Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

‘I do not consider your attitude is correct, Sir Walter.’

‘Come off it, man, who do you take us for?’

This was unlike the stately protocol of a meeting chaired by Hector Rose.

Francis Getliffe coughed, and with his curious relic of diffidence said to Mounteney: ‘I think perhaps I ought to have a word.’

Mounteney nodded.

‘Dr Brodzinski,’ said Francis, looking down the table, ‘if you hadn’t come here today I was going to ask you to call on me.’

Francis was speaking quietly, without Mounteney’s bleakness or Walter Luke’s roughneck scorn. He had to make an effort, while they could quarrel by the light of nature. Nevertheless, it was Francis whom we all listened to, Brodzinski most of all.

Brodzinski, although nobody had thought, or perhaps wished, to invite him (since the normal courtesies had failed) to sit down, had found himself a chair. He sat in it, squarely, heavy as a mountain and as impervious.

‘It’s time you heard something about your behaviour. It’s got to be made clear to you. I was going to do that. I had better do it now. You must realize there are two things your scientific colleagues hold against you. The first is the way you have behaved to some of us. This is not important in the long run: but it is enough to make us prefer not to have any personal dealings with you. You have made charges about us in public and, as I believe, more charges in private, that we could only meet by legal action. You have taken advantage of the fact that we are not willing to take legal action against a fellow scientist. You have said that we are dishonest. You have said that we have perverted the truth. You have said that we are disloyal to our country.’

‘I have been misrepresented, of course,’ said Brodzinski.

‘Not in the least.’

‘I have always given you credit for good intentions, Sir Francis,’ said Brodzinski. ‘I do not expect the same from you.’

His expression was pure, persecuted, and brave. It was the courage of one who even now, believed in his locked-in self that they would see how right he was. He felt no conflict, no regret nor remorse, just the certainty that he was right. At the same time, he wanted pity because he was being persecuted. He was crying out for pity. The more they saw he was right, the more they would persecute him.

Suddenly a thought came to me. I hadn’t understood why, the previous summer, he had given up attempting to see Roger: as though he had switched from faith to enmity. It must have been the day the offer of his decoration arrived. He had accepted the decoration — but he could have felt, I was sure he could have felt, that it was another oblique piece of persecution, a token that he was not so high as the Getliffes of the world, a sign of dismissal.

‘I had to make some criticisms,’ he said. ‘Because you were dangerous. I gave you the credit for not realizing how dangerous you were, but, of course, I had to make some criticisms. You can see that, Dr Rubin.’

He turned with an open, hopeful face to David Rubin, who was scribbling on a sheet of paper. Rubin raised his head slowly and gazed at Brodzinski with opaque eyes.

‘What you did,’ he said, ‘was not admissible.’

‘I did not expect any more from you, Dr Rubin.’ This answer was so harsh and passionate that it left us mystified. Rubin believed that Brodzinski had remembered that he was a Gentile talking to a Jew.

‘You said we were dangerous,’ Francis Getliffe went on. ‘I’ve finished now with your slanders on us. They only count because they’re involved in the other damage you’ve done. That is the second thing you must hear about. It is the opinion of most of us that you’ve done great damage to decent people everywhere. If we are going to use the word dangerous, you are at present one of the most dangerous men in the world. And you’ve done the damage by distorting science. It is possible to have different views on the nuclear situation. It is not possible, without lying or irresponsibility or something worse, to say the things you have said. You’ve encouraged people to believe that the United States and England can destroy Russia without too much loss. Most of us would regard that suggestion as wicked, even if it were true. But we all know that it is not true, and, for as long as we can foresee, it never will be true.’

‘That is why you are dangerous,’ said Brodzinski. ‘That is why I have to expose myself. You think you are people of good will. You are doing great harm, in everything you do. You are even doing great harm, in little meetings like this. That is why I have come where I am not welcome. You think you can come to terms with the Russians. You never will. The only realistic thing for all of us is to make the weapons as fast as we know how.’

‘You are prepared to think of war?’ said Arthur Mounteney.

‘Of course I am prepared to think of war. So is any realistic man,’ Brodzinski replied. ‘If there has to be a war, then we must win it. We can keep enough people alive. We shall soon pick-up. Human beings are very strong.’

‘And that is what you hope for?’ said Francis, in a dead, cold tone.

‘That is what will happen.’

‘You can tolerate the thought of three hundred million deaths?’

‘I can tolerate anything which will happen.’

Brodzinski went on, his eyes lit up, once more pure: ‘You will not see, there are worse things which might happen.’

‘I have to assume that you are responsible for your actions,’ said Francis. ‘If that is so, I had better tell you straight away I cannot sit in the same room with you.’

Faces, closed to expression, looked down the table at Brodzinski. There was a silence. He sat squarely in his chair and said: ‘I believe I am here by invitation, Mr Chairman.’

‘It would save trouble if you left,’ said Arthur Mounteney.

With exaggerated reasonableness, Brodzinski said: ‘But I can produce my invitation, Mr Chairman.’

‘In that case, I shall adjourn the meeting. And call another to which you are not invited.’

Later, that seemed to Rubin a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon propriety.

Brodzinski stood up, massive, stiff.

‘Mr Chairman,’ he said, ‘I am sorry that my colleagues have seen fit to treat me in this fashion. But I expected it.’

His dignity was absolute. With the same dignity, he went, soft-footed, strong-muscled, out of the room.

A few hours later, in David Rubin’s bedroom, he and I were having a snack before we went on to Roger’s house. The room was modest, in a cheap, genteel Kensington hotel: the snack was modest too. Rubin had the entrée to Heads of State, but, despite the Tailor and Cutter elegance of his clothes, he lived more simply than an Embassy clerk. He was a poor man, he had never earned money, apart from his academic salary and his prizes.

He sat without complaint in the cold bedroom, nibbling a stale sandwich, sipping at a weak and un-iced whisky. He talked about his son at Harvard, and his mother who would scarcely have known what Harvard was, who had not spoken English in the home, and who had been ambitious for David — just as rapaciously as my mother for me. He spoke a little sadly. Everything had come off for him, spectacular achievement, happy marriage, the love of children. He was one of the men most venerated in the world. Yet there were times when he seemed to look back to his childhood, shrug his shoulders and think that he had expected more.

We had each been talking without reserve, like passengers at sea. He sat there, in elegant suit, silk shirt, hand-made shoes, shook his head, and looked at me with sad, kind eyes. It occurred to me that he had not given me a clue, not so much as a hint, why he was so insistent on talking to Roger that night.