Madame

by Antoni Libera

  Constant fell silent; the quiet was broken only by the sound of his footsteps. (His shoes, unlike mine, were leather-soled.) We continued walking down the dark street, along the wet pavement strewn with fallen maple leaves, Constant stooping slightly, his hands linked behind his back. I walked on his right, with my hands in my pockets. I glanced at him: he was looking down and muttering silently to himself. I realised this wasn’t the first time he had broken off what he’d been saying and behaved strangely when Madame’s mother was mentioned.

  ‘You used the past tense,’ I said finally, breaking the silence. ‘You said “was”. Does that mean she’s no longer alive?’

  ‘Of course she isn’t alive,’ he replied, with an edge of irritation in his voice.

  ‘When did she die?’ I couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Hold on! Just a minute! One thing at a time!’ he snapped. ‘I was wondering how to tell it: should I start with Spain, and what happened to him there (which I didn’t find out about until many years later), or with what was happening here and what things looked like from my perspective?’

  ‘Perhaps from your perspective . . .’

  ‘No,’ he said after a moment, ‘it’ll be better if I start with Spain. But remember: not a word to anyone!

  ‘Max crossed the Pyrenees in December ’37. First he was in Lerida, then near Saragossa, and finally in Madrid. He worked with a number of different groups, most of them French; he organised transport, and he got into a few scrapes. Gradually he came to know the country and its recent past – the history of the war. And he soon understood that there were two fronts, not one: that it wasn’t just Franco and his supporters who were fighting against the Republic, but also Joseph Stalin, who was doing it more effectively and much more treacherously.

  ‘The victory of the Left in Spain in ’38 was both a success and a warning signal for the Soviet side. They’d been agitating there – as everywhere – for some time, but in a Catholic, agricultural country like Spain they hadn’t really expected the experiment to succeed. When it did, however, they had to take immediate control: the revolution had to be carried out in accordance with theory. Moreover, and this was crucial, it must not be allowed to take its own course: it must depend on Bolshevik Russia. Remember, for that whole gang in the Kremlin – Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky – the worst enemy wasn’t the “Right” or the “fascists” or “imperialists”, but democracy. Always and invariably. Especially the true, decent Left, the kind of Left that fought legally, by political means, for the rights and interests of working people. That was what they hated most. Because it was a threat: it could dislodge them and take their place. And it hindered them in their own bloody methods and aims.

  ‘So when the victory of the people’s front failed to bring the expected results, the Reds rushed in to add fuel to the flames. The ritual burning, pillaging and slaughter began. Political murder and provocation, raids and assaults and unending strikes. The aim was to set off a spiral of anarchy and violence, let it escalate, and then, when the terror and general confusion were at their height, grab everyone by the throat and take control. And keep it. They might well have succeeded, too, had it not been for that other beast roaming around at the time, also intent on conquering the world. Seeing that a chunk of Europe was about to fall to its rival, it rushed into the fray to wrest the spoils for itself.

  ‘That was the real reason for the war. That was how it really began. If it hadn’t been for the Comintern, if the communists hadn’t stirred up the rabble and unleashed them onto the streets, it probably wouldn’t have started. But it did – and for the Soviets it was very convenient. Do you imagine they were really concerned about the “wretched of the earth”, that they really wanted to help them “arise” and overthrow “tyrannies”? Oh, they wanted world revolution all right – but only if they controlled it, entirely, from beginning to end. They wanted to create colonies of the Soviet Union, states completely under the control of Moscow Central. Any other way of “liberating peoples from the yoke of poverty and exploitation” was out of the question – because it might reveal that Russia wasn’t, after all, the undisputed leader in “building a better world”, that she was indeed a leader, as always, but a leader in oppression.

