A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘My dear fellow,’ he was saying, as he peered curiously down­ward, ‘I dropped in to say goodbye, but if you’re going to take a bath, you might at least take off that dreadful suit.’

‘Is it Thursday?’

De Lisle had taken a napkin from the rail and was soaking it under the hot tap.

‘Wednesday. Wednesday as ever was. Cocktail time.’

He bent over him and began gently dabbing the blood from his face.

‘That football field. Where you saw him. Where he took Pargiter. Tell me how I get there.’

‘Keep still. And don’t talk or you’ll wake the neighbours.’ With the gentlest possible movements he continued touch­ing away the caked blood. Freeing his right hand Turner cautiously felt in the pocket of his jacket for the gunmetal key. It was still there.

‘Have you ever seen this before?’

‘No. No, I haven’t. Nor was I in the greenhouse at 3 a.m. on the morning of the second. But how like the Foreign Office,’ he said, standing back and critically surveying his handiwork, ‘to send a bull to catch a matador. You won’t mind my reclaiming my dinner jacket, will you?’

‘Why did Bradfield ask me?’

‘Ask you what?’

‘To dinner. To meet Siebkron. Why did he invite me on Tuesday?’

‘Brotherly love; what else?’

‘What’s in that despatch box that Bradfield’s so frightened of?’

‘Poisonous snakes.’

‘That key wouldn’t open it?’

‘No.’

De Lisle sat down on the edge of the bath. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ he said. ‘I know what you’ll tell me: somebody had to get their hands dirty.Just don’t expect me to be pleased it’s you. You’re not just somebody: that’s your trouble. Leave it to the people who were born with blinkers.’ His grey, tender eyes were shadowed with concern. ‘It is totally absurd,’ he declared. ‘People crack up every day under the strain of being saints. You’re cracking up under the strain of being a pig.’

‘Why doesn’t he go? Why does he hang around?’

‘They’ll be asking that about you tomorrow.’

Turner was stretched out on de Lisle’s long sofa. He held a whisky in his hand and his face was covered in yellow antisep­tic from de Lisle’s extensive medicine chest. His canvas bag lay in a corner of the room. De Lisle sat at his harpsichord, not playing it but stroking the keys. It was an eighteenth-­century piece, satinwood, and the top was bleached by tropical suns.

‘Do you take that thing everywhere?’

‘I had a violin once. It fell to pieces in Leopoldville. The glue melted. It’s awfully hard,’ he observed dryly, ‘to pursue culture when the glue melts.’

‘If Leo’s so damn clever, why doesn’t he go?’

‘Perhaps he likes it here. He’d be the first, I must say.’

‘And if they’re so damned clever, why don’t they take him away?’

‘Perhaps they don’t know he’s on the loose.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said perhaps they don’t know he’s run for it. I’m not a spy, I’m afraid, but I am human and I do know Leo. He’s extremely perverse. I can’t imagine for a moment he would do exactly what they told him. If there is a “they”, which I doubt. He wasn’t a natural servant.’

Turner said, ‘I try all the time to force him into the mould. He won’t fit.’

De Lisle struck a couple of notes with his finger.

‘Tell me, what do you want him to be? A goodie or a baddie? Or do you just want the freedom of the search? You want something, don’t you? Because anything’s better than nothing. You’re like those beastly students: you can’t stand a vacuum.’ Turner had closed his eyes and was lost in thought.

‘I expect he’s dead. That would be very macabre.’

‘He wasn’t dead this morning, was he?’ Turner said.

‘And you don’t like him to be in limbo. It annoys you. You want him to land or take off. There are no shades for you, are there? I suppose that’s the fun of searching for extremists: you search for their convictions, is that it?’

‘He’s still on the run,’ Turner continued. ‘Who’s he run­ning from? Us or them?’

‘He could be on his own.’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *