The Light and the Dark

by C. P. Snow

  Suddenly, with a good many shrugs and acid comments, they let us through. They had no formal case against us – but they might have persisted longer if we had kept our tempers and continued with rational and polite argument. As we walked into the town to the railway station (there was no car and they would not help us to find any sort of vehicle) it occurred to me that we were angry because of their suspicions: we were the more angry because the suspicions happened to be entirely justified. It was curious, the genuine moral outrage one felt at being accused of a sin of which one was guilty. I told Roy.

  “Just so,” he said, with a smile that was a little sour.

  The train was crowded up to the frontier, with people standing in each carriage. It arrived hours late at Annemas, and there we had another scene. At last we sat in a Swiss train, clean and empty.

  “Now you can relax,” said Roy. He smiled at me protectively; but that smile vanished, as the excitement and thrill of the journey dropped from him. He looked out of the window, as the train moved towards Geneva; his face was pensive, troubled, and grave.

  When there was no excitement to brighten his eyes, he had become by this time in his life sad without much intermission. It was not like the overmastering bouts of melancholy; he had not been invaded by irresistible melancholy since that last summer of peace. I wondered if it was creeping on him now. It was hard to tell, when so much of his time he was burdened – burdened without much up and down, as though this was a steady, final state. As he looked out of the window, I wondered if he was specially burdened now. Was he thinking of what awaited him at Basel?

  He turned away from the window, and found my eyes upon him. His own gaze met mine. I noticed his eyes as though it were the first time. They were brilliant, penetrating: most people found them hard to escape: they had often helped him in his elaborate solemn dialogues, in the days when he played his tricks upon the “stuffed”.

  “Anxious?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “About me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You needn’t worry, Lewis,” he said. “I shan’t disgrace you. I shan’t do anything unorthodox.”

  He looked at me with a faint smile.

  “There’s no need to worry. I promise you.”

  He spoke as he had come to speak so often – quietly, sensibly, kindly, without fancy. There was still just a vestigial trace of mischief in his tone. I accepted the reassurance implicitly. I knew I had nothing to fear at the end of this journey. It was a relief. Whatever happened now, I could cease to worry at the level of practical politics, at the level where Houston Eggar would be concerned.

  Yet, in those quiet, intimate words, there was an undercurrent of something more profound. Perhaps I did not hear it at its sharpest. I was not then attuned. But could anyone, still struggling with hope, still battling on with the selfish frailty of a human brother, be so considerate, so imaginatively detached, so desperately kind?

  We arrived at Basel late at night, and went at once to Willy Romantowski’s address. We were met by an anticlimax. Yes, he was living there. No, he was not in. He had been staying with some friends for a night or two. He was expected back tomorrow or the next day.

  “Willy must have found someone very, very nice,” said Roy with a grin, as we left the house. “Really, I’m surprised at the Swiss. Very remarkable.”

  I grinned too, though I was more frustrated than he by the delay. I wanted to get it over, return safely to England, clear off the work that was waiting for me. Roy did not mind; he was relaxed, quite ready to spend some time in this town.

  He remarked that Willy was not doing himself too badly. It was midnight, and difficult to get an impression of a strange street. But it was clearly not a slum. The street seemed to be full of old middle-class houses, turned into flats – not unlike the Knesebeckstrasse, except that the houses were less gaunt, more freshly painted and spick-and-span. Willy was living in a room under the eaves.

  “His standard of living is going up,” said Roy. “Why? Just two guesses.”

  Willy did not get in touch with us the next day, and we spent the time walking round Basel; I was still very restless, and Roy set out to entertain me. At any other time, I should have basked in the Gothic charm of the streets round our hotel, for the consul had found us rooms in a quarter as medieval as Nuremberg. There were only a few of these Gothic streets, which led into rows of doctors’ houses, offices, shops, as trim as the smart suburb of a midland town in England; but, if one did not walk too far, one saw only red roofs, jutting eaves, the narrow bustling old streets, the golden ball of the Spalenthor above the roofs, gleaming in the spring sunlight. It took one back immediately to childhood, like the smell of classroom paint; it was as though one had slept as a child in one of those tiny bedrooms, and been woken by the church bells.

  We used an introduction to some of the people at the university. They took us out and gave us a gigantic dinner, but they regarded us with a regretful pity, as one might look at someone mortally ill. For they took it for granted that England had already lost the war. They were cross with us for making them feel such painful pity – just as Lord Boscastle sounded callous at having his heart wrung by Roy’s sorrow. I found myself perversely expressing a stubborn, tough, blimpish optimism which I by no means felt. They became angry, pointing out how unrealistic I was, how like all Englishmen I had an over-developed character and very little intelligence.

  Roy took no part in the argument. He was occupying himself, with the professional interest that never left him, in learning some oddities of Swiss-German.

  Roy had left a note for Willy, and we called again at his lodging house. At last he came to our hotel, on our second afternoon there. His mincing mannerisms were not flaunted quite so much; he was wearing a pin-stripe suit in the English style, his cheeks were fatter, he looked healthy and well-fed. He was patently upset to find me with Roy. Roy said that he was sure Willy would be glad to see another old friend, and asked him to have some tea.

