Free The Human Pool by Chris Petit Page A

find that the impression I have of her is different if I think in English not German.
    On her good days, which sadly are few, she asks what she has done to be spared in such a terrible fashion, and, as she puts it, ‘kept behind after everyone else has been called’.
    You had the privilege of meeting her in the war, her most extraordinary period in a life that was never ordinary. You will be well aware of her fortitude and charm.
    In your letter you asked what she was really like, given that your own dealings with her were restricted. You know she was fiercely intelligent, and always determined. Her artistic side she attributed to Edith Wharton, a distant cousin. Mother was blue-blooded and blue-stocking, and travelled to Europe to study at the Sorbonne. She then moved to Switzerland in 1936 to do her doctorate under Carl Jung, a study of taboo and ‘cargo cults’ in primitive societies. She was ahead of her time in her demand for equal treatment from men. Few were her equal in any respect.
    She claimed she once partnered Nabokov at tennis. I believe that Nabokov taught tennis in Berlin, but I have no idea if he was ever in Zurich. Mother could be fanciful on occasion. I remember Father once telling me when I was too young to understand, with a mixture of affection and something else I now see was exasperation, that Mother collected famous people.
    Her marriage, to my father, has always been a source of mystery and some pain. It was the central enigma of her life, and, for those of us who were the result, not an easy one to live with! If my father was hurt by her adventurousness he never showed it. He was a dedicated and private man, and careful in granting my mother her freedom, but saddened by what he thought of as his failure. He was in all respects decent and upright. I know it hurt him that she refused to take his name after they married. But I risk being indiscreet. Perhaps I am writing this for myself, so please forgive me if it is not what you want.
    When the war broke out in 1939 I know she considered moving back to the United States, in spite of being married. Her family put pressure on her because it was by no means certain whether Switzerland would succeed in remaining neutral. She has never told me what stopped her, but, given what follows, it is possible to make an educated guess.
    You ask about Mother and Allen Dulles. Her account of their meeting is fresh in my mind because she spoke to me about it at the start of her illness. While her memory was still good she spoke a lot about the past. She said she was ‘setting everything in order before putting it away’. It was only then that we began to become close.
    I have never understood the assertion that America is a classless society. Mother and Mr Dulles came from that loose association known as the ‘top drawer’. I have the impression they knew each other long before their first official meeting in 1942. Mother has never talked about this. She was well capable of playing the clam when it suited.
    Their relationship is generally documented as starting with Mr Dulles’s arrival in Switzerland in November 1942. According to Mother, he first came to see her on a clandestine visit in January 1942, just after the United States entered the war. She had been recommended to Mr Dulles by her uncle who was a senior partner in the same law firm.
    Mother was struck by Mr Dulles’s comical insistence on cloak-and-dagger secrecy, and spoiled his surprise by guessing that he had been asked to become a spy. His task was to start assembling an espionage network, which he would return to take charge of later in the year. That Mother was central to his plans was a surprise, she said, if only because she was used to speaking her mind rather than dealing in subterfuge. She was being disingenuous. She was quite capable of putting her life in separate compartments, and her recruitment was inevitable, given her nationality, her connections, her