About Ashenden by Somerset Maugham 10 out of 10

 About Ashenden by Somerset Maugham

10 out of 10

 

 

Somerset Maugham is one of the best two writers ever, the other one is Marcel Proust, and therefore reading Ashenden-  even in an abridged form this time, to be revisited later for the full enjoyment – was an absolute joy…we can find Of Human Bondage on The modern Library’s 100 Best Novels https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

 

Ashenden is a secret agent enlisted during World War I – and inspired by the experience of Somerset Maugham as an intelligence officer – and based in Switzerland, although there would be at least one story that takes him as far as Russia, on the brink of the Bolshevik Revolution, when the agent will have an unlimited supply of money, but the impossible task of trying to do something about the unstoppable Apocalypse of the Bolshevik Revolution – a calamity that would propagate to our lands, albeit later – this is a catastrophe for which we still pay so much and will continue even when we will cease to have meaning as in I will not be around the see the end of the radioactivity of the communist bomb that had exploded so close alas…

One of the stories centers on Chandra Lai – in real life, this was Virendranath Chattopadhyaya – an Indian nationalist that could and did help the Germans in their efforts to destabilize the British Empire and force them to keep troops in India – hopefully even oblige them to send there more soldiers, thus weakening the armies that would face the Germans elsewhere – through unrest in the Indian subcontinent, the jewel of the empire was then as large as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh of these days combined…

 

Chandra Lai has fallen in love with an Italian dancer, who is not young anymore – or at least in the significance of the word, today, the sixties are the new forties and age has changed its old meaning, with new treatments, exercise, attitudes, analysts and more – and the British services have ways to press the woman…’R’ is the code name of the colonel that had enlisted and now gives orders to Ashenden and the mission of incapacitating the nationalist, maybe killing him or capturing him is of outmost importance.

The hero – or antihero depending on the feminist, woke, progressive, ultraliberal view we may have of the main character and his acts – is dispatched to handle the dancer, use the carrot and the stick, presumably alternatively, to try and convince her that her movements will be blocked if the British government uses its mighty force against her and if she collaborates, she will be rewarded and all she has to do is write some letters, telling her lover that she is in France, right on the lake that constitutes the border with Switzerland, where he is, away from the arm of the English, and he can come to see her…

 

He writes to explain that he will be in danger, if he crosses the border, the British might kill him, only she knows all that – she has tried to escape, when Ashenden gave her time off, she went to the lake and tried to bribe someone to allow her to go across without the proper documents, but she failed in her attempt – and relies pressing on and asking for proof of love, insisting she is not young anymore and she wants to be with someone who is really infatuated – not in those words, besides, she had asked Ashenden to dictate the messages, but the agent told her he prefers them to be in her own style…

 

Finally, the man crosses the border – spoiler alert for this one story in the package, though few will reach this far into the note – he is caught by the British and when he sees that this was a trap, he kills himself – this is just one aspect that makes these stories memorable and mesmerizing, for the drama is palpable, the narrator refrains from offering the reader easy access to the why, provoking him or her to think about it – was it because of the betrayal of the lover, or the inevitable suffering awaiting him in prison or maybe both – and then there are puzzling, sometimes overwhelming acts that cannot be explained, but leave the protagonist and the readers in a common bond, crated by their shared bemusement…the dancer asks for the wrist watch she had given as a gift to her now dead lover…

There is another story that has an unexpected, intriguing ending – since there has been a spoiler alert, maybe there is no need for a new one – in which Ashenden has a complicated game to play with adversaries and allies alike…the man that is supposed to give him information, a waiter that spies in Germany, is suddenly asking for considerably more money – you do not think I will put my life in danger for this much, or little, and to this the agent responds that he has no authority to increase the payment with two thousand and besides, the informer had agreed to the terms before…this prompts the aggrieved waiter to try blackmail, only to be told that if he gets Ashenden in the hands of the enemy, retribution will be swift, the end of the war will arrive and the traitor will find he is trapped….

 

The Swiss police come to question him at the hotel, then he is invited for a game of cards by an aristocrat and a wealthy Egyptian, who has on his payroll an old British governess…the latter is anti-British and whenever she meets with Ashenden tries hard to show contempt and hatred in her eyes, but nonetheless, in the night when the other side tries to cajole the British agent into switching sides, selling them the information he has, the agent is called out because the British woman is dying and she has called specifically for him…why has she done that, since there are other guests from the island in the hotel, the narrator speculates and we try and guess along with him…is it because she had known all along what he is doing and thus tries to pass him a secret that will be useless in the hands of any other…the problem is the has had a couple of heart attacks and the last one is fatal…just before she dies, she cries England!

The Russia story is equally brilliant in that it is so complete…it tells us what happens and at the same time, covering the Revolution and all – at a small scale, for the purposes of a short story there is no space or need for more – and introducing outlandish, exotic elements nevertheless, such as the love affair between a peculiar, outré Russian woman and a more conventional Englishman…when they go to Paris, she insists on having scrambled eggs today, tomorrow and forever, which is puzzling the lover, who wants them cooked differently, to the annoyance of the rebellious woman, who is outraged that he wants to make the cook work harder, showing the disdain he has for servants, lower classes…I do not see how my wanting the eggs done differently could scorch the earth…as a result of this ardent polemic, he takes the ship to America and hence the husband his saved…the married woman had stated that if he found out she wants to marry another, the Russian spouse would kill himself to spare her the embarrassment of the case in court…