  Willy would love to. He explained that he had become very fond of tea. He had also become, I thought, excessively genteel.

  Roy began by asking him about the people at No. 32. Willy said that he had not seen them for eighteen months (both Roy and I thought this was untrue). But the little dancer had unexpectedly and suddenly married a schoolmaster, back in her native town; she had had a child and was said to be very happy. We were delighted to hear it. In the midst of strain, that news came fresh and calm. We sent for a bottle of wine, and drank to her. For a few moments, we were light-hearted.

  Roy questioned Willy up to dinner, through the meal, through the first part of the night. Roy mentioned the clerk, Willy’s old patron, the “black avised” – Willy shrugged his shoulders: “I do not know where he is. He was tiresome. I left him. I do not know him any more.”

  Roy scolded him: “It is hard to be kind to those who love you, Willy. But you need to try. It is shameful not to try.” It was strange that he took the trouble to rebuke Willy, who had always seemed to me inescapably hard, petty and vain. Perhaps Roy saw something else. Perhaps he remembered that he himself had sometimes behaved unforgivably to those who loved him.

  From the black avised, he switched to Willy’s own adventures. Here we became inextricably entangled for a long time: it was difficult to pick out exactly where he was lying. His first, as it were official, story was this: he had been called up in the summer of 1939, had gone with an infantry division into Poland, had spent the winter with the army of occupation, had been transferred to the western front in the spring of 1940. His division had been sitting opposite Verdun, and had done no fighting; in the winter, they were moved across Europe again to the eastern front. It was then that Willy “got tired of it”. He had deserted, on the way through Germany, and smuggled himself over the Swiss frontier. Since then he had been living in Basel. “How are you keeping alive?” asked Roy.

  “Thanks to friends,” said Willy, turning his eyes aside modestly – but added in a hur
ry: “I am poor. Will you please help me, Roy?”

  Most of those statements were lies. That was quite clear. It was also quite clear that, if he wanted to make a proposition to Roy, he would have to admit they were lies. So we examined him, tripped him up on inconsistencies, just to give him a chance to come down to the real business. Meanwhile I was hoping, in the exchange, to collect a few useful facts.

  I ought to say in passing that the results were disappointing. Willy was sharp, quick-witted, acquisitive, but he did not know enough. All he could have told us, even if he had had the will, was the day-to-day gossip of Berlin and the personal facts he had observed. Roy made some deductions from the gossip which proved more right than wrong: I missed the significance of something Willy let fall. He said that the draughtsman at No. 32 had not been able to find a job for months. I ought to have pounced on that remark, but I was just obtuse: it seemed incredible then that their administration should be fundamentally, for all its streamlined finish, less sensible, less directed, less businesslike than ours.

  We drank a good deal before and during dinner. We hoped to get him drunk, for we were both, of course, accustomed to wine. But he turned out to have, despite his youth, an abnormally strong head. Roy said to me in English, over dinner: “We shall be dished, old boy – if he sees us under the table.”

  However, after dinner Willy made some pointed hints that I should leave him and Roy alone. I did not budge. Willy pouted. He might be acquiring great gentility, I thought, but he still had some way to go. His patience was not lasting – all of a sudden he began commiserating with Roy on the dangers of life in England. “You too will be destroyed. It is stupid to stay in England. Why do you not come to Germany? It can be arranged. We will have everything nice for you.”

  So that was it. I glanced at Roy. It was certain now that he would get more from Willy if I went away. He nodded. I made an excuse. “Don’t be too late,” said Roy. “He won’t have gone when you come back.” Willy regarded me with an absence of warmth.

  I sat at a café in the Petergraben, not far away. The night was warm enough for all the windows to be open; lusty young men and girls went by on the narrow pavement. It was all cosy, cheerful, jolly with bodily life. It was different from anything we should know for long enough.

  I bought a paper, ordered a large glass of beer, and thought about this affair of Willy Romantowski. It was grotesque. I was not worrying; I had faith that Roy would behave like the rest of us. Yet it was grotesque. Who had suggested it? What lay behind it? Maybe the motives were quite commonplace. In the middle of bizarre events, it was hard to remember that they might be simply explained. Yet I doubted whether we should ever know the complete truth behind Willy’s invitation.

  I was sure of one minor point – that Willy himself was a singularly unheroic character. He was terrified of the war and determined to avoid it. It seemed to me distinctly possible that he had volunteered to fetch Roy in order to establish a claim on a good safe job back in Berlin. I remembered Roy’s judgment on how gallant these epicene young men would be: this was a joke against him.

  I returned to the Spalenbrunnen. From outside, I could see Roy and Willy still sitting at the dinner-table. When I joined them, I noticed with a shock that Willy was in tears.

  “Nearly finished, Lewis,” said Roy to me. “I’ve been telling Willy that I can’t go back with him. I’ve asked him to tell my friends that I love them. And that I love Germany.”

  “I only came for your good,” said Willy, full of resentment, plaintiveness and guilt.

  “You must not pretend, Willy,” said Roy gently. “It is not so.”

