counter or the table, attracted by the thought that they might have before them some evil spy, at the same time, crossing their fingers and praying to heaven that they didn't, and that there wouldn't be anyone either who could pass it on, their confusing or impetuous story I mean. And nothing could be more thrilling than that some more responsible, upright compatriot should tell them off and reproach them for being so flippant, because that was an almost unmistakable sign to the speaker that he had entered the forbidden territory of the serious, the meaningful and the weighty where he had never before set foot. That state of fearful excitement, of laying oneself open to harm and simultaneously exposing the whole nation to harm as well, is illustrated by that cartoon of a man phoning from a public call-box besieged by little Fuhrers, and by the third, rather than the second, scene of the sequence that begins with the sailor and his girlfriend, that's them to a T. Most people, whether intelligent or stupid, respectful or inconsiderate, vitriolic or kindly, resemble, to a greater or lesser extent, that young woman with her brown hair caught up on top of her head: generally speaking, they listen with amazement and glee, even if they're being told something really terrible, because (and this is the reason why, briefly and occasionally, they deign to pay attention, because they can already imagine themselves retelling it) it's overlaid with the anticipated pleasure of themselves passing on the news, even if it's repugnant, horrifying, or brings with it awful sorrow, or provokes in others the very reaction being provoked in them now. Basically, all that interests us and matters to us is what we share, pass on, transmit. We always want to feel part of a chain, we are, how can I put it, the victims and agents of an inexhaustible contagion. And that is the greatest contagion, the one that is within the grasp of everyone, the one brought to us by words, this plague of talking from which I, too, suffer, well, you can see what happens, how I launch off once you let go of the rope. All credit, then, to anyone who has ever refused to follow this predominant inclination. And even more credit to anyone who was brutally interrogated and who, nevertheless, said nothing, gave nothing away. Even if their life depended on it, and they lost their life.'
I heard the sound of the piano coming from the house, background music to the river and the trees, to the garden and to Wheeler's voice. A Mozart sonata perhaps, or it could be by one of the Bachs, Johann Christian, one of Mozart's teachers and the poor, brilliant son of the genius, he lived in England for many years and is known there as 'the London Bach' and his music is often remembered and performed, an English German like those who worked at the Warburg Institute and like that admirable Viennese actor who was known first as Adolf Wohlbruck, and who also abandoned his name, and like Commodore Mountbatten, who was originally Battenberg, bogus Britons all of them, not even Tolkien was free of that. (Like my colleague, Rendel, who was an Austrian Englishman.) Mrs Berry must have finished all her chores and was amusing herself until it was time to call us in for lunch. She and Wheeler both played; she played with great energy, but I had rarely seen or heard him playing at all, I remembered one occasion when he wanted to introduce me to a song entitled Lillabullero or Lilliburlero or something rather Spanish-sounding like that, the piano was not in the living-room, but upstairs, in an otherwise empty room, there was nothing you could do there except sit down at the instrument. Maybe it was the contrast of the present cheerful music with his own mournful words, but Wheeler seemed suddenly very tired, he raised one hand to his forehead and allowed the full weight of his head to fall on his hand, his elbow resting on the table with its full-skirted canvas cover. 'And so the centuries pass,' I thought, while I waited for him to go on or else put an end to the conversation, I feared he might opt for the latter, he had become too conscious that he was lecturing, and I saw him close his eyes as if they were stinging, although they were hidden by the fingers resting on his forehead. 'And so the centuries pass and nothing ever yields or ends, everything infects everything else, nothing releases us. And that 'everything' slides like snow from the shoulders, slippery and docile, except that this snow travels through time and beyond us, and may never stop.'
'Andreu Nin lost his life,' I said at last, my improvised studies of the long previous night still floating in my head. 'Andres Nin,' I said, when I noticed Wheeler's confusion, which I noticed despite the fact that he had still not moved, and remained motionless and apparently drained. 'He didn't talk, he didn't answer, he gave no names, he said nothing. Nin, I mean, while they were torturing him. It cost him his life, although they would probably have taken his life anyway.' But Wheeler still did not understand or perhaps he simply did not want any more bifurcations.
