Tomb for Boris Davidovich

The Sow That Eats Her Farrow

THE LAND OF ETERNITY

The first act of the tragedy, or comedy (in the scholastic sense of the word), whose main character is a certain Gould Verschoyle, begins as all earthly tragedies do: with birth. The rejected positivist formula of milieu and race can be applied to human beings to the same degree as to Flemish art. Thus the first act of the tragedy begins in Ireland, “the ultima Thule, the land on the other side of knowledge", as one of Dedalus's doubles calls it; in Ireland, "the land of sadness, hunger, despair, and violence", according to another explorer, who is less inclined to myth and more to laborious earthy prose. However, in him too a certain lyrical quality is not in harmony with the cruelty of the region:“The ultimate step of the sunset, Ireland is the last land to see the fading of the day. Night has already fallen on Europe while the slanting rays of the sun still purple the fjords and wastelands in the West. But let the dark clouds form, let a star fall, and suddenly the island again becomes as in a legend, that distant place covered with fog and darkness, which for so long marked the boundary of the known world to navigators. And on the other side is a break: the dark sea in which the dead once found their land of eternity. Their black ships on shores with strange names testify to a time when travel had something metaphysical about it: they summon up dreams without shores, without return "

THE ECCENTRICS

Dublin is a city that breeds a menagerie of eccentrics, the most notorious in the whole Western world: nobly disappointed, aggressive bohemians, professors in redingotes, superfluous prostitutes, infamous drunkards, tattered prophets, fanatical revolutionaries, sick nationalists, flaming anarchists, widows decked out in combs and jewelry, hooded priests. All day long this carnivalesque cohort parades along the Liffey. In the absence of more reliable sources, Bourniquel's picture of Dublin enables us to get a sense of the experience Gould Verschoyle would inevitably take with him from the island, an experience that is drawn into the soul just as the terrible stench of fish meal from the cannery near the harbor is drawn into the lungs.

With a certain rash anticipation, we would be inclined to view this carnivalesque cohort as the last image our hero would see in a rapid succession of images: the noble menagerie of Irish eccentrics (to which, in some ways, he also belonged) descending along the Liffey all the way down to the anchorage, and disappearing as if into hell.

THE BLACK MARSH

Gould Verschoyle was born in one such suburb of Dublin within reach of the harbor, where he listened to ships' whistles, that piercing howl which tells the righteous young heart that there ate worlds and nations outside “Dubh-linn,” this black marsh in which the stench and injustice are mote heavily oppressive than anywhere else. Following the example of his father-who rose from bribe-taking customs official to even more wretched (in the moral sense) bureaucrat, and from passionate Pamellite to bootlicker and puritan-Gould Verschoyle acquired a revulsion for his native land, which is only one of the guises of perverted and masochistic patriotism. "The cracked looking glass of a servant, the sow that cats her farrow”-at nineteen Verschoyle wrote this cruel sentence, which referred more to Ireland than to his parents.

Wearied by the vain prattle in dark pubs where conspiracies and assassinations were plotted by phony priests, poets, and traitors, Gould Verschoyle wrote in his journal the sentence spoken by a certain tall nearsighted student, without foreseeing the tragic consequence that these words would have; "Anyone with any self-respect cannot bear to remain in Ireland and must go into exile, fleeing the country struck by the wrathful hand of Jupiter".

This was written in the entry for May 19, 1935.

In August of the same year he boarded a merchant ship, the Ringsend, which was sailing for Morocco. After a three — day stopover in Marseilles, the Ringsend sailed without one of its crew; or, to be exact, the place of the radio operator Verschoyle was filled by a newcomer. In February 1936 we find Gould Verschoyle near Guadalajara in the 15th Anglo-American Brigade bearing the name of the legendary Lincoln. Verschoyle was then twenty-eight years old.

FADED PHOTOGRAPHS

Here the reliability of the documents, resembling, as they do, palimpsests, is suspended for a moment. The life of Gould Verschoyle blends and merges with the life and death of the young Spanish Republic, We have only two snapshots. One, with an unknown soldier next to the ruins of a shrine. On the back, in Verschoyle's handwriting: ''Alcazar. Viva la Republics'’ His high forehead is half covered by a Basque beret, a smile hovers around his lips, on which one can read (from today's perspective) the triumph of the victor and the bitterness of the defeated: the paradoxical reflections that, like a line on the forehead, foreshadow inevitable death. Also, a group snapshot with the date November 5, 1936. The picture is blurred. Verschoyle is in the second row, still with a Basque beret pulled over his forehead. In front of the lined-up group a landscape stretches out, and it would not be hard to believe that we are in a cemetery. Is this the Honor Guard that fired salvos into the sky or into living flesh? The face of Gould Verschoyle jealously guards this secret. Over the rows of soldiers' heads, in the distant blue an airplane hovers like a crucifix.

