Our Man in Havana, Page 9

  The next telegram – No. 1 of 4 March – read coldly, ‘Please in future as instructed confine each telegram to one subject.’

  No. 1 of 5 March was more encouraging, ‘No traces Professor Sanchez and Engineer Cifuentes stop you may recruit them stop presumably men of their standing will require no more than out-of-pocket expenses.’

  The last telegram was rather an anticlimax. ‘Following from A.O. recruitment of 59200/5/1’ – that was Lopez – ‘recorded but please note proposed payment below recognized European scale and you should revise to 25 repeat 25 pesos monthly message ends.’

  Lopez was shouting up the stairs, ‘It is Dr Hasselbacher.’

  ‘Tell him I’m busy. I’ll call him later.’

  ‘He says will you come quick. He sounds strange.’

  Wormold went down to the telephone. Before he could speak he heard an agitated and an old voice. It had never occurred to him before that Dr Hasselbacher was old. ‘Please, Mr Wormold …’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘Please come to me. Something has happened.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In my apartment.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Hasselbacher?’

  ‘I can’t tell you over the telephone.’

  ‘Are you sick … hurt?’

  ‘If only that were all,’ Hasselbacher said. ‘Please come.’ In all the years they had known each other, Wormold had never visited Hasselbacher’s home. They had met at the Wonder Bar, and on Milly’s birthdays in a restaurant, and once Dr Hasselbacher had visited him in Lamparilla when he had a high fever. There had been an occasion too when he had wept in front of Hasselbacher, sitting on a seat in the Paseo telling him that Milly’s mother had flown away on the morning plane to Miami, but their friendship was safely founded on distance – it was always the closest friendships that were most liable to break. Now he even had to ask Hasselbacher how to find his home.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Hasselbacher asked in bewilderment.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please come quickly,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘I do not wish to be alone.’

  But speed was impossible at this evening hour. Obispo was a solid block of traffic, and it was half an hour before Wormold reached the undistinguished block in which Hasselbacher lived, twelve storeys high of livid stone. Twenty years ago it had been modern, but the new steel architecture to the West outsoared and outshone it. It belonged to the age of tubular chairs, and a tubular chair was what Wormold saw first when Dr Hasselbacher let him in. That and an old colour print of some castle on the Rhine.

  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, cauterizing 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 a 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 knees 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 circle
d 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 see here, line 12: ‘But I will draw the curtain and show the picture. Is it not well done?’

  Wormold called Lopez from the shop. He handed him twenty-five pesos. He said, ‘This is your first month’s pay in advance.’ He knew Lopez too well to expect any gratitude for the extra five pesos, but all the same he was a little taken aback when Lopez said, ‘Thirty pesos would be a living wage.’

  ‘What do you mean, a living wage? The agency pays you very well as it is.’

  ‘This will mean a great deal of work,’ Lopez said.

  ‘It will, will it? What work?’

  ‘Personal service.’

  ‘What personal service?’

  ‘It must obviously be a great deal of work or you wouldn’t pay me twenty-five pesos.’ He had never been able to get the better of Lopez in a financial argument.

  ‘I want you to bring me an Atomic Pile from the shop,’ Wormold said.

  ‘We have only one in the store.’

  ‘I want it up here.’

  Lopez sighed. ‘Is that a personal service?’

  ‘Yes.’

  When he was alone Wormold unscrewed the cleaner into its various parts. Then he sat down at his desk and began to make a series of careful drawings. As he sat back and contemplated his sketches of the sprayer detached from the hose-handle of the cleaner, the needle-jet, the nozzle and the telescopic tube, he wondered: Am I perhaps going too far? He realized that he had forgotten to indicate the scale. He ruled a line and numbered it off: one inch representing three feet. Then for better measure he drew a little man two inches high below the nozzle. He dressed him neatly in a dark suit, and gave him a bowler hat and an umbrella.

  When Milly came home that evening he was still busy, writing his first report with a large map of Cuba spread over his desk.

  ‘What are you doing, Father?’

  ‘I am taking the first step in a new career.’

  She looked over his shoulder. ‘Are you becoming a writer?’

  ‘Yes, an imaginative writer.’

  ‘Will that earn you a lot of money?’

  ‘A moderate income, Milly, if I set my mind to it and write regularly. I plan to compose an essay like this every Saturday evening.’

  ‘Will you be famous?’

  ‘I doubt it. Unlike most writers I shall give all the credit to my ghosts.’

  ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘That’s what they call those who do the real work while the author takes the pay. In my case I shall do the real work and it will be the ghosts who take the credit.’

  ‘But you’ll have the pay?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Then can I buy a pair of spurs?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Father?’

  ‘I never felt better. What a great sense of release you must have experienced when you set fire to Thomas Earl Parkman, junior.’