'What?' he managed to ask, and I saw that he was opening his eyes, saw a gleam of stupefaction, as if he thought I had gone mad, what's that got to do with anything. His mind was too far from Madrid and Barcelona in the spring of 1937, maybe what he had experienced in Spain, whatever it was, had dwindled in importance compared with what came afterwards, from the late summer of 1939 to the spring of 1945, or possibly even later in his case. And so I tried to return to the country we were in, to Oxford, to London (sometimes I forgot that he was well over eighty; or, rather, I forgot all the time, and only occasionally remembered):
'So the campaign was counterproductive, then?' I said.
He slowly uncovered his face and I saw that he was looking refreshed again, it was extraordinary how he recovered or recomposed himself after those moments of low spirits or of weariness or inability to speak, it was usually interest – his scheming mind, or the desire to say or hear something, something more – that revived him. Or else humour, a flash of irony, charm, wit.
'Not exactly,' he replied, slightly screwing up his eyes, as if they were still stinging. 'It would be both facile and unfair to say that. There was very little malice in people, not really, not even amongst the most indiscreet and boastful of blockheads.' And this last word he said in Spanish, 'botarates', sometimes you could tell that he hadn't visited my country for quite some time, because you never hear that word there now, or, for obvious reasons, other similar words: after all, when a society consists largely of imbeciles, halfwits, blockheads and oafs there is no point in anyone calling anyone else by those names. 'And there were others, too, who remained silent as the grave. I'm not referring to the dead, but to certain scrupulous, strong-willed, tenacious people with a keen sense of duty, who unhesitatingly sealed their lips, even though no one would ever know of their obedient response or congratulate them on it. There were many such people, although perhaps not that many, it was a very difficult order to carry out, almost absurd really, 'Don't speak, not a murmur, not a whisper, nothing, because they can read your lips, so forget your language.'' ('Keep quiet, then save yourself, was what crossed my mind and, also, just for a second, I wondered whether my Uncle Alfonso would have talked or kept silent, we would never know.) 'The reason I say that the campaign failed overall is not because people were not prepared to comply, the majority were; and it served a purpose, it served to give us a general awareness that we were not alone, but had as many companions as actors in a theatre; and that beyond the spotlights, in the penumbra, in the shadows or the darkness, we had a packed and very attentive audience, each member of which was endowed with an excellent memory, however invisible, unrecognisable and scattered that audience might be, and was made up of spies, eavesdroppers' (again that word which is so difficult to translate into Spanish), 'fifth columnists, informers and professional decoders; that each word of ours they heard could prove fatal to our cause, just as those we stole from the enemy were vital to us. But at the same time, this campaign – and this was where it was bound to fail despite its indisputable benefits and successes – increased, inevitably and incredibly, the numbers of the verbally incontinent, the out-and-out blabbermouths. And although many people who had previously always talked freely and unconcernedly did learn, as one of these cartoons recommends, to think twice before speaking, there were many others who had always tended to be silent or, at least, laconic, inhibited or taciturn, not out of choice or prudence, but because they felt that anything they might say or tell would be dull, unworthy of anyone's interest and utterly inconsequential, but now they found themselves unable to resist the temptation of feeling dangerous and reprehensible, a threat, and thus deserving of attention, to feel, in a way, that they were the protagonists of their own small world, even though, for the most part, that protagonism was mad, unreal, illusory, fictitious, mere wishful thinking. Whatever the reason, they began to talk nineteen to the dozen; to give themselves airs and pretend they were in the know, and anyone who pretends that usually ends up trying to be genuinely in the know, within their capabilities, of course, and thus becomes yet another entirely gratuitous spy. And whether they succeed or not, it is also true to say that everyone knows something, even when they don't know that they do, even when they imagine that they know absolutely nothing. But even the shyest and most solitary of men who merely grunts at his landlady if he should happen to meet her during the day, even the scattiest or most obtuse of women with barely an ounce of intellect, and even the least curious or sociable and most self-absorbed child in the kingdom, all know something, because words, that fierce contagion, spread without any need for help, they overcome all obstacles and proliferate and penetrate more, much more, unspeakably more than you, or indeed anyone, could ever imagine. All it takes is a sharp, detective's ear and a malicious, associative mind to capture and make the most of that something and to express it. The people in charge of the campaign were aware of this, that all of us know some effects and some causes, however unconnected. As I said, what valuable information could those two ladies on the Underground possibly know, or that very ordinary man in the cap, saying: 'What I know – I keep to
