A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  Turner grinned suddenly. ‘That’s quite funny.’

  ‘It would have been,’ said Meadowes, ‘if he hadn’t looked so darned fierce with it. Then another time we’re talking about Berlin, something to do with the crisis, and I said, “Well, never mind, no one thinks of Berlin any more,” which is true really. Files I mean; no one draws the files or bothers with the contingencies; not like they used to, anyway. I mean politically it’s a dead duck. “No,” he says. “We’ve got the big memory and the small memory. The small memory’s to remember the small things and the big memory’s to forget the big ones.” That’s what he said; it touched me, that did. I mean there’s a lot of us think that way, you can’t help it these days.’

  ‘He came home with you, did he, sometimes? You’d make an evening of it?’

  ‘Now and then. When Myra was out. Sometimes I’d slip over there.’

  ‘Why when Myra was out?’ Turner pounced quite hard on that: ‘You still didn’t trust him, did you?’

  ‘There’s rumours,’ Meadowes said evenly. ‘There was talk about him. I didn’t want her connected.’

  ‘Him and who?’

  ‘Just girls. Girls in general. He was a bachelor and he liked his fun.’

  ‘Who?’

  Meadowes shook his head. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he said. He was playing with a couple of paper clips, trying to make them interlock.

  ‘Did he ever talk about England in the war? About an uncle in Hampstead?’

  ‘He told me once he arrived at Dover with a label round his neck. That wasn’t usual either.’

  ‘What wasn’t –’

  ‘Him talking about himself. Johnny Slingo said he’d known him four years before he came to Registry and he’d never got a word out of him. He was all opened up, that’s what Johnny said, it must be old age setting in.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, that was all he had, a label: Harting Leo. They shaved his head and deloused him and sent him to a Farm School. He was allowed to choose apparently: domestic science or agriculture. He chose agriculture because he wanted to own land. It seemed daft to me, Leo wanting to be a farmer, but there it is.’

  ‘Nothing about Communists? A left-wing group of kids in Hampstead? Nothing like that at all?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Would you tell me if there was something?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Did he ever mention a man called Praschko? In the Bundestag.’

  Meadowes hesitated. ‘He said one night that Praschko had walked out on him.’

  ‘How? Walked out how?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say. He said they’d emigrated to England together, and returned here together after the war; Praschko had chosen one path and Leo had chosen another.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t press him. Why should I? After that night he never mentioned him again.’

  ‘All that talk about his memory: what do you think he had in mind?’

  ‘Something historical, I suppose. He thought a lot about history, Leo did. Mind you, that’s a couple of months back now.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘That was before he went on his track.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘He went on a track,’ Meadowes said simply. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’

  ‘I want to hear about the missing files,’ Turner said. ‘I want to check the ledgers and the mail.’

  ‘You’ll wait your turn. There’s some things that aren’t just facts, and if you’ll only pay attention you’ll maybe hear about them. You’re like Leo, you are: always wanting the answer before you’ve even heard the question. What I’m trying to tell you is, I knew from the day he came here that he was looking for something. We all did. You felt it with Leo. You felt he was looking for something real. Something you could almost touch, it meant so much to him. That’s rare in this place, believe me.’

  It was a whole life which Meadowes seemed to draw upon.

  ‘An archivist is like an historian; he has time-periods he’s faddy about; places, Kings and Queens. All the files here are related, they’re bound to be. Give me any file from next door; any file you want, I could trace you a path clean through the whole Registry, from Icelandic shipping rights to the latest guidance on gold prices. That’s the fascination of files; there’s nowhere to stop.’

  Meadowes ran on. Turner studied the grey, parental face, the grey eyes clouded with concern, and he felt the dawning of excitement.

  ‘You think you run an archive,’ Meadowes said. ‘You don’t. It runs you. There’s qualities to an archive that just get you, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. Take Johnny Slingo now. You saw him as you came in, on the left there, the old fellow in the jacket. He’s the intellectual type, college and all the rest. Johnny’s only been at it a year, came to us from Admin as a matter of fact, but he’s stuck with the nine-nine-fours: Federal Germany’s relations with Third Parties. He could sit where you are and recite the date and place of every single negotiation there’s ever been about the Hallstein Doctrine. Or take my case, I’m mechanical. I like cars, inventions, all that world. I reckon I know more about German infringement of patent rights than any desk officer in Commercial Section.’

  ‘What was Leo’s track?’

