The Lights of Skaro (7 page)

It was a feather in anybody’s cap to get an assignment to an important listening-post behind the Curtain. Cora, partly because she had wheedled advance information out of somebody in the know and had gone right to work studying the language, was one of the lucky ones, the only woman press correspondent for the West to get a post behind the Curtain until that time.

I was offered a similar assignment myself. A.N.A. was one of the few press services invited to set up a bureau in the Republic. Other services got into Rumania and Hungary and East Germany, where A.N.A. was barred, by the peculiar logic of the Party mind, as most of its competitors were barred from the Republic. Assignments were parceledaround like a deck of cards. Because the cards fell that way and I spoke the language, I could have gone into the Republic at the same time as Cora did. But I had been two years in Warsaw before they froze the foreign press out, then another year in Moscow, a total of thirty-six consecutive months with my own private crew of goons keeping an eye on me night and day, waiting for my foot to slip over the narrow line that divided reporting from espionage in the Party vocabulary. I had had enough of it. I felt that I was entitled to the six months of semi-vacation. I had been promised, full pay and a free hand to go where I wanted and write the stories I felt like writing, without worrying about spot news or my neck. I told the home office that if they could find somebody else I would decline the honor.

They gave the job to Jim Oliver, a good man who had spent some time in Czechoslovakia and knew, or should have known, the Party mentality. Oliver, with Cora for A.P., Heinz Gruber of the Ullstein chain in Western Germany,Léon Rébillard of Agence France-Presse and Graham Dill of Reuters, went into the Republic to report whatever they were allowed to report.

Oliver was the first man to get himself kicked out, six months later. Direct censorship of news had been lifted for dispatches to the foreign press, but there was a tight retroactive censorship. It meant that a reporter could file one, and only one, story the Party didn’t like before they cancelled his visa and gave him twenty-four hours notice to get out of the country. It had all been made crystal clear from the beginning. Oliver’s mistake, if it was a mistake, was one of judgment, not ignorance. He forgot to be ‘objective’ about the Gorza escape.

A few days after the Gorzas got out, when Ed Cleary’s story quoting Gorza about conditions inside the Republic was still making headlines, and I was in Istanbul unsuccessfully trying to get another angle on the same story from Madame Gorza, the Minister of Internal Affairs for the Republic, Milo Yoreska, issued a press release about the escape. Yoreska was top man in the government, chairman of the Party Presidium and the real head of everything. Radovič, the elected president, was a tame sheep they kept in office because he was a revolutionary hero, had once been a genuine democrat and still commanded strong popular support even though he was so old and broken that he spoke the speeches they put in his mouth without argument, swinging his own support behind the Party and Yoreska. Under Yoreska, Chief of Security Bulič and his
rokos
saw to it that any active opposition to Radovič’s regime – Yoreska’s, that is – was kept under control. But neither Bulič nor his
rokos
nor Radovič’s personal popularity nor Yoreska’s propaganda could effectively combat the passive resistance to farm collectivization and other basic Party reforms that was organized and directed by the leaders of the outlawed Peasant Party, the most important of whom was a religious fanatic named Anton Djakovo, a man with a price on his head who managed to keep out of the hands of Security because he had even more popular support among the peasants thanRadovič. Yoreska’s press release was a calculated attempt to turn Gorza’s escape into a weapon to attack the Peasant Party leader. After calling Gorza an insane liar, a criminal fugitive, a saboteur, and a paid lackey of certain unnamed Western powers that were not above stabbing the Republic in the back in spite of the Republic’s freely offered hand of international friendship, he ended up by stating flatly thatBulič’s Security police had gathered clear and incontrovertible evidence proving that Gorza’s escape had been arranged by Anton Djakovo, another insane, lying, criminal saboteur in the pay of certain unnamed Western powers. Djakovo would be tried for his crimes and executed as soon as he could be laid by the heels.

Oliver sent the release through verbatim, as Cora and the others did. They had no choice. But he filed at the same time a biographical sketch on Djakovo, pointing out that Djakovo was the Moslem equivalent of a Mahatma Gandhi, absolutely opposed to violence of any kind and so bound by his peculiar religious fanaticism that he wouldn’t even kill an animal for food but lived on milk, eggs, and honey. There was no apparent connection between the two stories. Anyone reading them could draw his own comparisons between a man like Djakovo and the cold-blooded murderer of two border guards. Most people saw the inference, including Minister of Internal Affairs Yoreska.

