The Invisible Writing

by Les Weil

  She was an amused listener and I did most of the talking. In fact, during three or four hours I talked my head off--about Paris and Vienna and Egypt and the North Pole. Nadeshda was egging me on, casually at first, but gradually her questions about life in Europe betrayed a pathetic eagerness, a nostalgic thirst. I was familiar with that hopeless longing of educated Russians for a glimpse of a world which they know they will never be permitted to see. My heart was aching for her and I became dimly aware--for the first time, I believe--of the monstrousness of a regime that cuts its two hundred million citizens off from the rest of the planet. As Nadeshda pursued her questions, some intelligent, some disarmingly ignorant and naive, I saw the slim, haughty girl transformed into a sick child, tied to its bed by some paralysing disease, hungrily asking questions about the children's party to which she could not go. The discrepancy between the unapproachable classic profile and that faintly pathetic quality in her face became more pronounced, but also less puzzling.

  When we had to leave the dining-car, she invited me to her compartment. We stayed there until the train arrived in Baku, looking at snapshots Nadeshda had taken during her holidays and at the books I had brought from Europe. Then, on a sudden impulse, she showed me two treasures that she had somehow got hold of through a friend of a friend in Kislavodsk: a woollen jumper and a pair of suede shoes of foreign make, both quite plain and ordinary, but of a quality unobtainable in the whole of Russia. When she noticed my slightly puzzled reaction, Nadeshda became confused. She had been unable to resist the temptation of showing off her hoard, and now her pleasure was spoilt. I told her that the next time I came from Europe would lay all the treasures of the world before her, from Lyons silks to Persian nard, and I said this actually on my knees on the floor of the compartment. (I wore high Russian boots and knee-breeches on all my travels in Russia, as these were the most practical). Nadeshda rewarded me with a regally serene touch of her lips on my forehead, Russian fashion.

  The train arrived in Baku about dinner time, and I proposed to Nadeshda that we spend the evening together. She explained that she lived with an aunt. So we took a horse-carriage and drove to the Intourist Hotel where we left my luggage, and then drove on to the aunt's flat. It was a small, two­roomed flat; a bedroom and a drawing-room, where Nadeshda slept on a sofa. The furniture was antique, battered and shabby. The aunt was a wizened litt1e woman, colourless and reserved, meticulously dressed in an old­fashioned manner, with lace round her neck. She spoke excellent French. I feared that she might be upset by Nadeshda's arriving with a stranger in tow, but if she was she did not show it. She was devoid of curiosity. She made tea while Nadeshda was freshening up, and after a quarter of an hour's dragging and desultory conversation, we went off. Nadeshda wore her new jumper and the new suede shoes, and catching my eye, smiled in touching self-mockery, but made no comment. The aunt, however, had noticed the jumper and the shoes and exclaimed: `C'est joli.' She had said no more, and it had been her only remark made with some animation. In the street Nadeshda clutched my arm and chattered like a bird escaped from its cage. I asked her what her aunt was doing. `Nothing,' she said. `She is a widow.' I asked her what her uncle had been, and learnt that he had been the consul of a European power in Czarist days. As for her own parents, Nadeshda merely said: `They are dead.'

  A few days later I mentioned to a friend in the G.P.U.--about whom I shall presently say more--Nadeshda's aunt. The day after, this friend told me in a voice which still rings in my ears:

  `I have asked my nachalnik (boss) about your girl's aunt. The nachalnik had laughed and said: "Staraya, sta-raya spionka-an old, old spy." ' As for Nadeshda, she was merely `under observation.'