CAUTIOUS SPECULATIONS

I see Verschoyle retreating from Malaga on foot, in the leather coat he took from a dead Falangist (under the coat there was only the thin, naked body and a silver cross on a leather string); I see him charging toward a bayonet, carried along by his own war cry as if by the wings of the exterminating angel; I see him in a shouting contest with Anarchists, whose black flag is raised on the bare bills near Guadalajara, and who are ready to die a noble, senseless death; I see him under the red-hot sky by a cemetery near Bilbao, listening to lectures in which, as at the Creation, life and death, heaven and earth, freedom and tyranny are fixed within boundaries; I see him discharging a clip of bullets into the air at planes, impotent, felled right afterward by fire, earth, and shrapnel; I see him shaking the dead body of the student Armand Joffroy, who died in his arms somewhere near Santander; I see him, his head wrapped in filthy bandages, lying in an improvised hospital near Gijon, listening to the ravings of the wounded, one of whom is calling on God in Irish; I see him talking with a young nurse who lulls him со sleep like a child, singing in a tongue unknown to him, and later he, half asleep and full of morphine, sees her climbing into the bed of a Pole who has had a leg amputated, and soon thereafter he hears, as in a nightmare, her aching love rattle; I see him somewhere in Catalonia, at the improvised battalion headquarters, sitting in front of the telegraph, repeating desperate calls for help while a radio in the nearby cemetery plays the gay and suicidal songs of the Anarchists; I see him suffering from conjunctivitis and diarrhea, and I see him naked to the waist, shaving by a well of poisoned water.

BETWEEN ACTS

In late May 1937, somewhere in the suburbs of Barcelona, Verschoyle requested to see the battalion commander. The commander, just past forty, looked like a well-preserved old man. Bent over his desk, he was signing death sentences. His aide, buttoned up to his neck and wearing shiny hunting boots, stood beside him and was pressing a blotter after each signature. The room was stuffy. The commander wiped his face with a batiste handkerchief. Rhythmical explosions of heavy-caliber grenades were heard in the distance. The commander motioned to Verschoyle to speak. "Coded messages are getting into the wrong hands", said Verschoyle. "Whose?*' asked the commander somewhat absentmindedly. The Irishman hesitated, suspiciously glandng at the aide. The commander then adopted die vocabulary of Verdun: “Speak up, son. Into whose hands?” The Irishman was silent for a moment, then bent over the desk and whispered something into the commander’s ear. The commander rose, approached Verschoyle, and accompanied him to the door, all the while parting him on the shoulder the waу recruits and dreamers are patted. That was all.

A CALL FOR TRAVEL

Verschoyle spent the hellish night between May 31 and June 1 in front of the Morse telegraph, sending stem messages to the forward positions over toward the mountains of Almeria. The night was muggy and illuminated by rockets, which made the region look unreal. Just before dawn Verschoyle handed the telegraph over to a young Basque. The Irishman walked ten paces into the woods and, exhausted, lay face down on the damp grass.

He was awakened by a messenger from headquarters, Verschoyle first glanced at the sky, then at his watch; he hadn't slept more than forty minutes. The messenger gave him an order in a tone unbefitting his tank: there was a ship in the harbor whose radio didn't work-it must be repaired; when the job was finished, a report should be submitted to the second-in-command; Viva la Republic! Vetschoyle rushed into the tent, picked up the leather bag with his tools, and set off with the messenger to the harbor. During the night, someone had written a victorious slogan with white paint, still dripping, on the door of the customhouse: viva la muerte, On the open sea far from the dock, a silhouette of a ship was outlined through the morning fog. The messenger and the sailors in the rowboat exchanged unnecessary passwords. Verschoyle got into the rowboat without looking back.

THE BRASS-PLATED DOOR

Charred timbers floated everywhere, remnants of a ship torpedoed during the night, Verschoyle watched the ashen sea, and this reminded him of scorned and scornworthy Ireland. (Even so, we cannot believe that there wasn’t a touch of nostalgia in this scorn.) His traveling companions were silent, busy with their heavy oars. Soon they approached the ship, and Verschoyle noticed that they were being watched from the upper deck; the helmsman had handed a pair of binoculars to the captain.

Here follow some technical details, perhaps unimportant to the story. The ship was an old wooden steamer of some five hundred tons which was officially transporting anthracite to the French dry of Rouen. Its brass parts- handholds, bolts, locks, and window frames-were almost green with tarnish, and the ship’s flag, covered with coal soot, could hardly be identified.

Verschoyle climbed the ship’s slippery rope ladder, accompanied by the two sailors from the rowboat (one of whom had relieved him of his leather bag, so the guest could climb more easily), There was no one on deck. The two sailors took him to a cabin below. The cabin was empty, and the door was plated with that same tarnished brass, Verschoyle heard the turning of the key in the lock. At the same time he realised-mote in rage than terror-that be had fallen into a trap, naively, like a fool.

The journey lasted eight days. Verschoyle spent these eight days and nights below deck, in a narrow cabin by the engine room, where the deafening noise of engines crushed the current of his thought and his sleep like a millstone. In a strange reconciliation with his fate (very deceptive, as shall be seen), he didn't bang on the door, he didn't call for help. It seemed he didn't even think of escape, which in any case was useless. In the morning he would wash himself over the tin basin, then glance at the food (herring, salmon, black bread, which they gave him three times a day through the round opening in the door), and without touching anything but water, lie down again on the hard sailor’s bunk. He would stare through the porthole at the monotonous waves of the open sea. On the third day Verschoyle awoke from a nightmare: on the narrow bench across from his bunk, two men sat silently watching him. Verschoyle abruptly stood up.

