Smiley's People (50 page)

“I have told her I shall not make love to her again until I completely trust her,” Grigoriev said earnestly. “Also I have not yet decided whether she shall be permitted to accompany me in my new life in Australia.”

“George, this is a madhouse!” Toby told Smiley in a furious mixture of images, while Smiley continued to study Karla’s solicitous questions, even though they were written in Russian. “Listen, I mean how long can we hold the dam? This guy is a total crazy!”

“When does Krassky return to Moscow?” Smiley asked.

“Saturday midday.”

“Grigoriev must arrange a meeting with him before he leaves. He’s to tell Krassky he will have a special message for him. An urgent one.”

“Sure,” said Toby. “Sure, George.” And that was that.

Where had George gone in his mind? Toby wondered, watching him vanish into the crowd once more. Karla’s instructions to Grigoriev seemed to have upset Smiley quite absurdly. “I was caught between one total loony and one complete depressive,” Toby claims of this taxing period.

 

While Toby, however, could at least agonise over the vagaries of his master and his agent, Smiley had less substantial fare with which to occupy his time, which may have been his problem. On the Tuesday, he took a train to Zurich and lunched at the Kronenhalle with Peter Guillam, who had flown in by way of London at Saul Enderby’s behest. Their discussion was restrained, and not merely on the grounds of security. Guillam had taken it upon himself to speak to Ann while he was in London, he said, and was keen to know whether there was any message he might take back to her. Smiley said icily that there was none, and came as near as Guillam could remember to bawling him out. On another occasion—he suggested—perhaps Guillam would be good enough to keep his damned fingers out of Smiley’s private affairs? Guillam switched the topic hastily to business. Concerning Grigoriev, he said, Saul Enderby had a notion to sell him to the Cousins as found rather than process him at Sarratt. How did George feel about that one? Saul had a sort of hunch that the glamour of a senior Russian defector would give the Cousins a much-needed lift in Washington, even if he hadn’t anything to tell, while Grigoriev in London might, so to speak, mar the pure wine to come. How did George feel on that one, actually?

“Quite,” said Smiley.

“Saul also rather wondered whether your plans for next Friday were strictly necessary,” said Guillam, with evident reluctance.

Picking up a table-knife, Smiley stared along the blade.

“She’s worth his career to him,” he said at last, with a most unnerving tautness. “He steals for her, lies for her, risks his neck for her. He has to know whether she cleans her fingernails and brushes her hair. Don’t you think we owe her a look?”

Owe to whom? Guillam wondered nervously as he flew back to London to report. Had Smiley meant that he owed it to himself? Or did he mean to Karla? But he was far too cautious to air these theories to Saul Enderby.

 

From a distance, it might have been a castle, or one of those small farmsteads that sit on hilltops in the Swiss wine country, with turrets, and moats with covered bridges leading to inner courtyards. Closer to, it took on a more utilitarian appearance, with an incinerator, and an orchard, and modern outbuildings with rows of small windows rather high. A sign at the edge of the village pointed to it, praising its quiet position, its comfort, and the solicitude of its staff. The community was described as “interdenominational Christian theosophist,” and foreign patients were a speciality. Old, heavy snow cluttered fields and roof-tops, but the road that Smiley drove was clear. The day was all white; sky and snow had merged into a single, uncharted void. From the gatehouse a dour porter telephoned ahead of him and, receiving somebody’s permission, waved him through. There was a bay marked “DOCTORS” and a bay marked “VISITORS” and he parked in the second. When he pressed the bell, a dull-looking woman in a grey habit opened the door to him, blushing even before she spoke. He heard crematorium music, and the clanking of crockery from a kitchen, and human voices all at once. It was a house with hard floors and no curtains.

“Mother Felicity is expecting you,” said Sister Beatitude in a shy whisper.

A scream would fill the entire house, thought Smiley. He noticed potted plants out of reach. At a door marked “OFFICE” his escort thumped lustily, then shoved it open. Mother Felicity was a large, inflamed-looking woman with a disconcerting worldliness in her gaze. Smiley sat opposite her. An ornate cross rested on her large bosom, and while she spoke, her heavy hands consoled it with a couple of touches. Her German was slow and regal.

