by Morris West
‘I wondered when they’d get to that.’ Spada was grim. ‘It’s the technique, isn’t it? Push bark the deadline. Once they’re over that, the first crisis is past. They can breathe freely and think up new ways to stall against the second deadline. This time, Maury, they’re not going to do it.’
‘I’ve told them, John. I think they believe it. I’ve suggested a way out. If you buy. it, I’ll try to fight it through.’
‘Let’s hear it.’ Spada waved a hand at the mess of papers around them. ‘Anything would sound good after this dreck!’
‘Before I start,’ said Feldman cautiously. ‘Remember the big stumbling-block. They insist that we disjoin the two events. The threat must be removed first; then the amnesty can take place. Clear?’
‘Clear; but…’
‘Forget the buts. Just listen! The deadline is noon, Tuesday, New York time . . . Now, here’s the proposal. Between now and then we feed the press the usual routine: hopeful negotiations, settlement near, all that. Your people are on notice and waiting for the final television transmission. At nine a.m., New York time, you go on the air with a statement. Goodwill has been shown. Humanity has been displayed. In view of this, you surrender your position. You call on your people to make known the location of the toxin. Twenty-four hours later the first token groups are released. One hundred prisoners from each country. The observers are already on hand to supervise their reception. Meantime, the negotiations for larger numbers go on.’
‘And all that’s in the statement?’
‘All of it. A public commitment has been made. Even if they stall later, it’s a start.’
‘Why can’t the two things be done simultaneously?’
‘Sovereignty, for Christ’s sake! We’ve been over it a hundred times!’
‘Who writes the broadcast statement?’
‘You do; but they’ll have to agree it.’
‘OK, let’s try it for size; but I reserve my position until I see the final terms.’
‘Good. I’ll take it back to them now.’
‘Stay and have some dinner with me first.’
‘No thanks. I’ve lost my appetite. They’re carrion birds out there.’
‘Tell them I’m not dead yet.’
He was very near dead and he knew it. They had him backed against a wall; and their swords were pricking at his throat. Once they had him disarmed, the game was over; and the token releases, even if they took place, would be the last and only gain – low-category inmates, washed-out and empty, whom the gaolers would gladly charge back to the charity of the world. Their promises were worthless. He had seen too many documents not to know that they were hedged and qualified to extinction. Before you could extract a meaning, let alone an enforceable judgment, you could litigate for ten years and feed an army of lawyers on the way.
Mercy? Anatoly Kolchak had said it, straight and plain; men had hearts; Russians, Americans, Chileans, Chinese, they all had hearts; but States, Nations, Juntas, they had none. They were idols with hollow bellies, filled with the charred bones of children. By some strange trick of memory, he had a picture of Rudolf Hess, an old broken madman, sitting in Spandau prison, denied the most minimal mercy, while others, a thousand times more guilty, waxed fat in freedom. This was statecraft. This was politics. This was the power-game pushed to its ultimate, obscene absurdity.
In spite of Maury Feldman’s hopes they wrangled for another three days over the wording of his surrender document. They would have no more sermons, they said, no more propaganda for a lost cause. He had agreed to disjoin the threat from the act of grace; they would not permit him to rejoin them. His case had been stated once. He might state, briefly, the issue upon which it had failed; if he attempted to elaborate it, he would be cut off the air.
Then they came up with a new demand. He must reveal the names of his accomplices as well as the location of the toxin. On this point he was adamant. He would not betray his friends. He could not change the agreed communication arrangements, since this would indicate to his collaborators that he was acting under duress. This was take-it-or-leave-it time. They took it and hated him. Their hatred was the last justification for what he intended to do. He signed the document at seven in the evening on the day before the deadline.
Maury Feldman stuffed the document in his brief-case and fished out a brown envelope. He said:
‘I didn’t mention this before. I never thought I’d win it. It’s a new passport with a new name. You’re free to go wherever it will take you, as long as you can stay alive . . . Our people agreed because they don’t want the sweat of bringing you to public trial and having the whole debate on their hands again.’
Spada held the document in his hands for a moment then passed it back. His voice was unsteady.
