Smiley’s People by John le Carré

After Mother Felicity’s arrival, Alexandra had held the white bed sheet to her eyes and decided that time was not passing at all, that she was in a child’s white limbo where everything was shadowless, even Alexandra, even Tatiana. White light bulbs, white walls, a white iron bed frame. White radiators. Through the high windows, white mountains against a white sky.

Dr Rüedi, she thought, here is a new dream for you when we have our next little Thursday talk, or is it Tuesday?

Now listen carefully, Doctor. Is your Russian good enough? Sometimes you pretend to understand more than you really do. Very well, I will begin. My name is Tatiana and I am standing in my white night-suit in front of the white Alpine landscape, trying to write on the mountain face with a stick of Felicity-Felicity’s white chalk, whose real name is Nadezhda. I am wearing nothing underneath. You pretend you are indifferent to such things, but when I talk to you about how I love my body you pay close attention, don’t you, Dr Rüedi? I scribble with the chalk in the mountain face. I stub with it like a cigarette. I think of the filthiest words I know – yes, Dr Rüedi, this word, that word – but I fear your Russian vocabulary is unlikely to include them. I try to write them also, but white on white, what impact can a little girl make, I ask you, Doctor?

Doctor, it’s terrible, you must never have my dreams. Do you know I was once a whore called Tatiana? That I can do no wrong? That I can set fire to things, even myself, vilify the State, and still the wise ones in authority will not punish me? But instead, they let me out of the back door – ‘Go, Tatiana, go’ – did you know this?

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, Alexandra pulled herself deeper under the bedclothes. The French girl is being led to the toilets, she thought. The French girl was the most beautiful in the place. Alexandra loved her, just for her beauty. She beat the whole system with it. Even when they put her in the coat – for clawing or messing herself or smashing something – her angel’s face still gazed at them like one of their own icons. Even when she wore her shapeless night-suit with no buttons, her breasts lifted it up in a crisp bridge and there was nothing anyone could do, not even the most jealous, not even Felicity-Felicity whose secret name was Hope, to prevent her from looking like a film star. When she tore her clothes off, even the nuns stared at her with a kind of covetous terror. Only the American girl bad matched her for looks, and the American girl bad been taken away, she was too bad. The French girl was bad enough with the naked tantrums and her wrist-cutting and her fits of rage at Felicity-Felicity, but she was nothing beside the American girl by the time she left. The sisters had to fetch Kranko from the lodge to hold her down, just for the sedation. They had to close the entire rest-wing while they did it, but when the van took the American girl off, it was like a death in the family and Sister Beatitude wept all through evening prayers. And afterwards, when Alexandra forced her to tell, she called her by her pet name, Sasha, a sure sign of her distress.

‘The American girl has gone to Untersee,’ she said through her tears when Alexandra forced her to tell. ‘Oh, Sasha, Sasha, promise me you will never go to Untersee.’ Just as in the life she could not mention, they had begged her : ‘Tatiana, do not do these mad and dangerous things!’

After that, Untersee became Alexandra’s worst terror, a threat that silenced her at any time, even her naughtiest : ‘If you are bad you will go to Untersee, Sasha. If you tease Dr Rüedi, pull up your skirt, and cross your legs at him, Mother Felicity will have to send you to Untersee. Hush, or they’ll send you to Untersee.’

The footsteps returned along the corridor. The French girl was taken to be dressed. Sometimes she fought them and ended up in the coat instead. Sometimes Alexandra would be sent to calm her, which she did by brushing the French girl’s hair over and over again, not talking, till the French girl relaxed and started to kiss her hands. Then Alexandra would be taken away again because love was not, was not, was not on the curriculum.

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