The Foreign Correspondent Read Online Free PDF Page B

him Delahanty. The Great Autodidact, Delahanty. Who had taught himself to read in French, to read in Spanish, to read—Lord have mercy!—in Greek, and to read, providentially, in Italian. Delahanty, the bureau chief of the Reuters wire service in Paris. Ecco, a job!
    Delahanty, white-haired and blue-eyed, had many years earlier left school in Glasgow and, as he put it, “worked for the papers.” Selling them, at first, then moving from copyboy to cub reporter, his progress powered by grit and insolence and genteel opportunism. Until he reached the top; chief of the Paris bureau, who, as trusted specialist, saw copies of dispatches from the important—Berlin, Rome—European offices. Which made him very much the spider at the center of the web, in the wire-service neighborhood near the place de l’Opéra, where, one chilly spring day, Carlo Weisz showed up. “So, Mr. Weisz—you say Weiss, not Veisch, correct?—you wrote for the Corriere. Not much of it left now. A sad fate, for a fine newspaper like that. Now tell me, would you happen to have any clippings of what you wrote?” The snipped-out articles, carried around in a cheap briefcase, were not in the best condition, but they could be read, and Delahanty read them. “No, sir,” he said, “you needn’t bother to translate, I can get along in Italian.”
    Delahanty put on his glasses and read with a forefinger. “Hmm,” he said. “Hmm. It ain’t so bad. I’ve seen worse. What do you mean by this, right here? Oh, that makes sense. I believe you can do this sort of work, Mr. Weisz. Do you like to do it? And do you care what you do, Mr. Weisz? The new sewers of Antwerp? The beauty contest in Düsseldorf? You don’t mind, that sort of thing? How’s your German? Spoke it at home? A little Serbo-Croatian? Can’t hurt. Oh I see, Trieste, yes, they speak everything there, don’t they. How’s your French? Yes, me too, I get along, and they look at you funny, but you manage. Any Spanish? No, don’t worry, you’ll pick it up. Now let me be frank, here we do things the Reuters way, you’ll learn the rules, all you have to do is follow ’em. And I have to tell you that you won’t be the Reuters man in Paris. But you’ll be a Reuters man, and that ain’t so bad. It’s what I was, and I wrote about every damn thing under the sun. So tell me, how does that sit with you, sir? Can you do it? Ride on trains and mule carts and whatnot and get us the story? With emotion? With a feel for the human side, for the prime minister at his grand desk and the peasant on his little patch of earth? You believe you can? I know you can! And you’ll do just fine. So, why not get down to it straight away? Say, tomorrow? The previous incumbent, well, a week ago he went up to Holland and passed out in the queen’s lap. It’s the curse of this profession, Mr. Weisz, I’m sure you know that. Very well, do you have any questions? None? Allright, then, that will bring us to the gloomy subject of money.”
     
    •
     
    Weisz drifted off to sleep, then woke as the train pulled in to Port Bou. The Spanish family stared at the platform across the tracks, at a few Guardia Civil lounging against the wall of the ticket office. At a small crowd of refugees standing amid trunks and bundles and suitcases tied with rope, waiting for the southbound train. Not everybody, it seemed, was allowed to cross the border. After a few minutes, Spanish officers came through the car, asking for papers. When they reached the adjoining compartment, the older daughter, next to Weisz, closed her eyes and pressed her hands together. She was, he realized, praying. But the officers were polite—this was, after all, first class—took only a cursory glance at the documents and then went on to the next compartment. Then the train blew its whistle and rolled a few hundred feet down the track, where the French officers were waiting.
      
    Report of Agent 207, delivered by hand on the fifth of December, to a