‘Thanks, Maury – thanks for everything. But I can’t accept it. If I do it will be seen that I’ve sold out; that I’ve made a bad deal to save my own skin. No way I’ll submit to that indignity.’
‘It’s your life, lover,’ said Maury Feldman. ‘I can’t say I disagree.’
‘I’ve got something for you, Maury. I’d like you to read it and show it to Kitty. It’s what I’d hoped I could say tomorrow. Still, there’s no one who will understand it better than you.’
He put his arms around Feldman and they embraced in the old Latin way. For the first time since their friendship began, Maury’s control cracked. Characteristically he cursed himself.
‘Christ! The Jews and the Italians – we must be the greatest wailers in the world!’
‘Relax!’ said Spada with a grin. ‘You’re getting paid for the tears as well!’
‘This time, there’s no fee.’ Maury refused to be comforted.
‘Come on! All this work . . .’
‘Call it the coin of the tribute,’ said Maury Feldman. ‘I owe it to you. I’m sorry we lost the case. See you tomorrow in court.’
It was perhaps an hour later when Anatoly Kolchak came in, solicitous and urbane as ever. Yes, he would enjoy a drink. Now that the great, windy debate was over, he would like to spend a few moments with a friend.
‘John . . .’ It was the first time he had ever used the Christian name. ‘I had to come. I had to pay a respect.’
‘Thank you, Anatoly.’
‘To say something, also. You have not lost. You have gained more than you will ever know. I wish it had been a full triumph; but I am a servant of what is. Perhaps my children will enjoy what can be.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Empty.’
‘I shall be in the gallery tomorrow. I should like you to know you will have a friend.’
‘I’ll remember it . . . Tell me, Anatoly, will they keep their promises?’
‘They will seem to keep them,’ said Anatoly Kolchak. ‘That’s the game, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s the game.’
‘Where will you go, afterwards?’
‘I haven’t thought of it.’
‘You cannot always be a fugitive with a false passport. So, if I can help . . . some small republic perhaps, where the people are too ignorant to read, too simple to care about anything but the rain and the maize crop. Something can be arranged.’
‘It won’t be necessary. Thanks, my friend.’
‘For nothing. Try to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow will be bad; but, like love affairs and financial scandals, it will be a nine days’ wonder.’
‘I know . . . That’s the problem. People have such short memories.’
‘If they hadn’t,’ said Anatoly Kolchak, ‘a political career would mean a first-class ticket to a death-cell.’
In the great chamber they were all assembled again, not grim this time, not fearful, as they had been before, but quietly exultant, waiting for the epilogue in which good would triumph over evil, order over chaos, the art of the possible over the impossible dream.
This time, there was no introduction from the Secretary-General. The murmurs died
as John Spada advanced to the rostrum alone, with a single sheet of paper in his hand. He laid it on the lectern, smoothed it against the wood, and read from it in a dead, level voice.
‘I say what it is agreed that I say, not what I myself believe. One man, alone, I entered into contest with the nations of the world, with the forces of law and established order, to plead a human cause. I backed the plea with a threat, because the forces of law and established order also hold threats over us all. My cause, the cause of the silent, has been lost.
‘It is lost upon a fundamental issue: whether the individual is more important than the mass, the sovereignty of a nation less important than the liberty of the people who live within its boundaries. You, the nations, have decided against me. Whether the people have so decided, I do not know, because I have not heard them speak.
‘I am promised that, as an act of grace, some categories of prisoners will be released in all countries. This is a good thing; but it is not enough. The shame lies still upon you. You have yet to endure the scorn of your children. For myself, I have no more to say.
‘The following message is for my friends and collaborators . . . “Proteus to the fishes, capitulate! Proteus to the fishes, capitulate! Proteus to the fishes, capitulate!” . . . I go now to join the silent.’
The cameraman held on him. They had been told that the last gesture was an integral part of the script. Spada raised his left hand to his lips. Then he lifted the water glass from the rostrum and drank. He put down the glass. They saw his face contort in a rictus of agony; then, in full view of the delegates of a hundred and forty-nine nations, he collapsed.