  Willy gulped with distress – perhaps through disappointment at not bringing off his coup, perhaps through a stab of feeling. He shook hands with Roy: then, though he hated me to perdition, he remembered his manners and shook hands with me. Without another word, he went out of the room.

  “Very remarkable,” said Roy. He looked tired and pale.

  I took him out of the smoky room, and we sauntered along the street. Roy had packed a black hat for the journey, and he pulled it down low over his forehead. The lights were uneven in the gothic lanes, and his face was shadowed, a little sinister. I laughed at him. “Special hat,” he said. Whatever else left him, the mockery stayed. “Suitable for spying. I chose it on purpose.”

  He was now certain that the first move had come from Schäder, though Willy did not have much idea. Someone from the “government” (no doubt an official in Schäder’s ministry) had gone to the Knesebeckstrasse to discover whether anyone knew Roy. Willy had been there, and had been only too anxious to please.

  That was intelligible. But why had he been despatched to Basel, long before they had the slightest indication that Roy would come? That was one of the puzzling features of the whole story. Roy brought out the theory that Willy was given other work to do in Switzerland. This was only one of his jobs. He was the kind of low-grade agent that the Germans used for their petty enquiries, and no doubt other governments as well. He had a nose for private facts, particularly when they were unpleasant. Probably he mixed pleasure with business, and put in a little blackmail on the side.

  But Roy had not been able to make him confess. It was no more than a guess. About the connection with Schäder, however (whom Willy had hardly heard of, any more than a bright cockney of the same class would have heard of a junior cabinet minister), Roy was able to convince me. For Willy had produced, parrot-like, several messages which he could not possibly have invented. The most entertaining ran thus: a few days before the war began, the university had resolved that Roy’s work during his stay in Berlin “had been of such eminence as to justify the title of visiting professor, and this title could properly be bestowed upon him, if he did similar work at a later period.” That is, the opposition had stone-walled until they got a compromise which must have irritated everybody. It was a piece of stately academic mummery, and we stood by the gold-painted fountain at the corner roaring with laughter.

  Why had Schäder taken this trouble to lure Roy? It was true that Roy knew things that would be of use – but how had they discovered that? was it in any case sufficient reason? I suggested that it might be, in part, friendly concern.

  “They must be absolutely confident that they’ve got it won,” I said. “It must be easy to sit back and do a good turn for a friend.”

  “I wonder if they are so confident,” said Roy. “I bet they still think sometimes of defeat and death.”

  He knew them so much better than I did. He went on: “Reinhold Schäder is a bit like you, old boy. But he’s very different when it comes to the point. He’s a public man. He never forgets it. He might think of doing something disinterested. Such as fetching me out for the good of my health. But he wouldn’t do it. Unless he could see a move ahead. No, they must think I could be some use. It’s very nice of them, isn’t it?”

  Then there was the final puzzle. Schäder, or his subordinates, must have thought it out. Roy said that there were complete arrangements for passing him into Germany. How likely had they reckoned the chance of getting him? Did Schäder really think that Roy would go over?

  Roy shook his head.

  “Too difficult,” he said.

  Then he said simply: “Did you think I should go?”

  I replied, just as directly: “Not this time.”

  “You came to watch over me, of course,” said Roy, not as a question, but as a matter of fact.

  “Yes.”

  “You needn’t have done,” said Roy. His tone was casual, even, sad, as though he were speaking with great certainty from the depth of self-knowledge. It was a tone that I was used to hearing, more and more. Suddenly it was broken humour. “If I’d wanted to go, what would you have done, old boy? What could you have done? I wish you’d tell me. It interests me, you know.”

  I would not play that game. We walked silently out by the old town gate, and Roy said, again in that even tone which seemed to hold all he had learned of life: “It
wouldn’t be easy to be a traitor.”

  He added: “One would need to believe in a cause – right to the end. If our country went to war with Russia – would our communist friends find it easy to be traitors?”

  I considered for a second.

  “Some of them,” I said, “would be terribly torn.”

  “Just so,” said Roy. He went on: “I may be old-fashioned. But I couldn’t manage it.”

  So we walked through the old streets of Basel, talking about political motives, the way our friends would act, the future so far as we could see it. Roy said that he had never quite been able to accept the Reich. It was a feeble simulacrum of his search for God. Yet he knew what it was like to believe in such a cause. “If they had been just a little different, they would have been the last hope.” I said that was unrealistic: by the nature of things, they could not have been different. But he turned on me: “It’s as realistic as what you hope for. Even if they lose, the future isn’t going the way you think. Lewis, this is where your imagination doesn’t seem to work. But you’ll live to see it. It will be dreadful.”

  He spoke with extreme conviction, almost as though he had the gift of foresight. In all our lives together, it was the one subject on which we had deeply disagreed. Yet he spoke as though he were reading the future.

  We turned back, each of us heavy with his thoughts. Then Roy said: “I used to be sorry that I hurt you. When I tried to fall in on the opposite side.”

  Between the gabled houses, the shadows were dramatic; Roy’s face was pale, brilliantly lit on one cheek, the features unnaturally sharp.