They are outraged by their parents as soon as they can climb onto two feet, as soon as they are human. They are imbued with cynicism. Yet let a man touch a child, be it in love and gentleness, and he is branded a pervert. There is no law to say that betraying words must be punished, that betraying ideas and received opinions are more dangerous than a poor old man who bounces a little girl on his knee and kisses her cheek and strokes her hair and reveals his need to love for just a few dangerous seconds. Imagination can be like the horns of the goat: useful until turned inward; whereupon, in the course of time, the horns pierce the brain and the goat is destroyed. Mrs Cornelius had no imagination, but she was fond of those of us who possessed it. She protected us. It was our downfall, perhaps. She used us, some say. She was a whore, a
And why, they ask me, has God created those sorrows? He did not create them. He created Life; He created Man. The rest occurred in Eden. God is not the Devil, I tell them. Goodness is not evil. It is the Devil, however, who speaks most piously of Justice and Love and he is in all disguises: artist, priest, scientist, friend. And they say I am paranoid because I loved Mrs Cornelius and she never betrayed me. She never betrayed my trust because she never asked for it. What harm have I done to others? I should have let Brodmann go to Riga. It was his fault that he insulted me.
We were working at our desks in that great office, which had once belonged to a shipping company. They would move along in their lines, rich and poor, old and young, trying to look confident, or humble, almost always in reverse to their station in life, and I would take some aside into the special interrogation room, where the business transactions were mostly done, and I would reject those who had not the means to get to their destination. It was a mercy: I knew of Ellis Island and what could happen there. I knew of Whitechapel and how refugees were courted by Jewish sweatshop owners and white-slavers. They would not have been worse off under the socialists. I did my best to be fair. We were not hard men. We were not cynical. We bled no one. Often we would let people through who had no business leaving.
On the day before Christmas Eve, during a difficult afternoon, I looked up at my next client. It was Brodmann, in his dark overcoat and his homburg hat and his spectacles and quivering lips. He looked older but more innocent. ‘Pyat,’ he said. I was easy with him. I had anticipated such a problem. ‘Brodmann.’ I looked at the application. ‘You are going to America.’
‘It is my hope. So you were a White all along?’ He became alarmed.
‘And you are still, then, a Red?’ I asked.
‘Of course not. They have reneged on everything.’ He sniggered. I lit a cigarette. I told him he had better go into the interrogation room and wait. I dealt with two young women who were planning to board a British ship bound for Yalta, then I left my desk and entered the small room. Snow was gathering against the windows and the skylight. I wished Brodmann the compliments of the season. ‘You’re not going to Germany, then? This application is to travel by train to Riga.’
‘From Hamburg I can go direct to New York.’ He was very frightened. I began to understand the power and the wonder of being a Chekist. I restrained that ignoble lust and sat down, hoping this action would stop him shaking. ‘I was never in Germany,’ he said, ‘It’s just my name. You know that.’
‘Your Red friends abandoned you.’
‘I was a pacifist.’
‘So you decided to leave the conflict?’ I was joking with him quite gently but he did not seem to understand that.
‘There is no more to be done. Is there?’ His shaking increased. I offered him a cigarette. He refused, but he thanked me several times. ‘Were you always with Intelligence?’ he wanted to know. ‘Even then?’
‘My sympathies have never changed,’ I said.
He gave me an adoring look, as one might compliment the Devil for His cunning. This made me impatient. ‘I am not playing with you, Brodmann. What do you want?’
‘Don’t be harsh, comrade.’
‘I am not your comrade.’ This was too much. I hate weakness. I hate the calling on common experience as comfort.
‘As a fellow Jew, you would help me?’
‘I am not Jewish.’ I stood up and pinched my cigarette out. ‘Is this the appropriate moment to insult me?’
‘I am not insulting you, Major. I apologise. I did you no harm. But in Alexandriya I saw...’ He became very white.
