Ask No Question

by MARY HOCKING

  He looked down at the water, grey, scarcely moving between the dark boulders. He shivered and hunched forward; he felt drained as though he, too, had had a haemorrhage. But in the rush of blood something had been released. He had a feeling of freedom; the freedom that comes at the extremity of sickness when no one can expect anything of you any more. A breeze was getting up, the water moved between the boulders; he listened to it, gentle against the implacable stone. Gradually, the water, too, turned to rose. As he watched the day stealing, soft and beguiling, across the lake he found that there were tears in his eyes, but whether they were for Claus or for himself he did not know.

  He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit a cigarette, crumpled the packet and then stopped himself throwing it on the ground. Leaving litter on the tidy Swiss promenade was a small gesture of insurrection, a gesture for a child; he was on the far side of that kind of rebellion. He put the crumpled paper in his pocket and walked slowly along the path in the direction of Villeneuve.

  There were a few people about now, the day started early for Swiss workers. As he passed men, neat and industrious, women, stolid, purposeful, he had the same feeling he had had years ago in Paris when he strolled past German soldiers and thought to himself, ‘I am your enemy, although you don’t realize it.’ Life had seemed precious then and he had been afraid of discovery. Now, in one stride, he had moved beyond the reach of fear. When he got near Chillon the path climbed steeply; he hadn’t the energy to drag himself upwards, so he sat on a bench, thinking about his new-found freedom, wondering how to use it.

  He did not even consider telling Eliot that he was through; Eliot had released him from that kind of obligation. So what did one do? He felt a need, after all these bleak, subservient years, to do something for himself; the need had been growing in him for a long time. But what did one do? This was not a time when the individual could make large gestures, the twentieth century had gutted the individual.

  Hunger and weariness confused his mind. He felt colder than ever and a little faint. He got up and toiled up the path, turning away from the direction of Chillon at the first fork and making his way to the main road. He was out of breath when he reached it; he felt all of his forty-four years. He took a tram into Montreux. It was still early, the shops were shuttered; but he found a café that was open, an impoverished place in a narrow street.

  The woman who served him was thin and querulous. She had a small girl trailing after her, a dirty, unsavoury creature with torn pants tumbled to her knees. The woman told the child to go away and emphasized the order with a furtive punch in the face which Mitchell was not meant to see. The child took no notice, accepting abuse as a spoilt child accepts endearments. She sat on the steps of the café, easing her naked behind slowly down from one step to the next, watching Mitchell all the time. She had an ugly face with a low forehead and a slack mouth; not an appealing child, but the dark, mongrel eyes were hungry for something. Mitchell drank the coffee, glad of its warmth, and ate one of the rolls. He wondered whether the child wanted food. There was no shortage of food in this efficient, well-ordered town, but perhaps humanity stopped somewhere short of this mangy little cur. There were barriers in every town. But if he made a gesture now, it would be the worse for the child later. If you can’t see things through, you must stand aside. He finished his breakfast, paid and left no tip for the woman, no money for the child, no salve for his conscience. As he walked away, he saw the child crouching under one of the tables; the face peered up at him, the eyes still asking for something the dim little mind would never be able to put into words.

  He walked on and turned into the main street. The sun was bright now; the shutters in the rooms above the shops were thrown back, he could see the bed linen draped across one balcony. The women were returning from the market, their bags laden, and the first tourists were strolling towards the quayside and the coach stations. There was a sense of purpose about the town. Days started hopefully here. But he could still see the child’s eyes. Not much hope there. He had seen so many eyes like that, staring across barriers . . . It would be good to remove at least one barrier.

  The idea came easily into his mind, as though it had always been there; but the reaction was sudden and tremendous. He realized, standing in the dazzling street, just what had happened to him in this last hour. He had become an individual again, no longer hemmed in by the old loyalties. The battle for the mind, the war of ideas, the conflict of ideologies . . . the phrases were drained of meaning; East and West had long ago merged into one vast wilderness of fear and hate. He was finished with causes. He was an individual, owing no allegiance to any power. The sense of release was exhilarating as the feeling one had going down a steep ski slope, the master of air and wind. He was an individual and he could take individual action. He could make that small, individual gesture that was the only thing that seemed important now.

  He crossed the road and went up the street that led to the station; every now and then he stopped to look in a shop window. It was important to appear aimless. From now onwards he must always assume that he was being watched. There were several telephone booths at the station; he stood for a moment sorting coins in his hand, then he strolled across to a newspaper kiosk and got some small change. The telephone booths were engaged; he had to wait several minutes until a man came out of the far one. It was nearly nine o’clock when he got through to the pension where Miriam Kratz was staying. The receptionist told him she was in bed, but he insisted on speaking to her. When she came to the telephone, he told her to join him in Montreux. When she hesitated, he said:

  ‘I can help you.’