“So,” she said. “So, you are Herr
Lachmann,
and Herr Lachmann is an acquaintance of Herr
Glaser,
and Herr Glaser is this week indisposed.” She played on these names as if she knew as well as he did they were lies. “He was not so indisposed that he could not telephone, but he was so indisposed that he could not bicycle. That is correct?”

Smiley said it was.

“Please do not lower your voice merely because I am a nun. We run a noisy house here and nobody is the less pious for it. You look pale. You have a flu?”

“No. No, I am well.”

“Then you are better off than Herr Glaser, who has succumbed to a flu. Last year we had an Egyptian flu, the year before it was an Asian flu, but this year the
malheur
seems to be our own entirely. Does Herr Lachmann have documents, may I ask, which legitimise him for who he is?”

Smiley handed her a Swiss identity card.

“Come. Your hand is shaking. But you have no flu. By occupation,
professor,
” she read aloud. “Herr Lachmann hides his light. He is
Professor
Lachmann. Of which subject is he professor, may one ask?”

“Of philology.”

“So. Philology. And Herr
Glaser,
what is
his
profession? He has never revealed it to me.”

“I understand he is in business,” Smiley said.

“A businessman who speaks perfect Russian. You also speak perfect Russian, Professor?”

“Alas, no.”

“But you are friends.” She handed back the identity card. “A Swiss-Russian businessman and a modest professor of philology are friends. So. Let us hope the friendship is a fruitful one.”

“We are also neighbours,” Smiley said.

“We are all neighbours, Herr Lachmann. Have you met Alexandra before?”

“No.”

“Young girls are brought here in many capacities. We have godchildren. We have wards. Nieces. Orphans. Cousins. Aunts, a few. A few sisters. And now a professor. But you would be very surprised how few
daughters
there are in the world. What is the family relationship between Herr Glaser and Alexandra, for example?”

“I understand he is a friend of Monsieur Ostrakov.”

“Who is in Paris. But is invisible. As also is Madame Ostrakova. Invisible. As also, today, is Herr Glaser. You see how difficult it is for us to come to grips with the world, Herr Lachmann? When we ourselves scarcely know who we are, how can we tell
them
who
they
are? You must be very careful with her.” A bell was ringing for the end of rest. “Sometimes she lives in the dark. Sometimes she sees too much. Both are painful. She has grown up in Russia. I don’t know why. It is a complicated story, full of contrasts, full of gaps. If it is not the cause of her malady, it is certainly, let us say, the framework. You do not think Herr Glaser is the father, for instance?”

“No.”

“Nor do I. Have you
met
the invisible Ostrakov? You have not. Does the invisible Ostrakov exist? Alexandra insists he is a phantom. Alexandra will have a quite different parentage. Well, so would many of us!”

“May I ask what you have told her about me?”

“All I know. Which is nothing. That you are a friend of Uncle Anton, whom she refuses to accept as her uncle. That Uncle Anton is ill, which appears to delight her, but probably it worries her very much. I have told her it is her father’s wish to have someone visit her every week, but she tells me her father is a brigand and pushed her mother off a mountain at dead of night. I have told her to speak German but she may still decide that Russian is best.”

“I understand,” said Smiley.

“You are lucky, then,” Mother Felicity retorted. “For I do not.”

Alexandra entered and at first he saw only her eyes: so clear, so defenceless. In his imagination, he had drawn her, for some reason, larger. Her lips were full at the centre, but at the corners already thin and too agile, and her smile had a dangerous luminosity. Mother Felicity told her to sit, said something in Russian, gave her a kiss on her flaxen head. She left, and they heard her keys jingle as she strode off down the corridor, yelling at one of the sisters in French to have this mess cleared up. Alexandra wore a green tunic with long sleeves gathered at the wrists and a cardigan over her shoulders like a cape. She seemed to carry her clothes rather than wear them, as if someone had dressed her for the meeting.

