A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘What difference does that make?’

‘That was before he went on his track.’

‘His what?’

‘He went on a track,’ Meadowes said simply. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’

‘I want to hear about the missing files,’ Turner said. ‘I want to check the ledgers and the mail.’

‘You’ll wait your turn. There’s some things that aren’t just facts, and if you’ll only pay attention you’ll maybe hear about them. You’re like Leo, you are: always wanting the answer before you’ve even heard the question. What I’m trying to tell you is, I knew from the day he came here that he was looking for something. We all did. You felt it with Leo. You felt he was looking for something real. Something you could almost touch, it meant so much to him. That’s rare in this place, believe me.’

It was a whole life which Meadowes seemed to draw upon. ‘An archivist is like an historian; he has time-periods he’s faddy about; places, Kings and Queens. All the files here are related, they’re bound to be. Give me any file from next door; any file you want, I could trace you a path clean through the whole Registry, from Icelandic shipping rights to the latest guidance on gold prices. That’s the fascination of files; there’s nowhere to stop.’

Meadowes ran on. Turner studied the grey, parental face, the grey eyes clouded with concern, and he felt the dawning of excitement.

‘You think you run an archive,’ Meadowes said. ‘You don’t. It runs you. There’s qualities to an archive that just get you, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. Take Johnny Slingo now. You saw him as you came in, on the left there, the old fellow in the jacket. He’s the intellectual type, college and all the rest. Johnny’s only been at it a year, came to us from Admin as a matter of fact, but he’s stuck with the nine-nine-fours: Federal Germany’s relations with Third Par­ties. He could sit where you are and recite the date and place of every single negotiation there’s ever been about the Hallstein Doctrine. Or take my case, I’m mechanical. I like cars, inventions, all that world. I reckon I know more about German infringement of patent rights than any desk officer in Commercial Section.’

‘What was Leo’s track?’

‘Wait. It’s important what I’m telling. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it in the last twenty-four hours, and you’re going to hear it right, whether you like it or not. The files get hold of you; you can’t help it. They’d rule your life if you ever let them. They’re wife and child to some men, I’ve seen it happen. And times they just take you, and then you’re on a track and you can’t get off it; and that’s what they did to Leo. I don’t know how it happens. A paper catches your eye, something silly: a threatened strike of sugar-workers in Sura­baya, that’s our favourite joke at the moment. “Hullo,” you say to yourself, “why hasn’t Mr So-and-So signed that off?” You check back: Mr So-and-So never saw it. He never read the telegram at all. Well, he must see it then, mustn’t he? Only it all happened three years ago, and Mr So-and-So is Ambassador in Paris. So you start trying to find out what action was taken, or wasn’t taken. Who was consulted? Why didn’t they inform Washington? You chase the cross-references, draw the original material. By then it’s too late; you’ve lost your sense of proportion; you’re away, and by the time you shake yourself out of it you’re ten days older and none the wiser, but maybe you’re safe again for a couple of years. Obsession, that’s what it is. A private journey. It happens to all of us. It’s the way we’re made.’

‘And it happened to Leo?’

‘Yes. Yes, it happened to Leo. Only from the first day he came here, I had that feeling he was… well, that he was waiting. Just the way he looked, the way he handled paper… Always peering over the hedge. I’d glance up and catch sight of him and there was those little brown eyes looking all the time. I know you’ll say I’m fanciful; I don’t care. I didn’t make a lot of it, why should I? We all have problems, and besides it was like a factory in here by then. But it’s true all the same. I’ve thought about it and it’s true. It was nothing much to begin with; I just noticed it. Then gradually he got on his track.’

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