Part 15 (1/2)

”Yes,” said Fiedler, ”he is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.” He seemed excited; he wants to boast to somebody, thought Leamas.

”I thought a lot about you,” Fiedler added. ”I thought about that talk we had--you remember-- about the motor.”

”What motor?”

Fiedler smiled. ”I'm sorry, that is a direct translation. I mean '_Motor_,' the engine, spirit, urge; whatever Christians call it.”

”I'm not a Christian.”

Fiedler shrugged. ”You know what I mean.” He smiled again. ”The thing that embarra.s.ses you. . . . I'll put it another way. Suppose Mundt is right? He asked me to confess, you know; I was to confess that I was in league with British spies who were plotting to murder him. You see the argument--that the whole operation was mounted by British Intelligence in order to entice us--me, if you like--into liquidating the best man in the Abteilung. To turn, our own weapon against us.”

”He tried that on me,” said Leamas indifferently. And he added, ”As if I'd cooked up the whole b.l.o.o.d.y story.”

”But what I mean is this: suppose you had done that, suppose it were true--I am taking an example, you understand, a hypothesis, would you kill a man, an innocent man--”

”Mundt's a killer himself.”

”Suppose he wasn't. Suppose it were me they wanted to kill: would London do it?”

”It depends. It depends on the need. . . .”

”Ah,” said Fiedler contentedly, ”it depends on the need. Like Stalin, in fact. The traffic accident and the statistics. That is a great relief.”

”Why?”

”You must get some sleep,” said Fiedler. ”Order what food you want. They wifi bring you whatever you want. Tomorrow you can talk.” As he reached the door he looked back and said, ”We're all the same, you know, that's the joke.”

Soon Leamas was asleep, content in the knowledge that Fiedler was his ally and that they would shortly send Mundt to his death. That was something which he had looked forward to for a very long time.

* * 19 * Branch Meeting

Liz was happy in Leipzig. Austerity pleased her--it gave her the comfort of sacrifice. The little house she stayed in was dark and meager, the food was poor and most of it had to go to the chilthen. They talked politics at every meal, she and Frau Luman, Branch Secretary for the Ward Branch of Leipzig-Neuenhagen, a small gray woman whose husband managed a gravel quarry on the outskirts of the city. It was like living in a religious community, Liz thought; a convent or a kibbutz or something. You felt the world was better for your empty stomach. Liz had some German which she had learned from her aunt, and she was surprised how quickly she was able to use it. She tried it on the children first and they grinned and helped her. The children treated her oddly to begin with, as if she were a person of great quality or rarity value, and on the third day one of them plucked up courage and asked her if she had brought any chocolate from ”_druben_”--from ”over there.” She'd never thought of that and she felt ashamed. Alter that they seemed to forget about her.

In the evenings there was Party work. They distributed literature, visited Branch members who had defaulted on their dues or lagged behind in their attendance at meetings, called in at District for a discussion on ”Problems Connected with the Centralized Distribution of Agricultural Produce” at which all local Branch Secretaries were present, and attended a meeting of the Workers' Consultative Council of a machine tool factory on the outskirts of the town.

At last, on the fourth day, a Thursday, came their own Branch Meeting. This was to be, for Liz at least, the most exhilarating experience of all; it would be an example of all that her own Branch in Bayswater could one day be. They had chosen a wonderful t.i.tle for the evening's discussions--”Coexistence After Two Wars”--and they expected a record attendance. The whole ward had been circularized; they had taken care to see that there was no rival meeting in the neighborhood that evening; it was not a late shopping day.

Seven people came.

Seven people and Liz and the Branch Secretary and the man from District. Liz put a brave face on it but she was terribly upset. She could scarcely concentrate on the speaker, and when she tried he used long German compounds that she couldn't work out anyway. It was like the meetings in Bayswater, it was like midweek evensong when she used to go to church--the same dutiful little group of lost faces, the same fussy self-consciousness, the same feeling of a great idea in the hands of little people. She always felt the same thing--it was awful really but she did--she wished no one would turn up, because that was absolute and it suggested persecution, humiliation--it was something you could react to.

But seven people were nothing: they were worse than nothing, because they were evidence of the inertia of the uncapturable ma.s.s. They broke your heart.

