Christmas Holiday

by W. Somerset Maugham

  “Then the people are duped?”

  “Of course. Why not? They’re fools, and they deserve to be. What does it matter? Their gain is substantial. They’re not asked to think for themselves any more; they’re told what to do, and so long as they’re obedient they have the security they’ve always hankered after. The dictators of our own day have made mistakes and we can learn by their errors. They’ve forgotten Machiavelli’s dictum that you can enslave the people politically if you leave their private lives free. I should give the people the illusion of liberty by allowing them as much personal freedom as is compatible with the safety of the state. I would socialize industry as widely as the idiosyncrasy of the human animal permits and so give men the illusion of equality. And since they would all be brothers under one yoke they would even have the illusion of fraternity. Remember that a dictator can do all sorts of things for the benefit of the people that democracy is prevented from doing because it has to consider vested interests, jealousies and personal ambitions, and so he has an unparalleled opportunity to alleviate the lot of the masses. I went to a great communist meeting the other day and on banner after banner I read the words Peace, Work and Weil-Being. Could any claims be more natural? And yet here man is after a hundred years of democracy still making them. A dictator can satisfy them by a stroke of the pen.”

  “But by your own admission the people only change their master; they’re still exploited; what makes you think that they’ll put up with it?”

  “Because they’ll damned well have to. Under present conditions a dictator with planes to drop bombs and armoured cars to fire machine guns can quell any revolt. The possessing classes could do the same, and no revolution would succeed, but the event has shown that they haven’t the nerve; they kill a hundred men, a thousand even, but then they get scared, they want to compromise, they offer to make concessions, but it’s too late then for concession or compromise and they’re swept away. But the people will accept their master because they know that he is better and wiser than they are.”

  “Why should he be better and wiser?”

  “Because he’s stronger. Because he has the power, what he says is right is right and what he says is good is good.”

  “It’s as simple as A B C but even less convincing,” said Charley with some flippancy.

  Simon gave him an angry scowl.

  “You’d find it convincing enough if not only your bread and butter but your life depended on it.”

  “And who, pray, is to choose the master?”

  “Nobody. He’s the ineluctable product of circumstances.”

  “That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”

  “He rises to the top because he has the instinct to lead. He has the will to power. He has audacity and enthusiasm, ability, industry and energy. He fears nothing because to him danger is the salt of life.”

  “No one could say that you hadn’t a good conceit of yourself, Simon,” smiled Charley.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, I suppose you imagine yourself to possess the qualities you’ve just enumerated.”

  “What makes you suppose it? I know myself as well as any man can know himself. I know my capacities, but I also know my limitations. A dictator must have a mystic appeal so that he excites his followers to a religious frenzy. He must have a magnetism which makes it a privilege for them to lay down their lives for him. In him they must feel that they more greatly live. I have nothing in me of that. I repel rather than attract. I could make people fear me, I could never make them love me. You remember what Lincoln said: ‘You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’ But that’s just what a dictator must do; he must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way he can do that, he must also fool himself. None of the dictators has a lucid, logical brain; he has drive, force, magnetism, charm, but if you examine his words closely you’ll see that his intelligence is mediocre; he can act because he acts on instinct, but when he begins to think he gets muddled. I have too good a brain and too little charm to be a dictator. Besides, it’s better that the dictator brought to power by the proletariat should be a member of it. The working classes will find it more easy to identify themselves with him and thus will give him more willingly their obedience and devotion. The technique of revolution has been perfected. Given the right conditions it’s easy for a resolute body of men to seize power; the difficulty is to hold it. The Russian revolution in the clearest possible way, the Italian and the German revolutions in a lesser degree, have shown that there’s only one means by which it can be done. Terror. The working man who becomes head of a state is exposed to temptations that only a very strong character can resist. He must be almost superhuman if his head isn’t turned by adulation and if his resolution isn’t enfeebled by unaccustomed luxury. The working man is naturally sentimental; he’s kind-hearted and so accessible to pity; when he’s got what he wants he sits back and lets things slide; he forgives his enemies and is surprised when they stick a knife in him as soon as his back is turned. He needs at his elbow someone who by his birth, education, training and character, is indifferent to the trappings of greatness and immune to the debilitating influence of success.”

  Simon for some time had been walking up and down the studio, but now he came to an abrupt halt before his friend. With his white unshaven face and dishevelled hair, in the dressing-gown huddled round his emaciated limbs, he presented a grotesque appearance. But in a past that is not so distant other young men as pale, as thin, as unkempt as he, in shabby suits or in a student’s blouse, had walked about their sordid rooms and told of dreams seemingly as unrealizable; and yet time and opportunity had strangely made their dreams come true, and, fighting their way to power through blood, they held in their hands the life of millions.

  “Have you ever heard of Dzerjinsky?”

  Charley gave him a startled look. That was the name Lydia had mentioned.

  “Yes, oddly enough I have.”

