Chapter Text
The first thing that jumps at me is the beard. Far more than the grey in it, it's the bushy (though well-kept) beard that clashes with my mental image of him.
He can tell. He's used to this sort of reaction, as I soon learn. "I don't generally make public appearances, so most people's mental image of me comes from early 1930s photographs and occasional political cartoons, which always draw me like I'm still in my twenties." He seems amused. "I've never really tried to correct that. For an investigative reporter, not being instantly recognized wherever I go has been a boon, really."
"Is that why you've never taken interviews before?"
"It's part of it. But I also don't think a journalist should himself be the story. That strikes me as a dangerous mix of unprofessionalism and vanity."
"But you've accepted to be interviewed today. Why?" I hesitate before asking the next question, afraid of being rude. "Are you thinking of retiring?"
He does not appear in the least offended, to my relief. "I'm not physically fit to keep running around like I used to, but I don't see myself no longer asking questions and writing what answers I find - not this decade, at least. I'll be the first to admit, though, that I'm past my prime. I suspect what I write from this point on is going to be less important than encouraging the next generation. And, perhaps, providing some perspective. I could have used the same when I was your age."
I nod. "You started out at Twentieth Century."
"You could almost say I was born there. The orphanage I grew up in and the school I attended were run by people in the same social circles as Twentieth Century's staff."
"Meaning, arch-conservative Catholics, royalists, and politically-engaged clergy," I say, and then immediately worry that my sarcasm has overstepped its bounds. Once again, he does not appear offended.
"That they were. It's no secret that Abbot Wallez kept a portrait of Mussolini in his office; he viewed Il Duce as the savior of Italian Catholicism and good old-fashioned values."
"The Abbot was your editor-in-chief back then. Were there tensions between you in the early days?"
"He was much more than my editor-in-chief," he says, and I think this is the first that he's trying to control his emotions since this interview started. "He was my mentor for years before I even joined Twentieth Century. He was like a father to me. There were no serious tensions at that stage - not until a while later."
"You mean the Congo exposé?"
"Yes. That was the first time I publicly disagreed with him. But that might be getting ahead of ourselves."
"Right. Before the Congo, there was the USSR."
"And before that, there were various articles about local affairs. Mostly covering Catholic charities. Small things. I was Abbot Wallez's personal protégé, but I was still the paper's young rookie; I wasn't supposed to write the important articles at that stage."
As the paper's young rookie who somehow got the job of doing a once-in-a-lifetime interview with the profession's greatest living legend, I briefly wonder if he's trying to tell me something. "So what happened?"
"Black Thursday happened. The world economy collapsed, and Belgium was no exception. Some people were hungry, some people were angry, and all the people were afraid. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people were saying capitalism had failed once and for all. Brussels didn't have a lot of communists, admittedly, but the conservatives were nonetheless afraid the depression would allow Marxists to turn public opinion in their favor - which, to be fair, they were certainly trying. In late 29, the USSR was negotiating to have a group of Western journalists brought in and given a tour of a communist society."
"I know you were part of the group, but in hindsight, I find it baffling," I admit. "Why would the Soviets bring in a journalist from a paper so strongly opposed to their cause?"
He smiles knowingly. "A bit of political intrigue on Abbot Wallez's part. It worked precisely because I was the young rookie. He argued that, with my youth and idealistic honesty - his words, which were really code for naiveté in this case - I would provide a good, fresh set of eyes and report things as I was truly seeing them. The Soviets figured I'd be easy to manipulate, maybe even convert to the cause of communism - exactly as he wanted them to believe. In private, he warned me not to trust a single thing I saw or heard in the USSR, and to look for the lies behind everything."
"Would you say he was being insightful, or just biased?"
He chuckles. "A lucky combination of both. Ideologically speaking, certainly, he hated the Soviets and everything they stood for. But the Abbot was not without some measure of cunning and insight. He understood what game was being played, and he was counting on me to see through the lies of the communists.
"And so, in early 1930, with a load of photography equipment and several other journalists from across the West, I traveled to Russia." He pauses. "In hindsight, I think I missed an opportunity by not getting closer to the other journalists. Eric from the Weimar Republic, Christopher from England… I could have learned a lot from them back then."
"You didn't stay with them too long anyway."
"True. Once we got to Russia, we got assigned guides who showed us around. Happy, smiling farming communities, productive factories, public works, everything. They surrounded us with charismatic Party members who were happy to rave about the regime's virtues and accomplishments. I wouldn't swear on it, but I think the female guides - all of them rather beautiful - were under orders to give us special attention." He does not develop on the euphemism.
"But you believed none of it."
He gives that amused smile of his. "I was already primed to disbelieve it. I didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to notice small inconsistencies in what we were seeing. Factories whose smokestacks were too clean, like they'd only started smoking earlier that day. Villages whose population didn't match the number of homes. Farmers who had no tan. You understand what I mean.
