Cards of Identity

by Nigel Dennis

  ‘No, sir you may not. It is absurd to open a sentence with all respect and close it with none.’

  ‘I shall not move from this floor,’ said Dr Shubunkin, ‘until justice has been done to my history.’

  ‘We can always give it a free pardon,’ said the President.

  ‘Shame!’ cried the doctor’s claque.

  ‘I was the first to applaud poor Bitterling’s little effort the other day,’ said the doctor, ‘because I always sympathize with people who have done their best. When that best is my own, my sympathy is bottomless.’

  Dr Bitterling feverishly wrote on a piece of paper and held up the words: ‘Why be a subordinate if there is to be no flattery?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Dr Musk. ‘Why be?’

  ‘I can only tell you, gentlemen,’ said the President, ‘that if you don’t reach a friendly conclusion I shall turn the matter over to Mr Harcourt and let him have the last word. None of you will like that.’

  ‘Me least of all,’ said Mr Harcourt. ‘I think it a shame that my opinion should count only when my betters are irreconcilable. People used to say of my elder sister: “You can always depend on her in an emergency.” How she hated it! “There’s only an emergency every twenty-five years,” she used to say: “Who am I supposed to be in the other twenty-four?”’

  ‘Things have come to a pretty pass,’ said Dr Musk, ‘when the day starts with sex and winds up with Harcourt’s sister.’

  ‘The history showed Shubunkin at the very peak of his peculiar zest,’ said Father Orfe. ‘We religious proselytizers appreciate zest, because a fast car is easier to steer.’

  Stapleton got up and said in a trembling voice: ‘It is agonizing for me to recall the dreams I had during the war of what peace would be like. I thought everyone would disarm and be the best of friends. Now, I wonder why I was wounded at all.’

  ‘I expect you were the type that always is,’ said Dr Shubunkin.

  ‘Mr Stapleton, your heart is in the right place …’ began the President.

  ‘That’s what the fox said to the goose!’ cried Dr Musk.

  ‘Gentlemen, we have strayed far from the heart of the matter,’ protested Mr Jamesworth.

  ‘Then I shall return to it – decisively,’ said Dr Shubunkin, working his face like a shuttle. ‘The heart of the matter is: When is a President not a President? And the answer is: When he fails to give his subordinates that mingled discipline and flattery which constitute true leadership. There!’

  Amid silence the President rose slowly to his feet and looked hard at the doctor. ‘Shubunkin,’ he said. ‘Do you invoke Clause (a) of Rule 1?’

  Before answering, the doctor glanced quickly round the room to test the moral of his claque. Finding it none to good, in that the gentlemen concerned were all suddenly studying their feet, he replied defensively: ‘Well, it’s a bit thick, you know.’

  The President put on pince-nez, stared closely at the doctor for some moments, and said: ‘I can’t see from here. Are you eating crow or flying the Jolly Roger?’

  ‘A direct apology would not be in keeping with Shubunkin’s distinctive identity,’ said Dr Musk. ‘Like all sexologists, he must be permitted the fullest ambiguity.’

  ‘His assertion and its contradiction must be swallowed as one,’ said Father Orfe.

  ‘Though, if he has erred,’ cried Mr Harris, ‘he must bare his neck to the short sword.’

  ‘I don’t know what the quarrel’s about,’ said Mr Harcourt, ‘but I do think it’s cruel to make people apologize. To prevent anyone making me, I always hasten to make the apology first.’

  ‘The President is never cruel,’ said Stapleton. ‘He is the perfect healer whose image was so often in my mind when I was in the hands of the R.A.M.C.’

  Suddenly, from a back seat, Captain Mallet arose. So impressive was his gradual ascent into common view, so portly the bearing of his head, that all the members, including the President, gave a sharp twitch – except Dr Shubunkin, who gave a score. ‘I am only a plain, blunt officer …’ began the captain, but was silenced by a burst of applause. ‘I am only a plain, blunt …’ he began again, and was once more silenced by loud enthusiasm. ‘I am only a plain …’ he began a third time, and then gave up.

  ‘This is all very well, Mallet!’ cried the President in a high, nervous voice, ‘but what is your point?’

  ‘He himself is his point!’ cried Dr Musk, winking at his claque. They applauded frantically.

