Epitaph for a Spy

Reality is always so obstructive.

Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.

I tell you this, my friend; all men are cowards. They dislike a fact except when it is so wrapped up in lies and sentiments that the sharp edge of it cannot hurt them. When a man tells the truth he his, depend upon it, a dangerous man.

All over Europe, all over the world, men were spying. While in government offices other men were tabulating the results of the spies' labours; thicknesses of armour-plating, elevation angles of guns, muzzles velocities, details of fire control mechanisms and range-finders, fuse efficiencies, details of fortifications, positions of ammunition stores, disposition of key factories, landmarks for bombers. The world was getting ready to go to war. For the cannon-makers and for the spies, business was good.

It was Napoleon who said that one spy in the right place was worth twenty thousand men in the field. He was speaking of his own spy, Schul-meister, a man of amazing courage, skill, and loyalty. But when the time came to reward Schulmeister for his services it was the same Napoleon who refused him the Legion of Honor for which he had been recommended, and the same Napoleon who commented that money was the only suitable reward for

After a bit, I began to think more calmly. It was ridiculous. It was outrageous. It was impossible. Yet it had happened. I was in a police cell under arrest on a charge of espionage. The penalty, should I be convicted, would be perhaps four years’ imprisonment—four years in a French prison and then deportation. I could put up with prison—even a French one—but deportation! I began to feel sick and desperately frightened. If France expelled me there was nowhere left for me to go. Yugoslavia would arrest me. Hungary would not admit me. Neither would Germany or Italy. Even if a convicted spy could get into England without a passport he would not be permitted to work. To America I would be merely another undesirable alien. The South American republics would demand sums of money that I would not possess as surety for my good behavior. Soviet Russia would have no more use for a convicted spy than would England. Even the Chinese wanted your passport. There would be nowhere I could go, nowhere. And after all, what did it matter? What happened to an insignificant teacher of languages without national status was of no interest to anyone. No consul would intervene on his behalf; no Parliament, no Congress, no Chamber of Deputies would inquire into his fate. Officially he did not exist; he was an abstraction, a ghost. All he could decently and logically do was destroy himself.

I was born in Szabadka in Hungary. By the treaty of Trianon in 1919 Szabadka was incorporated in Yugoslav territory. In 1921 I went as a student to the University of Buda-Pesth. I obtained a Yugoslav passport for the purpose. While I was still at the University my father and elder brother were shot by the Yugoslav police for a political offense. My mother had died during the war and I had no other relations or friends. I was advised not to attempt to return to Yugoslavia. Conditions in Hungary were terrible. In 1922 I went to England, and remained there, teaching German in a school near London until 1931, when my labor permit was withdrawn. I was one of many other foreigners who had their labor permits withdrawn at that time. When my passport had expired I had applied for its renewal to the Yugoslav legation in London, but had been refused on the grounds that I was no longer a Yugoslav citizen. I had afterwards applied for British naturalization, but when I was deprived of my labor permit I was forced to find work elsewhere. I went to Paris. I was allowed by the police to remain and given papers with the proviso that if I left France I should not be permitted to return. I have since applied for French citizenship.

It would be good now, I thought, to be in Paris. The afternoon city heat would have gone. It would be good to sit under the trees near the marionette theatre. It would be quiet there now. There would be no one there but a student or two reading. There you could listen to the rustle of leaves unconscious of the pains of humanity in labour, of a civilisation hastening to its own destruction. There, away from this brassy sea and blood-red earth, you could contemplate the twentieth-century tragedy unmoved; unmoved except by pity for mankind fighting to save itself from the primeval ooze that welled from its own subconscious being.

At this point doubts started to creep in. One was always reading of young men running away to sea, or people shipping as deck-hands and working their passages. There seemed to be no special qualifications needed. No ropes had to be spliced. No rigging had to be climbed. All you did was paint the anchor, chip rust off the deck plating and say 'aye, aye, sir', when addressed by an officer. It was a tough life and you met tough men. There were weevils in the ship's biscuits and you had little to eat but skilly. Quarrels were settled with bare fists and you went about naked to the waist. But one of the crew always had a concertina and there were sing-songs when the day's work was done. In after life you wrote a book about it.