Fear of Mirrors

by Tariq Ali

  ‘Not directly, perhaps, but if we had not handed over Germany to Hitler, could this have happened here?’

  ‘How many do you think there are in Moscow who talk as we do?’

  ‘Too many, as far as Stalin is concerned.’

  Three days of violence in Vienna. Three days in which the Schutzbund was incapable of effective resistance. Three days in which working-class Vienna lay in ruins, its leaders in prison or in exile. Arbeiterzeitung was being published clandestinely. Five years in prison for anyone caught in the act of distribution. Dolfuss triumphant.

  Hitler, irritated by Mussolini’s factional games in Austria and his apparent triumph, sent the following message to the defeated workers: ‘I am convinced that the Austrian workers will stand now behind the Nazi cause as a natural reaction to the violence which the Austrian Government has used against them.’

  Ludwik screamed in rage and quietly resumed his work. This man possessed five of the six attributes required of a great spy: an incredible memory for faces, names, conversations; the gift of languages; inexhaustible powers of invention; secrecy; capacity to engage in conversation with the most unlikely strangers. The sixth attribute – a freedom from conscience – always managed to elude Ludwik, and the men in Moscow were only too well aware of this, their spymaster’s only vulnerability.

  The following week he met Philby. It was a long meeting. Ludwik was pleased with the results and informed the Fourth Department of their new recruit. It was to his diary, in which he scribbled only irregularly, that he confided his innermost thoughts.

  For a long time Ludwik had resisted writing a diary, regarding it as a manifestation of narcissism and individuality, but Lisa had snorted at such a suggestion and warned him that he was in danger of losing his humanity. How right she had been. Now he used the diary as a means for isolating himself from the noise of the surrounding tables in a café or the other passengers in a train. The sight of a blank page invited him to enter a tranquil world, an island of self-imposed solitude in a sea of noise.

  20 FEBRUARY 1934:

  I met P. again today, but we agreed to avoid the cafés, which were thick with intrigue. Instead we met on the bridge, near the Schottenring. I had suggested we walk alongside the Danube. It was cold but sunny, and after three-quarters of an hour we found a bench from where we could see the scarred façade of the Karl Marx Hof We sat down and observed the wreckage that was Socialist Vienna. The events here have convinced P. of the correctness of our cause. His demeanour was calm. No trace of emotions or excitement in his voice. His decision was final. He is on our side. I asked him about the other Englishman, G. He smiled. Told me that G. had been affected in exactly the opposite fashion. The destruction of the Socialists had convinced him that the state could never be challenged effectively. ‘Very English reaction’, was P.’s epitaph on the affair.

  P. said that he had met an underground leader of the Schutzbund who had boasted that his men had been disciplined. No plunder or looting. They had been very proper. Perfect gentlemen. That’s why they lost, I said, and he nodded. I told him of one episode that had been reported to me by a Viennese Communist. As the Heimwehr were advancing near a park, the Schutzbund leader gave the order to surrender. Why? Because he would have had to walk on the grass in a park and violate the law that stated: Betreten Verboten! P. laughed at this and accused me of manufacturing the whole incident, but it was true.

  P. then told me that some years ago he had been at a dinner party in London. Here a retired Austrian general was holding forth at length on the crimes of the Austrian Socialists. P. recalled his exact words: ‘One day we’re going to put a stop to all this nonsense by fair means or foul. Parquet floor and showers for the workers? Might as well put Persian carpets in the pig-sty and feed the animals on caviar!’

  P. commented that it was odd how they always equated workers with pigs. Burke, he told me, had referred to the ‘swinish multitude’, and the radicals had responded by accepting the nomenclature and naming their newspapers The Swine, The Pig’s Trotter, etc.

  We talked then about the collapse of liberal bourgeois values in Austria. He was surprised by my suggestion that it was all to do with an élitist view of culture. I then gave him a brief lecture on the subject of the Viennese bourgeoisie. Brought back memories of all the discussions with Lisa and other friends before the war. As students at the university we used to stand for hours, look up at the ceiling and discuss the meaning of Klimt’s painting Philosophy. Was it truly a victory of light over darkness, as the Ministry of Culture had insisted? Or was it something far more ambiguous? Earth was dissolved into a fusion of Heaven and Hell. Suffering humanity was floating aimlessly in the universe. The painting had excited Lisa. I loved the painting, but hated its mysticism. Lisa was angry. The face at the bottom of the picture, Das Wissen, showed a conscious human mind. This face, she told us, was the real heart of the painting. Klimt was saying that Das Wissen was vital for all humanity. And so the debate had gone. We too had been caught up in the excesses of the Austrian bourgeoisie.

