Fear of Mirrors

by Tariq Ali

  Gertie had tried hard and become friends with Lisa. They talked about everything. Their early lives, their families, the break with the past and their lovers.

  It was from a heavily pregnant Lisa that Gertie had first heard the story of Ludwik and his four friends.

  It was a quiet Sunday. Outside it was freezing underneath a clear blue sky; the temperature had dropped again. Ludwik was due to return from Prague in the afternoon. Lisa’s child was restless inside her. She felt it was a boy and imagined him as a miniature Ludwik trapped in her stomach. The thought redoubled her tenderness and she began to stroke her stomach gently and sing an old Ukrainian song her mother had sung to her as a child.

  She was relieved when Gertie, wearing a Red Army greatcoat and an astrakhan, arrived well stocked with provisions. Black bread, cheese and chocolate. Soon the talk turned to Ludwik.

  ‘When I first saw him,’ she confessed to Lisa, ‘he struck me as very ordinary.’ They laughed at the ridiculousness of such a notion.

  ‘That’s why he’s so good at his job. An average-sized small businessman from mittel Europe. You know in Prague he meets his agents above a tavern, which is also used as a brothel. The tavern keeper is convinced that he’s a pimp!’

  Gertie suddenly noticed a small, framed photograph on the mantelpiece. Five boys, dripping with water from head to toe, their faces full of mischief, caught by the camera in their strange knee-length swimming trunks.

  ‘Can you recognize Ludwik?’ Lisa asked her.

  ‘Which one is he?’

  ‘Guess!’

  Gertie guessed. Lisa smiled.

  ‘Have you met the others?’

  Gertie shook her head.

  ‘I think you must have. They’re all in the same department as you.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. All of them?’

  Lisa nodded. Just then she felt a contraction and clutched her stomach. Gertie put down her glass of tea and began to gently massage Lisa’s neck and shoulders.

  ‘It seems close, Gertie. I really need Ludwik. I want him now. You’re sure he’ll be back today?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Where did you first meet him? Were you from the same village?’

  ‘No!’ Lisa gave a rich, throaty laugh. ‘I was a Lemberg girl. I met him in Vienna at the university. All five of them were there, each studying something different. Ludwik was studying literature. He was the funniest, made me laugh a lot. Those were carefree days, just before the outbreak of war. We lived in a safe world – or so we thought. The Dual Monarchy had been there forever. If someone had told us that soon there would be a war that would trigger a revolution that would destroy the Tsar, the Kaiser and the Emperor, we would have laughed and sent him off to see Dr Freud.’

  ‘Is Ludwik his real name?’

  Lisa smiled, but did not reply. Gertrude knew she could go no further. One of the first lessons she had been taught in the Department was that she was never to reveal her true identity, even to her closest friends. It was vital for her own security in the field. She had to forget the past.

  ‘Whatever happened to Krystina?’

  ‘Died in Baku last year. Typhus. Her five Ls carried the coffin. You should have seen them that day. These men are veterans of the revolution; four of them are heroes of the civil war. They wept like children, loudly and for a long time. I have never seen Ludwik in such a state. I think it was the death of innocence – a farewell to their youth. Poor Krystina.’

  ‘You didn’t like her, Lisa?’

  ‘Not really. She had such a hold on Ludwik. I was jealous. I knew their friendship was not physical, but it was deep. Too deep for me. Yes, I was jealous and it showed. To be honest, I felt nothing much when she died. It made me sad to see how upset they all were, but secretly I was relieved. There, I’ve got it off my chest. I think it was mutual. She always kept me at arm’s length. She disapproved of our relationship. It was too much like a marriage.’

  ‘A “glass-of-water” woman?’

  ‘Probably. I know that none of our five men slept with her. She was put on a pedestal and worshipped, a true Bolshevik madonna. I doubt we would have agreed to have a child if Krystina had still been alive. She was strongly opposed. When I told her once that having a child would help, since Ludwik and I would be accepted anywhere in Europe as a bourgeois couple, she looked at me with such anger that none of us could speak for several minutes. Then, her face pale with rage, she said: “We are revolutionaries, engaged in dangerous work. We are trying to banish fear from our hearts. A child stops us doing that. We worry too much, we become cowards.” Her voice was full of contempt.’

