I try to dissuade Kappler from returning to the GDR but instead he goes back and settles down at Rosmar; I try to persuade the young Frenchman to work with me, but he tells me to go to hell and denounces me to whoever will listen. You’ve still got your perfect symmetry but with both operations going wrong on the same day.
If Kappler does go back despite all I tell him it will be a failure only to me, in Berlin on the contrary I shall be congratulated for securing his return. But I won’t be forgiven if the second operation goes wrong, long-term recruitment is the aim of all heads of external security whichever side they’re on, a young man with a brilliant future, guide him over a period of years, tens of years, you’re taking a big risk here, oh yes, but the problem is that you’ve not told anybody in Berlin about this plan to recruit the young Frenchman.
Or then again I fail with Kappler and succeed with the Frenchman, or else I succeed with Kappler and fail with the Frenchman, but I can also fail with both of them, which makes four possible outcomes in all.
To convince the young Frenchman I’ll have to sound as if I’m convinced myself, with Kappler I’ll have to sound bitter, writers like bitterness but if bitterness is all Kappler sees in me and if the Frenchman senses that I am too convinced, I’ll be whistling in the wind, I’m the one who wants something, what have I got to offer?
Lilstein has known Kappler for ages, he first met him when he was already world-famous, it happened here, in 1929, Lilstein had come with his older brother, Thomas, a philosopher with a promising future, the ‘Waldhaus Seminar’, intellectuals, philosophers, economists, politicians, scientists, wealthy backers, beautiful women. People who wanted, as the expression already had it, to ‘build Europe’, all good bourgeois citizens and some of them even enlightened. Thomas is dead, he wanted to change philosophy, to find new relationships between being, reason and History.
What Lilstein wanted was to install telephone and radio in every corner of the globe and bring about the Revolution, sometimes people paid attention, affectionately, called him ‘Young Lilstein’, he was in love and he was rebuilding the world. These days he wonders exactly what it is he really wants to rebuild.
A few weeks ago in Berlin, he had been summoned by the Minister: ‘Kappler wants to come back! Come back! Imagine, he’s been gone ten years and now he wants to come back, at this point in time! It shows we were right all along!’
The Minister’s huge paw strikes the top of his desk, hairs sprout on every joint of each finger, his voice rises:
‘This proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt! Everything we’ve done this past year was harsh but it was fair, they call us “East Germany”, even the “Soviet Zone”, but Kappler said: “I’m going home”, it proves we’re a true homeland and not a part of somewhere else, you know him, don’t you? known him personally for almost thirty years, you will go to him, you will give him anything he asks for, he must come back, it would be a stupendous coup. Kappler! he’s abandoning them! I can already hear their hounds baying! He’s coming back to the camp of progress, peace and socialism in spite of all the howls of their typewriter-pounding hyenas.’
The Minister pauses, looks Lilstein in the eye and adds:
‘And in spite of our own mistakes! At last, some good news!’
And then the Minister did something very unpleasant. He stood up and scratched himself between the buttocks, a gesture which is appropriate only in private, as though Lilstein wasn’t there. The Minister has short arms and this means he has to twist his spine backwards and to one side so that his hand can reach its objective, his head also has to bend back and to one side. To compensate, the Minister thrusts his chin forward and half-opens his mouth, a pose redolent of authority and deep thought, while his hand explores, locates and deals at length with the main item on the agenda.
Lilstein glanced out of the window, how can the Minister be told that the whole scheme is likely to come badly unstuck? Kappler back in Rosmar? He’s done it once before, in 1946, he’d come from England, couldn’t stand being at Rosmar for more than six months, and now he wants to come back again, Lilstein knows Kappler, and he knows the area he comes from, hammer and compass in a ring of rye, it won’t work out, you won’t feel right there, Herr Kappler, everything they say about us is true. Even in his head he still calls him Herr.
Lilstein has tried to reason with the Minister again, he has asked for a delay, he said maybe the subject’s in poor physical shape, he’s coming back because he’s depressed, what’ll we do if it turns out he’d come to us as a way of going to his death? The Minister said he’ll be coming to the land of compass and rye, the scum flee, the best return, the compass, the rye and the hammer, not their filthy lucre, depression my arse, I thought you had a better analytical brain. The Minister’s forefinger in Lilstein’s direction:
‘Think more politically!’
Lilstein ignored the short-armed Minister’s arse: comrade Minister, we must tread carefully, this man won’t be coming back because he thinks we’re going to tear everything down, and the Minister said, but that’s the point, we are going to tear everything down, urged on by the proletarian masses whose mouthpiece is the Party, and Kappler will be the positive living contradiction within this process which has been decided, directed and led by the Politburo under the authority of the general secretary, Comrade…
‘Comrade Minister’ — Lilstein has dared to interrupt the Minister — ‘Hans Kappler does not give the same words the same meanings, let me remind you that in our country, when a writer publicly contradicts a minister, even the Minister of Culture, it’s called antidemocratic propaganda, and he can be sent to prison for it. Now Kappler will not hesitate to contradict, he will exude negative contradiction, so at what point do we lock him up? The day after he gets here? Three weeks after? We will probably have to do it very quickly, otherwise we’ll have to deport him or let all those who think as he does say their piece freely. Let’s take our time, I say “our” time although this is not my area, I am not authorised for internal subversion, only exterior intelligence.’
As he speaks, Lilstein can see the Minister’s tactic — success and it’s marked down to the Minister, failure and it’s Lilstein who fouled up — no, Minister, you fat pig, don’t rely on me to carry the can, you think you’re so strong, Minister, you have the support of a number of Soviet comrades, but they aren’t necessarily the right ones any more, the funny thing is that you can’t see it yet, one of these days I shall walk into your office and you’ll be looking pretty sick because in the photo in Pravda the faces are different, not all of them, but you’ll have this peculiar expression on yours, you’ll scratch your arse because you think that you’ve got every right to scratch your arse in my presence, that I don’t count, and you’ll try to make sense of the new photo.
You might ask me what the photo in Pravda, all these changes, mean. What cannot be asked of a Department Head can be put to someone in whose presence you can scratch your arse, even if he’s a Department Head, a brief passing conversation, one pig to another, you might assume I’ll make it easy for you, and if my reply is that I have no idea, you can always bawl me out saying I never know anything, no, I know what I’ll do, Minister, I’ll pick up the photo and I’ll look even more scared than you, and that’ll make you stop scratching yourself, you’ll try to reassure me, the Soviet comrades have their own way of seeing things, they’ll let us know when it suits them, sometimes they move very fast, you’ll put on a brave smile when you say ‘very fast’, Minister, and there we’ll be standing in front of the great slide, making polite noises.