  ‘So what were their choices? They weren’t strong enough just to take over Spain in a staged rebellion. On the other hand, if they fomented a real one, they couldn’t let it spread freely, in unpredictable and possibly uncontrollable ways. That was far too risky. So Spain had to be slaughtered, like a sacrificial lamb. But before she was slaughtered she had to be milked for all she was worth. Which was why Franco’s rebellion came as a blessing. Indeed the Soviets did all they could to provoke it. And when the war broke out, and Hitler and Mussolini joined in, all they had to do was manipulate things so that it went on as long as possible. For Russia, such a war was worth its weight in gold – quite literally, as you’re about to discover. For one thing, the unwanted child was being murdered by “Herods”, and not by its own mother, the “homeland of the proletariat”. For another, the slaughter was invaluable for propaganda purposes: Russia could pretend to be helping the victim when in fact it was just prolonging its bloody and painful death throes. And finally, there was money to be made – huge amounts. Do you know how much Stalin managed to squeeze out of Spain during that war? Six hundred million dollars! In gold, not in slips of paper.

  ‘You didn’t really think he helped them for free? That he sent all those tanks and bombs out of solidarity with the masses? It was a fantastic business deal. All he had to do was send people – that cost nothing. Besides, they weren’t even his own people: the only people from Russia were agents provocateurs and military advisers. The cannon fodder was recruited elsewhere, wherever there were Soviet agents: Austria, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and the Balkans. In Poland the agency was the PCP. It was brilliantly planned! You provoked a war, you milked it for all the profit you could, and when your coffers were empty you precipitated the end: the eminently desirable fall of the Spanish Republic.

  ‘How do you go about killing someone you’re supposed to be trying to save? There’s an old, tried-and-tested method. The Russians are masters at it, and the Soviets have perfected it to an art. What you do is attack the brain: you drive the victim mad. That was what “closing the ranks of the Left” was all about. Within a short time, on the Republican side, an atmosphere of such terror and suspicion had been created that everyone was at war with everyone else. The air was thick with conspiracies and denunciations, acts of provocation, intrigues and plots. While the situation at the front, in the trenches, grew worse and worse, the people at the top were busy slaughtering each other. All Franco had to do was sit and wait. Which, quite calmly, he did. And indeed, by the end of ’38 they were so confounded and exhausted by all the purges that they could barely stand. Some time in December, the news came that Stalin was abandoning the Republic (having taken all the gold); that was when Franco launched his final offensive – the “Catalan” offensive. In January of ’39 Barcelona fell, and the end of March saw the fall of Madrid.

  ‘Franco wasn’t much interested in the progress of the war he was waging. When they came to tell him it was over, he barely raised his head from his papers. What he did do, immediately and ruthlessly, was deal with the Republicans. Close to two hundred thousand people died, and more than twice that ended up in prison. Stalin breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Max had disappeared from view because he was in hiding. He was a volunteer from Poland unconnected with the PCP, and as such he had begun to look, to the Reds, extremely suspicious. They decided he was a spy, a fascist agent. They pronounced a death sentence on him. He went into hiding with a Frenchman wanted for the same crime. The Frenchman, unlike Max, was a political type: an activist, an organiser, an ideological enthusiast. He’d gone to Spain to join the fight for a “better tomorrow for the world”. It wasn’t long, though, before he got caught up in the frenzied tangles of party intrigue and suspicion, and since then he’d come a lo
ng way across very slippery ground. In the end it was decided that he knew too much and would have to be got rid of. He escaped death by a miracle; in fact it was Max who, quite by accident, saved his life. From then on they stayed together and became good friends. It was from him that Max learnt the truth about Soviet “aid” and about the whole war, and it was also thanks to him that he managed to get out of Spain. He escaped at the very last moment, just before the fall of Madrid.

  ‘I remember that day very clearly, the day when, after almost a year of total silence, the message came – a telegram from France. He was alive and well, it said, but he wasn’t coming back; she was to pack her bags and come out to join him – with the child, naturally.’

  At this point Constant again fell silent. He walked along, still stooped, gazing at the pavement.