  P. laughed, but commented that this did not sound like a materialist explanation for the weakness of the Austrian intelligentsia. He put on a schoolmaster’s expression and voice and said: Do try again. We both laughed.

  I told P. that in Austria, the bourgeoisie had been unable, like its French and English counterparts, either to destroy or fuse with the aristocracy. Therefore it remained dependent on the Emperor and the court, always an outsider, and denied any real share in the monopoly of ruling the country. Denied power, it sought refuge in art, which acquired the status of a religion. I reminded him of Karl Kraus’s withering comment about the sphere of action of Viennese liberalism being constricted to the parquets of theatres on opening night.

  Liberal abdication had left the path clear for the clerico-fascists. The Emperor had defended the Jews against the anti-Semitic campaigns of the Catholics. Later, the Socialists had defended traditional liberal values. Now there was no holding back the fascists. Europe could only resist if it fought back.

  A Europe-wide civil war? P. asked. I nodded.

  He then questioned me in some detail about the German debacle. Why, he insisted, had the leaders of the German Communist Party not resisted the suicidal instructions from Moscow? For the first time I saw P. quite agitated. Even though it was indiscreet, I told him about my conversation with one of the central leaders of the German party and a founder of the Comintern. I had known that this leader was in private scathing about Moscow’s policies. Why don’t you go public? I had asked him. Let the world know why the German workers were virtually handed over to Hitler by the Comintern. His answer, still imprinted on my memory as if it were yesterday: I cannot do what you want because of the existence of the Soviet Union. I know perfectly well that we sacrificed the German movement to avoid a struggle with Stalin. We may have to sacrifice the movement in many other countries as well. In the end Fascism will be victorious over the capitalist world. Then there will be a titanic struggle between Fascism and the Soviet Union.

  P. was amazed: Did he really say that? I nodded. Doesn’t the madman understand that if Fascism is established in the whole of Europe, let alone America, they will have enough resources to smash the Soviet Union five times over?

  He then asked if he could go to Moscow. I told him that was impossible. His task was to work in the West. We needed information from the top circles in Germany and Britain. Therefore he had to abandon all his connections with the Left. He had to cultivate a new personality: arrogant, condescending, patronizing – and also a tiny stutter. He had to mix in the right circles. Otherwise he would be of no use to us. That’s easier than you think in my case, he says. My father has excellent connections.

  We shall see. I told him that this was the last time we would meet in public.

  Thirteen

  EVELYNE WOKE UP feeling angry. Angry that Vlady had not really liked her film. Angry that he had lacked the courage to say so to her face. And, above all, angry t
hat he had turned down her totally serious offer to sleep with him.

  She jumped out of bed and walked briskly into the bathroom. She turned on the light and viewed her naked body in the full-length mirror. ‘Not bad at all,’ she muttered to herself and frowned.

  What’s wrong with him? Does he really believe that I’ve gone off men? Menopausal fool! Or is it that I no longer matter?

  As she brushed her teeth she suddenly felt like confronting Vlady in his lair. At first she thought she would ring and warn him, but she put the receiver down before he could respond. No. This wasn’t a good idea.

  I’ll surprise him.

  It was Sunday, and the clocks in her three-storeyed house had just struck seven. Evelyne slipped on a pair of loose, grey silk trousers and a black cashmere sweater. As she passed the kitchen she paused, tempted by the fragrant steam of her special mix of coffees. She knew what would be on offer in Vlady’s apartment. Should she have some coffee before she left? It would take too long. Lust overpowered greed. She rushed down to her car.

