A Perfect Spy

Herr Ollinger supplied a raincoat that could have gone twice round Axel’s body, Mr. San provided a broad black hat. Herr Ollinger drove them to the door in his broken car two hours early and they took their places at the back before the great hall filled. When the lecture was over, Axel marched Pym backstage and hammered on the dressing-room door. Pym had not cared for Thomas Mann till now. He found his prose perfumed and unwieldy, though he had tried his best for Axel’s sake. But now, there stood God Himself, tall and angular like Uncle Makepeace. “This young English nobleman wishes to shake your hand, sir,” Axel advised him with authority from underneath Mr. San’s broad hat. Thomas Mann peered at Pym, then at Axel so pale and ethereal from his fever. Thomas Mann frowned at the palm of his own right hand as if asking himself whether it could take the strain of an aristocratic embrace. He held out his hand and Pym shook it, waiting to feel Mann’s genius flow into him like one of those electric shocks you used to be able to buy at railway stations — hold this knob and let my energy revive you. Nothing happened, but Axel’s enthusiasm was enough for both of them:

“You touched him, Sir Magnus! You are blessed! You are immortal!”

Within a week, they had saved enough cash to take themselves to Davos to visit the shrine of Mann’s diseased souls. They travelled in the lavatory, Pym standing and Axel, in his beret, sitting patiently on the seat. The conductor knocked on the door and yelled, “Alle Billette, bitte”; Axel gave a girlish whimper of discomfort and pushed their one ticket under the door. Pym waited, his eyes fixed on the shadows of the conductor’s feet. He felt the conductor stoop, he heard him grunt as he straightened up. He heard a snap that felt like his own nerve breaking as the ticket reappeared under the door with a hole punched in it. The shadows moved on. This is how you walked here, thought Pym with admiration, as they silently shook hands. These are the tricks that got you to Switzerland. In Davos that evening Axel told Pym all about his nightmare journey from Carlsbad to Bern. Pym felt so proud and rich he decided that Thomas Mann was the best writer in the world.

“Dear Father”—he wrote jubilantly as soon as he was back in the attic—“I am having a really wizard time here now and getting some first-rate instruction. I cannot tell you how much I miss your worldly counsel and how grateful I am for your wisdom in sending me to Switzerland for my studies. Today I met lawyers who really seem to know life in all its aspects, and I am sure they will be a help in furthering my career.”

“Dear Belinda,

“Now that I have put my foot down, things are much better.”

* * *

Meanwhile there was good old you, wasn’t there, Jack? Jack the other war hero, Jack the other side of my head. I will describe to you who you were because I don’t expect we know the same person any more. I will describe what you were to me and what I did for you and as best I can why, because there again I doubt whether we share the same interpretation of events and personalities. I doubt it very much. To Jack, Pym was just another baby Joe, one more addition to his private army in the making, not broken and certainly not trained, but with the halter already slipped nicely round his neck and willing to run a long way for his lump of sugar. You probably don’t remember — why should you? — how you picked him up or made your overtures to him. All you knew was he was the type the Firm liked, and so did you, and so did part of me. Short back and sides, speaks the King’s English, decent linguist, good country public school. A games player, understands discipline. Not an arty chap, certainly not one of your overintellectual types. Levelheaded, one of us. Comfortably off but not too grand, father some sort of minor tycoon — how typical that you never bothered to check Rick out. And where else should you meet this paragon of tomorrow’s men but at the English church, where the flag of Saint George fluttered victorious in the neutral Swiss breeze?