Fear of Mirrors

by Tariq Ali

  ‘Sleep well, my son.’

  The next morning, Ludwik moved to a small hotel in Clichy, while Lisa and Felix boarded a train that would take them to Switzerland, but via an elaborate detour which Ludwik had worked out to throw any hounds off his trail. His own future was uncertain, but he was not prepared to take any risks with their lives. Better that they reached their destination totally exhausted than not at all.

  Lisa is dreaming: Gigantic waves, like thick sheets, pure white like washed cotton, have enveloped her senses. Ludwik’s head keeps bobbing up and down. Is he trying to swim? No. He’s disappeared again. The waves have settled down. It’s not the sea at all, but snow. A snow desert. She recognizes the familiar polar landscape. Siberia. And there she is herself, walking towards a stream which is flowing, but in slow motion. She reaches the edge of the water and is suddenly confronted by a gigantic tree trunk. A man is chained to it, but is not struggling at all. She recognizes Ludwik and runs towards him shouting ‘Ignaty! Ignaty!’, but the trunk and the man tied it keep receding as in a mirage. Then she is stuck to the ground and cannot move. Paralysis. The tree trunk has stopped as well. Blood is pouring out of Ludwik’s face and dripping into the stream, like candle wax on water. Pearls of blood. He is dead. No. He is still alive. A smile appears on his face and he begins to speak, but the voice does not belong to him. It is a deep voice and every word is crisp and clear. It’s the voice of the Jewish actor Mikhoels on the Moscow stage. Ludwik in Mikhoels’s throat mask. He is reciting a poem which is reassuringly familiar:

  I have outlasted all desire,

  My dreams and I have grown apart;

  My grief alone is left entire,

  The gleanings of an empty heart.

  The storms of ruthless dispensation

  Have struck my flowery garland numb –

  I live in lonely desolation

  And wonder when my end will come.

  Shadowy figures are moving behind Ludwik, axes raised high as they prepare to execute him. Another voice. Disembodied. Eerie. Who can it be? Felix. Repeating a phrase over and over again: ‘Our own people … our own people … our own people…’ The axes are about to fall.

  Lisa woke with a jolt, the dream fading away as the train lurched slightly and began to wind its way up the final stretch to the Swiss mountain village of Finhaut. She felt the wetness on her cheeks with her hands. The Pushkin poem was really odd. She had learnt the verses at school, when she was nine or ten years old. Never read or recited it since that time. One of memory’s surprises.

  Next to her, Felix was still fast asleep, his head leaning against the window, the afternoon sun printing shadows on his face. Lisa combed his hair with her fingers and looked out of the window. It was a stunning picture, the Valais in its summertime glory. Alpine flowers in full bloom. The primrose-yellow stars brought a smile of delight to her face. For a moment everything else was forgotten as she inhaled the surroundings.

  The compartment was filled with the rich odour of roses, which had been brought on board with the rest of their honeymoon baggage by a young German-Swiss bride and her French husband. A hundred creamy white roses. They were the only other people in the compartment.

  Felix, unused to such sights, had been amazed by the size and beauty of the bouquet. The young bride, touched by the obvious pleasure on the boy’s face, had removed a rose from her collection and pinned it on to his pullover. Lisa smiled at the sight. The rose lay on Felix’s chest, drooping slightly as if parodying the posture of its new owner.

  Ever since last night, when Ludwik had told her of his decision, she had been mute with fear.

  ‘I’ve decided to retire,’ he had said with a strange, sad smile. ‘I’ve had enough. I will write and tell Moscow next week.’

  She had held him close, but he could see from her eyes that she was petrified. Both of them were aware that the chances of survival were slim. Even a very minor flunky was not allowed to leave without a severe interrogation. What would they do to her Ludwik? The man who had established networks in over a dozen European countries?

  ‘Why are you thinking, Mother?’ Felix, wide awake and excited by the sights and smells of the mountains, was looking straight into his mother’s eyes. They were alone again, the newlyweds having disembarked at the last stop, and the train was climbing slowly and painfully to Finhaut.

