THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM ThE COLD by Le Carre, John

They walked to her flat through the rain and they might have been anywhere–Berlin, London, any town where paving stones turn to lakes ol light in the evening rain, and the traffic shuffles despondently through wet streets.

It was the first of many meals which Leamas had at her flat. He came when she asked him, and she asked him often. He never spoke much. When she discovered he would come, she took to laying the table in the morning before leaving for the library. She even prepared the vegetables beforehand and had the candles on the table, for she loved candlelight. She always knew that there was something deeply wrong with Leamas, and that one day, for some reason she could not understand, he might break and she would never see him again.

She tried to tell him she knew; she said to him one evening: “You must go when you want. I’ll never follow you, Alec.”

His brown eyes rested on her for a moment: “I’ll tell you when,” he replied.

Her fiat was a bed-sitting-room and a kitchen. In the sitting room were two armchairs, a sofa-bed, and a bookcase full of paperback books, mainly classics which she had never read.

After supper she would talk to him, and he would lie on the sofa, smoking. She never knew how much he heard, she didn’t care. She would kneel by the sofa holding his hand against her cheek, talking.

Then one evening she said to him, “Alec, what do you believe in? Don’t laugh–tell me.” She waited and at last he said:

“I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don’t believe it’s driven by Father Christmas.”

She seemed to consider this and at last she asked again: “But what do you believe in?”

Leamas shrugged.

“You must believe in something,” she persisted: “something like God–I know you do, Alec; you’ve got that look sometimes, as if you’d got something special to do, like a priest. Alec, don’t smile, it’s true.”

He shook his head.

“Sorry, Liz, you’ve got it wrong. I don’t like Americans and public schools. I don’t like military parades and people who play soldiers.” Without smiling he added, “And I don’t like conversations about Life.”

“But Alec, you might as well say–”

“I should have added,” Learnas interrupted, “that I don’t like people who tell me what I ought to think.” She knew he was getting angry but she couldn’t stop herself any more.

“That’s because you don’t _want_ to think, you don’t dare! There’s some poison in your mind, some hate. You’re a fanatic, Alec, I know you are, but I don’t know what about. You’re a fanatic who doesn’t want to convert people, and that’s a dangerous thing. You’re like a man who’s. . . sworn vengeance or something.”

The brown eyes rested on her. When he spoke she was frightened by the menace in his voice.

“If I were you,” he said roughly, “I’d mind my own business.”

And then he smiled, a roguish Irish smile. He hadn’t smiled like that before and Liz knew he was putting on the charm.

“What does Liz believe in?” he asked, and she replied:

“I can’t be had that easy, Alec.”

Later that night they talked about it again. Leamas brought it up–he asked her whether she was religious.

“You’ve got me wrong,” she said, “all wrong. I don’t believe in God.”

“Then what do you believe in?”

“History.”

He looked at her in astonishment for a moment, then laughed.

“Oh Liz . . . oh _no!_ You’re not a bloody Communist?”

She nodded, blushing like a small girl at his laughter, angry and relieved that he didn’t care.

She made him stay that night and they became lovers. He left at five in the morning. She couldn’t understand it; she was so proud and he seemed ashamed.

He left her flat and turned down the empty street toward the park. It was foggy. Some way down the road–not far, twenty yards, perhaps a bit more– stood the figure of a man in a raincoat, short and rather plump. He was leaning against the railings of the park, silhouetted in the shifting mist. As Leamas approached, the mist seemed to thicken, closing in around the figure at the railings, and when it parted the man was gone.

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