  I had become involved with the G.P.U. in Baku in two independent ways. To understand what follows it must again be remembered that these events took place in the pre-Terror days of 1932, and secondly, that in spite of my occasional `bellyaches', I was still a true believer. As such, I looked upon the `Comrades of the G.P.U.' much as a loyal Englishman looks at Scotland Yard. It was the most, and in fact the only, efficient organisation in the Soviet Union. To work for the G.P.U. was the highest distinction for a Party member, a sign of his absolute loyalty. `Every Bolshevik must be a Chekist," Lenin had said--and for every Bolshevik, Russian or foreign, this was a self-evident truth. After my break with the Party, when I lived for a while in fear of assassination, the fateful initials became for me a symbol of terror, more menacing than the swastika. But in I932 they represented a paternal authority, ubiquitous and omnipotent. In short, the `Comrades of the G.P.U.' had come to replace the knowing shamans of my early years, and I regarded them with a child-like trust. In this respect I was probably more naive than the majority of my Party comrades--a consequence of the infantile streak of which I have made repeated mention before. (The Cheka ('Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolutionary Activities was the forerunner of the G.P.U. in the heroic days of the Revolution.)

  On my second or third day in Baku, I went to buy food at INSNAB, the foreign specialists' co-operative store. There was red caviar, which had become my staple diet, and little else to buy. Next to me in the queue stood a slight youth with a deformed shoulder, who talked, like myself, with a pronounced foreign accent. While our rations of caviar were being wrapped in copies of last week's Pravda, I got into conversation with the person who, seven years later, appeared as Little Loewy in Darkness at Noon. We left the shop together.

  The name of my new acquaintance was Paul Werner. He was small and nimble like a weasel and looked both frail and tough, with the pale, pinched face of a child of the slums. His right shoulder was higher than the left; it looked as if it were permanently raised to protect his face against a threatening blow. One could imagine him as a newsboy, racing down the Friedrich­strasse and crying out the evening paper, or selling fruit from a barrow in a London street--except for his soft, brown eyes. They were the eyes of a sad, ageing hunchback. Their quiet, contemplative gaze was a strange contrast to his nimble gestures and sharp features. They seemed to say: `Forget how I look and behave; I am really a quite different person.'

  I took to Werner at once. It was very exciting to meet, in this remote part of the world, a comrade of the German C.P. who spoke the same language, and the same jargon within that language; with whom one could talk shorthand instead of stammered Russian, and crack private jokes. I had not known how much I had felt the need of it. Werner had felt it even more. He had been working in Baku for over a year, and as we tramped through the drizzle of the depressing streets with their all-pervading odour of petrol, there was an aura of pathetic loneliness around him. He explained to me that he worked in PROFSAYUS, the Trade Unions. I found this rather strange, and asked him what earthly use the Azerbaijani Trade Unions had for a German youngster from Leipzig? He shrugged with the shoulder that was higher, and said that as a political refugee he had been directed by the Party from one job to another, and that at present he was serving as a kind of instructor or lecturer on European Trade Union movements. It did not sound convincing. I was naive, but not quite as naive as that, and the thrilling thought occurred to me that my new friend was a`Comrade from the G.P.U.' who had been assigned a fictitious cover job with PROFSAYUS. This hypothesis based partly on certain discrepancies in his story, and partly on a kind of instinct that had developed in me through my contact with Schneller's apparat and with other comrades who had some hush-hush assignment. But naturally I could not be sure.

  I invited him to a glass of vodka in my hotel, and we talked for several hours, until I had to meet Nadeshda. At some point during out talk I asked Werner whether he knew how I could get hold of material on foreign espinage in Baku for my book. He looked rather shocked, and said that I had better lay off that subject. I told him that I thought the matter was politically important. The capitalist Press was constantly berating the Soviet Union for its distrust of foreigners, its stringent visa and security regulations. I needed material to prove that these measures were justified, that
espionage and sabotage did in fact exist. And Baku, Russia's oil centre, close to the Turkish and Persian frontiers, was the obvious locale for cloak-and-dagger intrigues. I wanted one or two striking cases to illustrate my point.

  Werner remained uneasy and sceptical. Then I had an idea. `Weisst dit was?' I told him. `I shall go straight to the horse's mouth. I shall go to the G.P.U. and ask them for material. Naturally, the names, details and so on, will have to be camouflagcd.'

