Ask No Question

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I’ve got some money stored away, Stephen. If it would help . . .’

  Mitchell picked up the jar and folded the paper more securely around it.

  ‘I really think you should let Arnold see that hand.’

  Burke did not offer the money again; he was weary and defeated and he wanted an end to this charade. He said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Mitchell said that he would take the films and the powder into Lausanne and Burke made no protest. He watched Mitchell putting the films away with the talcum powder jar. He said:

  ‘I’m sorry for Alperin.’

  ‘Why be sorry for him?’ Mitchell sounded angry. ‘He’s a weak, insignificant little man.’

  When Mitchell had gone, Burke lay wondering what he should do. What indiscretion had Mitchell committed that had put him so completely in Miriam Kratz’s power? Whatever it was, Burke suspected that its roots were in the past because there had always been something rather guilty in Mitchell’s attitude towards the woman. He was sorry to see Mitchell go down; his steadfastness, though rather tedious, had at times been comforting. He was sorry, too, that he himself was partly to blame for Mitchell’s misfortunes. It had been as a result of his indiscretion that the woman had traced them to Tamaro. Why, in God’s name, had he sent that card to Lottë?

  The sun was shining brightly through the window. It made his eyes ache. He turned his head away, staring at the blank, discoloured wall, tracing the cracks that made it look like a jigsaw puzzle gradually coming apart . . . a return to chaos . . . What should he do? Only one thing was certain: he would not go to Eliot. He was not sure that he was a match for Mitchell, but whether he was or whether he was not, he would not go to Eliot for help. That would be a betrayal not of Mitchell, which was something he could have countenanced in the last extremity, but of himself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alperin was in a state of terror. Anyone would have thought that there had been supernatural intervention in his affairs rather than that he had been the victim of burglary. It was the blood that had disturbed him, Mitchell gradually realized. He had not yet comprehended what the loss of the films meant and he had not even discovered the loss of the talcum powder jar. He had retired from the bathroom immediately he saw the towel. Now he sat on his bed, shaking with fear, and would listen to nothing that was said to him.

  ‘Your burglar had a nose bleed,’ Mitchell told him tartly. ‘I should have thought that was the least of your worries.’

  Alperin shook his head as though it was impossible that a nose bleed could produce so much blood.

  ‘Then what do you think happened?’ Mitchell demanded.

  Alperin folded his arms across his breast; he pressed his legs tightly together and bowed forward until his elbows touched his knees. He seemed to be trying to compress himself into as small a space as possible; inevitably the posture made him rigid and it was more difficult than ever to relieve the tension of his body.

  ‘It was a sign,’ he said.

  ‘A spiritual sign?’ Mitchell asked in exasperation. ‘Spirits don’t bleed.’

  ‘It was a sign to me that if I go on with this, it will be my blood next time.’

  This, of course, was the moment when he must dominate Alperin. Not a difficult task, God knew! Yet Mitchell found himself oddly reluctant to start the treatment.

  ‘And if you don’t go on with it? Have you thought what happens then?’

  Alperin had not thought about it; so Mitchell enlightened him while Alperin hunched forward, staring at his feet as though there was something monstrous about them.

  ‘The burglar took two rolls of film. Why you didn’t give them to me in the first instance, I can’t imagine. He also took a jar of powder that you kept on the shelf in the bathroom. Fortunately, I have recovered both these items. But can you imagine what would have happened to you if it had been known that you had these things in your possession?’

  Alperin did not move, but his eyes roamed reflectively across the floor boards. He said in a perplexed voice:

  ‘But you said you had recovered them.’

  ‘I shall want to know whether we are working together or not before I decide what to do with them.’

  ‘I see.’

  Alperin’s lips quivered. Mitchell pressed home his advantage.

  ‘Whatever made you behave so foolishly?’

  For the first time Alperin raised his head. He had lately developed a special way of looking at Mitchell, his eyes expressing an odd mixture of shyness and familiarity which Mitchell found nauseating. On this occasion, there was an added element of supplication as he said:

  ‘Was I foolish? I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You left that powder—I shall want to know more about it—on a shelf in the bathroom. At best, I call that foolish.’

