“Has he no connections in Moscow?”
“None. Listen, Comrade Jordan. Do you know about the two kinds of fools?”
“Plain and damn?”
“No. The two kinds of fools we have in Russia,” Karkov grinned and began. “First there is the winter fool. The winter fool comes to the door of your house and he knocks loudly. You go to the door and you see him there and you have never seen him before. He is an impressive sight. He is a very big man and he has on high boots and a fur coat and a fur hat and he is all covered with snow. First he stamps his boots and snow falls from them.
Then he takes off his fur coat and shakes it and more snow falls. Then he takes off his fur hat and knocks it against the door. More snow falls from his fur hat. Then he stamps his boots again and advances into the room. Then you look at him and you see he is a fool. That is the winter fool.
“Now in the summer you see a fool going down the street and he is waving his arms and jerking his head from side to side and everybody from two hundred yards away can tell he is a fool. That is a summer fool. This economist is a winter fool.”
“But why do people trust him here?” Robert Jordan asked.
“His face,” Karkov said. “His beautiful ‘gueule de conspirateur’. And his invaluable trick of just having come from somewhere else where he is very trusted and important. Of course,” he smiled, “he must travel very much to keep the trick working. You know the Spanish are very strange,” Karkov went on. “This government has had much money. Much gold. They will give nothing to their friends. You are a friend. All right. You will do it for nothing and should not be rewarded. But to people representing an important firm or a country which is not friendly but must be influenced—to such people they give much. It is very interesting when you follow it closely.”
“I do not like it. Also that money belongs to the Spanish workers.”
“You are not supposed to like things. Only to understand,” Karkov had told him. “I teach you a little each time I see you and eventually you will acquire an education. It would be very interesting for a professor to be educated.”
“I don’t know whether I’ll be able to be a professor when I get back. They will probably run me out as a Red.”
“Well, perhaps you will be able to come to the Soviet Union and continue your studies there. That might be the best thing for you to do.”
“But Spanish is my field.”
“There are many countries where Spanish is spoken,” Karkov had said. “They cannot all be as difficult to do anything with as Spain is. Then you must remember that you have not been a professor now for almost nine months. In nine months you may have learned a new trade. How much dialectics have you read?”
“I have read the Handbook of Marxism that Emil Burns edited. That is all.”
“If you have read it all that is quite a little. There are fifteen hundred pages and you could spend some time on each page. But there are some other things you should read.”
“There is no time to read now.”
“I know,” Karkov had said. “I mean eventually. There are many things to read which will make you understand some of these things that happen. But out of this will come a book which is very necessary; which will explain many things which it is necessary to know. Perhaps I will write it. I hope that it will be me who will write it.”
“I don’t know who could write it better.”
“Do not flatter,” Karkov had said. “I am a journalist. But like all journalists I wish to write literature. Just now, I am very busy on a study of Calvo Sotelo. He was a very good fascist; a true Spanish fascist. Franco and these other people are not. I have been studying all of Sotelo’s writing and speeches. He was very intelligent and it was very intelligent that he was killed.”
“I thought that you did not believe in political assassination.”
“It is practised very extensively,” Karkov said. “Very, very extensively.”
“But—”
“We do not believe in acts of terrorism by individuals,” Karkov had smiled. “Not of course by criminal terrorist and counterrevolutionary organizations. We detest with horror the duplicity and villainy of the murderous hyenas of Bukharinite wreckers and such dregs of humanity as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and their henchmen. We hate and loathe these veritable fiends,” he smiled again. “But I still believe that political assassination can be said to be practised very extensively.”
“You mean—”
“I mean nothing. But certainly we execute and destroy such veritable fiends and dregs of humanity and the treacherous dogs of generals and the revolting spectacle of admirals unfaithful to their trust. These are destroyed. They are not assassinated. You see the difference?”
“I see,” Robert Jordan had said.
“And because I make jokes sometime: and you know how dangerous it is to make jokes even in joke? Good. Because I make jokes, do not think that the Spanish people will not live to regret that they have not shot certain generals that even now hold commands. I do not like the shootings, you understand.”
“I don’t mind them,” Robert Jordan said. “I do not like them but I do not mind them any more.”
“I know that,” Karkov had said. “I have been told that.”
“Is it important?” Robert Jordan said. “I was only trying to be truthful about it.”
“It is regretful,” Karkov had said. “But it is one of the things that makes people be treated as reliable who would ordinarily have to spend much more time before attaining that category.”
“Am I supposed to be reliable?”
“In your work you are supposed to be very reliable. I must talk to you sometime to see how you are in your mind. It is regrettable that we never speak seriously.”
“My mind is in suspension until we win the war,” Robert Jordan had said.
“Then perhaps you will not need it for a long time. But you should be careful to exercise it a little.”
“I read ‘Mundo Obrero’,” Robert Jordan had told him and Karkov had said, “All right. Good. I can take a joke too. But there are very intelligent things in ‘Mundo Obrero’. The only intelligent things written on this war.”
“Yes,” Robert Jordan had said. “I agree with you. But to get a full picture of what is happening you cannot read only the party organ.”
“No,” Karkov had said. “But you will not find any such picture if you read twenty papers and then, if you had it, I do not know what you would do with it. I have such a picture almost constantly and what I do is try to forget it.”
“You think it is that bad?”
“It is better now than it was. We are getting rid of some of the worst. But it is very rotten. We are building a huge army now and some of the elements, those of Modesto, of El Campesino, of Lister and of Durán, are reliable. They are more than reliable. They are magnificent. You will see that. Also we still have the Brigades although their role is changing. But an army that is made up of good and bad elements cannot win a war.
All must be brought to a certain level of political development; all must know why they are fighting, and its importance. All must believe in the fight they are to make and all must accept discipline. We are making a huge conscript army without the time to implant the discipline that a conscript army must have, to behave properly under fire. We call it a people’s army but it will not have the assets of a true people’s army and it will not have the iron discipline that a conscript army needs. You will see. It is a very dangerous procedure.”
“You are not very cheerful today.”
“No,” Karkov had said. “I have just come back from Valencia where I have seen many people. No one comes back very cheerful from Valencia. In Madrid you feel good and clean and with no possibility of anything but winning. Valencia is something else. The cowards who fled from Madrid still govern there. They have settled happily into the sloth and bureaucracy of governing. They have only contempt for those of Madrid. Their obsession now is the weakening of the commissariat for war. And Barcelona. You should see Barcelona.”
“How is it?”
“It is all still comic opera. First it was the paradise of the crackpots and the romantic revolutionists. Now it is the paradise of the fake soldier. The soldiers who like to wear uniforms, who like to strut and swagger and wear red-and-black scarves. Who like everything about war except to fight. Valencia makes you sick and Barcelona makes you laugh.”
“What about the P.O.U.M. putsch?”
“The P.O.U.M. was never serious. It was a heresy of crackpots and wild men and it was really just an infantilism. There were some honest misguided people. There was one fairly good brain and there was a little fascist money. Not much. The poor P.O.U.M. They were very silly people.”
“But were many killed in the putsch?”
“Not so many as were shot afterwards or will be shot. The P.O.U.M. It is like the name. Not serious. They should have called it the M.U.M.P.S. or the M.E.A.S.L.E.S. But no. The Measles
