PARTISAN REVIEW
53
First, then, the roar. Then a soupc;on of whimsicality: alas for
this badly ordered world where men so well-equipped to be friends
must be enemies. Finally, the hard offer.
Our friend the telephone-tapper was offered a retaining fee by
the Communist party, and their provisional trust, on condition that
he stayed where he was, working for the other side. Of course, what
else had he expected? Nor should he have felt insulted, for in such
ways are the double agents born, those rare men at an altogether
higher level than he could ever aspire to become in the hierarchies
of espionage. But his finer feelings had been hurt by the offer of
money, and he refused. He went off and suffered for a week or so,
deciding that he really did have to leave his job with the Secret Po–
lice - an accurate name for what he was working for, though of
course the name it went under was much blander. He returned to
the Secretary in order to ask for the second time to become just a
rank and file Communist party member.
This
time there was no
roar of laughter, not even a chuckle, but the frank (and equally
obligatory) I-am-concealing-nothing statement of the position. Which
was that he surely must be able to see their point of view - the Com–
munist party's. With a toehold in the enemy camp (a delicate way
of describing his salary and his way of life) he could be of real use.
To stay where he was could be regarded as a real desire to serve
the People's cause. To leave altogether, becoming just honest John
Smith, might satisfy his conscience (a subjective and conditioned
organ as he must surely know by now if he had read those pam–
phlets properly) but would leave behind him an image of the ca–
pricious, or even the unreliable. What had he planned to tell his
employers? "I am tired of tapping telephones, it offends me!" Or:
"I regard this as an immoral occupation!" - when he had done
nothing else for years? Come, come, he hadn't thought it out. He
would certainly be under suspicion for ever more by his ex-em–
ployers. And of course he could not be so innocent, after so long
spent in that atmosphere of vigilance and watchfulness, not to expect
the Communists to keep watch on himself? No, his best course would
be to stay exactly where he was, working even harder at tapping
telephones.
If
not, then his frank advice (the Secretary's) could only
be that he must become an ordinary citizen, as far from any sort of
politics as possible, for his own sake, the sake of the Service he had