  ‘Why didn’t he want to come back?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘he was convinced that Poland would be invaded at any moment. From two directions at once – from the east and from the west.’

  ‘When was this exactly?’

  ‘In April ’39.’

  ‘He could already foresee it then?’

  ‘The day Madrid fell, Germany broke the treaty it had signed with Poland in ’34 and a week later invaded Czechoslovakia and Lithuania. At more or less the same time, the chief Soviet diplomat told the French ambassador at an official meeting, without mincing his words, that the Soviet Union had no choice but to proceed with a fourth partition of Poland. This was well known; it was talked about in the press. But apart from that’ – Constant halted and glanced in my direction – ‘he had a nose for these things.’

  We stood at the edge of a large puddle, in the dim circle of light from a streetlamp.

  ‘Well? Did she go?’ I said after a long silence, clenching my hands in my pockets.

  ‘Yes. Almost overnight. I remember – it was evening, the central train station, the sleeping-carriage. That was where I saw her for the last time – through the open train window.’

  Constant stood gazing at the puddle, on the surface of which our shadows moved and rippled. Then, skirting it carefully, he moved off again. Once more we walked in silence. I struggled with a confusion of thoughts. What should I say? What should I ask him? I decided to wait. Finally he spoke.

  ‘She had a little less than thirteen years of life ahead of her then,’ he said. I did a quick sum: she must have died in 1952. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A car accident. Except . . .’ He let the sentence trail away.

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Except it’s unclear what caused it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I broke in, ‘where are we now? In France, or back in Poland?’

  ‘In France, dear boy, in France.’

  ‘So they didn’t come back after the war –’

  ‘No,’ he replied shortly.

  ‘What kind of accident? How did she die?’

  ‘She was driving. She lost control of the car.’

  ‘And what’s unclear about it?’

  ‘The essential thing: why it happened. On a straight, empty road.’

  ‘Was she alone, or . . . with someone?’

  ‘Alone. But Max saw it.’

  ‘What did he see?’

  ‘He saw that the car wasn’t stopping. He saw it go off the road and hurtle down the side of the mountain.’

  ‘And what did that mean?’

  ‘It meant that the brakes or the steering mechanism wasn’t working.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So someone must have deliberately tampered with them.’

  ‘Why? Or rather, who?’

  ‘That’s what’s unclear. In any case, he believed – he was absolutely convinced – that it was a trap which had been set for him. That he was supposed to have been the victim.’

  ‘And who was supposed to be behind it?’

  Constant halted again, withdrew a silver cigarette case and a box of matches from his trouser pocket, extracted a Giewont cigarette and lit it with reverence. ‘All I know is what Max told me,’ he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke with relish. ‘And frankly I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Listen.’ In a swift, decisive movement he slid the cigarette case and the matches back into his pocket and moved off again. ‘The Frenchman who had helped him get out of Spain was later involved in the Resistance. Their paths crossed again. He persuaded Max to join him. And that’s when it all started again: the sick atmosphere, the acts of provocation, the murders. Under the pretext of bringing traitors and collaborators to justice, dozens of current scores and various old ones were settled. The circle began to close. One by one the people from the Frenchman’s network were killed off, among them several other veterans of the Spanish war. Finally he was murdered, too. Max saw this as a sign that his own life was at risk; he was convinced he’d be next. So they fled, right there and then, all three of them. Into the mountains, somewhere near Mégève.

  ‘Have you read Conrad’s Victory? Oh, of course, I’ve already asked you that. You really must read it. This was something else that could have come straight out of it: you seek asylum, you take refuge somewhere, but the evil of the world, the world you’ve rejected with such contempt, appears personified on your doorstep and forces you to a duel. It comes in the form of Mr Jones, Ricardo and the terrible brute Pedro: the sinister threesome sent by Schomberg. Out of spite, meanness, resentment. Evil.

  ‘That, at least, was how Max presented it to me.

