‘Well, at first sight, he made little impression on me. I would have been hard put to it to recognise in the little fellow before me the master of cunning we have heard about in Irina’s letter, poor woman. I suppose it’s also true that my nerve-ends had been a good deal blunted by so many similar encounters in the last few months, by travel, and well, by – well, by things at home.’
In all the time Guillam had known him, it was the nearest Smiley had ever come to acknowledging Ann’s infidelities.
‘For some reason, it hurt an awful lot.’ His eyes were still open but his gaze had fixed upon an inner world. The skin of his brow and cheeks was drawn smooth as if by the exertion of his memory; but nothing could conceal from Guillam the loneliness evoked by this one admission. ‘I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,’ Smiley went on, more lightly. ‘Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things. What do you think of it?’
‘What did Karla look like?’ Guillam asked, treating the question as rhetorical.
‘Avuncular. Modest, and avuncular. He would have looked very well as a priest: the shabby, gnomic variety one sees in small Italian towns. Little wiry chap, with silvery hair, bright brown eyes and plenty of wrinkles. Or a schoolmaster, he could have been a schoolmaster: tough, whatever that means, and sagacious within the limits of his experience: but the small canvas, all the same. He made no other initial impression, except that his gaze was straight and it fixed on me from early in our talk. If you can call it a talk, seeing that he never uttered a word. Not one, the whole time we were together; not a syllable. Also it was stinking hot and I was travelled to death.’
Out of a sense of manners rather than appetite, Smiley set to work on his food, eating several mouthfuls joylessly before resuming his narrative. ‘There,’ he muttered, ‘that shouldn’t offend the cook. The truth is, I was slightly predisposed against Mr Gerstmann. We all have our prejudices and radio men are mine. They’re a thoroughly tiresome lot in my experience, bad fieldmen and overstrung, and disgracefully unreliable when it comes down to doing the job. Gerstmann, it seemed to me, was just another of the clan. Perhaps I’m looking for excuses for going to work on him with less’ – he hesitated – ‘less care, less caution, than in retrospect would seem appropriate.’ He grew suddenly stronger. ‘Though I’m not at all sure I need make any excuses,’ he said.
Here Guillam sensed a wave of unusual anger, imparted by a ghostly smile that crossed Smiley’s pale lips. ‘To hell with it,’ Smiley muttered.
Guillam waited, mystified.
‘I also remember thinking that prison seemed to have taken him over fast in seven days. He had that white dust in the skin and he wasn’t sweating. I was, profusely. I trotted out my piece, as I had a dozen times that year already, except that there was obviously no question of his being played back into Russia as our agent. “You have the alternative. It’s no one else’s business but your own. Come to the West and we can give you, within reason, a decent life. After questioning, at which you are expected to co-operate, we can help you to a new start, a new name, seclusion, a certain amount of money. On the other hand you can go home and I suppose they’ll shoot you or send you to a camp. Last month they sent Bykov, Shur and Muranov. Now why don’t you tell me your real name?” Something like that. Then I sat back and wiped away the sweat and waited for him to say “Yes, thank you”. He did nothing. He didn’t speak. He simply sat there stiff and tiny under the big fan that didn’t work, looking at me with his brown, rather jolly eyes. Hands out in front of him. They were very calloused. I remember thinking I must ask him where he had been doing so much manual labour. He held them – like this – resting on the table, palms upwards and fingers a little bent, as if he were still manacled.’