  Lisa stopped suddenly and clutched her womb. Her waters had broken. There was a midwife in the building who had already been alerted, but where was Ludwik? As Gertie went to fetch the midwife, she heard the big entrance door to the barracks heave open and in walked Ludwik, looking cheerful and loaded with packages of different sizes. He smiled on seeing her; his eyes asked her whether he was too late, but Gertie smiled.

  ‘Not yet, but soon. Just in time, Ludwik.’

  He grinned. ‘I always am.’

  Little Felix was born a few minutes before the clock struck midnight.

  ‘I knew it was a boy. It had to be a boy,’ Lisa said a few minutes after giving birth and just before demanding a mug of hot chocolate. Later, as she sipped her drink, she told them why.

  ‘If it had been a girl, he would have insisted on naming her Krystina. I don’t like ghosts.’

  ‘Look at him. Look at Felix,’ crooned Ludwik, ignoring her remark. ‘He’s just like the Revolution: ugly and insolent!’

  Gertrude, who lived a few kilometres from the old barracks where Ludwik and other Fourth Department operatives were housed, was walking back to her room. Outside, behind the black birch trees, a full moon was in motion. The ground was covered with snow. She walked slowly, very slowly, trying to keep pace with the moon.

  Seeing the joy in Ludwik’s eyes as he held his newborn child had awakened suppressed passions in her. She did not feel any guilt. Does a volcano feel guilty when it realizes that it is no longer dormant?

  Nine

  IN 1928, Ludwik had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the highest military honour of the Soviet Republic. The citation had referred to the services he had rendered to the world revolution – services that could not be listed for reasons of security. Lisa knew that he had established networks in several European countries, but the Red Banner was for something very special.

  For a moment she wondered if he had killed an important enemy. He denied that strongly. Till now, he told her, he had not killed anyone. Not that a single death mattered too much. This was a generation that had known the First World War, when the Germans alone had lost nearly two million people. The Great War had devalued death, devalued human lives to such an extent that killing the odd individual did not pose moral problems for either side in the interwar years. If not a strategically important murder, then what else could it be? Lisa was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘What did you do, Ludwik? Please tell me. Was it dangerous?’

  He never did tell her. Ludwik concealed most of his exploits on special missions from her. He did not want her implicated if they were ever arrested by the other side. Lisa understood the reasons for his caution, but that did not prevent her from being irritated by his secretiveness. There had been a time, she told herself, when they had no secrets from each other. Throughout the years of civil war neither of them had felt the need to hide anything from each other. She often pestered him for details of the affair that had led to the medal, but he had always refused.

  Years later she discovered that the events had taken place while they were in Amsterdam in 1927, the only time when the three of them had come close to leading a normal existence. Ludwik had set up a stationery shop to establish a cover. Lisa had run it so well that the wretched enterprise had started making a profit, much to their surprise and to the great amusement of Berzin and the rest of the gang in Moscow
.

  It was Hans the painter, one of Ludwik’s oldest comrades and agents, who had told her last winter, while visiting Paris. Hans had been genuinely surprised that she had not been told. They always assumed she knew everything.

  ‘You mean he never told you?’

  Lisa shook her head and frowned. Hans lit his pipe, and in his Dutch-inflected German told her the whole story. ‘Your Ludwik always made everything sound so simple. One day he came to my studio. “Pack your bags, my friend. We’re off on a trip.” The next thing I knew we were in London, where we stayed with Olga. You know her? No? It doesn’t matter. We stayed for three days. On the first day, Ludwik took me for a walk: Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, the House of Commons. You know, the usual tourist jaunt. Then he showed me their Foreign Office. “Look at that building carefully, Hans.” I did. To me it was just like the others. Imperialist architecture. I shrugged my shoulders. “Forget the aesthetic side for a minute, comrade. This is the centre of their International. World counterrevolution is planned and executed from that building. We’ve got to get someone in there.” I laughed at the joke and so did Ludwik. I forgot about it all till we returned to Amsterdam.

