Read Online Young Philby by Robert Littell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert Littell
Tags: Biographical, Fiction, Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, International Mystery & Crime
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which are crashing down around their heads.”
Shaking his head crossly, Kim murmured, “ Lacrimae rerum gets it wrong—these are tears for events, not things.”
After an eternity the cellars and the tunnels gave way to stingingly icy air, to a night sky brimming with stars, to alleyways filled with cartons of shoes, some of them with limbs attached, to narrow streets rank with cordite, to checkpoints manned by nervous soldiers who aimed rifles and flashlights at us as my Englishman frantically waved his passport. A British citizen and his girlfriend caught up in a war, let us through, for God’s sake . My apartment. The dull but not unpleasant thud of artillery shells exploding across town—it reminded me of the dry thunder over my grandfather’s estate that brought no rain. I remember my Englishman gazing out the window at the low clouds on the horizon tinted bloodred by fires burning out of control beneath them. He was drinking schnapps straight from the bottle when he turned his back on the fires and told me, out of the blue, that he’d once been b-b-b-b-b-buggered by a schoolmate.
What did that have to do with the thugs running riot in the workers’ tenements across the city?
* * *
Kim forbade me to leave the apartment—the streets were crawling with Heimwehr patrols hunting down Socialists and Communists. He himself went outside two, sometimes three times a day. I could see him from my window, hunched over the handlebars of his motorcycle, waving his British passport to get past checkpoints or patrols. He had given himself a mission—scrounging old but serviceable overcoats and suits and ties from the journalist Gedye and the artist Spender and their English friends, delivering the clothing to the Schutzbund comrades trapped in cellars and sewers, many of them wounded; their only hope of fleeing was if they could pass themselves off as civilians caught in the crossfire, and for this they needed clothes that weren’t battle worn and bloodstained.
After the three-day civil war, comrades, several of them with festering shrapnel wounds, all of them exhausted, made their way to my apartment. Some stayed only long enough to disinfect their wounds with alcohol, others (having no place else to go) camped. The Hungarian professor and three students occupied the spare room, two on the bed, two on the rug folded to make a mattress. Three young Communists who had crawled through sewers to escape the epicenter lived in the sitting room. Kim and I shared what food we had with the others as we clustered around the shortwave radio post trying to make sense of the BBC bulletins through the static. I translated the news into German for the comrades. According to the BBC, fifteen hundred had been killed and another five thousand had been wounded when Dollfuss crushed a Communist uprising in Vienna. (Some Communist uprising!) In what appeared to be a meticulously planned operation, Socialist and Communist leaders were being rounded up. Those who managed to avoid arrest were fleeing abroad. Opposition headquarters had been closed down. With the movement crushed, the workers’ militias collapsed in disarray. The BBC correspondent reported seeing women frantically digging up the gardens at the Engelhof when word spread that weapons were buried there. The workers’ tenements, long considered to be impregnable Socialist fortresses, had been occupied by the army and the government’s Heimwehr militia. Workers’ rest homes and holiday camps across Austria had been closed by the police. Terror gripped Vienna. Civilians caught with rifles or pistols were being shot out of hand.
In my apartment, we existed in a kind of suspended animation. Kim sat next to my phonograph, his head in his hands, listening to scratchy records of Beethoven sonatas, each of which, to the professor’s dismay, he could identify by its opus number. When we ran out of coal, we started breaking up furniture and burning bits of it in the stove.
Shaking his head crossly, Kim murmured, “ Lacrimae rerum gets it wrong—these are tears for events, not things.”
After an eternity the cellars and the tunnels gave way to stingingly icy air, to a night sky brimming with stars, to alleyways filled with cartons of shoes, some of them with limbs attached, to narrow streets rank with cordite, to checkpoints manned by nervous soldiers who aimed rifles and flashlights at us as my Englishman frantically waved his passport. A British citizen and his girlfriend caught up in a war, let us through, for God’s sake . My apartment. The dull but not unpleasant thud of artillery shells exploding across town—it reminded me of the dry thunder over my grandfather’s estate that brought no rain. I remember my Englishman gazing out the window at the low clouds on the horizon tinted bloodred by fires burning out of control beneath them. He was drinking schnapps straight from the bottle when he turned his back on the fires and told me, out of the blue, that he’d once been b-b-b-b-b-buggered by a schoolmate.
What did that have to do with the thugs running riot in the workers’ tenements across the city?
* * *
Kim forbade me to leave the apartment—the streets were crawling with Heimwehr patrols hunting down Socialists and Communists. He himself went outside two, sometimes three times a day. I could see him from my window, hunched over the handlebars of his motorcycle, waving his British passport to get past checkpoints or patrols. He had given himself a mission—scrounging old but serviceable overcoats and suits and ties from the journalist Gedye and the artist Spender and their English friends, delivering the clothing to the Schutzbund comrades trapped in cellars and sewers, many of them wounded; their only hope of fleeing was if they could pass themselves off as civilians caught in the crossfire, and for this they needed clothes that weren’t battle worn and bloodstained.
After the three-day civil war, comrades, several of them with festering shrapnel wounds, all of them exhausted, made their way to my apartment. Some stayed only long enough to disinfect their wounds with alcohol, others (having no place else to go) camped. The Hungarian professor and three students occupied the spare room, two on the bed, two on the rug folded to make a mattress. Three young Communists who had crawled through sewers to escape the epicenter lived in the sitting room. Kim and I shared what food we had with the others as we clustered around the shortwave radio post trying to make sense of the BBC bulletins through the static. I translated the news into German for the comrades. According to the BBC, fifteen hundred had been killed and another five thousand had been wounded when Dollfuss crushed a Communist uprising in Vienna. (Some Communist uprising!) In what appeared to be a meticulously planned operation, Socialist and Communist leaders were being rounded up. Those who managed to avoid arrest were fleeing abroad. Opposition headquarters had been closed down. With the movement crushed, the workers’ militias collapsed in disarray. The BBC correspondent reported seeing women frantically digging up the gardens at the Engelhof when word spread that weapons were buried there. The workers’ tenements, long considered to be impregnable Socialist fortresses, had been occupied by the army and the government’s Heimwehr militia. Workers’ rest homes and holiday camps across Austria had been closed by the police. Terror gripped Vienna. Civilians caught with rifles or pistols were being shot out of hand.
In my apartment, we existed in a kind of suspended animation. Kim sat next to my phonograph, his head in his hands, listening to scratchy records of Beethoven sonatas, each of which, to the professor’s dismay, he could identify by its opus number. When we ran out of coal, we started breaking up furniture and burning bits of it in the stove.
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