The room was better than the schoolroom in Bayswater, but even that was no comfort. In Bayswater it had been fun trying to find a room. In the early days they had pretended they were something else, not the Party at all. They'd taken back rooms in pubs, a committee room at the Ardena Caf& or met secretly in one another's houses. Then Bill Hazel had joined from the Secondary School and they'd used his cla.s.sroom. Even that was a risk--the headmaster thought Bifi ran a drama group, so theoretically at least they might still be chucked out. Somehow that fitted better than this Peace Hall in pre-cast concrete with the cracks in the corners and the picture of Lenin. Why did they have that silly frame thing all around the picture? Bundles of organ pipes sprouting from the corners and the bunting all dusty. It looked like something from a fascist funeral. Sometimes she thought Alec was right--you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function. What did he say? ”A dog scratches where it itches. Different dogs itch in different places.” No, it was wrong, Alec was wrong--it was a wicked thing to say. Peace and freedom and equality--they were facts, of course they were. And what about history--all those laws the Party proved? No, Alec was wrong: truth existed outside people, it was demonstrated in history, individuals must bow to it, be crushed by it if necessary. The Party was the vanguard of history, the spearpoint in the fight for Peace . . . She went over the rubric a little uncertainly. She wished more people had come. Seven was so few. They looked so cross; cross and hungry.

The meeting over, Liz waited for Frau Luman to collect the unsold literature from the heavy table by the door, fill in her attendance book and put on her coat, for it was cold that evening. The speaker had left-- rather rudely, Liz thought--before the general discussion. Frau Luman was standing at the door with her hand on the light switch when a man appeared out of the darkness, framed in the doorway. Just for a moment Liz thought it was Ashe. He was tall and fair and wore one of those raincoats with leather b.u.t.tons.

”Comrade Luman?” he inquired.

”Yes?”

”I am looking for an English Comrade, Gold. She is staying with you?”

”I'm Elizabeth Gold,” Liz put in, and the man came into the hail, closing the door behind him so that the light shone full upon his face.

”I am Halten from District.” He showed some paper to Frau Luman who was still standing at the door, and she nodded and glanced a little anxiously toward Liz.

”I have been asked to give a message to Comrade Gold from the Praesidium,” he said. ”It concerns an alteration in your program; an invitation to attend a special meeting.”

”Oh,” said Liz rather stupidly. It seemed fantastic that the Praesidium should even have heard of her.

”It is a gesture,” Halten said. ”A gesture of goodwill.”

”But I.. . but Frau Luman.. .” Liz began, help.lessly.

”Comrade Luman, I am sure, will forgive you under the circ.u.mstances.” - ”Of course,” said Frau Luman quickly.

”Where is the meeting to be held?”

”It will necessitate your leaving tonight,” Halten replied. ”We have a long way to go. Nearly to Gorlitz.”

”To Gorlitz. . . . Where is that?”

”East,” said Frau Luman quickly. ”On the Polish border.”

”We can drive you home now. You can collect your things and we will continue the journey at once.”

”Tonight? Now?”

”Yes.” Halten didn't seem to consider Liz had much choice.

A large black car was waiting for them. There was a driver in the front and a flag post on the hood. It looked like a military car.

* * 20 * Tribunal

The court was no larger than a schoolroom. At one end, on the mere five or six benches which were provided, sat guards and warders and here and there among them spectators--members of the Praesidium and selected officials. At the other end of the room sat the three members of the Tribunal on tall-backed chairs at an unpolished oak table. Above them, suspended from the ceiling by three loops of wire, was a large red star made of plywood. The walls of the courtroom were white like the walls of Leamas' cell.

On either side, their chairs a little forward of the table and turned inwards to face one another, sat two men: one was middle-aged, sixty perhaps, in a black suit and a gray tie, the kind of suit they wear in church in German country districts; the other was Fiedler.

Leamas sat at the back, a guard on either side of him. Between the heads of the spectators he could see Mundt, himself surrounded by police, his fair hair cut very short, his broad shoulders covered in the familiar gray of prison uniform. It seemed to Leamas a curious commentary on the mood of the court--or the influence of Fiedler--that he himself should be wearing his own clothes, while Mundt was in prison uniform.

Leamas had not long been in his place when the President of the Tribunal, sitting at the center of the table, rang the bell. The sound directed his attention toward it, and a s.h.i.+ver pa.s.sed over him as he realized that the President was a woman. He could scarcely be blamed for not noticing it before. She was fiftyish, small-eyed and dark. Her hair was cut short like a man's, and she wore the kind of functional dark tunic favored by Soviet wives. She looked sharply around the room, nodded to a sentry to close the door, and began at once without ceremony to address the court.

”You all know why we are here. The proceedings are secret, remember that. This is a Tribunal convened expressly by the Praesidium. It is to the Praesidium alone that we are responsible. We shall hear evidence as we think fit.” She pointed perfunctorily toward Fiedler. ”Comrade Fiedler, you had better begin.”