Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (60 page)

Wheeler studied them closely and with evident interest, even fascination, and after a moment's silence, said:

'They're different. There's more hate in them.'

'In the Spanish ones?'

'Yes, if you look at ours and even those from the other countries, they were warning people above all of the danger and urging them to keep silent,

to maximize discretion and caution, but they didn't demonize the hidden enemy or stress the need to hunt him down, to pursue and destroy him. It's odd, they hardly condemn him at all. Perhaps because we were conscious that whenever possible, we were doing exactly the same thing, spying in Germany and in occupied Europe and were aware that in wartime, it's only to be expected (and so, propaganda apart, one can't really be too reproachful) that each side will do whatever

it can to win that war, with no limits, or only those demanded by public opinion, which doesn't, of course, mean that the limits we're told, officially, that governments won't cross are never crossed, only that they cross them furtively, in secret, without acknowledging the fact and even denying it, if that's what's required. But look at this: "Find him out and denounce him," and they depict the spy as a monster with elephantine powers of sight and hearing as well as smell, and they associate him with Italian fascism, and I'm not sure, but he may even be wearing a priest's biretta on his bald head, what do you think that is? Not to mention this other one: "Find and ruthlessly crush the Fifth Column" whose members are shown as a handful of plundering, bloodthirsty rats caught in the light of a torch, with the sole of a giant shoe about to flatten them and a spiked bludgeon about to batter them. The poster was obviously published by the Communist Party, which was dominated by Soviet Stalinists, and they called for both the enemy and the halfhearted to be mercilessly hunted down and unceremoniously killed, just as the Francoists on the other side did.

And look at this next one: they refer to the eavesdropper as "The beast": "The beast is listening. Watch what you say!" and the beast is wearing a crown on his head and a cross dangling from a necklace, which makes him look rather effeminate, don't you think? It's describing the ambushee, it's saying who he is and what he's like, it's pointing him out. The other posters, though,

the ones by the celebrated artist Renau with the eye and the ear and the one published by the Direccion General de Bellas Artes addressed to militiamen, are more like ours, less aggressive, more to do with defense and prevention, more neutral perhaps.

They are simply a warning against spies. The text of the latter could easily have appeared on one of the later British posters: "Don't give away any details about the situation at the front. Not to your comrades. Not to your brothers or sisters. Not to your girlfriends." Those wretched girlfriends again.

One tended to confide in them and they, in turn, confided in you, too much really, at a time when no one could trust anyone. It really is a most fascinating book, Jacobo, thank you so much for thinking of me and bringing it all the way from Spain, especially given that it weighs a ton.' He thought for a few seconds, then added: 'Yes, that hatred is very striking. Quite different. I'm not sure we experienced it in the same way here.'

'Perhaps in our War it was necessary to describe and characterize the spy like that,' I said, 'because they had fewer distinguishing marks and it was easier for them to pretend and to hide. Don't forget, for example, that we all spoke the same language, not like here, where you were fighting the Nazis.'

Wheeler shot me one of those occasional looks of fleeting annoyance and displeasure—those mineral eyes, like two marbles almost violet in color, or like amethysts or chalcedony or, when narrowed, like the seeds of pomegranates—that made you feel you had said something stupid. That was when he most resembled Toby Rylands.

'I can assure you that most of those who spied here could speak English as well as you or I. In fact, probably better than you.

They were Germans who had lived here since they were children, or who had an English father or mother. Some were renegade purebred Englishmen, and there was quite a large number of fanatical Irishmen too. It was the same with those who spied for us in Germany or Austria. They all spoke excellent German.