In his apartment on Park Avenue, Maury Feldman read aloud the last testament of John Spada:
‘… On this, the eve of my exit from the world, I find myself very calm. This is strange, because, in spite of all, I am still a believer and I am convinced that there must be some kind of casting-up of accounts, some judgment upon our deeds and misdeeds. I know that I am not guiltless. I do not ask that anything I have done should be condoned or excused. At the same time, I am aware that there was a terrible, inevitable logic to this situation. The exercise of power was habitual to me. I was educated not to suffer but to act. The act once performed, I was committed to its consequence, however long, however drastic.
‘From my youngest years, the Christian ethic was proposed to me: forgive your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for your persecutors. I assented to it as a formal creed; but the truth is that I was never able to consent to it absolutely or apply it in my own life. I wonder – as I have wondered many times – what would have happened had I been able to accept the violation of my daughter with resignation, leaving redress to an unseen God? I do not know. I think if I had been the victim I could have forgiven the violator. But as the witness, the vicarious sufferer? God help me! I still cannot believe there is enough grace in the world for that kind of submission! If we cannot invoke the law in defence of the innocent, what is left but the code of retaliation?
‘So, I fought back! I killed. I threatened to kill. I walked the long road to the edge of the world and saw that it came to a dead end. One more step and I would be whirling in a void. So I drew back, not from cowardice, but simply because I saw that the final act would be a pointless massacre of innocents. Yet, even as I retracted, I knew that others would not. I knew, as certainly as I know that summer follows spring, that some mad general, some desperate committee would one day pull the plug and flush mankind into nowhere. My gamble was that mankind, seeing the imminent horror, would reject it in a universal revulsion. The gamble has failed.
‘Even so, I want it known – at least to my friends – that my suicide is not an act of despair. It is – I wish it to be – a religious act, a donation to my friends, whom I know I could betray under torture . . . And let no one think that torture is some kind of mediaeval monstrosity, with hooded inquisitors and red-hot pokers. We have that, too; but in our enlightened age it is an unnecessary sadism. Deprive any man of light and sound and tactile reference, you will reduce him in days to total insanity. Feed him phychotropic drugs and you will do it sooner. And even we, the free, the enlightened and the civilised practise these brutalities. I do not believe that any of us is obliged, by any morality, to submit to this ultimate debasement.
‘So, I go. I go grateful for the love I have been given, the light I have once seen – yes, even the fight I have lost. I ask you to keep our Proteus people together – the benevolent and the combative. Both are needed. Neither can survive without the other. The tyrants must hear the growling in the forest. Their victims must hear the singing in the darkness. Ciao, Maury! Ciao, Kitty! Give my love to Uncle Andrea and see that he gets a copy of what I have written. John Spada will die; but Proteus is still unchained and, who knows how many fish there are in the sea? . . .’
Maury Feldman laid down the manuscript. He picked up the book of the Speech of Truth, fumbled for the page and intoned the Kaddish prayer:
‘God, full of mercy, who dwellest on high, cause the soul of John Spada, which has gone to its rest, to find repose in the wings of the Schechinah, among the souls of the holy, pure as the firmament of the skies, for they have offered charity for the memory of his soul; for the sake of this, hide him in the mystery of thy wings forever and bind up his soul in the bond of life; may the Lord be his inheritance; and may he repose in peace in his resting place . . .’
‘Requiescat,’ said Uncle Andrea. ‘Thank you for your friendship to my nephew.’
Maury Feldman pinched out the Shivah candle and said in his edgy way:
‘I loved him. I’ll miss him. He had so much goddam style . . . And he’s right. He didn’t fail altogether. Proteus is still unchained!’
‘Like all myths, it’s man-made,’ said Uncle Andrea moodily. ‘And it has a flaw in it. Proteus is the shepherd of the sea-creatures. But even in his kingdom, the big fish still eat the little fish; and they’ll go on doing it for ever and ever . . .’
‘Amen!’ said Kitty Cowan in her brusque fashion. ‘I’m tired – and I’m scared of the dark. Which of you gentlemen is going to walk me home?’
‘I will,’ said Uncle Andrea. ‘I’d like to keep you in the family, Caterina!’
