Stranger on the Square

...The remaining six chapters of Part II, written entirely by Cynthia Koestler, cover the period 1951-56 Thus, this volume is largely hers Cynthia Koestler was born in Pretoria in 1921 When she was 22, and living with her mother in Paris, she answered an ad in the Herald Tribune for a part-tune secretary, and thus came to work for Arthur Koestler She seems to have fallen In love with him almost immediately For the next six years she worked for Koestler on and off in France, England, and the United States In 1955 she became his permanent secretary, and in 1965 they were married To say that Cynthia Koestler was devoted to her husband would be an understatement Indeed, her selfeffacement is so extreme that it occasionally becomes off-putting Here is an example In Pans, In the middle of the night, I woke up to find Arthur wandering around lost m the hotel room, calhng the name of an old girlfriend I led hem back to bed, where he muttered to himself in French for a while I had often wondered whether he knew who was beside him at night, for sometimes an arm reached over to feel or he turned his head in the semi-darkness, as ff he wasn't sure I vaguely pondered the mystery Perhaps I should have felt jealous, but I only felt lucky to be shanng his hfe Such declarations of unconditional loyalty, repeated throughout the book, Incline one to think that the lady protesteth too much Yet given her manner of death, there can be no doubting her dedication and her love By all accounts, Koestler loved her in his own way in return Though Stranger on the Square ~s not nearly in the same league as Arrow m the Blue or The Invisible Writing, the second volume of Koestler's autobiography, it contmns much mterestmg information To begin with, there is the portrait of Koestler's life in postwar France It is often forgotten that in the aftermath of the Second World War, the French Communist party emerged as the strongest pohttcal force in the country It dominated the trade unions and the media, and the resistance groups tt controlled carried out a ruthless purge Yet it was at precisely this moment that Darkness at Noon9 P 9 Koestler's great expose of Stahnlsm, was published in French as Le Zero et l'Infimt~ Despite Communist attempts to suppress it, the book enjoyed a sensatlonal success, selling over a quarter of a mllhon copies Some have claimed that the novel played a major role in preventing France from going Communist Unable to suppress Koestler's book, the Communist and fellow-traveling press launched a vicious campaign of defamation against Koestler himself For example, the official party organ, LHumamte, printed a map o f Koestler's village, Fontaine-le-Port, with an arrow pointing at his home, explaining "This is the headquarters of the cold war This is where Chip Bohlen, the American Ambassador, trams his para-milttary Fascist mlhtm " The future Mrs Koestler, however, seems not to have been very pohtlcally minded, and was bhssfully unaware of the controversy surrounding her new employer when she became his temporary secretary She was therefore not alarmed when a "Rumanlan friend" of hers inquired whether Koestler carried a gun When she answered that he did not, the friend was surprised, and wanted to know whether an electric fence surrounded Koestler's house There was no fence, she replied, and the front gates were always open "But I did notice that when I came into his study after lunch to wake him from his short siesta, he always awoke with a start " Fortunately, the young Rumanian had nothing in common with the young Spaniard who befriended Trotsky's secretary, penetrated his Mexican 35 retreat, and spht h~s skull open w~th an ~ce p~ck Yet the atmosphere m France was sufficiently hostile for Koestler to leave the country and divide his time between England and the United States Another aspect of Koestler's hfe covered m Stranger on the Square is his practical philanthropy Many pohtlcal writers have limited their concerns to Humanity in the abstract, to the great issues of war and peace, Communism and anti-Communism, freedom and tyranny Koestler, however, was equally concerned with such comparatively mundane issues as refugee relief In the early 1950s, he launched an enterprise called Fund for Intellectual Freedom, and for about a year devoted half his working ume to it Its aim was to help refugee writers by prowdmg them with the tools of their trade---everything from typewriters and grants to translators and pubhshlng contacts THE AMERICAN SPEcTATOR JANUARY 1985 36 Most unportantly, the Fund subsid~ed ~mlgr~ magazines m Russmn, Pohsh, Rumanmn, and Hungarian Besides the work he put into ~t, Koestler donated all his royalties from the dramatized version of Darkness at Noon to the Fund Koestler was also revolved m a number of crusades, including a campaign to abohsh capital pumshment in England, and a slightly comic effort, m the early 1960s, to reform British animal quarantine regulations (Koestler was a great dog lover) Nothing, it seems, was beneath his attention--not even Pans brothels, whose closing by French authorities in 1946 he bitterly denounced in Arrow in the Blue Since the closing of the Houses, the rate of cnmmahty and venereal disease has of course been on the increase, and there are more prostitutes m Paris than ever before Most Pansmns privately agree that the reopening of the Houses would be a boon But none of the exlstentmhsts, postsurreahsts, defenders of the philosophy of the absurd, flayers of hypocrisy, anarchists and hbertmes, whose books describe every vlce in the alphabet w~th detached neutrahty or lmphcit approval, had the guts to speak h~s opmmn in pubhc on this matter of sooal hygtene Their excuse was that they would endanger their political reputations, or be accused of being m the pay of the brothelkeepers Which goes to show that the Left lntelhgentsia of our day have become as cowardly and hypocritical m their own way as the Babblts whom they despise...

