Dr Hasselbacher like his voice had grown suddenly old. It was not a question of colour. That seamed and sanguine skin could change no more than a tortoise’s and nothing could bleach his hair whiter than the years had already done. It was the expression which had altered. A whole mood of life had suffered violence: Dr Hasselbacher was no longer an optimist. He said humbly, ‘It is good of you to come, Mr Wormold.’ Wormold remembered the day when the old man had led him away from the Paseo and filled him with drink in the Wonder Bar, talking all the time, cauterising the pain with alcohol and laughter and irresistible hope. He asked, ‘What has happened, Hasselbacher?’
‘Come inside,’ Hasselbacher said.
The sitting-room was in confusion; it was as though a malevolent child had been at work among the tubular chairs, opening this, upsetting that, smashing and sparing at the dictate of some irrational impulse. A photograph of a group of young men holding beer mugs had been taken from the frame and torn apart; a coloured reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier hung still on the wall over the sofa where one cushion out of three had been ripped open. The contents of a cupboard old letters and bills were scattered over the floor and a strand of very fair hair tied with black ribbon lay like a washed-up fish among the debris.
‘Why?’ Wormold asked.
‘This does not matter so much,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘but come here.’ A small room, which had been converted into a laboratory, was now reconverted into chaos. A gas-jet burnt yet among the ruins. Dr Hasselbacher turned it off. He held up a test tube; the contents were smeared over the sink. He said, ‘You won’t understand. I was trying to make a culture from never mind. I knew nothing would come of it. It was a dream only.’ He sat heavily down on a tall tubular adjustable chair, which shortened suddenly under his weight and spilt him on the floor. Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of tragedy. Hasselbacher got up and dusted his trousers. ‘When did it happen?’
‘Somebody telephoned to me -a sick call. I felt there was something wrong, but I had to go. I could not risk not going. When I came back there was this.’
‘Who did it?’
‘I don’t know. A week ago somebody called on me. A stranger. He wanted
me to help him. It was not a doctor’s job. I said no. He asked me whether my
sympathies were with the East or the West. I tried to joke with him. I said they
were in the middle.’ Dr Hasselbacher said accusingly, ‘Once a few weeks ago you
asked me the same question.’
‘I was only joking, Hasselbacher.’
‘I know. Forgive me. The worst thing they do is making all this suspicion.’ He stared into the sink. ‘An infantile dream. Of course I know that. Fleming discovered penicillin by an inspired accident. But an accident has to be inspired. An old second-rate doctor would never have an accident like that, but it was no business of theirs -was it? -if I wanted to dream.’ ‘I don’t understand. What’s behind it? Something political? What nationality was this man?’
‘He spoke English like I do, with an accent. Nowadays, all the world over, people speak with accents.’
‘Have you rung up the police?’
‘For all I know,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘he was the police.’
‘Have they taken anything?’
‘Yes. Some papers.’
‘Important?’
‘I should never have kept them. They were more than thirty years old.
When one is young one gets involved. No one’s life is quite clean, Mr Wormold. But I thought the past was the past. I was too optimistic. You and I are not like the people here -we have no confessional box where we can bury the bad past.’
‘You must have some idea… What will they do next?’ ‘Put me on a card-index perhaps,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘They have to make themselves important. Perhaps on the card I will be promoted to atomic scientist.’
‘Can’t you start your experiment again?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, I suppose so. But, you see, I never believed in it and now it has gone down the drain.’ He let a tap run to clear the sink. ‘I would only remember all this -dirt. That was a dream, this is reality.’ Something that looked like a fragment of toadstool stuck in the exit pipe. He poked it down with his finger. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Wormold. You are a real friend.’ ‘There is so little I can do.’
‘You let me talk. I am better already. Only I have this fear because of the papers. Perhaps it was an accident that they have gone. Perhaps I have overlooked them in all this mess.’
‘Let me help you search.’
‘No, Mr Wormold. I wouldn’t want you to see something of which I am ashamed.’
They had two drinks together in the ruins of the sitting-room and then Wormold left. Dr Hasselbacher was on his knee under the Laughing Cavalier, sweeping below the sofa. Shut in his car Wormold felt guilt nibbling around him like a mouse in a prison-cell. Perhaps soon the two of them would grow accustomed to each other and guilt would come to eat out of his hand. People similar to himself had done this, men who allowed themselves to be recruited while sitting in lavatories, who opened hotel doors with other men’s keys and received instructions in secret ink and in novel uses for Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim. The bells were ringing in Santo Christo, and the doves rose from the roof in the golden evening and circled away over the lottery shops of O’Reilley Street and the banks of Obispo; little boys and girls, almost as indistinguishable in sex as birds streamed out from the School of the Holy Innocents in their black and white uniforms, carrying their little black satchels. Their age divided them from the adult world of 59200 and their credulity was of a different quality. He thought with tenderness, Milly will be home soon. He was glad that she could still accept fairy stories: a virgin who bore a child, pictures that wept or spoke words of love in the dark. Hawthorne and his kind were equally credulous, but what they swallowed were nightmares, grotesque stories out of science fiction.
What was the good of playing a game with half a heart? At least let him
give them something they would enjoy for their money, something to put on their
files better than an economic report. He wrote a rapid draft, ‘Number 1 of 8
March paragraph A begins in my recent trip to Santiago I heard reports from
several sources of big military installations under construction in mountains of
Oriente Province stop these constructions too extensive to be aimed at small
rebel bands holding out there stop stories of widespread forest clearance under
cover of forest fires stop peasants from several villages impressed to carry
loads of stone paragraph B begins in bar of Santiago hotel met Spanish pilot of
Cubana air line in advanced stage drunkenness stop he spoke of observing on
flight Havana-Santiago large concrete platform too extensive for any building
paragraph C 59200/5/3 who accompanied me to Santiago undertook dangerous mission near military H.Q. at Bayamo and made drawings of strange machinery in transport to forest stop these drawings will follow by bag paragraph D have I your permission to pay him bonus in view of serious risks of his mission and to suspend work for a time on economic report in view disquieting and vital nature of these reports from Oriente paragraph E have you any traces Raul Dominguez Cubana pilot whom I propose to recruit as 59200/5/4.’ Wormold joyfully encoded. He thought, I never believed I had it in me. He thought with pride, 59200/5 knows his job. His good humour even embraced Charles Lamb. He chose for his passage page 217, line 12: ‘But I will draw the curtain and show the picture. Is it not well done?’