John le Carré - Smiley's People

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

Smiley's People

John le Carré

Published 1980. ISBN 0-330-26272-6.

For my sons, Simon, Stephen, Timothy and

Nicholas, with love

ONE

Two seemingly unconnected events heralded

the summons of Mr George Smiley from his

dubious retirement. The first had for its

background Paris, and for a season the

boiling month of August, when Parisians by

tradition abandon their city to the scalding

sunshine and the busloads of packaged

tourists.

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

On one of these August days - the fourth,

and at twelve o'clock exactly, for a church

clock was chiming and a factory bell had just

preceded it - in a quartier once celebrated for

its large population of the poorer Russian

émigrés, a stocky woman of about fifty,

carrying a shopping bag, emerged from the

darkness of an old warehouse and set off,

full of her usual energy and purpose, along

the pavement to the bus-stop. The street

was grey and narrow, and shuttered, with a

couple of small hôtels de passé and a lot of

cats. It was a place, for some reason, of

peculiar quiet. The warehouse, since it

handled perishable goods, had remained

open during the holidays. The heat, fouled by

exhaust fumes and unwashed by the

slightest breeze, rose at her like the heat

from a lift-shaft, but her Slavic features

registered no complaint. She was neither

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

dressed nor built for exertion on a hot day,

being in stature very short indeed, and fat, so

that she had to roll a little in order to get

along. Her black dress, of ecclesiastical

severity, possessed neither a waist nor any

other relief except for a dash of white lace at

the neck and a large metal cross, well

fingered but of no intrinsic value, at the

bosom. Her cracked shoes, which in walking

tended outwards at the points, set a stern

tattoo rattling between the shuttered houses.

Her shabby bag, full since early morning,

gave her a slight starboard list and told

clearly that she was used to burdens. There

was also fun in her, however. Her grey hair

was gathered in a bun behind her, but there

remained one sprightly forelock that flopped

over her brow to the rhythm of her waddle. A

hardy humour lit her brown eyes. Her mouth,

set above a fighter's chin, seemed ready,

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

given half a reason, to smile at any time.

Reaching her usual bus-stop, she put down

her shopping bag and with her right hand

massaged her rump just where it met the

spine, a gesture she made often these days

though it gave her little relief. The high stool

in the warehouse where she worked every

morning as a checker possessed no back,

and increasingly she was resenting the

deficiency. 'Devil,' she muttered to the

offending part. Having rubbed it, she began

plying her black elbows behind her like an

old town raven preparing to fly. 'Devil,' she

repeated. Then, suddenly aware of being

watched, she wheeled round and peered

upward at the heavily built man towering

behind her.

He was the only other person waiting, and

indeed, at that moment, the only other

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

person in the street. She had never spoken

to him, yet his face was already familiar to

her : so big, so uncertain, so sweaty. She

had seen it yesterday, she had seen it the

day before, and for all she knew, the day

before that as well - my Lord, she was not a

walking diary! For the last three or four days,

this weak, itchy giant, waiting for a bus or

hovering on the pavement outside the

warehouse, had become a figure of the

street for her; and what was more, a figure of

a recognizable type, though she had yet to

put her finger on which. She thought he

looked traqué - hunted - as so many

Parisians did these days. She saw so much

fear in their faces; in the way they walked yet

dared not greet each other. Perhaps it was

the same everywhere, she wouldn't know.

Also, more than once, she had felt his

interest in her. She had wondered whether

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

he was a policeman. She had even

considered asking him, for she had this

urban cockiness. His lugubrious build

suggested the police, so did the sweaty suit

and the needless raincoat that hung like a bit

of old uniform from his forearm. If she was

right, and he was police, then - high time too,

the idiots were finally doing something about

the spate of pilfering that had made a bear-

garden of her stock-checking for months.

By now the stranger had been staring down

at her for some time, however. And he was

staring at her still.

'I have the misfortune to suffer in my back,

monsieur,' she confided to him finally, in her

slow and classically enunciated French. 'It is

not a large back but the pain is

disproportionate. You are a doctor, perhaps?

An osteopath?'

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

Then she wondered, looking up at him,

whether he was ill, and her joke out of place.

An oily gloss glistened on his jaw and neck,

and there was an unseeing self-obsession

about his pallid eyes. He seemed to see

beyond her to some private trouble of his

own. She was going to ask him this - You are

perhaps in love, monsieur? Your wife is

deceiving you? - and she was actually

considering steering him into a café for a

glass of water or a tisane when he abruptly

swung away from her and looked behind

him, then over her head up the street the

other way. And it occurred to her that he

really was afraid, not just traqué but

frightened stiff; so perhaps he was not a

policeman at all, but a thief, though the

difference, she knew well, was often slight.

'Your name is Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova?'

he asked her abruptly, as if the question

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

scared him.

He was speaking French but she knew that it

was not his mother tongue any more than it

was her own, and his correct pronunciation

of her name, complete with patronymic,

already alerted her to his origin. She

recognized the slur at once and the shapes

of the tongue that made it, and she identified

too late, and with a considerable inward start,

the type she had not been able to put her

finger on.

'If it is, who on earth are you?' she asked him

in reply, sticking out her jaw and scowling.

He had drawn a pace closer. The difference

in their heights was immediately absurd. So

was the degree to which the man's features

betrayed his unpleasing character. From her

low position Ostrakova could read his

weakness as clearly as his fear. His damp

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

chin had set in a grimace, his mouth had

twisted to make him look strong, but she

knew he was only banishing an incurable

cowardice. He is like a man steeling himself

for a heroic act, she thought. Or a criminal

one. He is a man cut off from all

spontaneous acts, she thought.

'You were born in Leningrad on May 8,

1927?' the stranger asked.

Probably she said yes. Afterwards she was

not sure. She saw his scarred gaze lift and

stare at the approaching bus. She saw an

indecision near to panic seize him, and it

occurred to her - which in the long run was

an act of near clairvoyance - that he

proposed to push her under it. He didn't, but

he did put his next question in Russian - and

in the brutal accents of Moscow officialdom.

'In 1956, you were granted permission to

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Smiley's People by John le Carré

leave the Soviet Union for the purpose of

nursing your sick husband, the traitor

Ostrakov? Also for certain other purposes?'

'Ostrakov was not a traitor,' she replied,

cutting him off. 'He was a patriot.' And by

instinct she took up her shopping bag and

clutched the handle very tight.

The stranger spoke straight over this

contradiction, and very loudly, in order to

defeat the clatter of the bus : 'Ostrakova, I

bring you greetings from your daughter

Alexandra in Moscow, also from certain

official quarters! I wish to speak to you

concerning her! Do not board this car!'

The bus had pulled up. The conductor knew

her and was holding his hand out for her

bag. Lowering his voice, the stranger added

one more terrible statemene 'Alexandra has

serious problems which require the

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Smiley'sPeoplebyJohnleCarréSmiley'sPeopleJohnleCarréPublished1980.ISBN0-330-26272-6.Formysons,Simon,Stephen,TimothyandNicholas,withloveONETwoseeminglyunconnectedeventsheraldedthesummonsofMrGeorgeSmileyfromhisdubiousretirement.ThefirsthadforitsbackgroundParis,andforaseasontheboilingmonthofAugust,when...

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John le Carré - Smiley's People

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