  Lisa hugged him, but did not reply. She and Ludwik had decided even when Felix was three and had the knack of asking awkward questions, that it was better to remain silent than to tell lies – except, of course, in very special cases. It had been the only way. The nature of Ludwik’s work would otherwise have meant creating a totally false universe, a kingdom of untruths, and this was unacceptable to both Felix’s parents.

  Felix, for his part, grew to accept that in this world there were many questions to which he would never receive an answer. He thought it quirky, but accepted it as a fact of life, the way children often learn not to challenge adult decisions.

  The train pulled into the station. Lisa and Felix stepped down on to the platform and breathed the mountain air. A porter helped with the luggage and within half an hour they had reached the chalet Ludwik had selected as their retreat from the world. Both of them were thinking about him.

  ‘When will he come?’

  Twenty-five

  LUDWIK WAS ALONE in Paris. He spent very little time in his hotel room and avoided all his old haunts and contacts. One night, he was returning to his hotel well past midnight when he saw a stranger watching his hotel bedroom from the street. He waited till the man left and checked out at three in the morning.

  It was well past midday when he woke the next day in a safe apartment on the top floor of an old block in the rue de Condé. There was nobody else in the whole world, not even Lisa, who knew of its existence. Ludwik strolled out soon after two that afternoon, ordered a coffee and a croissant at the nearest café and used the telephone to ring Livitsky as pre-arranged. Within half an hour Livitsky was at the café. He took out a three-day-old copy of Izvestia from his briefcase and handed it to Ludwik. They had not yet exchanged a single word.

  ‘Are you sure you weren’t followed, Shmelka?’

  ‘Positive,’ replied Livitsky.

  As Ludwik read the newspaper his face filled with anger. ‘The killers of the old Bolsheviks are being given medals! We can’t stay on, Shmelka. This butcher is killing everyone. Why the hell did you let Bukharin go back? He should have stayed and linked forces with Trotsky.’

  ‘He was frightened. Trotsky, too, will be killed. Spiegelglass boasts about it already.’

  ‘We must warn Trotsky. Have you any contacts? His son is here.’

  ‘Would he trust us?’

  ‘I cannot wait any longer. I have written a first draft of my letter to the Central Committee, returning my Order of the Red Banner. Tomorrow I will send it to Moscow as well as to friends in Amsterdam and London with the instruction that it should be made public. Once that happens we will be able to see Trotsky and warn him of what we know. Why are you looking at me in that way?’

  ‘You don’t want to live any more, do you?’

  ‘I do. I have a son. I want to see him a grown man.’

  ‘But your letter is an invitation to murder. They’ll kill you, Ludwik. You know that better than me.’

  ‘There is a risk, but…’

  ‘No buts, Ludwik. The only people who could protect us are the state intelligence agencies of Britain and the United States.’

  ‘Not Britain,’ Ludwik laughed. ‘We have too many of our people in there. I put them there and now I’m scared of them. In any case, we must never sell ourselves to the bourgeoisie. Better to die.’

  ‘Perhaps I should sign your letter as well. Both of us quitting together might have a bigger impact.’

  ‘I disagree. We should spread it out. Who knows, a few others might join us as well.’

  ‘Will you give me a phone number?’

  Ludwik handed him a piece of paper. Liv
itsky memorized the number and destroyed the note. The two men shook hands warmly.

  ‘Who would have thought all those years ago in Pidvocholesk that we would end up like this…’

  Ludwik embraced his friend as the two men parted. Livitsky was frightened. He felt empty inside. He knew that he would never see Ludwik again.

  Ludwik climbed the stairs back to his refuge and began to re-draft his letter.

  When he had finished he felt at peace with himself. He was free again. He opened the window to let in the fresh air and looked down at the people on the street. He smiled at the clear blue sky. Life was flowing smoothly in Paris that day. If only he had been feeling so happy in a Leningrad apartment as he looked down on the Nevsky Prospect.

