But now things were different, and in more ways than one. No longer was Rudy able to make his entrée into an assemblage, perhaps unfamiliar to him, and unfamiliar with him, as a family man with a beautiful wife, and a hardly less beautiful daughter, moving slowly and gracefully maturing, through her adolescence. No longer could he divert the attention of the company from him to them, while he had a quiet talk with someone he wanted to have a word with, and who might want to have a word with him. He didn’t exactly take refuge behind them; but they were his cards of identity; while they were around, engaging the others in conversation, he didn’t have to wonder much if people were looking at him.
Now all this was changed. The semi-social life on which so much of his success as an agent (an agent for whom? for what?) depended, had lost its context.
*
Rudy was a man of action, and action, such as it was, and wherever it was, involved a good deal of danger. This he not only accepted, he welcomed it for he was made that way; but being a professional, he didn’t go in search of it; to avoid it was as much a matter of self-training and self-discipline as to confront it when it came.
These two complementary qualities had helped him to get out of a number of tight places. His wife and his daughter had helped him, too, not physically, for he never wanted them to run unnecessary risks; but by their mere presence, which gave him an air of respectability and solidity which deceived a good many people.
How far he valued them for themselves, and not just as adjuncts to his appearance and personality—his image—he himself would have found it hard to say. While they were with him it was a question he did not even ask himself: he took their presence, and what they did for him, and what he did for them, for granted. They were reciprocal services in a good cause. The cause of what? Freedom perhaps, though freedom is such an elastic term; and some of his co-adjutors wondered which side he was on. But business is business, and as someone has said, a lie in business is not a lie. Rudy had availed himself, cautiously of course, of this precept.
Now he had to explain himself. It wasn’t difficult to explain that his wife was tired of travelling, which was true, and was now living in Warsaw, which was not true. For his sake, as well as Trudi’s and Angela’s, he did not want their whereabouts to be known. He also explained, which was true, that Angela was married and expecting a baby—he did not say where, for who knew where, or where not, a baby might be born?
This freedom from family ties gave him as a man who was still attractive to women, a good many opportunities which he was not slow to take; not only from the amorous angle, whatever that might be, but from the information sometimes supplied. He knew that information was double-edged, but he relied on getting more than he gave.
But he was not heartless, and though not yet forty, he sometimes thought rather wistfully in the loneliness of his leaking tent, pitched between somewhere and somewhere, or between nowhere and nowhere, eating his viands, on which he relied so much, out of a tin, or tins, in his solitary confinement, of the domestic amenity and seeming security he had once enjoyed. Those softer moments! When he came back tired and hungry from some mission, and smelt from afar the smell of a delicious dish that was cooking for him on the little oil stove, and heard, from nearer to, the gentle muffled swish and a rustle, so different from a man’s direct and decisive movements—loudly proclaiming their object instead of trying to conceal it—of the participants who were preparing his evening meal! Mouth-watering prospect! And more than living up to its promise. While he was eating he didn’t talk much; just a word here and there escaped the otherwise inarticulate smacking of his lips. But afterwards, full-fed, finishing the bottle of wine or spirits, if they were in funds, for he could drink at a sitting a bottle of brandy or sligovitz, or vodka, or grappa, or calvados or whatever might be the spirituous tipple of the country; then he became expansive, and told them a little, but not (for their own sakes) too much of what he had been doing during the day—the contacts he had made, the possible development, and their probable next destination. To all this they listened eagerly, even avidly, and fondly watched his face as (unknown to him) its taut features slowly relaxed to reveal a husband and a father.
And afterwards, when the dividing curtain was drawn he could hear their lowered voices (whispers meant not to disturb him rather than to prevent him hearing what they said), after which he dropped off in a genial alcoholic haze, with a sense of protective influences round him, and replete in every sense, he slept like the proverbial log, till dawn, or until the clock in his subconscious mind (as reliable and less noisy than an alarum clock) told him it was time to get up. Even if he had possessed an alarum clock he would not have used it, for it would have disturbed the slumbers beyond the curtain (not the Iron Curtain) and sometimes he was off before day-break.
Comfort! Comfort! He might not have admitted it to himself, but it was comfort that he missed, and business, however much it may sharpen the other faculties, does not always warm the heart.
He had had many surprises in his life, his life as an international spy, but the greatest and the most unforeseen was when almost simultaneously his wife and his daughter decided to leave him. He had always been ready, as indeed he had to be, to accept facts—but he could hardly credit this one. Leave him, after twenty years of wifehood, and perhaps longer still of daughterhood? He couldn’t and didn’t blame them; blame didn’t come into his code of behaviour, in which success and failure were his only criteria. He knew he hadn’t been a good husband and father, but there were many worse; he might have treated them as camp-followers but they were willing to be so treated; he had shared his good times as well as his bad times with them, and set aside some money for them, which was no doubt one reason why they had left him. He had counted on their loyalty, not on their love; love was a thing he didn’t take into account, except in the crudest way, as leading to someone or something.
