There’s no one else in the room, Lilstein speaks slowly, in measured terms, it’s dangerous, the place might be bugged, the waitress at the far end of the lounge who comes and goes at intervals might overhear snatches of their conversation, a professional like Lilstein must know, but it doesn’t stop him:
‘When soul number two, the soul of a young, concerned Frenchman, is thwarted, it might go as far as to declare that life is a struggle, just as the old one used to be actually, but now it’s a different struggle, the triumph of the strong, the struggle for survival — you don’t much like this second soul, it was bequeathed to you, it’s the family soul, the soul of the nice part of town where you live, at first you hated it, but it’s not always wrong, it is very effective, you might say it has the effectiveness of capitalism, it’s in Marx:
‘So you see, two souls, one full of dreams, the other believing it sees things as they are, but you don’t really care for either one or the other, and as you leave the Party of your youth you find that you fall between two souls, ideas with no way of implementing them, ideas with no point, a pointless life before you’ve even lived, but I can show you how to keep both souls, how to make the most of both of them and act: a soul that dreams and a soul that does not dream.’
Lilstein has raised his right hand, it is closed except for the index and middle fingers which make a V to accentuate ‘two’, it also recalls Churchill’s V:
‘Two souls. Dreams? We’ll dream them together, a just, classless society but you won’t need to get your hands dirty defending that dream, I’ll spare you the embarrassment of having to defend Pravda editorials, there’s no point now, in future you’ll bury your fine soul deep inside yourself and meantime, in public, you’ll be the other one, the bourgeois, realistic soul, the one you dislike, the soul that would — dreadful fate — see eye to eye with Antoine Pinay, Joseph Laniel or Guy Mollet, a soul so lucid it does not believe in forgiving, leave it to do the dirty work, though it’s not as dirty as all that, you’ll denounce tyranny, show trials, anything from Bukharin to Stalin’s doctors by way of all your Slanskys and Rajks.’
Two swallows of tea, a glance at the view over the Grisons, to allow the shadows of Slansky and Rajk to depart. Lilstein resumes:
‘And I’m not entirely sure there won’t be more trials, you know the old joke, a Marxist is a man who doesn’t believe in life after death but does believe in rehabilitation after death, you will denounce the whole set-up, it will stand you in good stead, you’ll condemn the economic chaos, the bogus statistics, the whole Potemkin village of Sovietism, the camps no one talks about, like the one I was released from in 1953, there are still party officials who want to keep them on, reopen them for Nagy or even Gomulka, Gomulka has already spent four years in a camp, he’s used to it, like me. Not all the Soviet comrades are ruthless Kapos, but there are some who are best left well alone.
‘You must denounce the whole shooting match, and make your denunciation pack a punch even if it makes people turn on you, because turn on you they will, they’ll accuse you of turning on the Party, no one leaves the Party without some payback but your Good Soul will say your conscience is clear whereas if it was your good soul people had turned against, your lucid soul would never rush to your defence, all of which in short brings me to my proposition:
‘You won’t have to disown your ideals in degrading battles, nor defend everything Suslov or Thorez says, even if they say it in defence of the working class and the human race, on the contrary you will at last be able to say what you really think of the presence of the Russians in Budapest, in public, rather than publicly justify their presence and privately think it’s madness, see how coy I am myself, the presence of the Russians, a splendid euphemism, you will embody lucidity, you’ll tell the world Drop the masks! and the world will beg you to remove its masks. And it will make no attempt to touch yours.
‘We shall go on dreaming, young Frenchman, but I won’t promise you the moon and stars because I don’t believe in them any more, I leave all that to the angels, the sparrows, the Party activists and the men with twisted minds.
‘That said, there’s still work to be done among men, beyond men, riding your luck, dreaming of a socialism cleansed of the scum, I’ll go further: I don’t know who will win. I’m speaking of a distant future, I don’t know which of the two sides will win, our dreams or their capitalism, but you’ve nothing to lose: if it’s your bourgeois soul that triumphs you can simply forget the other one, and if it’s your revolutionary soul that emerges victorious you’ll never have left the fold, I’ll be there to vouch for it, two souls, and I’ll always be frank with you, no not frank, frank is for hypocrites, I shall be unambiguous, we shall be equals, after all I too might have two souls.’
Lilstein has noticed that you have raised your eyebrows, he might also devise a mime to go with his two souls, eyes open wide, hands expressive, but he doesn’t, his face is a blank and his words are cooclass="underline"
‘I propose we start with a straightforward exchange of information, not straight away, in a year or two, in the mid-term, anything that will help me rein in my more excitable comrades, the warmongers, the ones who believe you need tanks to help people think and camps to teach them to be punctual, do I surprise you? Already? None of this sounds anything like what you get from official spokesmen? But if I were just an official mouthpiece, I’d have disappeared long ago, in the camp they sent me to, not Auschwitz, a different one, six years after Auschwitz, one of the camps no one talks about.
‘One day I’ll tell you about it, I’ve a great fund of stories, meantime when you’re in a position to, you can help me fight the warmongers, your Great Soul will tell me everything soul number two has garnered, I will pass on to you the secrets of the world I belong to, you will bring me yours, I shall today give you something that will make you very precious to your imperialist masters, you will become — you may smile — a keen supporter of the Cold War.
‘A very sophisticated but rock-solid supporter, you will write splendid articles attacking communism, and very well-informed they’ll be, it will be great fun, anyone who leaves the Party eventually turns into a supporter of the Cold War, but I suggest you become one straight away, you’ll find it amusing and will leave the ranks of the Party without feeling that you’re betraying anything, you have two souls, the disenchanted soul will remain the handmaid of your dreaming soul and will help it not to betray those dreams.
‘A pact? No, we won’t have a pact, the idea doesn’t fill me with confidence, obviously one day you might be tempted to reverse the roles and betray me, betray what we’ll have become, but I don’t want pledges, I’ve got faith in you, young comrade, absolute faith, why? because I know all about you, if once upon a time you betrayed your family by joining the Party it was because you saw that your family was the betrayer, you know, we two are alike, if later on you betray the working class, such a pompous expression but there it is, if, I was saying, you betray the working class after betraying the bourgeoisie, you’ll have nowhere else to go, and you’re not old enough to return to the crucifix of your boyhood, your need not to be a traitor is too strong, just like mine.
‘What did I betray? The world’s youth, young gentleman of France. We’ve both lost our stake, we need each other, let’s stay together, let’s try to be civilised, and maybe thanks to us all these people will some day step back from the edge, it’s what is called peaceful co-existence, we’ll help to make the phrase fashionable.’