  Werner burst out laughing. `How long have you been in the U.S.S.R.? Six months? You are crazy. One does not go to the G.P.U. to ask questions. One goes to the G.P.U. to answer questions. Du bist verriickt! They will throw you out head first, and you will get into serious trouble with the Party.'

  I remained, however, adamant. We made an appointment for lunch for the next day. For an employee of the hard-working PROFSAYUS, Werner had a remarkable amount of free time on his hands.

  The next morning I betook myself to the Baku headquarters of the G.P.U. It was housed in an imposing building in Byeligorod, the modern European quarter. The atmosphere inside the building did not impress me in any particular way. The people in the entrance hall who were queuing up at the porter's cubicle looked shabby and morose, as people did in any other queue in Russia. If they were frightened or distressed, I did not notice it. The porter or concierge, called Kommandant as in every official building, was a scruffy, grubby little man with a distinctly unpleasant face; this I remember because it surprised me. I also remember that all the people in the queue, except myself, had typewritten summonses which the Kommandant stamped, marking the hour and minute when they had entered the building. This too is a matter of routine in official Soviet bureaux. As I had no summons, the Kommandant asked me gruffly what I wanted. I showed him my Comintern letter--not, of course, my bourgeois Press accreditation--and asked to see a `responsible comrade in the department dealing with espionage'. He asked me what for. I said I could not tell him, and repeated my request. He said: `It is called the Economic Department.' This detail, too, has remained in my memory, because I cannot understand to this day why even the G.P.U. whose official business it is to deal with espionage, has to use a cover-name for it. But euphemisms and camouflage are part of the ever-present conspiratorial ritual of the Communist world.

  The Kommandant went to another sound-proof cubicle where he telephonecl upstairs. Then he told me to wait. I waited for about half an hour. Then a uniformed guard took me up in a lift to a higher floor, led me along some corridors, and showed me into an office. It was a small room, furnished with a large desk and three chairs. Behind the desk sat a tall officer with a shaven skull. He aked me, unsmiling, to sit down and tell him what I wanted. His manner was coldly polite and stiff. I showed him my papers and briefly told him the purpose of my visit. He studied all my papers with extreme care for several minutes, re-examining some of them two or three times as if he were learning them by heart. Then he said, looking at me with an expressionless stare: `We do not give information of the kind you require, citizen.' I resented that he had called me citizen, not comrade. I repeated the arguments I had used with Werner. While I talked, there was a knock at the door and another officer came in. He saluted my interviewer in military fashion and laid a bundle of letters before him on the desk. While the latter was signing these, the other officer remained standing and studied me with what seemed to me an amused smile. He was tall and slim, with a dark, handsome face and easy manners. In contrast to him, the officer behind the desk, with his shaven skull, the flat eyes, and the stiff, creaking uniform, seemed to belong to a primitive race, a kind of Neanderthal bureaucrat. I registered in a half-conscious way that while he had scrutinised my papers with such pedantic care, he put his signature on the letters before him after only a cursory, absent-minded glance. As the dark officer left, he again saluted gracefully, while the man behind the desk acknowledged the salute with a curt, stiff nod. Then he turned to me, and, cutting me short, said: `I shall discuss your request with my colleagues. You will probably hear from us.' I asked whether I should call again after a few days. He said: `That is not necessary. Please wait until you hear from us.' With that I was dismissed. I never heard from them. It had obviously been intended to teach the foolish little foreigner a chilling lesson. I never again set foot in a G.P.U. building, in Baku or anywhere else.