All the same, in those lonely nights in the tent, when he heard no whispering of women’s voices, and smelt no smell of the creature comforts they were preparing for him, he knew he was missing something. It never entered his mind that they might be missing something too.
He didn’t often sleep now, as aforetime he used to, in the comfort of a luxury hotel; but sometimes he did, and it was there that the unexpected happened. In the middle of dinner, with a bottle of wine half empty on the table, two men touched him on the shoulder and before he had time to pay his bill, or anyone had time to pay it for him, he was marched away and bundled into a waiting car, not his car, which was outside in the car-park. ‘Can’t I get my things?’ he asked in the language of the country. ‘No, we’ve got all your things that matter,’ was the reply, and no more was said until he found himself, handcuffed, in a small cell, seven feet by five with a grated window at the top, admitting the air, and a grated window in the door, admitting a dim light from the passage. An unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling showed him a straw mattress in the corner, and one or two pieces of furniture which might have been made out of the same substance as the cell.
Here they left him; but presently a warder came in with a small bundle of clothes which he recognized as his. ‘This is all you’ll want,’ he said, ‘we’ve got the rest. I’ll show you where the place is,’ and unlocking the door he indicated where Rudy could relieve himself. ‘But you’ll have to knock on the door—there’s always me or one of us in the passage. Lights out at ten o’clock. Breakfast at six. These handcuffs are a bit tight, I’ll give you some second-grade ones, and you can stretch your arms a bit. No fooling about, mind. Good-night.’
The new handcuffs did indeed give Rudy more freedom of movement. Instead of being clamped together, with only an interval of a few inches between, hardly enough, not enough, to enable him to satisfy the most rudimentary needs of Nature, his hands now stretched to his hips; he could feel parts of his body that before had been beyond their scope; he could have picked things up from the dirty stone floor, had there been anything worth picking up. He could eve
n embrace himself, or part of himself, had he felt so inclined. This freedom! But compared with the earlier restriction it seemed like liberty. Now he could sleep again; he had always been a good sleeper, but with his hands tied so tight in front of or (according to the gaoler’s whim) behind him, he had been unable to sleep, and his breakfast of bread and water, or whatever insubstantial substance took its place, found him more tired than he had been at ten o’clock lights out.
But now, folding and unfolding his arms so as to give him as little discomfort, not to say pain, as might be, he awoke, not refreshed, but with the blessed sense of having slept.
Gradually he adjusted himself, as best he could, to his new life. Small reliefs, that in the old days he would have taken for granted or not noticed—the cleansing of his cell from certain noxious insects—seemed like a gift from Heaven. And what a blessing it was to go out into the light of common day and join the other prisoners in their half-hour’s exercise inside the high-walled courtyard. Here they were allowed to speak to each other, those who had the necessary gift of speech, for they were of many nations and languages. Some had known each other recently, some from long ago; but the majority, of whom Rudy was one, were too low-spirited to want to talk much. What was there to talk about, between those flat, encircling walls, outside which life went on, with its incentives and excitements, whereas inside all was static and uneventful, without hope, promise, or future? Only death; and for death he sometimes longed. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been executed before; ‘they’ had plenty against him, a whole dossier, and from time to time they made him stand up in his cell while they questioned him. Sometimes he was too weak to stand up, and asked permission to sit down on his straw bed. He answered, or parried the questions as well as he could, and as well as his tired mind would let him. He had to keep a constant watch on his tongue, for he didn’t want to involve other people more than he could help—it was an occupational obligation to keep his mouth, as far as might be, shut.
He wasn’t subjected to any physical or bodily torture, in these interrogations, except a very hard strong light from an electrical instrument they brought with them, shining on his eyes. It dazzled and distressed him, and drove almost every thought from his head; to keep his head, or what remained of it, was his chief concern.
They are trying to wear me down, he thought, they are trying to wear me down, and perhaps one day they will, and perhaps I shall tell them everything—what is true as well as untrue—for he knew only too well, that for some psychological reason, physical or even emotional pressure will induce a man to tell the truth, instead of the lies to which spies are accustomed and which they have already carefully prepared.
They are waiting for me to break down, he thought, they are waiting for me to break down, and he who had always been proud of his strength, felt this as an almost personal affront to his image of himself.
Meanwhile his fears for his health were being too well justified. Needless to say, there was no looking glass in his cell—why should a prisoner want to look at himself? much better not. They had taken away his razor, as no doubt they do, and always have done, in many prisons, and for obvious reasons: but they had left him his little pocket mirror, in which, in better days, he used to study his face to see if it looked like what he wanted it to look like at the moment.
And now, what a picture did it present! He had usually been clean-shaven; he had sometimes, when the occasion seemed to demand it, been bearded; but beards need a good deal of attention and in the absence of scissors, his face, as he saw it reflected, was almost unrecognisable, and also shaming, for he had always been proud of his looks which had taken him a long way on his uneven road to temporary prosperity.
