Smiley’s People by John le Carré

‘So,’ he said. ‘So then, Alexandra!’

Suddenly Alexandra did not want to wait for his questions. Suddenly she could not. She thought of pulling down his trousers and making love to him. She thought of messing in a corner like the French girl. She showed him the blood on her hands where she had chewed them. She needed to explain to him, through her own divine blood, that she did not want to hear his first question. She stood up, holding out one hand for him while she dug her teeth into the other. She wanted to demonstrate to Uncle Anton, for once and for ever, that the question he had in mind was obscene to her, and insulting, and unacceptable, and mad, and to do this she had chosen Christ’s example as the nearest and best : did He not hang on Felicity-Felicity’s wall, straight ahead of her, with blood running down His wrists? I have shed this for you, Uncle Anton, she explained, thinking of Easter now, of Felicity-Felicity going round the castle breaking eggs. Please. This is my blood, Uncle Anton. I have shed it for you. But with her other hand jammed in her mouth, all she could manage in her speaking voice was a sob. So finally she sat down, frowning, with her hands linked on her lap, not actually bleeding, she noticed, but at least wet with her saliva.

Uncle Anton held the notebook open with his right hand and was holding the pop-top pencil in his left. He was the first left-handed man she had known and sometimes, watching him write, she wondered whether he was a mirror image, with the real version of him sitting in the car behind Andreas Gertsch’s barn. She thought what a wonderful way that would be of handling what Doctor Rüedi called the ‘divided nature’ – to send one half away on a bicycle while the other half stayed put in the car with the red-headed woman who drove him. Felicity-Felicity, if you lend me your pop-pop bicycle, I will send the bad part of me away on it.

Suddenly she heard herself talking. It was a wonderful sound. It made her like all the strong healthy voices around her : politicians on the radio, doctors when they looked down on her in bed.

‘Uncle Anton, where do you come from, please?’ she heard herself enquire, with measured curiosity. ‘Uncle Anton, pay attention to me, please, while I make a statement. Until you have told me who you are and whether you are my real uncle, and what is the registration number of your big black car, I shall refuse to answer any of your questions. I regret this, but it is necessary. Also, is the red-headed woman your wife or is she Felicity-Felicity with her hair dyed, as Sister Beatitude advises me?’

But too often Alexandra’s mind spoke words which her mouth did not transmit, with the result that the words stayed flying around inside her and she became their unwilling jailer, just as Uncle Anton pretended to be hers.

‘Who gives you the money to pay Felicity-Felicity for my detention here? Who pays Dr Rüedi? Who dictates what questions go into your notebook every week? To whom do you pass my answers which you so meticulously write down?’

But once again, the words flew around inside her skull like the birds in Kranko’s greenhouse in the fruit season, and there was nothing that Alexandra could do to persuade them to come out.

‘So, then?’ said Uncle Anton a third time, with the watery smile that Dr Rüedi wore when he was about to give her an injection. ‘Now first you must please tell me your full name, Alexandra.’

Alexandra held up three fingers and counted on them like a good child. ‘Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova,’ she said in an infantile voice.

‘Good. And how have you been feeling this week, Sasha?’

Alexandra smiled politely in response : ‘Thank you, Uncle Anton. I have been feeling much better this week. Dr Rüedi tells me that my crisis is already far behind me.’

‘Have you received by any means – post, telephone, or word of mouth – any communication from outside persons?’

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