  He did not regard himself as a traitor or a counter agent; these were labels one attached to other men, meaningless when applied to oneself. As for England, it was a green and pleasant land that he had not seen for quite a while; he bore it no ill will and did not think of it in relation to what he intended to do. The world had become very small, and the only people of any importance in it were himself and Mikail Kratz. Mikail Kratz was a good man; goodness was not a commodity of any commercial value, nevertheless it should occasionally be rewarded. He would give this good man an extension of time. It would be the most exciting assignment of all, the most dangerous, the most worthwhile. The current of energy flowed strong and steady through his body; he was supremely confident.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alperin looked at the bars of light falling across the sheet of paper. He traced the lines of light with his pen. It was the most positive thing he had yet done; but it didn’t lead anywhere. Man, Alperin thought, was not meant to be free. He looked down at the parallel lines of light on the paper and absently joined them to form a parallelogram. That was that: he felt as though a door had been closed. His head began to ache and his body tensed again; the muscles at the back of his neck were rigid. He tried to send a message to his brain warning it against another bout of thought. But it was no use; already it was rushing like a panic stricken animal into one alley of thought, backing, heading blindly down another alley, backing again like a creature performing some terrible rite, moving frantically in ever-decreasing circles until in the end it would become a prisoner in the center of a web too intricate ever to be unwoven.

  And this was freedom, this ultimate negation! He stabbed with his pen on the paper, saying through clenched teeth, ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it! Stop all this abstract mumbo jumbo and get down to the realities.’ Immediately, he was confronted with Huber and the Room. He could not go to Huber. He had freed his mind of the shackles of the Western world and he needed to cross another frontier, accept new limitations . . . But he could not do it through Huber; it was a physical impossibility for him ever to go near Huber again. It was equally impossible for him to go back to the Room.

  He was annoyed with himself for even thinking of the Room. It was a small issue, quite unworthy of him. The Room was also small and quite unworthy of him; moreover, it faced east and was at the end of a long wing which meant that
the heating system exhausted itself well before it reached this outpost. ‘I shouldn’t survive in it for six months, let alone a year,’ he had told Sir Harry when it had first been suggested that he might change rooms. Sir Harry had said that he would not be in it for one month, let alone six. ‘You’d be in the lab most of the time.’ As though any of them could afford to spend time in the lab, now! They were reduced to the status of administrators. He had told Sir Harry that, and Sir Harry had offered to relieve him of some of his administrative duties. It never paid to argue with Sir Harry. Now he would be planning the reorganization, taking the more responsible of Alperin’s administrative duties from him and giving them to the new young woman from Cambridge with her slovenly clothes and slovenly morals. She would have his room, too. While he . . . He pressed shaking hands against his lips and hissed, ‘The Room doesn’t matter!’ It was the work that mattered, the years of research into the means of destruction; it was this that was gradually corrupting him. He really must get his priorities right and remember that it was his soul and not his physical comfort that he was concerned about. He wanted to escape so that he could work on something creative; on soil improvement, on new ways of making the wilderness bring forth fruit, the desert flower . . . He would transform the virgin lands as Khrushchev had failed to do, he would devise a five year plan that would be the world’s wonder. And he would never have to work in the Room.

  He flung his pen down and bent forward, tears streaming down his face. He had been crying a great deal since he came to this hotel. The shock over Huber, the obscene affront to all his hopes . . . He screwed up the paper in front of him and threw it on the carpet. There were a lot of scraps of paper on the carpet, all blank. His speech for the conference remained unwritten.

  He looked round the room. From a great distance, a voice was trying to reach him, telling him to go out of the hotel, to divert his mind . . . But it was no use. There was really no point in leaving the hotel until he knew where he was going. That made sense, didn’t it? Unfortunately, at this moment his eyes rested on the mirror. The face that stared at him knew little about sense. The eyes were screwed up as though unable to bear even the dim light in this room, the mouth was slack, and everywhere shadows encroached, beneath the eyes, on each side of the mouth, around the jaw. He fingered the jaw. This, at least, could be remedied. It would not do to let his appearance go altogether.

  He got up and went into the bathroom attached to his bedroom. He shaved with a shaking hand, cutting his chin and his left ear. He found sticking plaster and applied it clumsily, then he mopped up the blood. The blood made him feel faint and he had to sit on the lavatory seat and put his head between his legs. This stopped him fainting and seemed momentarily to clear his mind. He was more in command of himself when he went into the bedroom. Then there was a knock on the door.

  His heart started to pound and panic had him in its grip again. It was only the chambermaid; she came every day to torment him with requests to do his room. He went to the door, dragging his dressing gown round him. He opened the door, looking down because he could not bear the bright amusement in her eyes.

  ‘I shan’t be getting up today,’ he began, and then realized that he was staring at a pair of men’s shoes. The shoes moved forward. Alperin edged back.

  ‘That’s all right. We can talk in here.’

  As Alperin closed the door, he had the nightmare feeling that although the voice was familiar, it was in some subtle way different.

  ‘It’s hot in here,’ the voice said. ‘Do you mind if I pull back the shutters?’

  ‘It gets hotter then and . . .’

  ‘No. It’s much cooler here than at Maggiore.’

  The white, clear light invaded the room. Alperin put his hands across his eyes.

  ‘I came to see how you were getting on.’