“Is Anton dead?” she asked, and Smiley noticed that there was no natural link between the expression on her face and the thoughts in her head.

“No, Anton has a bad flu,” he replied.

“Anton says he is my uncle but he is not,” she explained. Her German was good, and he wondered, despite what Karla had said to Grigoriev, whether she had that from her mother too, or whether she had inherited her father’s gift for languages, or both. “He also pretends he has no car.” As her father had once done, she watched him without emotion, and without commitment. “Where is your list?” she asked. “Anton always brings a list.”

“Oh, I have my questions in my head.”

“It is forbidden to ask questions without a list. Questions out of the head are all completely forbidden by my father.”

“Who is your father?” Smiley asked.

For a time he saw only her eyes again, staring at him out of their private lonely place. She picked up a roll of Scotch tape from Mother Felicity’s desk, and lightly traced the shiny surface with her finger.

“I saw your car,” she said. “‘BE’ stands for ‘Berne.’”

“Yes, it does,” said Smiley.

“What kind of car does Anton have?”

“A Mercedes. A black one. Very grand.”

“How much did he pay for it?”

“He bought it second-hand. About five thousand francs, I should imagine.”

“Then why does he come and see me on a bicycle?”

“Perhaps he needs the exercise.”

“No,” she said. “He has a secret.”

“Have
you
got a secret, Alexandra?” Smiley asked.

She heard his question, and smiled at it, and nodded a couple of times as if to someone a long way off. “My secret is called Tatiana,” she said.

“That’s a good name,” said Smiley.
“Tatiana
. How did you come by that?”

Raising her head, she smiled radiantly at the icons on the wall. “It is forbidden to talk about it,” she said. “If you talk about it, nobody will believe you, but they put you in a clinic.”

“But you are in a clinic already,” Smiley pointed out.

Her voice did not lift, it only quickened. She remained so absolutely still that she seemed not even to draw breath between her words. Her lucidity and her courtesy were awesome. She respected his kindness, she said, but she knew that he was an extremely dangerous man, more dangerous than teachers or police. Dr. Rüedi had invented property and prisons, and many of the clever arguments by which the world lived out its lies, she said. Mother Felicity was too close to God, she did not understand that God was somebody who had to be ridden and kicked like a horse till he took you in the right direction.

“But you, Herr Lachmann, represent the forgiveness of the authorities. Yes, I am afraid you do.”

She sighed, and gave him a tired smile of indulgence, but when he looked at the table he saw that she had seized hold of her thumb, and was forcing it back upon itself till it looked like snapping.

“Perhaps
you
are my father, Herr Lachmann,” she suggested with a smile.

“No, alas, I have no children,” Smiley replied.

“Are you God?”

“No, I’m just an ordinary person.”

“Mother Felicity says that in every ordinary person, there is a part that is God.”

This time it was Smiley’s turn to take a long while to reply. His mouth opened, then with uncharacteristic hesitation closed again.

“I have heard it said too,” he replied, and looked away from her a moment.

“You are supposed to ask me whether I have been feeling better.”

“Are you feeling better, Alexandra?”

“My name is Tatiana,” she said.

“Then how does Tatiana feel?”

She laughed. Her eyes were delightfully bright. “Tatiana is the daughter of a man who is too important to exist,” she said. “He controls the whole of Russia, but he does not exist. When people arrest her, her father arranges for her to be freed. He does not exist but everyone is afraid of him. Tatiana does not exist either,” she added. “There is only Alexandra.”

“What about Tatiana’s mother?”

“She was punished,” said Alexandra calmly, confiding this information to the icons rather than to Smiley. “She was not obedient to history. That is to say, she believed that history had taken a wrong course. She was mistaken. The people should not attempt to change history. It is the task of history to change the people. I would like you to take me with you, please. I wish to leave this clinic.”

Her hands were fighting each other furiously while she continued to smile at the icons.

“Did Tatiana ever meet her father?” he asked.

“A small man used to watch the children walk to school,” she replied. He waited but she said no more.

“And then?” he asked.

“From a car. He would lower the window but he looked only at me.”