  ‘One is abashed,’ murmured Mr Harris, ‘by the economy of such self-assertion.’ At which Dr Shubunkin signalled his claque and they, too, burst into applause. This put all the other claques on the qui vive, so that when Mr Jamesworth rose, they cheered in unison before he could say a word.

  At this, the captain, a troubled look on his grave face, rose again and said: ‘It was not my intention, gentlemen, to focus attention upon myself.’

  ‘Then you are to be doubly congratulated,’ said the President angrily, ‘on having done so with such success.’

  There were cries of ‘Shame!’ from all claques and Dr Shubunkin said indignantly: ‘That was a most unjust remark! It is Mallet’s business to epitomize the ideal of honourable and humble service. To treat him as a rival is to cast doubt on his highest ideals.’

  ‘A beastly thing to do!’ cried Mrs Mallet in a high voice – and at the sight of her standing there – all woman, with flushed face, sparkling eyes, and small fist clenched – the Club again burst into applause. The noise reached its peak when Beaufort, his Adonis head rising high above the intellectual ruck, laid his hand on her arm and proudly dragged her down into her seat.

  ‘I don’t, of course, know why,’ cried Mr Harcourt abruptly, ‘but I am beginning to feel much, much better! My doubts are ebbing away: I suddenly feel at home in the world.’

  ‘A most important statement!’ exclaimed Mr Jamesworth. ‘I propose that we proceed to immediate discussion of why Harcourt should so suddenly have become acclimatized.’

  ‘Nothing would please me more,’ said the President, who was looking old and pale. ‘Unfortunately, Orfe’s history is next on the agenda.’

  ‘I’m sure Orfe would gladly sacrifice his paper to the common weal,’ said Mr Jamesworth. ‘And a discussion would be much more exciting.’

  ‘On the whole I wouldn’t,’ said Father Orfe, pocketing his flask stoutly. ‘Anyone else’s paper, yes.’

  ‘I am sure,’ said Stapleton, ‘that Orfe is not being selfish when he refuses to stand down. I expect he has numerous reasons.’

  ‘I have one,’ said Father Orfe, ‘and it’s the best I know.’

  ‘I think it shockingly naïve of Orfe,’ said Dr Shubunkin, ‘to allow the whole mood and sweep of the Club to be destroyed simply by a foxy appeal to his egotism.’

  ‘It was my religious principles,’ replied Father Orfe. ‘Après moi le déluge, i.e., first things first.’

  ‘Before we go to lunch,’ said Stapleton, ‘could we not shake hands all round?’

  ‘It would take exactly seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds,’ said Mr Jamesworth, half-closing one statistical eye.

  *

  The secret of Father Golden Orfe – unknown to everyone, including Orfe – was that he would have been a concert pianist had he had any interest in music: only tone-deafness made him instead a student of the soul of man. It was certain, however, that he had at one time had a musical relative, or box, or chair, or something of that nature, because at an impressionable period of his life he was taken to at least one concert, which marked him for life. As is usually the case in such matters, he was not marked by the recital itself but by the extraordinary behaviour of the performer. Just as men who are quite uninterested in food become chefs in order to add a white hat to their stature, so Father Orfe became a pianist in every respect save for the piano.

  This is obvious when the Club assembles for the next session. It is set to begin sharp at two thirty, by which time the whole Club is present, including the Pre
sident. Everyone is chattering away as vigorously as possible, as is natural before a long monologue; but as the minutes pass, members start glancing at their Swiss watches and raise their eyebrows. They sprawl into their seats and make worried faces at each other: ‘Where’s Orfe?’ ‘Can’t think.’ Suddenly, fifteen minutes late, the door opens swiftly and Father Orfe enters at a rapid glide, sober as a judge and moving like a well-tuned mowing-machine. He approaches the President, murmurs: ‘So sorry sir; delayed, you know,’ and then skates straight to his seat. Where is this seat? Well, it does not exist; what happens is that Orfe arrives at the seat he has decided to choose, seizes it by the back, shakes it, and drops a huge portfolio upon it. He does not realize, it seems (so deep are the preoccupations of musical genius), that the seat is occupied by another member; and anyway, after he has shaken and dropped for a moment or so, this is no longer the case. The Club watches him nervously: they have often seen Orfe make this characteristic entry but have never managed to conquer the terror it arouses in them. They immediately stop talking: only Mr Harcourt’s voice is heard, as usual, for a few brief seconds, tailing off in the middle of telling his latest dream to Mr Jamesworth.