  ‘The following week we had dinner together at your house. Suddenly he said to me: “You know, I wasn’t joking.” I couldn’t even remember what he was talking about. I really had forgotten the whole episode. He reminded me. I thought he was going mad. How could I, a Dutch painter, with very bad English, get anyone into any place in London, let alone their Foreign Office? But Ludwik, as always, had a plan. It could easily have been a disaster. In fact, I was convinced it would fail. Instead it succeeded. Are you sure you don’t want to go out and eat now?’

  ‘No, you idiot,’ Lisa almost shouted at him. ‘Finish the story first.’

  ‘It was a simple plan, so simple that any old fool could have thought of it, but your Ludwik was never any old fool. Was he? Behind the simplicity of his plans there is always a touch of genius, which is more than can be said for my paintings.’

  ‘Hans,’ Lisa pleaded, ‘just tell me.’

  ‘It was a three-stage operation. I’m beginning even to sound like him now. First I was to go to Geneva and set up a studio. During the day, he told me, I could paint or fornicate or both. My evenings were in the service of the Fourth Department. Are you wondering why Geneva?’

  ‘The League of Nations?’

  ‘Exactly. And in the League a British Delegation. And in the British Delegation a few cryptographers. I was to find one of them and befriend him. It wasn’t easy, what with my poor command of English, but Ludwik showed up and soon obtained a description of two of the cryptographers and where they drank in the evenings.

  ‘For two weeks I observed them closely. I decided – don’t ask me why, pure instinct, I guess – to go for the older of the two, a very intelligent man from a lower middle-class background, fluent in German, French and Russian. That solved the communication problem. We became good friends. First stage was complete.

  ‘After a few months I confessed my communist sympathies, discussed the Russian Revolution and all that sort of business. Then I introduced him to Ludwik. Within three weeks, Lisa, your husband had recruited our English friend to the ranks of the Communist International. He was an intelligent fellow, grasped the arguments very quickly. He really did know the English ruling class. The stories he told us about Curzon were funny and vicious. He had a real contempt for the men who ruled his country. One day Ludwik casually popped the question. Just like that, you know, and David agreed to work for us. We now had someone at the very heart of their world-wide operations. It had cost us not a penny. Pure politics. All that has gone now, but in those days …’ Hans paused to clean and relight his pipe.

  ‘And stage three, Hans?’

  ‘Simple,’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion. ‘When David had ended his tour of duty in Geneva he went back to the Foreign Office in London. Ludwik transferred me there as well, but this time as a photographer. I set up a tiny shop and studio in Fleet Street, specializing in portraits. I earned more money than I ever had from my paintings. Ludwik always told us that whatever cover we used, it must be real. To be a complete fake was a serious risk.’

  Lisa laughed, remembering their stationery shop in Amsterdam. Hans guessed the cause of her amusement.

  ‘Your shop, eh? Exactly! I had always been interested in photography. Ludwik made me a professional. I started selling photographs to newspapers in England and on the Continent, but always to serious bourgeois papers. He told me never to contact any left newspaper. And some of the pictures I took were good, really good. So I became a fixture on Fleet Street. Everyone knew how I earned a living. Once a week, the cryptographer, David, would arrive from the Foreign Office. We would meet in a restaurant or cafe. He would take out a sheaf of papers. I would take them back to my studio, photograph every single page, and then rush back to the cafe and return them to him. He would breathe easily and depart. That same afternoon I would process the material and that same evening, a courier would collect the stuff and off it would go to Moscow. There were occasions when Moscow read the documents before they reached the Foreign Secretary or Downing Street. For that master-stroke, they gave Ludwik the Order of the Red Banner.’

  ‘What happened to David the cryptographer?’

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ Hans’s eyes disappeared as his face creased with laughter. ‘David was transferred to the British Embassy in Moscow!’