...Though the Soviet Union did support the creation of Israel in 1948--Lemmsts would say that it "exploited the contradictions" between British and American " i m p e r i a l i s m " - - i t also arrested numerous Soviet Jews on charges of Zionism and support for Israel Zionism, in short, was always a term of abuse in Soviet parlance That Koestler was unaware of this seems mconceivable Thus, his assertmns to the contrary are quite puzzling Also puzzling is Koestler's dec~sion, taken in 1955, to give up political writing His farewell to politics is contained in the preface to The Trail of the Dinosaur "Now the errors are atoned for, the bitter passion has burnt itself out, Cassandra has gone hoarse, and is due for a vocational change" But though Stranger on the Square mentions Koestler's decision, ~t does not explain it One would have liked to ask Koestler why he turned his back on politics, and whether he found working on the fringes of various scientific disciplines a satisfactory alternative Most of all, one would have liked to ask him whether the text of the "invisible writing," which he believed constituted a "higher order of reality" than mere politics, became any clearer to him as the years advanced Since, however, we cannot put these questions to Koestler, let us be grateful to him for these final f,-1 autoblographlcal fragments...

...She had asked people from Ghana, now in chaos "You were rich the other day Now you are poor and your country is in a mess Doesn't this worry you~" And they had said, "Yesterday we were all right Today we are poor That's the way It is Tomorrow we may be all right again Or we may not That's the way it is " That was the way ~t was m the upper world The tuner world, the other world, continued whole And that was what mattered Nalpaul seems to have forgotten his own observation about Mobutu's Congolese bureaucrats, made in 1975 "This, for all their talk of authenticity and the ways of the ancestors, was their fear to be returned from the sweet corruptions of KInshasa to the older corruption of the bush, to be returned to Africa " The "night world" certainly didn't explain everything there and then In fact, Nalpaul scorned the way "Mobutlsm simplifies the world " But now he seems as open-mouthed and eager for simplification as Candlde I asked, "When does the world of the night begin 9'' Mr Nmngoran-Bouah said slowly and seriously, "As soon as the sun goes down " (Ask a stupid question ) Mr Joseph ShattantsPohcyandPrograms Nlangoran-Bouah is a teacher of Officer at the State Department's Drummologle at the umversity, the In- Bureau of Human Rights THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 ventor of his own d~sciphne and title His "cause" is proving that "true knowledge of the talking drum gave to Africa the old civilization which Europeans and colomahsts said didn't exist " Upon meeting him the reader is prepared for Mr Nmngoran-Bouah to be treated as a famlhar sort of academic charlatan But as his talk of the night world IS taken m by Nalpaul, satisfying the need for slmphficatlon, he gains an expedient stature "It was impresswe," Naipaul writes "I began to understand the richness of the material he had made his subject, and his passmn to present this materml adequately to Africans and the world " It is a bad sign when a writer assures readers of his good will, and that is what Naipaul seems to be doing here that his book had been misunderstood by some when it first appeared It wasn't a "gratuitous" wallow in "moral squalor" but a "perfectly genuine piece of work" whose ironies were intended to convey both scorn and pity Read The Secret Agent again and write me if you believe hun I never have No amount of protest can undo the extent to which the text behes the introduction Nalpaul's remarks about writing more in wonder than m anger are similarly undone by the rest of his text His credible dlsbehef has often been a bracing antidote to the unselfconfident West's sentimentalities about the developing world But he may have reached a point when it IS time for him to become skeptical of h~s own scorn, to make sure he has not become Indolently imprisoned by his own dlsIn a preface to The Secret Agent9 damful VlSmn Otherwise a severe, career-long polemic may turn into a [] Conrad--to whom Nmpaul has been, with some justice, compared--resisted STRANGER ON THE SQUARE Arthur and Cynttua Koestler/Random House/S16 95 Joseph Shattan ( I t seems to me that I have been more or less free of the fear of death-though not of the fear of the act of dying, with its painful and degrading pamphernaha As I grow older, this latter fear increases, hke the apprehensmn of a painful operation to which one submits only reluctantly--though one knows that it is for one's good " So wrote Arthur Koestler in the first volume of his autobiography, Arrow m the Blue, published m 1952 l On March 3, 1983 the bodies of Koestler and his wife Cynthia were found in the sitting room of their London home Each had taken a massive overdose of barbiturates Koestler was 77 years old, and, as he explained in his suicide note, had been suffering from Parkinson's disease and leukemm His wife was 55, and m perfect health Her reason for taking her own life was also contained in the suicide note "I cannot live without Arthur," she wrote, "despite certain inner resources " The manuscript of Stranger on the Square was found among the papers on 'Stem and Day, $19 95/$12 95 paper toothless party piece Koestler's desk It is divided into two parts Part I covers the years 1940-1951, and consists of six chapters, alternately written by Koestler and his wife...