  “He was a gentleman. His family had been landowners in Poland since the seventeenth century. He was a cultivated, well-read man. Lenin and the Old Guard made the revolution, but without Dzerjinsky it would have been crushed within a year. He saw that it could only be saved by terror. He applied for the post that gave him control of the police and organized the Cheka. He made it into an instrument of repression that acted with the precision of a perfect machine. He let neither love nor hate interfere with his duty. His industry was prodigious. He would work all night examining the suspects himself, and they say he acquired so keen an insight into the hearts of men that it was impossible for them to conceal their secrets from him. He invented the system of hostages which was one of the most effective systems the revolution ever discovered to preserve order. He signed hundreds, nay, thousands of death warrants with his own hand. He lived with spartan simplicity. His strength was that he wanted nothing for himself. His only aim was to serve the revolution. And he made himself the most powerful man in Russia. It was Lenin the people acclaimed and worshipped, but it was Dzerjinsky who ruled them.”

  “And is that the part you wish to play if ever revolution comes to England?”

  “I should be well fitted for it.”

  Charley gave him his boyish, good-natured smile.

  “It’s just possible that I’d be doing the country a service if I strangled you here and now. I could, you know.”

  “I daresay. But you’d be afraid of the consequences.”

  “I don’t think I should be found out. No one saw me come in. Only Lydia knows I was going to see you and she wouldn’t give me away.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of those consequences. I was thinking of your conscience. You’re not tough-fibred enough for that, Charley, old boy. You’re soft.”

  “I daresay you’re right.”

  Charley did not speak for a while.

  “You say Dzerjinsky wanted nothing for himself,” he said then, “bu
t you want power.”

  “Only as a means.”

  “What to do?”

  Simon stared at him fixedly and there was a light in his eyes that seemed to Charley almost crazy.

  “To fulfil myself. To satisfy my creative instinct. To exercise the capacities that nature has endowed me with.”

  Charley found nothing to say. He looked at his watch and got up.

  “I must go now.”

  “I don’t want to see you again, Charley.”

  “Well, you won’t. I’m off to-morrow.”

  “I mean, ever.”

  Charley was taken aback. He looked into Simon’s eyes. They were dark and grim.

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I’m through with you.”

  “For good?”

  “For good and all.”

  “Don’t you think that’s rather a pity? I haven’t been a bad friend to you, Simon.”

  Simon was silent for a space no longer than it takes for an over-ripe fruit to fall from the tree to the ground.

  “You’re the only friend I’ve ever had.”

  There was a break in his voice and his distress was so plain that Charley, moved, with both hands outstretched, stepped forward impulsively.

  “Oh, Simon, why d’you make yourself so unhappy?”

  A flame of rage leapt into Simon’s tortured eyes and clenching his fist he hit Charley as hard as he could on the chin. The blow was so unexpected that he staggered and then, his feet slipping on the uncarpeted floor, fell headlong; he was on his feet in a flash and, furious with anger, sprang forward to give Simon the hiding he had often, when driven beyond endurance, given him before. Simon stood quite still, his hands behind his back, as though ready and willing to take the chastisement that was coming to him without an effort to defend himself, and on his face was an expression of so much suffering, of such consternation, that Charley’s wrath was melted. He stopped. His chin was hurting him, but he gave a good-natured, chuckling laugh.

  “You are an ass, Simon,” he said. “You might have hurt me.”

  “For God’s sake, get out. Go back to that bloody whore. I’m fed to the teeth with you. Go, go.”

  “All right, old man, I’m going. But I want to give you a little presy that I brought you for your birthday on the seventh.”

  He took out of his pocket one of those watches, covered in leather, which you open by pulling out the two sides, and which are wound by opening.

  “There’s a ring on it so you can hang it on your key-chain.”

  He put it down on the table. Simon would not look at it. Charley, his eyes twinkling with amusement, gave him a glance. He waited for him to say something, but he did not speak. Charley went to the door, opened it and walked out.

  It was night, but the Boulevard Montparnasse was brightly lit. With the New Year imminent there was a holiday feeling in the air. The street was crowded and the cafés were chock-a-block. Everybody was taking it easy. But Charley was depressed. He had a feeling of mortification, as one might have if one had gone to a party, expecting to enjoy oneself, and because one had been stupid and tactless, had come away conscious that one had left behind a bad impression. It was a comfort to get back to the sordid bedroom at the hotel. Lydia was sitting by the log fire sewing, and the air was thick with the many cigarettes she had smoked. The scene had a pleasant domesticity. It reminded one of an interior of Vuillard’s, with its intimate, cosy charm, but painted by Utrillo so that it had at the same time a touching squalor. Lydia greeted him with her quiet, friendly smile.

  “How was your friend Simon?”

  “Mad as a hatter.”