  Alperin said tentatively, ‘But I have heard that the best way of hiding a thing is to display it.’

  ‘That rather depends on the object itself, I would have thought. Suppose someone had accidentally upset a quantity of that powder over their arm. What would have happened?’

  ‘They would have lost their arm,’ Alperin explained simply.

  ‘And this could have happened to the chambermaid, for example?’

  ‘I have instructed her not to clean the bathroom until I am better.’

  ‘The burglar, then?’

  Alperin shrugged his shoulders. ‘There must be some penalties for burglary.’

  ‘I know you are not concerned about people,’ Mitchell snapped, ‘but you really can’t afford to be quite so careless.’

  ‘Concerned about people!’ Alperin was genuinely hurt. ‘Of course I’m concerned! Why do you think I am trying to escape from all this beastliness and destruction?’

  ‘You care about them en masse, but not when they come too close, is that it?’ Mitchell drew in his breath, aware that he was going too far. He modified his tone. ‘Oh well, it’s over now. But tell me, have you brought any more samples with you?’

  ‘I didn’t need any more.’

  ‘You felt that you could establish your claim to usefulness simply on the contents of that jar?’ Alperin stared at him; to Mitchell’s astonishment, the pleading expression was replaced by a kind of prim outrage.

  ‘My usefulness . . . established on the contents of that jar . . . What arrant nonsense! My claim to usefulness, as you put it, is my not inconsiderable reputation. The films will also be of value, of course; they give details of research in connection with the genetic make-up of viruses . . .’

  ‘Save that for the scientists. What interests me is why you brought that jar with you if the contents are of no value.’

  ‘One must have some means of protection,’ Alperin explained in an exasperated tone. ‘After all, for me this is a venture into the unknown, and one doesn’t go unarmed on such occasions.’

  ‘You mean that you meant to use that powder?’

  ‘Only in an emergency, of course. I know so little about this sort of thing; but I thought that if, for example, there was some last-minute intervention—guards at a frontier—it would come in handy. The contents of that jar would account for quite a few people, provided they were in a fairly compact group . . .’

  ‘And the wind was in the right direction!’

  ‘I had not thought of that.’

  ‘You had better leave me to deal with last-minute interventions.’

  ‘Well, yes, I shall do that, of course. But when I set out I didn’t know that you would be here to help me, did I?’ Alperin’s shoulders slumped and he said wearily, ‘I’m extremely grateful to you for everything you’ve done, it means more to me than I can possibly tell you. But all this has been very exhausting, and I feel that just at this moment the one thing I need is a really good sleep.’

  ‘Before you sleep, I want to be satisfied that you have nothing else hidden away,’

  ‘Nothing.’ Alperin’s eyelids drooped and he yawned.

  ‘No pills? You haven’t prepared for another kind
of emergency?’

  Alperin’s lids flicked back like those of a doll which has received a sharp jolt and Mitchell knew at once that this was a possibility that had not occurred to him.

  ‘You mean, in case I don’t succeed?’

  ‘Some people lose their nerve at the last minute. But things will move smoothly for you, so you will have nothing to worry about provided you do as I tell you from now on.’

  Alperin said, ‘I will. I promise I will.’

  Although he appeared fairly relaxed, he no longer seemed quite so anxious to sleep and he began to ask Mitchell questions about life in Russia. Would he stay in Moscow or would they send him to a research center somewhere in Siberia? He was not, he explained, very attracted to camp life. His conversation became trivial and rather childish and the last question was surely the most trivial of all.

  ‘Do you think I will have a housekeeper?’

  ‘I’ve no idea!’ Mitchell laughed. ‘I don’t know much about Russia. In fact, I suppose you might say that I have very little experience of any place except the no-man’s-land on either side of borders.’

  Alperin looked at him. ‘How terrible that must be!’ He sounded as though he really meant it; there was pity in his voice. Pity from Alperin was the last thing that Mitchell had expected or wanted. He left shortly after that.