THE TRAVELING COMPANIONS

Blue-eyed, with healthy white teeth, the visitors smiled at Verschoyle amicably. With an unnatural politeness (unnatural for the time and place), they also rose at once, and introduced themselves, slightly nodding their heads. To Verschoyle, who introduced himself, the syllables of his own name suddenly sounded strange and altogether alien.

The next five days the three men spent in the hot, narrow cabin behind the brass-plated door in a terrible game of chance, resembling three-handed poker in which the loser pays with his life. Interrupting the discussion only to gobble a piece of dried herring (the fourth day Verschoyle also began to eat) or to refresh their dry throats and take a breather from their shouting (and then the deafening noise of the engines would become only the reverse of silence), the three men spoke of justice, of freedom, of the proletariat, of the goals of the Revolution, vehemently trying to prove their beliefs, as if they had purposely chosen this semidark cabin of a ship on international waters as the only possible objective and neutral terrain for this terrible game of argument, passion, persuasion, and fanaticism. With rolled-up sleeves, unshaven and sweaty, worn out from near fasting, they stopped the discussion completely only once: on the fifth day, the two visitors (besides their names, all that was known was that they were about twenty years old and not members of the crew) left Verschoyle alone for several hours. During that time, through the deafening noise of the engines, the Irishman heard the sound of a familiar foxtrot coming from the deck. Before midnight the music suddenly died, and the visitors returned, tipsy. They told Verschoyle that there was a celebration on board: a cablegram received that afternoon by the radioman had told them that their ship, the Vitebsk, had changed its name to Ordzhonikidze. They offered him some vodka. He refused, fearing poison. The young men understood and finished the vodka, laughing at the Irishman's distrust.

The sudden and unexpected halt of the engine noise abruptly interrupted the conversation in the cabin, as if that deadly rhythm was the ritual accompaniment which until then had given impetus and inspiration to their thoughts and arguments. Now they were silent, totally mute, listening to the waves splashing at the sides of the ship, to the thud of footsteps on deck, and the prolonged scraping of heavy chains. It was after midnight when the door of the cabin was unlocked, and the three men left their quartets strewn with cigarette butts and fishbones.

THE HANDCUFFS

The Vitebsk-Ordzhonikidze dropped anchor in the open sea nine miles from Leningrad. From the cluster of distant lights on the shore, one soon separated, and grew larger, while the wind, like an advance guard, brought the noise of the boat that was approaching the ship. Three men in uniform, one with the rank of captain and the other two without insignia, approached Verschoyle and aimed their guns at him, Verschoyle put his hands up. They searched him, then tied a rope around his waist. Verschoyle compliantly went down the rope ladder and into the motorboat, where they handcuffed him to the seat. He watched the ghostly silhouette of the ship illuminated by searchlights. He saw his two companions also coming down the ladder with ropes tied around their waists. Soon all three sat side by side, handcuffed to the seat.

THE JUST SENTENCE

The true outcome of the six-day battle of words and arguments waged by the Irishman Gould Verschoyle and his two traveling companions will probably remain a secret to the contemporary researcher. It will also remain a psychological secret, and legally a most interesting one, whether it is possible for a man cornered by fear and despair to so sharpen his arguments and experience that he is able-without external pressure, without the use of force and torture-to throw into doubt all that has been developed through many years of upbringing, lectures, habit, and training in the consciousness of two ocher men, Then, perhaps, the decision of the high tribunal, which, according to some loftier justice, had pronounced the same stem sentence (eight years of imprisonment) on each of the three participants in that long game of persuasion, might not seem entirely arbitrary. For even if it is believed that the two men succeeded, through dense and exhausting ideological polemics, in dispelling certain suspicions that had appeared in the head of the Republican Verschoyle (suspicions with possible far-reaching consequences), there was a perfectly justified suspicion that the other two had also felt the fatal influence of certain counterarguments: in the merciless battle of equal opponents, as in a bloody cockfight, no one comes out unharmed, regardless of which one walks away with the empty glory of victory.[2]

FINALE

We lose track of Verschoyle’s two companions in Murmansk, on the banks of the Baltic Sea, where for a time during the terrible winter of 1942 they lay in the same section of the prison camp's outpatient ward, half blind and wasted with scurvy: all their teeth had fallen out, and they looked like old men.

Gould Verschoyle was murdered in November 1945, in Karaganda, after an unsuccessful attempt to escape. His frozen, naked corpse, bound with wire and hung upside down, was displayed in front of the camp’s entrance as a warning to all those who dream of the impossible.

POSTSCRIPT

In the commemorative volume Ireland to Spain, published by the Federation of Dublin Veterans, the name of Gould Verschoyle is mistakenly entered among some one hundred Irish Republicans slain in the battle of Brunete. Thus Verschoyle enjoyed the bitter glory of being pronounced dead some eight years before his actual death. The famous battle of Brunete, waged bravely by the Lincoln Battalion, took place the night of July 8–9, 1938.