  Lighting his pipe, he sat down on the floor in front of the fire, with his back against the seat of her chair. Her nearness gave him a sense of comfort. He was glad that she did not speak. He was troubled by all the horrible things Simon had said to him. He could not get out of his head the picture of that thin creature, his pale face scrubby with a two days’ beard, underfed and overworked, walking up and down in his old dressing-gown and with a cold-blooded, ruthless malignance delivering himself of his fantastic ideas. But breaking in upon this, as it were, was the recollection of the little boy with the big dark eyes who seemed to yearn for affection and yet repelled it, the little boy with whom he went to the circus during the Christmas holidays and who got so wildly excited at the unaccustomed treat, with whom he bicycled or went for long walks in the country, who was at times so gay and amusing, with whom it was jolly to talk and laugh and rag and play the fool. It seemed incredible that that little boy should have turned into that young man, and so heart-rending that he could have wept.

  “I wonder what’ll happen to Simon in the end?” he muttered.

  Hardly knowing that he had spoken aloud, he almost thought Lydia had read his thoughts when she answered:

  “I don’t know the English. If he were Russian I’d say he’ll either become a dangerous agitator or he’ll commit suicide.”

  Charley chuckled.

  “Oh well, we English have a wonderful capacity for making our wild oats into a nourishing diet. It’s equally on the cards that he’ll end up as the editor of The Times.”

  He got up and seated himself in the armchair which was the only fairly comfortable seat in the room. He looked reflectively at Lydia busily plying her needle. There was something he wanted to say to her, but the thought of it made him nervous, and yet he was leaving next day and this might well be his last opportunity. The suspicion that Simon had sown in his candid heart rankled. If she had been making a fool of him, he would sooner know; then when they parted he could shrug his shoulders and with a good conscience forget her. He decided to settle the matter there and then, but being shy of making her right out the offer he had in mind, he approached it in a round-about way.

  “Have I ever told you about my Great-Aunt Martha?” he started lightly.

  “No.”

  “She was my great-grandfather’s eldest child. She was a grim-featured spinster with more wrinkles on her sallow face than I’ve ever seen on a human being. She was very small and thin, with tight lips, and she never looked anything but acidly disapproving. She used to terrify me when I was a kid. She had an enormous admiration for Queen Alexandra and to the end of her days wore her hair, only it was a wig, as the Queen wore hers. She always dressed in black, with very full long skirts and a pinched-in waist, and the collar of her bodice came up to her ears. She wore a heavy gold chain round her neck, with a large gold cross dangling from it, and gold bangles on her wrists. She was appallingly genteel. She continued to live in the grand house old Sibert Mason built for himself when he began to get on in the world and she never changed a thing. To go there was like stepping back into the eighteen-seventies. She died only a few years ago at a great age and left me five hundred pounds.”

  “That was nice.”

  “I should have rather liked to blue it, but my father persuaded me to save it. He said I should be damned thankful to have a little nest egg like that when I came to marry and wanted to furnish a flat. But I don’t see any prospect of my marrying for years yet and I don’t really want the money. Would you like me to give you two hundred of it?”

  Lydia, going on with her work, had listened amiably, though without more than polite interest, to a story that could mean nothing very much to her, but now, jabbing her needle in the material she was sewing, she looked up.

  “What on earth for?”

  “I thought it might be useful to you.”

  “I don’t understand. What have I done that you should wish to give me two hundred pounds?”

  Charley hesitated. She was gazing at him with those blue, large, but rather flat eyes of hers, and there was in them an extreme attention as though she were trying to see into the depths of his soul. He turned his head away.

  “You could do a good deal to help Robert.”

  A faint smile broke on her lips. She understood.

  “Has your friend Simon been telling you that I was at the Sérail to
earn enough money to enable Robert to escape?”

  “Why should you think that?”

  She gave a little scornful laugh.

  “You’re very naïve, my poor friend. It’s what they all suppose. Do you think I would trouble to undeceive them and do you think they would understand if I told them the truth? I don’t want your money; I have no use for it.” Her voice grew tender. “It’s sweet of you to offer it. You’re a dear creature, but such a kid. Do you know that what you’re suggesting is a crime which might easily land you in prison?”

  “Oh well.”

  “You didn’t believe what I told you the other day?”

  “I’m beginning to think it’s very hard to know what to believe in this world. After all, I was nothing to you, there was no reason for you to tell me the truth if you didn’t want to. And those men this morning and the address they gave you to send money to. You can’t be surprised if I put two and two together.”

  “I’m glad if I can send Robert money so that he can buy himself cigarettes and a little food. But what I told you was true. I don’t want him to escape. He sinned and he must suffer.”

  “I can’t bear the thought of your going back to that horrible place. I know you a little now; it’s awful to think of you of all people leading that life.”

  “But I told you; I must atone; I must do for him what he hasn’t the strength to do for himself.”

  “But it’s crazy. It’s so morbid. It’s senseless. I might understand, though even then I’d think it outrageously wrong-headed, if you believed in a cruel god who exacted vengeance and who was prepared to take your suffering, well, in part-payment for the wrong Robert had done, but you told me you don’t believe in God.”

  “You can’t argue with feeling. Of course it’s unreasonable, but reason has nothing to do with it. I don’t believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That’s a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn’t express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don’t know what I believe, because it’s instinctive, and how can you describe an instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a power that demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that though we may writhe and squirm we have to submit, for the power is ourselves.”