The Worst Spy

It was the clustered neighbourhood of old townhouses where my grandmother lived with my father when he was a young child long after losing his father in the war. Before the war, the house belonged to my grandmother’s family, but ownership changed hands, and everything belonged to the government of the people. My father vaguely remembered that house with its roof sagged from age and its bullets shelled walls pressed up against the iron gate secured by a massive lock requiring a key the size of an arm. The key had a ring, as my father recalled, clipped to the back pocket of the trousers worn by Mr Tailor, the gatekeeper who was also a handy man, looking after the premises, making sure the gate was closed for the night.

Mr Tailor wasn’t a gentle mannered guardian of the gate, apparently. The man had a murky gaze — the kind of eyes that could see far beyond what was in front of him, suspicious of anybody leaving or entering through “his gate.” He would carefully lock the gate before midnight, and if anyone came late, he or she would have to ring a bell attached to a chain. Mr Tailor, whose apartment had windows overlooking the gate, often watched from his windows the minute the wind rattled the bell, peering into the darkness with malicious intent to inform on people leaving their houses for the night. If he had to come up and open it for a latecomer, he would hold grudges the next morning, falling into a sour mood felt throughout the community, but he wasn’t a man to laugh at. As my father described him, I imagined a man holding a cigarette permanently in the crooked corner of his mouth while sweeping the yard using a coarse broom made from twigs. Black dust was everywhere, especially on his clothes, from removing lumps of coal from his coal-burning fireplace in his basement.

As there were children living in the settlement, at his young age my father feared Mr Tailor just like the rest of the children, staying out of his sight for he would often throw a piece of coal between the most boisterous among them. Yet despite the fear he commanded, my father knew that Mr Tailor stayed clear of my grandmother, and if he had to cross her path, he kept his dark eyes anywhere but on her. Spying on everyone else, Mr Tailor sold his soul by giving secrets away to people interested in what the citizens were doing in their free time outside their job, even if they walked a dog, played with their children or stayed out at night, coming late and waking the gatekeeper.

My father recalled that Mr Tailor would watch the children play, chewing on his cigarette while setting traps on their parents because there wasn’t a month if the secret police wouldn’t come knocking on someone’s door, often targeting the individual with harassed visits, once even taking someone for questioning, after which, the person vanished. No one complained, as people vanished sometimes, falsely or not being accused of propaganda against the state.

Mr Tailor wasn’t a good spy, as everyone knew he was the one listening to people talking while sweeping the yard under their windows. But even the least careful of spies fall into a trap because, unlike ordinary people, they carry secrets dating back to the day they were born, traits of lack of empathy playing a role in informing on others. It was not until my grandmother moved out that she revealed the gatekeeper had been a spy his entire life. Even when he was a young man in the war, he spied for the occupying forces against his own countrymen. It was in his blood to betray others in exchange for small privileges, sometimes for bigger gains like shaking hands and drinking in the company of uniformed officers.

Mr Tailor’s treacherous activities might have been forgotten after the war if it wasn’t for a regular sewing machine that Mr. Tailor sold to my grandmother when he first moved into his basement, planted as a spy. As she opened the drawer in that sewing machine, she found a few pieces of war paraphernalia — an iron cross, the SD patch to wear on a sleeve, and a photograph of a young man. She stared hard at the face with murky eyes that grew darker with age. It was him, no doubt. The same spying Mr Tailor who, as the photograph suggested, had been watching her family and reporting back to the authorities. The photograph showed him standing with an officer known to have targeted her relatives for the contraband, confirming his involvement in the betrayal.

It took my father many years to understand why his mother, a conscientious being, never warned her neighbours that the gatekeeper in their midst was a soulless man during the war. Her answer was as practical as it was blood chilling. Mr Tailor’s real name wasn’t Tailor to start, and revealing her secret would not have helped her neighbours as the authorities at the time would just have replaced him with another spy, meddling with her activities for collaborating against the unpopular local government. She waited for Mr Tailor’s fate to unfold naturally, as a firm believer that what you sow, you reap. So, it came to my father’s knowledge that Mr Tailor ended up like the rest of them, informers, being spied upon and prosecuted for crimes he actually didn’t commit. Someone must have broken into his basement apartment and left there the sewing machine with false incriminating evidence against its owner, Mr Tailor.

No one believed him when he claimed he sold the sewing machine to my grandmother, because why would she not take it with her when she left but placed it back in his basement flat, having no key? People breathed an air of relief when he vanished from the old townhouses, perhaps changing his name, possibly informing on his fellow prisoners, or spying on a bunch of children while swirling the dust with his twig-made broom. Years later, they demolished any such old buildings, replacing them with modern apartments blocks with a concierge sitting in the glossy reception room.

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