  Alperin edged into a chair, keeping his back to the light. He said:

  ‘It’s very kind of you.’

  But the voice had not been kind. There was a silence which the man made no attempt to break. And yet, before, he had always been so talkative, so overbearingly friendly . . . Slowly, very slowly, Alperin raised his head. He saw a big man, sitting easily in the armchair, his head slightly on one side as he studied Alperin with an interest that was not friendly. The eyes that met Alperin’s were not friendly, either; they were the eyes of a shrewd buyer who will not purchase an article that has been over-valued. Alperin remembered that he had once wondered whether this was the man with whom he would have to deal. His heart began to beat very fast, his mouth was dry and his breath whimpered through his lungs. The other man bent down and picked up one of the crumpled pieces of paper. He unscrewed it, turned it over, raised his eyebrows.

  ‘No inspiration?’

  ‘It’s not inspiration that’s needed. Merely facts. Unfortunately, they have to be assembled in some form that can be presented to the conference next week.’

  ‘I thought you people always prepared this sort of thing months ahead?’

  ‘Not always. Scientists aren’t all efficient, you know.’

  ‘I would have thought that you were a methodical man.’

  ‘I . . .’ Alperin looked at him again. It was as though the eyes were slowly drawing something from him. ‘My mind has been occupied with other things.’ As he said it, he experienced a sense of release, as though a boat had slipped its moorings and was slowly bearing him downstream. ‘You see, I am what I suppose you would call the dedicated type of scientist.’

  ‘Are you so different from other scientists in that respect?’

  ‘Very much so! You mustn’t believe everything you read about scientists, their single-mindedness, their disinterested curiosity . . . It’s not true. They’re as jealous as a bunch of prima donnas and quite as ruthless when it comes to upstaging each other.’

  Mitchell looked at Alperin’s face; the features had sharpened and the eyes were keen as though a film had dispersed, the lips formed words carefully and expelled them with a snap of the small, even teeth. Mitchell said:

  ‘You surprise me.’

  ‘Take Sir Harry, for example . . .’

  ‘Sir Harry Gethryn? He’s quite a personality, isn’t he?’

  ‘Personality!’ Alperin rapped his knuckles on the arm of the chair. ‘Yes, precisely, he’s a personality! Not a scientist.’

  ‘He seems to get results.’

  ‘Other men’s results. Sir Lawrence Virnay, Maximilian Schmidt, Horner . . . myself.’

  Mitchell took out a packet of cigarettes. Alperin watched. His eyes went anxiously from the cigarette to the other man’s face. Mitchell lit the cigarette and flicked the match away. He looked at the glowing tip of the cigarette, an expression on his face that seemed to Alperin to be quite terrifyingly judicial.

  ‘Don’t you exaggerate your own importance?’

  ‘No.’ Alperin was ready for this. His words were chosen with precision. ‘I can assure you that over the years I have formed a good estimate of my own value. And if you do not think my judgment is sound in this instance, you must accept Sir Harry’s judgment.’

  ‘He thinks you are good?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say so. But although he does everything he can to humiliate me, he has resisted every attempt to transfer me to another establishment.’

  Mitchell continued to study the cigarette tip. Alperin said quietly, ‘If you want proof of my usefulness, I can provide it.’

  ‘My dear man, I don’t know enough about your work to know what would be useful.’ Mitchell’s eyes met Alperin’s coolly. ‘You must find some other way of convincing me.’

  ‘You’re not a scientist?’ Alperin spoke with authority, as though he was conducting an interview. Mitchell shook his head.

  ‘And you have no scientific knowledge?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘Then one must paint a picture for you in terms the layman can understand.’

  ‘If you please.’

  Alperin folded his hands in front of him,
absently examining the freckled skin stretched across the knuckles.

  ‘Do you know Kent?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ For the first time Mitchell looked surprised.

  ‘The part to the south east that is rather flat, where the eye travels a long way over the fields?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I sometimes visit acquaintances who have a farm in that region. I have stood in the fields on a still summer day, when the sky is blue and the sun is shining. You have probably done the same thing. You can see for miles. Cornfields, vegetables, a few small orchards, but mostly corn and vegetables.’ He clasped his hands and said with serene assurance, ‘I can turn that fertile land into a wilderness of stubble and rotting vegetation in which nothing will grow again during our lifetime.’ He smiled at Mitchell, a smile that might conceivably have been described as companionable. ‘I mention Kent as an example, you understand, because we both know it.’

  ‘I understand.’ Mitchell’s voice was cool, his reaction to the smile was cooler still.

  ‘You believe that I can do these things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause, then Alperin asked shyly:

  ‘Have we progressed as far as that?’

  ‘We?’ Mitchell was angered by the familiarity.

  ‘You must remember that one crosses the frontiers of the mind first.’ Alperin repeated the companionable smile. ‘For a long time, I have been thinking of myself as already . . . one of you.’

  Mitchell turned his head away.

  ‘You mustn’t imagine that I know much about this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘My concern is with people.’

  ‘But you must have some information, surely.’