  Evelyne loved Berlin at this time of morning. The streets were virtually empty. If she had not been feeling so angry with Vlady she would have walked. Instead she drove her Mercedes through the KuDamm at eighty kilometres. Within ten minutes she was outside Vlady’s apartment block. But she did not jump out and race up the stairs. She sat clutching the steering wheel. Why had she come here? An inner voice responded: To lay a ghost, to lay a ghost.

  Evelyne laughed. She sometimes visualized their relationship as a prematurely lanced boil, but not today. Anyway, she had never regarded her affair with Vlady as dead for all time. Could she be wrong? Was she deceiving herself? Was Vlady just a ghost then, a five-year-old memory that still haunted her because it had gone so disastrously wrong? What was she doing here?

  It had been so different at the beginning. He had been so different. Full of fun. She remembered the very first time they had talked.

  ‘Let me ask you something, Evelyne. Do you want to wreck my marriage?’

  ‘No,’ she had replied, taken aback but amused by his directness.

  ‘That’s fine. We can have an affair, but I must explain the ground rules.’

  Several months later she had told him that she wanted a child.

  ‘Why?’ Vlady had asked. ‘It’s a crazy idea. Do you realize what it will do to your life?’

  ‘I want one, Vlady. It will be a revolution in my life.’

  ‘And a counter-revolution in mine!’

  In those days the tension between them was always defused by laughter. Could that be the reason? Was she trying to relive the good memories?

  Her inner voice interrupted once again: It’s Sao isn’t it? The Vietnamese moneybag from Paris. You just want cash for your next movie. Vlady is simply a conduit. Isn’t that right?

  No, Evelyne told herself. No! I’m not that cynical. I still feel something for him, but I’m not sure what or why.

  Just as she had opened the door and was about to step out, she was overwhelmed by a memory and began to laugh loudly. She had only slept with him once. Then nothing for two weeks. Their failure to repeat the experience had made both of them irritable and bad-tempered with each other. Evelyne had broken the deadlock by entering his office at Humboldt wearing a long brown army coat with nothing underneath. She had locked the door, discarded her coat and asked in the sweetest voice imaginable: ‘Herr Meyer, are you capable of something more than a one-night stand?’ It was the look on his face, incredulity mingled with horror, that had made her laugh, then as now. Their relationship had prospered for a while after ‘the happening’, as he called it, and she had become attached to him. She still missed the old Vlady. The dissident leader with the venomous eye and the acid tongue; the polemicist who wielded his pen like a sword, producing pamphlets which panicked the regime; the enthusiastic professor who could infect his students with a love of Russian and Chinese literature. Having inspired herself, Evelyne began the long climb to the third floor. She pressed the bell. No reply. She began to knock on the door.

  Vlady had been checking the proofs of a Chinese translation of Adorno’s essays for most of the night. It was paid work and he enjoyed it a great deal. A very deep sleep had claimed him some hours ago and he did not hear the noise at the door. A desperate Evelyne was banging harder and harder and simultaneously pressing the bell. Slowly the loud and persistent rings penetrated his unconscious. Who? Why? He grabbed at his wrist watch on the side table. It was seven-thirty. Vlady cursed his tormentor as he got out of bed and stumbled towards the door.

  ‘Evelyne! Why in God’s name…?’

  ‘Don’t try too hard to be inhospitable, Vlady. You look a complete wreck. I’m desperate for some coffee.’

  ‘Evelyne,’ Vlady’s tranquil voice was deceptive. ‘What are you doing here at seven o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘I felt like seeing you. Isn’t that sufficient reason?’

  This time anger breached the surface calm and he shouted. ‘Not at this hour, damn you! Couldn’t you wait till the afternoon? Please leave.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the urge that brought me here is overpowering. I’m glad you’re angry. I hate it when you pretend to be calm. You’re still the same. Why don’t you go back to bed, and I’ll make some coffee.’

  ‘There isn’t any.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Evelyne shrieked in disbelief. ‘What do you drink in the morning? Your own piss?’

  Vlady grinned and walked out of the room. She followed him through the corridor to his study-bedroom. He got back into bed and held the quilt tightly around him.

  ‘I’m going back to sleep. You can stay if you like. Read. Listen to music. Masturbate. Anything, but let me sleep. We’ll talk later. Or you could go back home and return with a flask of coffee or you could have a shower, go for a walk and come back later. Anything you want, but just let me sleep.’

