THE LOOKING GLASS WAR by John LeCarré

Control was shocked.

“What are you suggesting? How very distasteful. Whoever would do a thing like that?”

Smiley was putting on his coat.

“Good night, George,” Control said; and fiercely, as if he were tired of sensibility: “Run along. And preserve the difference between us: your country needs you. It’s not my fault they’ve taken so long to die.”

The dawn came and Leiser had not slept. He wanted to wash but dared not go into the corridor. He dared not move. If they were looking for him, he knew he must leave normally, not bolt from the hostel before the morning came. Never run, they used to say: walk like the crowd. He could go at six: that was late enough. He rubbed his chin against the back of his hand: it was sharp and rough, marking the brown skin.

He was hungry and no longer knew what to do, but he would not run.

He half turned on the bed, pulled the knife from inside the waistband of his trousers and held it before his eyes. He was shivering. He could feel across his brow the unnatural heat of incipient fever. He looked at the knife, and remembered the clean, friendly way they had talked: thumb on top, blade parallel to the ground, forearm stiff. “Go away,” the old man had said. “You are either good or bad and both are dangerous.” How should he hold the knife when people spoke to him like that? The way he held it for the boy?

It was six o’clock. He stood up. His legs were heavy and stiff. His shoulders still ached from carrying the rucksack. His clothes, he noticed, smelled of pine and leaf-mold. He picked the half-dried mud from his trousers and put on his second pair of shoes.

He went downstairs, looking for someone to pay, the new shoes squeaking on the wooden steps. There was an old woman in white overalls sorting lentils into a bowl, talking to a cat.

“What do I owe?”

“You fill in the form,” she said sourly. “That’s the first thing you owe. You should have done it when you came.”

“I’m sorry.”

She rounded on him, muttering but not daring to raise her voice. “Don’t you know it’s forbidden, staying in town and not reporting your presence to the police?” She looked at his new shoes. “Or are you so rich that you think you need not trouble?”

“I’m sorry,” Leiser said again. “Give me the form and I’ll sign it now. I’m not rich.”

The woman fell silent, picking studiously among the lentils.

“Where do you come from?” she asked.

“East,” Leiser said. He meant south, from Magdeburg, or west from Wilmsdorf.

“You should have reported last night. It’s too late now.”

“What do I pay?”

“You can’t,” the woman replied. “Never mind. You haven’t filled in the form. What will you say if they catch you?”

“I’ll say I slept with a girl.”

“It’s snowing outside,” the woman said. “Mind your nice shoes.”

Grains of hard snow drifted forlornly in the wind, collecting in the cracks between the black cobbles, lingering on the stucco of the houses. A drab, useless snow, dwindling where it fell.

He crossed the Friedensplatz and saw a new, yellow building, six or seven stories high, standing on a patch of wasteland beside a new estate. There was washing hanging on the balconies, touched with snow. The staircase smelled of food and Russian petrol. The flat was on the third floor. He could hear a child crying and a wireless playing. For a moment he thought he should turn and go away, because he was dangerous for them. He pressed the bell twice, as the girl had told him. She opened the door; she was half asleep. She had put on her mackintosh over the cotton nightdress and she held it at the neck because of the freezing cold. When she saw him she hesitated, not knowing what to do, as if he had brought bad news. He said nothing, just stood there with the suitcase swinging gently at his side. She beckoned with her head; he followed her across the corridor to her room, put the suitcase and rucksack in the corner. There were travel posters on the walls, pictures of desert, palm trees and the moon over a tropical sea. They got into bed and she covered him with her heavy body, trembling a little because she was afraid. “I want to sleep,” he said. “Let me sleep first.”

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