...Needless to say, Koestler was also passionately revolved in the great issues of his time He helped organize the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an international gathering of writers, scholars, and soentlsts, whose founding meeting in Berlin (June 1950) colnoded with the outbreak of the Korean War Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, John Dewey, Karl Jaspers, Jacques Mantam, and Sidney Hook were among the Congress's distlngmshed patrons and participants The Berhn meeting issued a Freedom Manifesto, most of which Koestler drafted Among other things, the Manifesto declared, "We hold that the theory and practice of the totahtarmn state are the greatest challenge which man has been called upon to meet in the course of civilized history" For those who believe that the concept of "totahtarmmsm" was invented by the Reagan Administration to justify ~ts anti-Communist policies, the Freedom Mamfesto ought to be required reading During much of the period covered in Strangers on the Square, Koestler was one of the West's most effective antiCommunist polemicists One evening, when Richard Crossman was hls droner guest, the two of them came up with the Idea of preparing an anthology relating the experiences of prominent ex-Communlst intellectuals The result, of course, was The God that Faded, which contained contributions by Ignazm Sllone, Andr~ Glde, Richard Wright, Louis Fischer, Stephen Spender, and Koestler, and an lntroductmn by Crossman In that introduction, Crossman wrote, "We were not m the least interested in swellmg the flood of anti-Communist propaganda " Koestler, who despite his fondness for Crossman found him an "incurably opportunistic politician," thought that th~s demurral was quite amusing Swelling the flood of antiCommunist propaganda, he cheerfully admits, "was precisely what we were interested In, but for a Labor MP in those days it just wouldn't do to say so in as many words " These are just a few of the many insights into Koestler and his Umes contamed in this memoir Yet it also contams one curiously jarring note which I cannot pass over During the 1920s, Koestler became a Zionist, a disciple, hke Menachem Begin, of Ze'ev Jabotmsky During the 1930s, he became a Communist To go from right-wing Zmmsm to Commumsm was certainly a most unusual pohucal evolution, but both responses, Koestler beheved, were sensible reactions to the times "Nor," he writes, "was there any mcompatlblhty, at that time, between devotion to the Promised Land---Palestine --and the land of Prormse--the Soviet Union The Communist revolution was to solve all problems on a global scale, but also reserve a niche for the 'Jewish National Home' in the new world order It is now generally forgotten that in 1948 the USA and the USSR were the first two countries to recognize officially the State of Israel 'Zlomsm' became a term of abuse in Soviet parlance only at a later stage" This is plainly wrong There was always a glaring incompatibility between Zionism and Commumsm Communist propaganda never ceased denouncing Zionism, and Soviet authorltles have long regarded Zlomst activity as a major crime (Begin, for ~nstance, was arrested by Soviet authorities m Vllna and spent two years in the Arctic region for his Zlomsm, his memoir of this period, Whzte Nights, is a classic of prison literature...

...drops a plate, Nmpaul's guide rattles on about the powers offdtwheur~ a local chief is made to look as ridiculous as, well, a First World pol "He gestured with this moneyed hand while he talked From Ume to time, when he opened his legs, to pat his cloth down between his legs, he showed his darkblue shorts " There are zealous attempts to make nearly everything foohsh or simster The chmrs m the lobby of the Hotel President are upholstered "in wrulent blue and green, not restful " Nalpaul applies his inductive whip with such constancy that one loses faith in the nasty details being cowed into the big unsavory p~cture He is so determined to shine a hght into a heart of darkness that he fails to notice that he ~s sometimes just wading around the edge of a muddle What he finds "at the bottom of ~t all" is magic Evil sprats, good magic, sorcery, bad magic, magic mLxed up with Chrlstmn evangelism--all of it coming from a continent that mutates every twelve hours between the world o f day and the world of mght During the mght, distance folds upon Itself and values dissolve into the cosmos Arlette, a woman who works at the umverstty, tells Nmpanl that the two worlds are two ideas of reality that made Africans so apparently indifferent to their material circumstances Men of wealth and potation could return easily to their villages at the weekend, could easily resume the hut life, could welcome that life...