They kicked Oliver non-stop as far as Vienna. I met him there, going in to replace him. My six months holiday was up. I was told, not asked, to take the post. I had to see Oliver to find out what pipelines he had established inside, and what I should take with me, and other things.

When I talked to him he was eating his fifth meal of the day. He had been out for seventy-two hours, but he was still catching up on his diet. Food was scarce in the Republic, poor and high-priced. So were razor blades, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shoes, clothes, and a number of other things. I would have to carry a supply of all of these, as well as any luxury items I was fond of, such as coffee, sugar, and reading material. Cigarettes and
slivovič
were available at high prices on the open market, nothing much else. He made it sound like Poland all over again.

“Matches are expensive,” he told me. “Better carry a lighter. Heinz says please bring him a new one, with plenty of flints. He uses
slivovič
for fuel, so you don’t have to worry about that. Léon wants coffee, if you have room to spare in your bags, and reading material, anything, in any language but Slavic. Graham says he will give you the name of the only decent restaurant in the Republic for a bottle of Scotch. Cora wants half a dozen pairs of nine-and-a-half nylons, extra long, and a couple of pink lipsticks. Neon-light color.”

I was writing it down. I said, “Extra long nylons? And pink lipsticks?” Cora was a small brunette who wore, as I remembered, bright scarlet lipstick.

“They’re not for her. She has a contact named Danitza, Yoreska’s official secretary and unofficial mistress. A big blonde dish. Nylons and lipstick are her price for tip-offs.”

“What about Cora herself? What does she need?”

“Nothing.” He chewed moodily for a while on a piece of bread he was using to sop up gravy. “Sleeping pills, maybe. If you could get her to take them.”

“Is she jumpy?”

“Like a flea. She doesn’t belong there, Jess. She’s as much out of place in a police state as I’d be on a ladies’ volley-ball team. It’s no place for a girl. For hardshells like you and me, O.K. But—”

“Have you ever suggested to Cora that she wasn’t as capable of doing her job as any man alive?”

“She’s a pighead, I know. But the wear and tear shows on her. She smokes too much, drinks too much. I was getting the jumps myself, and I’ve been through it before. It’s worse even than Czechoslovakia. The loudspeakers yammer at you from five in the morning until midnight. When they shut up at last and you have a chance to sleep, you worry about the story you’ve just filed, you worry about your contacts, you worry about knocks on the door, you worry about an overnight shift in the Party line that will trap you Inside before you hear about it, you worry about everything. Bulič’s
rokos
are watching you all the time. I tell you, Jess – and I know you were in Warsaw and Moscow, but I still say it – you never
saw
thugs like Bulič’s bully-boys. They scare you just to look at them. Apes! Gorillas! Sub-men!”

His voice rose higher with each word, then dropped again.

“That’s another thing with Cora. She worries like the rest of us, and she’s scared stiff of Bulič. Physically. She gets the shudders just to look at him. We brave males don’t mind admitting that he scares us, but she’s too proud to confess it to any of us. It might sound like feminine weakness. There isn’t another woman in the whole bloody country she can talk to, let her hair down with. She’s all bottled up in herself. If you have any influence with her, Jess, for God’s sake get her out of there!”

“Nobody has any influence with Cora. She makes up her own mind. But it must be pretty bad.”

“Wait until you’ve had a few months in the People’s Paradise, friend.”

“I mean the way you feel about her.”

He flushed, then grinned.

“Well, all right. Sure, I do. I asked her to name the date a couple of days before I left.”

“What did she say?”

“What she says to all the other candidates, I guess. She claims she wasn’t cut out to be a wife, only a reporter.” He made a face. “A girl like that. She patted my hand, though.”

“That’s encouraging. Tell me more about Bulič.”

