Truths and Lies of an Introspective Spy

The time in which the action takes place Polish, Vicenç Villatoro's return to fictional novels (Terrassa, 1957) after four very notable books focused on personal, family, and community memory, is decisive. It's January 1992, in the midst of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a generator of uncertainty, speculation, and geopolitical disorder at all levels. We are, moreover, in Warsaw, the capital of the ever-punished Poland, a border space—more uncertainty, more speculation, more disorder—between the capitalist bloc and the Soviet bloc. To further unravel the skein, we follow the steps of a widowed, now-retired Israeli spy who has been reactivated to carry out one last mission: to participate in a purchase and sale operation of unknown war material between unknown sellers (former KGB agents).

The novel's opening is suggestive but heavy-handed: there's atmospheric tension and intimate dilemmas, but hardly any narrative drama. There are reflections on the spy profession and its existential dimension, which requires one to constantly live as an actor and to believe and be, simultaneously and without contradiction, very different and often completely opposite things. The duplicitous world of espionage has been widely explored in literature, film, and television, and Villatoro is aware of this, which is why he brings into play all the usual motifs and elements of the subgenre: from the misanthropic and solitary protagonist and narrator—an introspective spy who feels detached to the point of being disconnected from the current situation—to enigmas, to authentic, feigned, or hidden identities, and to loyalties and disloyalties that turn everything into a game of mirrors where nothing is what it seems.

The plot moves slowly, so slowly that it even feels somewhat static, but Villatoro manages to invent a powerful turning point, which not only adds intrigue but also human, historical, and political complexity to the novel. Nothing seems what it seems, did I write? Worse: nothing seems like nothing, and everything seems like everything. To get to the kernel of truth, you have to peel away so many layers of lies that, when you hold the kernel in your hand, you don't even recognize it.

A thick whirlwind of intertwined identities

The narrator and protagonist of Polish He explains to us upfront who he is – a Mossad agent, born into a Jewish family in Poland before the Second World War, all of whom died in the Holocaust – but what does it mean when a spy, a man who has made lying his profession and his way of life, explains who he is? This is the novel's strong point: the skill with which Villatoro makes the reader feel sucked into the thick whirlwind of intertwined identities, of doubts and divisions, of truths grafted onto lies and lies that end up being true, of incompatible convictions and duties (and yet, incompatible, the narrator-protagonist explains himself).

Polish, a title that refers to the novel's geographical setting but also to Chopin's musical composition (which plays a small but important role, between leitmotif and decorative grace), is written in laconic prose, with an almost telegraphic rhythm and tones. Sometimes the reader thinks that the text would benefit from alternating short, cutting sentences with longer, more flowing ones, of less restrained breath. It's a stylistic trait that gives the text a systematically sustained rhythm, and which benefits Villatoro's articulation and essay style—reinforcing communicative effectiveness, analytical precision, and the ordering of ideas and materials—but which harms the narrative, because it makes it dull and monotonous while diminishing its intensity. These are always appropriate. Especially in a spy novel.