  Father Orfe is too fine a pianist to notice the absolute silence. With a stupendous frown he opens his enormous portfolio, takes out twenty bound manuscripts, holds them up to the light one by one, peers at them, and grunts at each. Then he puts all the manuscripts back in the portfolio, snaps it shut, grunts generally, and runs through all his pockets as if they were exploratory scales. He finds a lucky penny in his trousers and a cigar-lighter elsewhere: but that is all. His expression becomes exceedingly grave: he stands for a full quarter minute with his hands reaching down as far as his knees, not moving, only thinking. At last, as if to say: ‘A thought strikes me,’ he opens the portfolio again and instantly produces the lost manuscript. A puff of relief comes from the audience: it has hardly expired before Father Orfe is at work on a new business, clenching the manuscript between his teeth while, with one hand, he tries to close the portfolio, and with the other adjust the chair in relation to the light, set the portfolio behind it and himself in front of it, brush ash off his waistcoat, and so on. He goes on doing this until all the members’ nerves are again as tense as barbed wire; suddenly, he concludes it, takes the manuscript out of his mouth, and stands absolutely erect, his hands folded over his top fly-button. He then begins, in the manner of a weather-cock, to turn his head, beginning towards the farthest right-hand quarter of the room. All the members in this area have been silent as the grave until now, but as soon as they feel the death-ray of Orfe’s eye they burst into a consumptive roar of coughing, sniffing, and grunting. Orfe continues to stare at them, until they increase their noises to a crescendo and only sink back into silence out of sheer exhaustion. Orfe then waits for the inevitable, single cough that always breaks this silence; after that he waits for the silence itself to become silent. Only then does his expression of a man bitterly insulted ebb slowly away – returning as he turns his eyes to another quarter of the room, where he repeats the whole process. At last, with everyone completely silent he does a sort of flashing, general test-of-the-room-as-a-whole, provoking and crushing fresh coughs in every quarter. After that, as if it were a private Armistice Day, he tests the overall silence for two full minutes before he at last raises his manuscript, clears his own throat with a delicacy which is an example to all, and opens his mouth. Everything is now ready for the first pebble of sound to drop into the pool of silence; but Orfe has a joker up his sleeve. His teeth come together again; he gives the slightest of frowns, lowers his manuscript – and moves his chair one inch to the right. The portfolio falls on its side with a crash. Members would like to gasp, but dare not, for fear everything will start from the beginning again: but this is where Orfe suddenly seems to blaze up into an unexpected fire of majestic tolerance: he gives a light sweep of his white hand, as if to say: ‘What do noisy trifles matter to a man of my stature?’ and, raising his manuscript, begins to read aloud almost like any normal person:

  SECRET AGENT: Multiple Confessions and Singular Identities

  by

  Father Golden Orfe

  The monastery bell is striking nine and I must be off to testify before the International Anti-Communist Committee. My eight-cylinder Panther Perfecto, bought with the movie-royalties of my last confession, awaits me in the monastery garage; but I would like to write a few words about myself before driving away today. The nice thing about living in a monastery is that it makes one introspective: each day brings a new and fascinating aspect of oneself to light, arousing so many delightful sensibilities that tears come to my eyes when I must leave them even for a day on television.

  First, a word about this monastery. It stands on a hilltop which might be anywhere – a rise of the Sussex downs; a castle-site above a European valley; a slope above the Hudson where that blue, incomparable river nurses the shad in the shade of Sing Sing. As monasteries go, ours is pretty new; but in view of the speed with which newer ones are springing up nowadays, it is soon going to seem quite old. Ours was planned to accommodate fifty ex-Party men, but long before it was finished we had three hundred applications for cells, and there is now a long waiting-list of international distinction.

  The land about the monastery is an endless joy. Every year the trees throw off their old leaves and put on new ones: this is God’s way of reminding us of how we, too, once shed old selves, old dialectics, old aims, and put on new means dedicated to His ends. There are herds of many wonderful, unthinking beasts, such as cows, sheep, goats, ducks, and hens: it is our joy to serve these witless creatures instead of packing them off to Siberia. Indeed, like all who have fornicated with the cold Whore of Reason, we never tire of praising the beautiful attributes of those who have nothing to think with.