“Bulič. Well, Bulič.” Oliver’s face sobered. “An ugly man, Jess. Ugly inside. Absolutely ruthless. The perfect man for his job. He’ll go after Yoreska one of these days, and I give him better than an even chance to come out on top of the heap. There isn’t a drop of softness in him anywhere, or weakness, or real loyalty to anything but himself. Only ambition and cruelty. He’s been a Party man all his life, but only because it served his ends, gave him the ladder he needed. Yoreska is relatively civilized alongside of Bulič. You may even like him. Bulič belongs in the jungle.”

“Why hasn’t he gone after Yoreska before?”

“Yoreska has the army, as well as the Party organization. All Bulič has is his Security thugs. So far.”

“I heard a rumor in Istanbul that the man who helped the Gorzas get out of the country was Bulič himself.”

Oliver laughed, without humor.

“Somebody had been hitting the hemp leaves if you did. The only way Bulič would help anyone out of the People’s Paradise is in a basket.”

“I didn’t think much of the rumor. Tell me one thing more, Jim. Was there any connection between your proposal to Cora, and the fact that you were fed up with the job, and the story you filed that any reporter as experienced as you are would realize was enough to get you thrown out?”

“None of your business. I’m through talking. But I’ll give you a final couple of tips.”

He held up two fingers. “First, cross Yoreska if you want to get out the way I did, but don’t cross Bulič. Keep yourrumors to yourself. When you land on
his
bad books, you’re cooked.
Kaput. Fini.
It’s his way of doing things. Second—”

He hesitated.

“It’s really a favor, Jess. If there’s any way you can do it, get Cora out of there. The ground is going to be torn up one of these days, when Bulič and Yoreska lock horns. I wouldn’t like to think of her there when it happens. Particularly if Bulič wins out.”

“Is he down on Cora?”

“He’s down on everybody. That’s the whole truth, Jess. He’s the only man I know of whose world is populated exclusively by enemies.”

I remember when he told me that I made some gesture to indicate I thought he was exaggerating. Half in a doze, reliving the conversation, I must have tried to repeat the gesture. I lost the grip on my legs and fell over sideways against one of the ewes, who blatted angrily and thumped me with her hoof. It brought me back to a realization of where I was. Sitting in a marketplace nodding with sleep and regretting past mistakes of judgment wasn’t helping us to escapeBulič’s world of enemies.

We had to move along soon. The sun was still high, but the trading was over. Most of the peasants were packing up to leave. We had to leave with them, in a crowd.

Cora had had several good hours of sleep. When a man driving a yoke of oxen came our way, going towards the fountain to water his animals for the home trip, I pulled her
yashmak
up to cover her mouth, then shook her arm.

She awoke immediately. Her eyes were blank and peaceful. She looked at me for a moment, unwinking, gathering her thoughts. When they had caught up with realities, she smiled, surprisingly.

“This will make a wonderful story when we write it, Jess.”

“If, as and when we write it.”

“Just when. I’m confident.”

“You’re fully awake, too, aren’t you? You know where you are?”

“Why must you be so pessimistic all the time?’ Her voice was soft. “We’ll get out of it. You’ll get us out of it. I knew it back there on the road, when we tumbled into the ditch and they passed us by. I haven’t really worried since, not even when we came through the archway. I went to sleep feeling safe just because you were here with me.”

I said, “I appreciate your confidence,” and began untying the wether’s cord from her ankle.

She irritated me, with her great-big-wonderful-you routine, as much as she had angered me before with her stubbornness. I resented having that calculated, high-voltage charm turned on me, as if she could buy from me some further effort for her protection and safety that I wasn’t already making for both of us. I resisted a temptation to tell her tocork it up and save it for Bulič.

The loudspeakers on the minarets picked up the chime of a bell striking three o’clock from Brotherhood and Unity Square in the capital, booming it across the nation to remind sixteen million people that they had their work quotas to fill before dark. Cora said, “How long did I sleep?”

“About three hours.”

“Jess! You should have wakened me.”

“There was no need for it. The market was bad. I sold one ewe and did some shopping.” I showed her my pack. “We’ve got blankets and socks and cigarettes. And food. You’d better eat something before we go.”

I gave her a piece of bread and a slab of the roast mutton.

Eating hungrily she said, “What are we going to do about them?”

She meant the goats, our increasingly dangerous cover.