  Ten

  ‘WHY IS HE ALWAYS LATE, Mama? Why?’ Felix’s voice, as he stood there with his freshly cut, washed and combed light blond hair, had a desperate ring. It was his tenth birthday. He had demanded and been promised a celebratory meal at the Sacher, and Lisa had ordered a special cake to mark the occasion.

  Felix was dressed in a dark brown three-piece suit – his first – and a red tie. He had now perfected the art of tying his own knot in the shape and style he wanted, although it had taken him an hour in front of the mirror. Felix was excited, but where was Ludwik?

  Lisa too, was smartly attired in a cream silk blouse, a long beige skirt and matching jacket. Her fur coat was resting on an armchair, ready to protect her from the cold outside.

  ‘Will he come today, Mama?’

  She smiled at her son and stroked his head lightly, trying to conceal her own worry. It had always been the same. Whenever he was late, she imagined the worst. Death. An unmarked grave. The torment of not knowing if he was dead or alive! During the civil war when Red and White detachments had fought hand-to-hand battles, death, compared to the survival of the Revolution, had been of little account. More importantly, she, too, had been on the front as a Commissar. Both of them had faced similar dangers, and this had made the separation bearable. In fact, the problems she confronted with her detachment had meant that she barely had time to think of Ludwik.

  Now her task was to keep up the appearance of a good mother and wife. And there was Felix. She recalled Krystina’s warning about how children adversely affected one’s revolutionary commitment. Lisa permitted herself a wry smile. Clever Krystina. She knew.

  Everything had become much worse since the fascist victory in Germany. Berlin, for so long a city on which so many dreams and hopes had been pinned, had gone over to the enemy. Ludwik and Gertrude had been there for over two weeks. He was reorganizing the clandestine networks, finding out how many of his agents were in prison, meeting those still at liberty, to ascertain in the most delicate fashion possible whether any of them had, in some way, been touched by the Brown flood which was sweeping the country.

  Lisa missed Ludwik more than she had thought possible. There were times when her entire being was filled with an overwhelming longing for him. She recalled his voice, his body-movements and gestures, felt the touch of his hand on her face, smelled the scent of the coffee at the Zentrale where they had met in the first few days of their courtship. At moments like this she became paralysed, incapable of doing anything, and distracted from her Ludwik-t
houghts only by the insistent voice of her son.

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘My child, listen to me. We shall wait ten more minutes. Then you will escort your mother to the restaurant. We shall eat, drink a toast to your health and enjoy ourselves.’

  Felix’s eyes filled with tears. Lisa knelt down and hugged him tightly to her bosom.

  ‘Wherever your father is, and I’m sure he’s on a train nearing Vienna, you can be sure he’s thinking of you. Let’s not wait any longer. Let’s go.’

  Mother and son walked out of the apartment block arm in arm. Outside it was cold and dark. They had to wait some time for a tram; both of them were shivering. As the doorman outside the Sacher held the doors open for them, they sighed with relief. The warmth was welcoming. Felix looked up at Lisa and smiled. They handed their coats to the cloakroom attendant and made their way into the restaurant. As the head waiter was accompanying them to the table, specially reserved in Felix’s name, the boy’s eyes lit up. Decorum disappeared.

  ‘Papa! Papa!’

  Ludwik put down his newspaper and rose from the table to embrace and kiss his son. Lisa stared at him, trying hard to control her emotions. He was safe.

  ‘Well now,’ said Ludwik in his most paternal voice. ‘Trust the pair of you to be late. I thought we were due here at eight precisely. You have kept me waiting.’

  Felix laughed with delight. His father handed him a small parcel. Felix undid the string, his pleasure unrestrained: a new stamp album and several little brown envelopes bursting with stamps. The collapse of the Hapsburgs had led to the birth of new countries, and this meant new stamps. Felix specialized in Central and Eastern Europe. His father’s never-ending travels had one positive feature – they helped to enhance the stamp collection. Felix began to inspect the swastikas and brown shirts on the new German stamps.

  ‘How was Berlin?’ Asked in a normal voice, Lisa’s question was anything but banal.

  ‘Not good. Most of our friends have disappeared.’