And now another thing, another physical thing, connected with the conditions in which he lived. The chain of his handcuffs had been considerably lengthened, so that he could now scratch himself (an almost necessary activity) in places where before he could not; but owing to his hands and wrists being of extra size, they chafed him, bringing to those parts sores and inflammation which took away what little physical comfort he had left. His gaoler, who was by no means unsympathetic, for a gaoler, reported this to the prison doctor, and the doctor, seeing Rudy’s swollen and suppurating hands, recommended handcuffs at least an inch wider, to help circulation and enable the blood to flow. This was a great relief to Rudy, whose robust constitution responded to any mitigation allowed it, and by degrees, the swelling died down, leaving behind them hollows where the flesh and muscles used to be.
Being technically stateless, though he had (or had had, before his belongings were confiscated), more than one passport he could not appeal to any country for aid, and even if he could have, the country he appealed to would certainly not have recognized him. Now that spying was an almost organized occupation, he had hoped that he might be exchanged for some opposite number (he could think of several); but it hadn’t happened—for how could he get in touch with some country to whom he had been of service? It didn’t seem likely to happen. In fact he had no one in authority to appeal to; and meanwhile he grew thinner, and less and less, physically and mentally, his old self.
For it was his misfortune that the country which had caught up with him and detected him was a poor country, and overrun by refugees; they had no food to spare for themselves or for the refugees, political sympathisers, who swarmed over them; and those who came last on the list, for physical sustenance, were political prisoners, of whom, for one reason and another, they had a surfeit.
Rudy’s diet was hardly enough to keep body and soul together; looking at himself, when he was allowed to have a bath, as sometimes the prisoners were, he hardly recognized the fine figure of a man he used to know.
*
Occasionally, but only occasionally, and under the strictest supervision, the prisoners were allowed to receive visitors. Such visitors, of course, had to be carefully ‘screened’, and more often than not, they were turned away at the gateway of the prison. So what was Rudy’s surprise, when his gaoler told him, almost as if it was a command not a concession, that a lady wanted to see him. ‘She says she is your daughter. I don’t know if you know about her. But sometimes we let in relations.’
‘Just a moment, please,’ said Rudy, who was lying on his bed, half naked, owing to the intense heat. ‘Just a moment.’ He tried to collect his thoughts, if any, but the sound of running water in the lavatory at the end of the passage gave him, as it gives many men, an uncontrollable desire to pee. ‘Take me down there, will you?’ he said, waving towards the sound, for without the gaoler’s permission, and presence, he couldn’t relieve the needs of Nature.
‘All right, but hurry up,’ the gaoler said, ‘Ten minutes is the most you’ll be allowed.’
‘I shan’t need ten minutes here,’ answered Rudy, on the threshold of the pissoir.
Natural needs, as so often they do, brought him to a sense of his general situation. Who was it who wanted to see him? For weeks, months, it seemed, he had been cut off from contact with the outside world. He had given up hope of ever seeing it again. He hardly even wanted to see it, so inured had he become not only to the privations but to the utter lack of personal incentive, the desire to make himself known and felt, which is the almost inevitable consequence of even a short spell in prison.
‘Hurry up,’ repeated the warder, just behind him. ‘You’ve only got ten minutes.’
Rudy followed him back, and in a few moments the door of his cell re-opened.
‘Father!’ she exclaimed, but she recognized him before he recognized her, this glorious young creature, dressed in what he imagined was the height of fashion, pearls, bracelets, even a little tippet of fur in case the broiling evening should turn cold.
They embraced and embraced, her beautifully attired body to his half-naked one. But it was the body of her father.
When her tears began to dry she said,
‘But you’re so thin!’
‘They don’t give us much to eat here,�
�� he said, as casually as he could.
His daughter had of course seen him in ‘his prime’, how many months ago? when the shield of partition between his sleeping-quarters and theirs, opened to reveal a half-clad figure, asking for something—probably a drink—disappearing almost as soon as it appeared—leaving behind a scent of unwashed masculinity, soon to be washed, for Rudy was particular about that and always had his white-enamelled basin, and his soap, and his washing flannel ready—for anything that might occur. Now he had none of these, he couldn’t even wash, except under supervision.
This question of personal cleanliness was uppermost in his thoughts when he drew away from his daughter and said,
‘You must find me very changed.’ She mistook his meaning and said, ‘Of course you’re not changed, dear Father, except for those nasty handcuffs, and because you look so thin. What can we do about that?’
‘Nothing,’ said Rudy, ‘so far as I know. This miserable country can’t afford to give its subjects let alone its refugees, let alone its prisoners, a decent meal, so why should I be favoured?’
His daughter didn’t answer for a moment; she knew their time together was getting short; she could see the gaoler pacing up and down the passage, with an eye on his watch for he was soon to be off duty, and a look through the grille inside to see how things were going on. Darkly his helmet gleamed.
With the sudden impulse of a woman Angela said, ‘There’s something I can do. If you agree to it, Father. Only we have to be quick.’
Smiling at him with the intensity of affection she had always felt for him, she raised her right hand to her black velvet bodice; her left hand, lovely-fingered, played around her waist in a vague semi-circle, as if awaiting a cue from the other. Her head bent forward; her smile grew more inviting as if it was the very messenger of love.
The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley Page 87