  But that short, silent scene between the two officers had made a curiously vivid impression on me. It had seemed unreal in an undefinable way. A few days later I found out why--from Werner. By that time he no longer pretended to work for the PROFSAYUS. When I described to him my visit to headquarters, he laughed his head off he had a pleasant, boyish way of laughing. Then he said: `They played a routine trick on you. The dark, elegant one was the nachalnik. The one behind the desk is his subordinate. The nachalnik came in under a pretext because he was curious about you.' I asked what purpose was served by this reversal of parts, and he explained: `Don't you know that the kibitz is always in a better position to observe?.' (A kibitz is the silent onlooker in a game of cards or chess.)

  This, and my emotional involvement with Nadeshda, reinforced even more the vividness of my image of that strange scene, so that even after years I could evoke it unimpaired before my mind's eye. Six years later, when I was searching my memory for visual models for two characters in a novel, the image flashed up almost like a hallucination, and the two officers became Ivanov and Gletkin in Darkness at Noon.

  The exact sequence of events during my stay in Baku is blurred in my memory. At my second or third meeting with Werner, over a copious meal with some vodka, I told him straight to his face that I was sure he was working with `the Comrades of the G.P.U.', and he saw that it was no use trying to deny it. He then told me that he had been detailed to accost me and make friends with me, but that after a couple of days he was told to drop the matter because information about me had arrived from Moscow and the nachalnik had simply said: `Your friend is okay. No need to bother about him.'

  I was, of course, greatly pleased by this honourable exemption. Werner was perhaps even more pleased. He felt very lonely indeed--only after we had parted did I fully realise the depth of his loneliness--and he had an almost physical need to talk to somebody in whom he could confide without reserve. On two consecutive days he told me the story of his life. It is the story of Little Loewy in Darkness at Noon, except for its ending.

  He had grown up in Leipzig, Saxony, as a working-class child--a cross between the street-urchin that he still looked, and the bookworm and dreamer who was reflected in his gentle eyes. He had joined the Young Communist League, and in due time had graduated into the Party. The Party needed weapons for its guerilla warfare against the Nazis, and Werner participated in a daring coup to procure some arms, as a result of which he was forced to flee abroad. For about a year he tramped through Belgium and France. There were times when he lived on stolen food, and times when he killed stray cats and sold their furs for half a loaf of bread and a packet of pipe tobacco. At last he found contact with one of the Party-apparats, which took him over. He carried out various clandestine duties; the last of these was the liquidation of an apparat-man turned traitor. Werner talked about the murder he had committed without visible emotion, but with the air of acute embarrassment of one who confesses to a foolish act which makes him appear ridiculous, and about which he nevertheless feels an irresistible urge to speak. At moments his embarrassment became so acute that he avoided my eyes; at others he looked full into my face with a soft, questioning look, as if probing my reaction. When he had finished, I asked him whether he had occasional dreams about it. He said no--the only nightmares he had were about killing cats, and the eyes of dead cats, and their smell.

  After that episode, he was whisked off to Russia where he was given asylum as a political refugee, and finally his present job. That job was, as I knew, somehow related to G.P.U. work; its precise nature he did not tell me and I did not ask.

  Werner's disclosures about Nadeshda and her aunt came a fe
w days after he had told me his story. From this point onward my memory becomes confused, with only a few scenes standing out vividly, like islands in a fog. I seem to have been wandering through a murky emotional labyrinth which I find difficult to map out without simplifying or dramatising.

  Topmost in my reaction was shocked incredulity. That two women living alone, one the widow of a foreign consul, the other a striking beauty, could attract suspicion was almost inevitable. The Party taught that social origin was a decisive test of political reliability, and the social origin of the two women was unmistakably the Russian aristocracy or upper middle class. I could not believe that the aunt was really a spy--it sounded rather too crude and obvious. Perhaps in bygone days the consul, and even she herself, had done some routine intelligence work, and the expression 'staraya spionka' referred to that; but precisely that conspicuous past seemed to make her unfit for carrying on any such activity. As for Nadeshda, the idea of her being a fireign agent was simply preposterous. She was under observation--all right. If Werner wanted to meet her, he was welcome; it would only help to convince him of the absurdity of the whole thing.