  At the corner of the street he saw a group of young men in army uniform, but he could not sight any NKVD operatives. Ludwik sat down at the typewriter and began to type out his letter.

  16 JULY 1937

  TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE USSR

  I should have written the letter I am writing a long time ago, on that day when the Sixteen – each of them a veteran Bolshevik – were massacred in the cellars of the Lubianka on the orders of the ‘Father of the People’.

  I kept quiet then and I did not raise my voice at the murders that followed, and as a result I bear a heavy responsibility. My guilt is grave, but I will try to repair it, to repair it promptly and thus ease my conscience.

  Up to this moment I marched alongside you. Now I will not take another step. Our paths diverge! He who now keeps quiet becomes Stalin’s accomplice, betrays the working class, betrays socialism. I have been fighting for socialism since my twentieth year. Now, on the threshold of my fortieth, I do not want to live off the favours of the NKVD. For sixteen years I learnt to work illegally. I have enough strength left to start all over again in order to save socialism.

  Your self-congratulatory noises will not succeed in drowning out the moans and cries of the victims tortured in the cellars of the Lubianka, in Svobodnaia, in Minsk, in Kiev, in Leningrad, in Tiflis. You will not succeed. The voice of truth cannot be drowned out for ever by corrupt and dislocated men like yourselves, devoid as you are of all principles and, with your mixture of lies and blood, poisoning the workers’ movement throughout the world …

  He warned Stalin not to take at face value the multitudes who acclaimed him. A terrible hatred lay hidden beneath the adulation. He explained his own political evolution and why he could no longer serve Moscow. He signed himself ‘Ludwik’. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added a paragraph:

  In 1928 I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for services to the proletarian revolution. I am enclosing the decoration. It would be beneath my dignity to wear an order also worn by the executioners of the best elements of the working class in Russia. In the last two weeks Izvestia has published the names of those who recently received the award. Their achievements have been discreetly kept quiet: they are the men who have carried out the death sentences on the old Bolsheviks.

  Ever since he had built his network, Ludwik had also devised a plan for getting urgent letters to Moscow within twenty-four hours. He put the letter to his former employers in a brown envelope and marked it for the urgent attention of the Fourth Department. Then he walked to the Soviet Embassy, posted it in the special letter box and left without saying a word to anyone except the doorman, who smiled at Ludwik and gave him a wink.

  After several detours, he returned to the rue de Condé, convinced that he had taken them by surprise. The last place they would have been expecting him was at the Embassy. Ludwik thought he was now safe for a few days, till the letter reached Moscow.

  He had underestimated the enemy. Within an hour of the letter being delivered, Spiegelglass had used his authority to open it, read it and call a meeting of his top operatives.

  ‘Ludwik has betrayed us and gone over to the Nazis. I want him and his family found and executed. That’s all. Any questions? Good. Don’t come back till you have carried out this task. And send in Livitsky.’

  Livitsky walked into the room ashen-faced.

  ‘Where is your friend Ludwik?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Is he still in Paris?’

  ‘I really don’t know. We have not been in touch for several weeks. As you know I returned from England only yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t trust you, Livitsky. You cosmopolitans are all the same. Slowly we are cleansing the stables. I’m warning you. If you don’t help us find him you will be returned to Moscow, where they will question you in the Lubianka.’

  Livitsky gave a weak smile. ‘Thank you for your trust, comrade. Now I have work to do against the real counter-revolution.’

  ‘Get out Livitsky, and have no doubts. Ludwik is finished.’

  Livitsky went to a cafe and ordered two large brandies. After he had consumed them, his hands stopped trembling. He went to the bar and rang Ludwik. Two short rings and stop. Then three short rings and stop. The message was simple. Run for your life. You’ve been discovered. His task accomplished, Livitsky returned to his own apartment and was reassured to find an NKVD operative trying hard to look normal on the opposite pavement.