  His adult life had been spent in no-man’s-land and he had become so used to it that he had spoken of it to Alperin without thought. And Alperin had had the impertinence to pity him! Yet he could remember how, when the war ended and the great trek home began, he and Claus had stood apart and pitied the men about to be caught up in the web of domestic life. His own resistance had been strengthened by the realization that his affectionate wife was extremely possessive and so he had traded the shackles of love for the freedom to travel alone. Had that been the first wrong move? Or was he the kind of man who, war or no war, would always make that choice, whose journeys would always end in no-man’s land? It was too late to ask those questions now. There was no time for regret: the choice had been made. But although he told himself that he could no longer afford to look back, his discomfort was not so easily dispelled.

  As he climbed the road from Alperin’s hotel to the village of Veytaux his mind was more confused than ever. He sat on a seat halfway up the hill. He had not gone to Alperin immediately after Burke told him of his discoveries; it had seemed more important to see Novak and after that other things had occupied him. The day had slipped away. Now it was towards evening and the sky had thinned to a pale heliotrope, the mountains were plumed with mist and the lake was pearl grey; the whole landscape was less substantial, already resigned to night. Beyond the network of tramlines and railway signals, he could see Chillon, bastion, keep, battlement and tower merged into one dark mass of granite indifference. For the first time, he began to think about failure.

  He had been in the service long enough to know that the espionage system had its weaknesses, the chain of communication stretched a long way now and some of the links were weak. He was not afraid of immediate failure. But afterwards? He wanted to give life and hope; these were words that one used often and too lightly so that they had lost their value, but now the meaning overwhelmed him . . . life . . . hope. . . . A man broken in prison, a woman born of chaos, an abandoned child: what hope was there for them? He had wanted to work a miracle for them; but he was not God and he had not the healer’s touch. He could unlock a door, but what happened after that was beyond his control.

  He tried to think dispassionately about Miriam Kratz. It was obvious from all that she had told him about her married life that the burden of responsibility had been borne by her husband: now the burden would be hers and she was ill-equipped to bear it. It had been foolish of him ever to think that she could bear so much . . . whereas he would demand so little. . . . The thought passed so easily across the threshold of his conscious mind that he knew it had been waiting in the shadows for a long time. He shivered, more disturbed by this unguarded impulse than by his larger treachery. Something for myself, he had thought when he planned this, I must do something for myself, remove at least one barrier . . . Well, that disinterested impulse to do good had not survived long! Now, indeed he wanted something for himself. The longing was so strong that he was not at all sure he could withstand it. He had fought a lot of things during his life, but he had never been conspicuously successful at fighting himself; the disciplines imposed upon him by his job had been those that he was well able to bear, they had not been the kind really to test him. Test him! He had always hated this kind of moralizing; it was absurd to submit himself to it now. He felt more deeply about Miriam Kratz than he had ever felt about any woman, she opened up a whole new territory of experience to him. One should take such an opportunity when it presented itself; to refuse would be cowardice, a refusal to put his feeling to the test, a submission to the fear that he could not sustain a lasting relationship with a woman. Miriam Kratz represented something tremendous, the last adventure . . . He looked down the hill. It was nearly dark, but the moon had come up and he could see the water running swiftly past Chillon, the little silver waves breaking ineffectually against the hard, black rocks. Perhaps the most absurd thing of all was to have imagined that Mikail Kratz could still be alive.

  In Lausanne, Eliot drew back the window curtains. He, too, was depressed by the coming of evening, an unusual occurrence since on the whole night and day were barely distinguishable to him. The decision to expose himself to the neon brilliance of Lausanne at night was not a good one because for some maddening reason the scene served to remind him of Claus Hesselmann. Perhaps it was the fairy wheel high above the tall tower of a night club, which at this angle seemed to revolve a little drunkenly, that reminded him of Hesselmann. Hesselmann never did anything in moderation and during the last year he had abandoned himself to revelry. The decision to get rid of him had been perfectly justified. Unfortunately, it was doubtful whether the people in London would agree with the method adopted. They would have agreed that he should be dropped, but they would not have liked him to drop so far. And now they were making enquiries.

