I have temporarily moved to a new surveillance location, the small square in the Jewish quarter, its tiny but perfectly formed square, with the mighty oak overhanging it, facing the beautifully renovated white Stork synagogue. It seemed a suitable spot to uncover potential acts of espionage and the bohemian crowd and the smoky atmosphere that pervaded the cafés there reminded me of my spying salad days. The tables outside the bar I chose called Mleczania were arranged in a higgledy piggledy manner, some at such strange angles as they tried to find some sort of equilibrium on the uneven cobbles. The patrons of this and the other bars in the square was a mixture of students, artists and what I imagined were other types of subversives that did not quite fit into either of the two previous categories. As I made my way to the bar with the disinterested girl who stood behind it, I suspected that forty years ago this very bar would have been full of spies, revolutionaries and informants all leaning their ear to their neighbours tables trying to catch mumblings of dissent. A few people at the tables turned to look at me as I walked past; a group of what I imagined was female student’s giggles as I clumsily navigated my way around their unruly seating arrangement at their table. I arrived at the bar and asked for a coffee in English of course!
I was starting to wonder if my complete lack of Polish combined with my outfit of a Harris Tweed suit and bowler hat were making me a little too conspicuous, maybe it was time to update my attire, blend in, melt into the walls and dark alleys of the city, go dark.
The young girl behind the bar handed me my espresso macchiato with a look of general disdain, I cheerfully handed over my 10 zloty note, coupled with a comment on the lovely weather, she just sighed and walked off to get my change, returning with a smile that suggested a genuine dislike towards me. I took my tiny cup of Italian coffee and its accompanying shot glass of water and made my way out to the relative safety of the square, choosing the least unstable table I could find I placed the coffee, water and moleskin notebook down and prepared myself for a day of observation of the suspicious characters that frequented this establishment.
I sat there trying to look elegant and as if I belonged among such an artistic crowd, trying to hold the tiny cup of coffee with my stubby fingers in the manner of a bon vivant. I opened the moleskin notebook that my mother had given to me for Christmas along with the most horrific yellow knitted jumper I had ever seen. I started to enter my notes and observations for the day, in code of course just in case someone stole my notebook. Not that there really seemed anything to report that warranted this complex coding system HQ favoured so. It was a well-known fact, a joke even among my colleagues that I had constantly struggle with the finer details of this code. Only last year I gave incorrect information in my coded report that resulted in my elderly neighbour Mrs Jiggins spending 14 days hooded and deprived of sleep in one of our detention facilities for political deviants. I had somehow got my reports confused and sent the letter I had written to Mrs Jiggins thanking her for the lovely Battenberg cake she had made for me. My superiors thinking this was a coded message had hauled poor Mrs Jiggins in for intensive interrogation under the assumption she was in fact an enemy of the state. I still have a nasty feeling she might have even been the victim of rendition in an attempt to circumnavigate our human rights laws. Suffice to say I have not received an invitation for tea or cake since.
Nothing of interest seemed to be happening at this café so I decide to work on an update of my wild mushroom grading system for headquarters eyes only. Just as I was getting lost in the finer details of the length of the pied de mouton season my concentration was shattered by an odd looking man who perched himself down on the chair at the other side of my table. I tried to ignore him, at first I presumed he was just one of the many drunken vagrants that lurked around the squares of the city but after a few minutes I kept noticing that his red blotchy face was peering over at my notebook as if he was trying to decipher my mushroom statistics. Instinct kicked in, the butterflies started to flit back and forth inside my stomach, was this the moment I had been waiting for? First contact with a potentially “unfriendly” agent. I didn’t try too hard to hide the notebook, as I was sure he would have little chance of deciphering the code from where he sat, to be honest I was not even sure I could decipher the code. In fact even if he could I am sure his superiors were more than well aware of the indigenous varieties of wild mushrooms to be found in their own country. What I did do was open the notebook so it faced him, allowing him to see it more clearly this way I could gauge his reactions.
After five minutes of silence, as we both stared back and forth toward each other he spoke, some gabble in Polish that I understood not a word of, I just smiled apologetically and said “English I am afraid old boy” This seemed to please him greatly “Ah William Shakespeare, King Lear” I nodded and pretended to write something in the moleskin notebook “you are writer man good”. To me this seemed like a good cover story so I replied “yes I am a writer my dear fellow” because that is how I imagined a writer would speak. He started to become more and more animated his head shaking a little “Oxford, Cambridge?” He shouted, before I could formulate a response the word “Oxford” leapt out of my mouth in an involuntary manner, on reflection it was a good answer after all what kind of writer studied at Staines technical college. I added the word Magdalene College in between an otherwise incomprehensible sentence as it was the only college at Oxford I could remember the name of.
He seemed convinced enough anyway, or maybe he wasn’t , maybe he had already seen through my lies and was just toying with me, I mean he was after all a fellow brother Seamus, just batting for the other chaps. He kept staring at me through these slightly glassy looking eyes, and then he would rigorously shake his head up and down until I almost feared it would fall off, before almost drifting off into some sort of trance. Then suddenly he would be back almost shouting the words at me “Shakespeare” “Byron” “writer” “poet” “good, good, good, like”.
He is a madman I thought, maybe not though, it was after all completely conceivable that he was not mad, just a brilliant spy feigning insanity to try and lull me into a false sense of security; if this was the case it would be remiss of me not to say I was an admirer of his work. Pointing to my left hand which held the Spy kids pen another Christmas present from mother, another name popped out of man’s mouth “Leonardo Da Vinci” now I did not care if the gentleman was mad or not, I was flattered after all this was probably going to be the only time in my life that I would be compared to Da Vinci. I decided to make the most of it fluttering the spy kids pen in my left hand, in what I perceived was an artistic manner, then I would hold it to my head as if I was deep in thought, pondering the obstacles I would have to conquer to create my next masterpiece or invention. I started to get carried away imagining my notebook being poured over many centuries later with wonderment. Lots of ooohs and aaaahs spilling out of the mouths of the great intellectuals of the time as they carefully turned each page of the book delicately and with deference, as if it was some ancient scripture holding untold treasures. My childish sketches of wild mushrooms being fought over by the Smithsonian and Tate; people queuing around the block to get just a glimpse of these previously undiscovered masterpieces. An incessant beeping from my phone bought me back from this delightful daydream, oh no it was mother.
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