  Ludwik was staggered by Livitsky’s message. How could they have been so quick? Then, angry with himself, he banged his fist on the table. Spiegelglass must have opened the letter. Ludwik cursed himself for not having used another channel to Moscow. He packed his typewriter and his clothes and walked out of the apartment. He knew that the railway stations in Paris would be unsafe for the next few days. There was no alternative but to take the car. His black Citroën was parked outside the house of a friend, the old woman who had handed him the warning note a few days ago. She was his most reliable and oldest letter-box in Paris. He was tempted to go to her apartment to say farewell, but his instinct was overridden by the years of iron discipline. There was no room for sentiment in this wretched business.

  He made sure that the car wasn’t being watched by walking up and down the side-streets. The day had been quite hot and Ludwik welcomed the evening breeze, wishing that he had not had to dress himself in a suit and tie. Only after he had made sure that he could not possibly have been watched did he enter the Citroën.

  Within half an hour he had left Paris behind and was heading towards Dijon. The roads were pitch black and Ludwik had no option but to drive slowly. For three hours his was the only car on the road. By the time he reached Dijon it was early morning. The station was not too difficult to find. He dumped the car and found a workers’ café, where he ordered a cognac with his coffee. At the station he was lucky. There was a morning train for Lyon and from there he could get a train for Lausanne.

  It was late afternoon when he reached Finhaut. Lisa and he had passed through here once before, many years ago, and wondered why this exquisite mountain village had neither a hotel nor a restaurant. Lisa had found rooms in the mayor’s house and Ludwik was directed there by some children, who had already befriended Felix.

  It was Felix who saw him first and came running down a hill shouting at the top of his voice.

  ‘Papa! Your hair’s gone white!’

  Ludwik lifted the boy off the ground and kissed him. Together they went to the mayor’s house. Lisa saw them from the window and rushed down to greet him. She, too, noticed how his hair had changed, but did not say anything.

  All three were sharing a room, thus limiting the conversation between the two adults. Ludwik, in any case, was exhausted and went to bed immediately after a spartan supper consisting of bread and cheese washed down by a glass of hot milk. He was asleep long before Felix that night.

  When Ludwik awoke the others were still fast asleep in their tiny cots. He went to the window and stood there, looking for calm in the alpine landscape. He knew he was standing on the edge of an abyss, but compared to the world of mirrors, masks and tortures from which he had just freed himself, even the abyss was enticing.

  His whole adult life
had been spent playing chess with death. His generation was not frightened by the thought of death, but what made it acceptable was the thought that one might die for a cause, in the course of a titanic struggle for power.

  Now he realized that the Revolution in which he had played a small part had degenerated beyond recognition, and that people who had once worked under him would now be recruited for the hunt. They would try and corner him and, if they succeeded, he would be shot. How long could he wander restlessly, looking over his shoulder every few minutes to see if the executioner had arrived?

  He recalled last night’s dream. Memories of his childhood. A moon seen through the mist, the wet mud on the roads which used to splatter his clothes, the sun coming through the trees, his father playing the piano night after night, his elder brother, whom Ludwik had not seen once since the Revolution. Was he dead or alive? His renegade brother, who had fought with Pilsudski against the Red Army in 1921. Freddy had told him that his enemies in Moscow were trying to use that fact to discredit Ludwik.

  Lisa came up quietly and put her arms around him. ‘The living conditions here are primitive,’ she whispered, and they both giggled.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Ludwik pointing to their sleeping boy.

  ‘His presence makes it worth while. Our reward for years of pain and trouble,’ said Lisa.

  ‘I hope I haven’t brought disaster to the two people I love most in this world. Perhaps you and he should go away…’

  ‘No.’

  The first week passed quickly. Ludwik began to unwind. They went for long walks. Ludwik told Felix stories of the past, the days before the Revolution. When he and Lisa were alone they would discuss the future. Ludwik was desperate to contact a few of his trusted friends in Amsterdam, in particular the Dutch dissident Communist Sneevliet. Through him Ludwik wanted to offer his services and his immense knowledge of the inner workings of the system to Trotsky.

  ‘I think you should publish your letter now, Ludwik. It will make it more difficult for them to kill you.’