"I won't bore you with the story of how I escaped my handlers. Suffice to say, at the time I felt very clever, and with hindsight I eventually realized I had been very lucky. But the short of it is that I was able to evade official attention for a while, I had my photographic equipment, and I had questions. Soon enough, I also had the GPU looking for me. Did you know," his eyes shine with nostalgia, "that I actually adopted my first dog to avoid their notice?"
Now I'm genuinely surprised. "You adopted Milou in Russia?"
"The opportunity to adopt a dog presented itself by sheer happenstance, and I thought, the GPU are looking for an isolated Westerner who has no friends in Moscow and only speaks broken Russian, not for a man with a dog. In hindsight, I don't think it was a brilliant plan, but I certainly don't regret it… even if I suspect the GPU had more difficulties with my not shaving during my stay. As you've noticed yourself," he grins, "the beard makes me look pretty different from the pictures. Still, credit where credit is due, even with my luck there were several close calls. I almost got caught several times, and setting up my camera discreetly was often a challenge - those were a lot bulkier in 1930, as you may imagine."
"I'm aware. You spent several months in Moscow and the countryside."
"A very educational trip. Certainly my Russian improved. More importantly, I did get a lot of answers to my questions. Mass arrests among the Orthodox clergy, the successes and failures of industrialization, the State control over the media, the use of activists to wrest control of foreign labor unions away from socialists, the forced collectivization of farms and the relocation of so-called koulaks… Those months gave me enough material for the most detailed exposé on the USSR in the Western press up to that point."
"I meant to ask. Observing, taking pictures, interviewing people… Is that all you did during those months, besides dodging the GPU? There are rumors that you were involved with an anti-Bolshevik resistance movement."
"There's no substance to those rumors," he waves dismissively. "If the USSR had an active anti-Bolshevik movement, then I never came across it. I did find a forced labor camp, supposedly full of enemies of the regime, but I suspect those people weren't involved in any manner of organized rebellion. At most," his eyes twinkle, "I may have given some farmers ideas on how to hide grain. ...And informed them that the government was only seizing grain, not animal stocks, so there was little point in trying to slaughter their cattle and pigs before the government got there." His expression grows serious again. "I hope I didn't get anyone in trouble back then. I wasn't all that good at considering long-term consequences yet.
"Still, months passed, I had run out of photographic equipment, and I felt I had enough material. I'd pushed my luck enough. I managed, again with a little cleverness and a lot more luck, to sneak on a train to Poland, and got back to Brussels - where most people had assumed, after such a long silence, that I was either dead or rotting in a Russian prison. Twentieth Century hadn't been raising a fuss, but they'd been biding their time… and there I showed up, alive, healthy, and with a hard-hitting exposé on the USSR.
"There was a disagreement between Abbot Wallez and me. My exposé included some genuine accomplishments of the Bolsheviks - a stronger industry, better healthcare and rising literacy to name but three. He wanted to focus on the negatives instead, and told me mentioning any positives might give ammunition to the reds in other countries. I told him the exposé needed to be genuine. He finally concluded that, if I was truthful about the positives, it would give more impact to the overwhelming negatives, and I was able to write my exposé like I wanted."
"From my understanding, your exposé changed the world."
"Did it, now? Certainly it made a lot of noise. Twentieth Century sold the right to reprint it to magazines across Europe and the world. I will admit that back then, knowing that my article was being reprinted in English in The New York Times made an impression on me. I certainly remember a lot of people crowing about it being the end of communism."
"It may not have ended communism," I say, "but from what I've read, it had a major influence. Labor unions everywhere distancing themselves from the communists, communist parties across the world suffering from falling rates of recruitment… Your exposé was a turning point in public opinion."
"I don't really know. Even if some people became warier of Stalin, communist parties were hardly deserted overnight. The Cambridge Three still became spies for the Soviets in the years that followed. I'm not sure how much impact I actually had.
"What I do know," he says, "is that Abbot Wallez and his entourage definitely believed it had a major impact. I was feted as the great Christian hero, here to save king and country from the insanity of modern ideologies like communism, general leftism or democracy." His smile turns slightly bitter. "It's part of why I can't take hero-worship all that seriously. It certainly didn't survive my next exposé."
"You mean the Congo."
"Correct. Abbot Wallez figured, since I had won such a sterling victory against the reds," his voice is now dripping with sarcasm, "the next battlefield I ought to be deployed to was Belgium's glorious colony, so I could tell the world about our charitable work in bringing civilization and the love of Christ to the African continent, and, hopefully, restore the tarnished name of the late king Leopold II.
"That didn't go as planned, to put it mildly."