  ‘Why do you go on bringing that up, Father? It was years ago.’

  ‘Because I admire you for it. Can’t you do it again?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m too old. Besides, there are no boys in the senior school. Father, one other thing. Could I buy a hunting flask?’

  ‘Anything you like. Oh, wait. What are you going to put in it?’

  ‘Lemonade.’

  ‘Be a good girl and fetch me a new sheet of paper. Engineer Cifuentes is a man of many words.’

  INTERLUDE IN LONDON

  ‘Had a good flight?’ the Chief asked.

  ‘A bit bumpy over the Azores,’ Hawthorne said. On this occasion he had not had time to change from his pale grey tropical suit; the summons had come to him urgently in Kingston and a car had met him at London Airport. He sat as close to the steam radiator as he could, but sometimes he couldn’t help a shiver.

  ‘What’s that odd flower you’re wearing?’

  Hawthorne had quite forgotten it. He put his hand up to his lapel.

  ‘It looks as though it had once been an orchid,’ the Chief said with disapproval.

  ‘Pan American gave it us with our dinner last night,’ Hawthorne explained. He took out the limp mauve rag and put it in the ashtray.

  ‘With your dinner? What an odd thing to do,’ the Chief said. ‘It can hardly have improved the meal. Personally I detest orchids. Decadent things. There was someone, wasn’t there, who wore green ones?’

  ‘I only put it in my button-hole so as to clear the dinner-tray. There was so little room what with the hot cakes and champagne and the sweet salad and the tomato soup and the chicken Maryland and ice-cream …’

  ‘What a terrible mixture. You should travel B.O.A.C.’

  ‘You didn’t give me enough time, sir, to get a booking.’

  ‘Well, the matter is rather urgent. You know our man in Havana has been turning out some pretty disquieting stuff lately.’

  ‘He’s a good man,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘I don’t deny it. I wish we had more like him. What I can’t understand is how the Americans have not tumbled to anything there.’

  ‘Have you asked them, sir?’

  ‘Of course not. I don’t trust their discretion.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t trust ours.’

  The Chief said, ‘Those drawings – did you examine them?’

  ‘I’m not very knowledgeable that way, sir. I sent them straight on.’

  ‘Well, take a good look at them now.’

  The Chief spread the drawings over his desk. Hawthorne reluctantly left the radiator and was immediately shaken by a shiver.

  ‘Anything the matter?’

  ‘The temperature was ninety-two yesterday in Kingston.’

  ‘Your blood’s getting thin. A spell of cold will do you good. What do you think of them?’

  Hawthorne stared at the drawings. They reminded him of – something. He was touched, he didn’t know why, by an odd uneasiness.

  ‘You remember the reports that came with them,’ the Chief said. ‘The source was stroke
three. Who is he?’

  ‘I think that would be Engineer Cifuentes, sir.’

  ‘Well, even he was mystified. With all his technical knowledge. These machines were being transported by lorry from the army-headquarters at Bayamo to the edge of the forest. Then mules took over. General direction those unexplained concrete platforms.’

  ‘What does the Air Ministry say, sir?’

  ‘They are worried, very worried. Interested too, of course.’

  ‘What about the atomic research people?’

  ‘We haven’t shown them the drawings yet. You know what those fellows are like. They’ll criticize points of detail, say the whole thing is unreliable, that the tube is out of proportion or points the wrong way. You can’t expect an agent working from memory to get every detail right. I want photographs, Hawthorne.

  ‘That’s asking a lot, sir.’

  ‘We have got to have them. At any risk. Do you know what Savage said to me? I can tell you, it gave me a very nasty nightmare. He said that one of the drawings reminded him of a giant vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘A vacuum cleaner!’ Hawthorne bent down and examined the drawings again, and the cold struck him once more.

  ‘Makes you shiver, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But that’s impossible, sir. He felt as though he were pleading for his own career, ‘It couldn’t be a vacuum cleaner, sir. Not a vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘Fiendish, isn’t it?’ the Chief said. ‘The ingenuity, the simplicity, the devilish imagination of the thing.’ He removed his black monocle and his baby-blue eye caught the light and made it jig on the wall over the radiator. ‘See this one here six times the height of a man. Like a gigantic spray. And this – what does this remind you of?’

  Hawthorne said unhappily. ‘A two-way nozzle.’

  ‘What’s a two-way nozzle?’

  ‘You sometimes find them with a vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘Vacuum cleaner again. Hawthorne, I believe we may be on to something so big that the H-bomb will become a conventional weapon.’

  ‘Is that desirable, sir?’

  ‘Of course it’s desirable. Nobody worries about conventional weapons.

  ‘What have you in mind, sir?’