  Unlike the old Party days, there is only one brother in each cell. This is a plain, four-square room, with a double coat of whitewash. It contains everything a penitent requires – an iron bed for remorse, a stone floor for prayer, and a writing-table for confessions. We have, of course, an Abbot who wields absolute power and lays down the ‘Abbey Line’ at regular intervals. We have numerous rules about silence, discipline, punishment, and so on, all delightfully humiliating; and we have the world’s finest library of Marxist literature, every volume of which we are theologically confuting in the giant Encyclopedia Penitentia which is our principal work. We bring out a revised, up-to-date edition of this once a year, and one of our strictest rules is that if any brother is needed to do some work on the Encyclopedia he must immediately put aside his current confession and join the editors in the library.

  But I hope you will not think of us as grim men to whom duty is everything and democracy stall nothing. On the contrary, our little Abbey is a tolerant place. The outside world is full of ex-Party members who have not found God, and they spend their lives fighting an exhausting battle of suspicion and hatred centring upon the question: ‘At what date did you break with the Party?’ Each heretic believes that he alone broke precisely at the moment when the eau-de-vie of Communism changed to the ditch-water of absolutism; those who broke before him he regards as renegades, those who broke after, as charlatans. But in the Abbey, we have none of this. We believe that God is not subject to Party chronology and that His admission to Heaven of the penitent thief is the ‘line’ He laid down for us to follow. So, to us, those who break at the very last moment, tomorrow, will be as welcome in His midst as those who broke in varying yesterdays. The brother in the cell on my left is a so-called ‘Thirty-niner’: he went out of the Party with the Stalin-Hitler pact. The brother on my right was ‘out in the ’45’, as we put it; and there are some who made their breaks even later, as well as a few who actually broke with Lenin in the battle of the Mensheviks. Frankly, I think that to make a break before an autocracy has even been established is as silly as getting a divorce before one has been married, but I shall not press the point. For here, in the Abbey, we have dest
royed the whole prestige chronology of breaking: we argue simply that each of us erred and fell into wickedness and that the exact date of his breakage is no more interesting than the date of his birthday. What is important is that he has since made a religious reformation and has reason to believe that his piety is as sincere as his wickedness was.

  I would like to stress this point. Many outsiders think that our Abbey is a place where tired radicals go when their rationalism has died; but this is not the case. We have no cell for people who are tired and dis appointed; and nor has the general public: who would ever read the confessions of such men? No, our Abbey is for those who could not hope to reach the first stage of Christian humility without Grace abounding. The world of today is one in which religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must seem to have been invented by Bunyan and had teeth put into it by Dostoyevsky. This means that only those who have been indescribably wicked in the past can hope to be religious in the future: indeed, I would go further, and say that the only road to Rome nowadays is via Moscow. There are alternative by-ways: many intellectuals, for example, have a soft place in their hearts for drunkenness, moral cowardice, sexual quiddities, and other non-political vices, which, if practised frantically enough, serve, they say, as adequate preliminaries to the religious state. Some of them even argue that the two states are inseparable and that the man most likely to succeed is he who carries prayer in one holster and a really good vice in the other, firing each according to whim. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the old-fashioned notion of religion as a sort of everyday affair in which everyone can join has quite gone out: the only devout ones today are those who really have something to be devout about.

  Take Brother Kapotzky, for instance. He cannot bear to kill a chicken for Sunday dinner. If he sees a worm in his path he picks it up, blesses it, and puts it in a safe place. Is this the result of going to Sunday School in childhood? Not a bit. All through the twenties and thirties Kapotzky was an official of the Ogpu and NKVD: thousands went to their death over his loose signature. ‘Believe me,’ he says, ‘it’s only when you’ve liquidated large numbers of people that you appreciate the miracle of life.’ In short, we are all converts today, if we are anything at all, and it is only logical to assume that the greater the preliminary sin, the more triumphant the ultimate conversion. The public agrees with this and only listens to prayers made with red hands. I remember one novice in our Abbey exclaiming spontaneously: ‘I must say, we are jolly lucky to live in an era when sin is considered so very religious.’ To which the Abbot replied drily: ‘I think, Brother Thomas, that Providential would be the better word.’