  ‘Please be quiet. You’re beginning to repeat yourself. I won’t let you sleep. I barely slept myself.’

  ‘Why? On your own?’

  ‘I usually am. I felt like a change.’

  She took off her clothes and got under the quilt with him. Vlady froze. He realized that a confrontation was inevitable. Till that ghastly dinner party he had neither written to Evelyne, nor thought of her and hadn’t, no, not even for a moment, wanted to see her. She belonged to a tarnished past, mixed up with their hopes and illusions and Helge’s departure, even though he knew that Evelyne was not responsible. He looked at her clouded face. The mask had disappeared. She was once again the troubled student, who had touched his heart five summers ago.

  He got annoyed with her because he knew that she was faking. The frantic, post-modern hothead constantly longing to shock was a total fiction, part of her plan to make some money, to build a new career in this wide-open country where the fastest growing industry was pornography, but he wished she wouldn’t try it all out on him.

  Evelyne, for her part, was irritated by his self-righteousness and a solemn longing to have everything in order, alles in Ordnung. How ironic for a Jew born and brought up in Moscow to be so German. Helge’s flight to New York had traumatized Vlady, and Evelyne had thought it was best to leave him alone to nurse his dented pride. If he thought she was wrong he should have told her. Why couldn’t he let her make her own mistakes now? She wasn’t his student any more. Sometimes, she told herself, the strongest emotion this tight-arsed fool feels is disapproval.

  The last three months before they finally separated had been painful. They had slept together, but like two corpses, never making love. It had become a grotesque and obscene ritual. Evelyne would feel a terrible twist in her stomach after every night spent in this fashion. Finally she ran away.

  As she observed his rigid frame the bad memories flowed through her once again and she cursed herself. Without saying a word she got out of bed and dressed. Vlady watched her in silence. It was not an unfamiliar scene.

&nbs
p; ‘Don’t go, Evelyne. Let me shave and get dressed. We’ll go for a walk.’

  A sad look crossed her face. ‘What is it about us, Vlady? We were so close.’

  Instead of replying he went to his desk and returned with Suhrkamp’s 1980 edition of Adorno’s Gesammelte Schriften.

  ‘I was checking the Chinese translation of this last night. Look what a gem I found. They’d left it out of the earlier editions. God alone knows why. Perhaps it touched a sensitive chord in Adorno’s own life.’

  He left her holding the book, while he went next door to take a shower. So obscure, she thought, translating Adorno into Chinese. There must be more practical things he could do. Losing the job at Humboldt could be good if it drags him out his ghetto. He could easily become a columnist, or host a radio show – anything to stop him scrutinizing his own entrails.

  ‘Have you finished? What do you think?’

  She slumped back on the bed and read the recommended extract.

  Post festum Pain at the decay of erotic relationships is not just, as it takes itself to be, fear of love’s withdrawal, nor the kind of narcissistic melancholy that has been penetratingly described by Freud. Also involved is fear of the transience of one’s own feeling. So little room is left to spontaneous impulses that anyone still granted them at all, feels them as joy and treasure even when they cause pain, and indeed, experiences the last stinging traces of immediacy as a possession to be grimly defended, in order not to become oneself a thing. The fear of loving another is greater, no doubt, than of losing that other’s love. The idea offered to us as solace that in a few years we shall not understand our passion and will be able to meet the loved woman in company with nothing more than fleeting, astonished curiosity, is apt to exasperate the recipient beyond all measure. That passion, which breaches the context of rational utility and seems to help the self to break its monadic prison, should itself be something relative to be fitted back into individual life by ignominious reason, is the ultimate blasphemy. And yet, inescapably, passion itself in experiencing the inalienable boundary between two people, is forced to reflect on that very moment and thus, in the act of being overwhelmed by it, to recognize the nullity of its overwhelming. Really one has always sensed futility; happiness lay in the nonsensical thought of being carried away, and each time that went wrong was the last time, was death. The transience of that in which life is concentrated to the utmost breaks through in just that extreme concentration. On top of all else the unhappy lover has to admit that exactly where he thought he was forgetting himself he loved himself only. No directness leads outside the guilty circle of the natural, but only reflection on how closed it is.