  ‘After a few years of peace and quiet, some time in ’52, he again felt their breath on his neck. One day he saw a man he remembered seeing in Spain prowling near his house. He was a shady character who played a devious game with various sides – Max had been warned about him by the Frenchman. Now he got the impression the man was an agent sent to spy on him and find out where he lived. There were others who came after him – at least that’s what Max claimed: I don’t have evidence of it. I do, however, have reasons for thinking he’d gone mad.

  ‘He was convinced they were following him, waiting to pounce. He was suspicious of everything that happened around him. He became pathologically distrustful; he smelt betrayal everywhere. On the other hand, it was a fact that the Russian Secret Police in those days were swanning about in France as if they owned the place. They seized people in the streets, abducted them in broad daylight, even in the centre of Paris. There were some notorious cases, much talked about. And then it finally happened: the car accident. For him it was an assassination attempt, and it confirmed all his fears: he was a marked man. He said they examined the car, went through everything with a fine-tooth comb. I don’t know what they found. In any event, after that he cracked up for good. He became a different person: unstable, excitable – a nervous wreck. He indulged in torments of self-reproach; he was obsessively cautious and at the same time wildly rash. That was the state I found him in when he came back here with her soon after Stalin’s death.’

  ‘With her?’ I asked, unable to stop myself.

  ‘With his daughter. You didn’t think I meant the coffin, did you?!’ he snapped. ‘With the person who is now your French teacher.’

  ‘Oh, yes! Of course.’ I feigned a delayed reflex.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ He halted again, this time at the top of some steps that led to an underground passage beneath the viaduct. ‘Do you realise the implications of what he did? He feels surrounded there, so what does he do? He comes here! He thinks he’ll be safe here! He must have been mad! To come back then, knowing what it was like! Oh, he knew perfectly well; he was under no illusions. Yet he chose this as his place of escape.’

  He took a deep, final drag on his cigarette, crushed the butt underfoot and began to make his way carefully down the slippery stairs ahead of us. ‘It shows the state he was in,’ he continued, in a slightly steadier voice, ‘what his “duel with the world” had brought him to. It’s a thing no sane person would have done.’

>   The dark tunnel smelt of dankness and urine. Water dripped from its low ceiling.

  ‘He was a sick man,’ Constant continued, ‘and his sickness manifested itself as a kind of hunger, a hunger for fear and danger. It was a nervous disease. People who are afflicted by it want to be afraid; it’s like a drug. And when nothing is happening they create situations that will confirm their vision of the world.

  ‘He’d always had a tendency to challenge fate, but now, after everything he’d gone through, it was as if his best qualities had warped. His extraordinary courage, his sense of responsibility for others, his carefulness and discipline – they all dissolved into a kind of extreme recklessness and unpredictability. It was a way of seeking death. Although by the time he came back the worst of the terror was over, it still didn’t take much to get yourself into trouble, and he seemed to go out of his way to stick his neck out. Instead of settling down in some quiet little corner and making himself inconspicuous, he immediately began blabbing his story to all and sundry. So in the end, of course, they locked him up. And not the ordinary Security Services, either, but Military Intelligence – the darkest circle of hell.

  ‘He never came out. He died in prison. Heart-attack, they said. It could be true, I suppose, because they did release the body. But in those circumstances . . . they might just as well have murdered him; it amounted to the same thing. Plain, ordinary murder. So it finally happened: the thing he had so feared, and at the same time so desperately sought and done everything to provoke.’

  A train rumbled above us. We quickened our pace and emerged at the other end of the tunnel. Slowly we climbed the stairs that led up to the other side of the tracks.

  ‘And what about her?’ I said, slightly out of breath, when we’d reached the top.

  ‘Who?’ he asked absently.

  I almost said, ‘His daughter; you didn’t think I meant the coffin, did you?!’ His reply still resounded in my ears. But I restrained myself and muttered, with only a hint of impatience in my voice, ‘The child. The one he called Victory.’