  Eliot twisted the sash cord and peered down with eyes sharpened by pain at all the stupid, busy people crawling over the bridges, spewing out into the brightly-lit streets, eager, expectant, urgent. If only they knew the utter motivelessness to which all their bustling energy was reduced at this level! This, of course, was how God would see them, if there happened to be a God and if he ever looked down; it was ridiculous to depict him as being concerned with all those absurd little creatures. So many flies. And Eliot had got rid of one of the flies. But it was not God who would not care to whom he had to account, it was to London; and the men in London, though not particularly ethical themselves, were sentimental about people like Hesselmann who had a splendid war record and a generous, extrovert personality. Also, far from believing that to sacrifice an agent here and there encouraged the others, London believed that such incidents were a positive discouragement. Men became nervous and nervous men became unreliable. Men like Dan Burke, for example. Why, Eliot thought wearily, why had he told Burke? Without Burke there would be no problem. He could tell London that Hesselmann had gone to the hospice at his own suggestion, that he was acting as a counter-agent. London would accept this. Any plausible explanation would be accepted, since Eliot was still valuable to London. But Burke was not the kind to keep quiet.

  Even so, it was not Burke with whom Eliot was really concerned at the moment. He could handle Burke if it came to a showdown between them. Burke’s sound and fury signified very little. But Stephen Mitchell was a different proposition. And it was of Mitchell that Eliot was thinking as he stared across at the wheel of light, winking, swaying, dipping, gay and foolish in the night. Mitchell. He knew as much about the man as he knew about the lure of the fairy wheel. For the first time, Eliot was conscious that to be remote from feeling was a disadvantage; for Mitchell was undoubtedly a man of feeling. This unpleasant suspic
ion had been growing on Eliot for a long time, it was one of the reasons why he regarded the man as potentially suspect as an agent. There was too much feeling, a softness in the eyes . . . How would such a man act in a crisis of feeling?

  Eliot looked longingly at his map; he looked down at the table where he sometimes played chess. Chess was a matter of intellect; you invaded a man’s mind and asked what move he would make next . . . but you had to assume that he was playing the same game as yourself. Eliot was conscious of a lack in himself. It came to him as a great revelation, full of wonder and regret, that a whole world of power had eluded him. He sat down by the window; his face was thin and wasted, the skin green, the lips mauve in the unnatural light and he looked like a vampire unexpectedly accommodated in an urban setting. He thought about the past, his mind resurrecting people he had known, some of whom he had defeated, others who had defeated him, and he realized that all of them, to some extent, had escaped him. If he had understood more about their feelings, what might he not have achieved? And it was not just the achievement, it was the exhilaration that he had missed. The pawns had feeling! If only he had been sensitive to it, understood how to manipulate it so that they throbbed, twisted and turned in his fingers, then the game would have been fantastically enriched . . . Here he became so excited that he had a bad fit of coughing and when he recovered, shaking and sweating, the exhilaration had gone and he had no energy left. No energy: but one pawn still to move into position. He hauled himself out of his chair and went across to the telephone.

  Chapter Twenty One

  It seemed to Mitchell that time had lost all meaning. An age elapsed before Novak presented him with a foolscap envelope saying:

  ‘At least we haven’t lost any time.’ In his time, six days had elapsed.

  Mitchell took the paper back to his room. He felt as though it contained a death sentence, not Kratz’s but his own. His mouth was dry as he unfolded it. The questions had been typed on a sheet of foolscap and the place where the answers were to be written was indicated by a series of dots. Who had written those answers? Kratz, bending over the questionnaire in some clinical little room, blinded by unaccustomed light, watched by a guard who had been instructed not to intrude? Or had an official produced the answers with the aid of guards racking their memories for odd phrases muttered by a man long dead? It was difficult at first to gain any very definite impression. The writing was the formal, scholarly writing of a very old man who had retained his individuality at some cost. Here and there a word clumsily begun had been restarted more legibly, presumably to please some standard set by the writer rather than for any other purpose, since the answer was seldom enlightening.