical condition …

  Major von Peters: Aren’t there any malingerers in the Navy?

  Commander Kampenmann: This is like an old joke. Yes, there are malingerers in the Navy, but they don’t pretend that their left eyes have been removed, or that their kneecaps have been smashed or that all the fingers on their right hands have been amputated.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, yes, the man was wounded, wasn’t he?

  Commander Kampenmann: Yes, in the neck. That’s why he finds it difficult to hold his head up. The rest are of a more recent date.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Don’t start getting soft now, Kampenmann.

  Commander Kampenmann: I’m not. I’m just telling you a few facts.

  Major von Peters: May I ask one thing? How the hell do you know all this?

  Commander Kampenmann: I told you. I’ve read the record of the preliminary investigation.

  Colonel Orbal: I’m getting tired of all this now. Am I the only one who wants to have a pee? Where’s that instruction thing, Carl? Good. This extra-ordinary court martial is herewith adjourned until eleven o’clock on Monday. Thank you, gentlemen.

  Third Day

  Lieutenant Brown: Present: Colonel Orbal, Major von Peters, Colonel Pigafetta, Commander Kampenmann. And Lieutenant Brown presenting the case.

  Colonel Orbal: Isn’t Haller here?

  Lieutenant Brown: Justice Haller has been prevented from appearing. He’s at a meeting of the government.

  Colonel Orbal: You seem to have got some life into the central heating, anyhow.

  Colonel Pigafetta: I’m afraid that’s due to the weather rather than the heating system. It’s considerably warmer out today.

  Colonel Orbal: Spring’s coming.

  Commander Kampenmann: Didn’t Haller’s behaviour seem a bit peculiar on Saturday? Why didn’t he want to testify until later?

  Colonel Orbal: Are you asking me? How would I know?

  Major von Peters: Who is Prosecuting Officer today?