I must have looked disbelieving. He took another biscuit. ‘I will tell you a little story about the regime. A member of the People’s Party wrote a novel about the fight of a group of workmen with the capitalists who wished to close a factory. It was a naive story in which the capitalists were all monsters of evil and the workmen’s leader a People’s Party man. The Propaganda Minister, whose name is Brankovitch, would not, however, allow its publication. He said that the hero was not positive.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The author had not demonstrated that the hero member of the party was a good man.’
‘But surely that was inferred.’
‘Brankovitch would say that you were in intellectual error, Herr Foster. Inference is not positive. The public must be instructed that the man is good, as they must be instructed in all things.’
‘You must be exaggerating.’
‘In London or New York I would be exaggerating. Here, no. The sequel to this is that the writer was angry and made a little propaganda of his own. He has now been sent to forced labour. Pashik does not see that fate for himself. You see, Herr Foster, those who must be persuaded to obey are no longer important, for shortly we shall cease to exist. Our liquidation has begun.’ He smiled significantly.
‘What do you mean?’
He took another biscuit and held it up. ‘This is the third biscuit I have taken,’ he said. ‘There are twenty-one left in the box. I can eat nine more.’
‘You can have the box.’
He inclined his head. ‘Thank you. I had hoped that you would give it to me. I had based my calculations on your doing so. If I eat nine more I shall have eaten twelve. That will leave twelve for my wife. Luckily we have no children to share with us.’
I was silent.
‘I will explain. It is quite simple. Persons who are listed as untrustworthy are not allowed to work at anything but manual labour. I tried that, but I am not strong enough. So, as I cannot work, my wife and I may not have ration cards. We are, of course, very often hungry, and that can make a good argument for obedience.’
I got up and went to the wardrobe for the whisky. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him reaching for another biscuit. He glanced over his shoulder at me.
‘Please do not distress yourself, Herr Foster. A bad conscience can, I know, be as unpleasant in some ways as an empty stomach, and the person with the biscuits so often has a bad conscience. The trouble is that most of us with empty stomachs also have bad consciences. That combination will prove deadly.’
‘I have a metal cup,’ I said, ‘and also a toothglass. If you like whisky-’
‘I tasted it once,’ he said courteously. ‘I thought it better than schnapps and more interesting than our plum brandy. You need not fear, however, that I shall insist on taking it away with the biscuits.’
I gave him the toothglass. He took a small sip and looked at me. ‘I know that you will forgive my telling you that before I came to see you this evening I looked up your name in an English reference book I have.’
‘You’d like to know what a playwright is doing writing articles about a political trial?’
‘Oh no. I see the connection. I was putting myself in your place for a moment. You have been in this city for two or three days perhaps. You do not know the country or the people. You are present at a trial which is like a game played for counters of which you do not know the value. Yet you have to interpret it for Western eyes.’
‘Something of the kind has already been said to me once today.’
He nodded calmly. ‘As a guide you have Pashik, a man so preoccupied with a problem of his own — self- preservation possibly, but we cannot be sure — that he can lead you only to the counter of the Propaganda Ministry.’ He took another biscuit. ‘Have you seen the official bulletin of the trial today?’
‘This?’ I took it out of my pocket. ‘They gave out copies as we left the courtroom.’
‘They will do so every day. Tell me, Herr Foster, what will there be in your articles that a clever, malicious journalist sitting in London could not contrive for himself from a set of these reports?’
‘I’m sure you have your own answer ready.’
‘Ah, I have offended you.’ He smiled. ‘But not seriously, I think, if you reflect. What I am suggesting to you, Herr Foster, is that you might find it useful to employ my services.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. How?’
‘As a guide. I make this suggestion without embarrassment. You were kind enough to invite me to tell you some things about Yordan and of course I will do so.’ He touched the biscuit box. ‘I should have been well paid for that. But I think that I could be of further use to you.’ His haggard eyes looked up at me with a cold little smile in them. He licked a crumb off his lower lip.
‘I’m sure you could,’ I said, and waited.
‘For instance,’ he went on, ‘I wonder if you have considered that some of the evidence against Yordan Deltchev might not be as stupid as the Prosecution makes it.’ He looked into the toothglass.
An unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind. ‘Your difference of opinion with him,’ I said, ‘was over his radio speech approving the election, wasn’t it?’
He was very quick. He said calmly, ‘If I were an enemy of his I would not need to beg a gift of biscuits, Herr Foster. I should be a witness at his trial. And if, as your caution may suggest, I am here as an emissary of the Propaganda Ministry to try to corrupt your judgment, then you cannot yet have identified the man whose task it will be to do so.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What man?’
‘Our friend Brankovitch has been forced to admit a number of hostile foreign journalists for the purpose of reporting this trial. Do you suppose that while they are here he will make no attempt to neutralize their hostility? Of course he must try. I can even tell you the procedure he will adopt. Tomorrow perhaps, or the next day, after Vukashin’s evidence has been heard, Brankovitch will call a foreign press conference and answer questions. Then, perhaps the next day, someone will approach you privately with a great secret. This person will tell you that he has discovered a way of getting uncensored messages out of the country. He will let you persuade him to share the discovery. Of course, your messages will not be sent, but they will serve as a guide to your intentions, which can then be anticipated in the official propaganda. Brankovitch likes, for some reason, to use agents provocateurs.’ He looked at me sardonically. ‘I know his sense of humour. It was I who recommended him to Yordan for a place on the Committee.’
I offered him a cigarette again. He hesitated. ‘If I might take two?’ he said.
‘One for your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please take the packet.’
‘Thank you.’
It was not quite full. He counted the cigarettes in it carefully.
‘How did you meet Deltchev?’ I asked.
He looked up. ‘He was my partner,’ he said. He seemed surprised that I did not know.
I gave him a box of matches and he lit a cigarette.
‘Thank you.’ He blew smoke. ‘When Yordan first practised as a lawyer, I was his clerk. Later I became his partner. When he was appointed Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, I became his assistant and secretary. I was also his friend.’
‘What sort of man is he? Superficially, I mean.’
‘Quiet, deliberate, very patient. A sound lawyer. If you were a journalist interviewing him in his office, you would probably be irritated by a habit he has of looking past you when he is talking. He keeps his desk very tidy and empties the ashtray as soon as you have put your cigarette out. Yet polite. He would tend to put words into your mouth — criticisms of himself — and then answer them. A bad habit for a lawyer, that. A man with a family — wife, son, daughter — of whom he is very fond, but not a family man. A good man, but not at ease with himself.’
‘The sort of man who would betray a principle for a bribe?’
‘Yordan has never valued money enough to be corrupt in that way. Power might have tempted him once. You speak, of course, of his actions over the election promise.’
‘Yes.’
‘If he was paid to make that radio speech, he gave up what he might value — power — to gain what he did not value — money.’ He shrugged. ‘I have had plenty of time for thinking, and much bitterness has gone. At one