  ‘Wait. It’s important what I’m telling. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it in the last twenty-four hours, and you’re going to hear it right, whether you like it or not. The files get hold of you; you can’t help it. They’d rule your life if you ever let them. They’re wife and child to some men, I’ve seen it happen. And times they just take you, and then you’re on a track and you can’t get off it; and that’s what they did to Leo. I don’t know how it happens. A paper catches your eye, something silly: a threatened strike of sugar-workers in Surabaya, that’s our favourite joke at the moment. “Hullo,” you say to yourself, “why hasn’t Mr So-and-So signed that off?” You check back: Mr So-and-So never saw it. He never read the telegram at all. Well, he must see it then, mustn’t he? Only it all happened three years ago, and Mr So-and-So is Ambassador in Paris. So you start trying to find out what action was taken, or wasn’t taken. Who was consulted? Why didn’t they inform Washington? You chase the cross-references, draw the original material. By then it’s too late; you’ve lost your sense of proportion; you’re away, and by the time you shake yourself out of it you’re ten days older and none the wiser, but maybe you’re safe again for a couple of years. Obsession, that’s what it is. A private journey. It happens to all of us. It’s the way we’re made.’

  ‘And it happened to Leo?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it happened to Leo. Only from the first day he came here, I had that feeling he was … well, that he was waiting. Just the way he looked, the way he handled paper … Always peering over the hedge. I’d glance up and catch sight of him and there were those little brown eyes looking all the time. I know you’ll say I’m fanciful; I don’t care. I didn’t make a lot of it, why should I? We all have problems, and besides it was like a factory in here by then. But it’s true all the same. I’ve thought about it and it’s true. It was nothing much to begin with; I just noticed it. Then gradually he got on his track.’

  A bell rang suddenly; a long, assertive peal up and down the corridors. They heard the slamming of doors and the sound of running feet. A girl was calling: ‘Where’s Valerie, where’s Valerie?’

  ‘Fire practice,’ Meadowes said. ‘We’re running to two or three a week at present. Don’t worry. Registry’s exempt.’

  Turner sat down. He looked even paler than before. He ran a big hand through his tufted, fair hair.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘Ever since March now he’s been working on a big project: all the seven-o-sevens. That’s Statutes. There’s about two hundred of them or more, and mainly to do with the handover when the Occupation ended. Terms of withdrawal, residual rights, rights of evocation, phases of autonomy and God knows what. All forty-nine to fifty-five stuff, n
ot relevant here at all. He might have started in half a dozen places on the Destruction, but the moment he saw the seven-o-sevens, they were the ones for him. “Here,” he said. “That’s just right for me, Arthur, I can cut my milk teeth on them. I know what they’re talking about; it’s familiar ground.” I shouldn’t think anyone had looked at it for fifteen years. But tricky, even if it was obsolete. Full of technical talk. Surprising what Leo knew, mind. All the terms, German and English, all the legal phrases.’ Meadowes shook his head in admiration. ‘I saw a minute of his go to the Legal Attaché, a résumé of a file; I couldn’t have put it together I’m sure, and I doubt whether there’s anyone in Chancery could either. All about the Prussian Criminal Code and regional sovereignty of justice. And half of it in German, too.’

  ‘He knew more than he was prepared to let on: is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Meadowes. ‘And don’t you go putting words into my mouth. He was being used, that’s what I mean; he had a lot of knowledge in him that he hadn’t done anything with for a long time. All of a sudden, he could put it to work.’

  Meadowes resumed: ‘With the seven-o-sevens there wasn’t any real question of destruction: more of sending it back to London and getting it stored out of the way, but it all had to be read and submitted the same as everything else, and he’d been getting very deep in it these last few weeks. I told you he was quiet up here; well, he was. And once he got tucked into the Statutes he got quieter and quieter. He was on a track.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  At the back of Turner’s notebook there was a diary; he had it open before him.

  ‘Three weeks ago. He went further and further in. Still jolly, mind; still bouncing up and down to get the girls a chair or help them with a parcel. But something had got hold of him, and it meant a lot to him. Still quizzy: no one will ever cure him of that; he had to know exactly what each of us was up to. But subdued. And he got worse. More and more thoughtful; more and more serious. Then on Monday, last Monday, he changed.’

  ‘A week ago today,’ said Turner. ‘The fifth.’

  ‘Seven days. Is that all? My God.’ There was a sudden smell of hot wax from next door, and the muffled thud of a large seal being pressed on to a packet.

  ‘That’ll be the two o’clock bag they’re getting ready,’ he muttered inconsequentially, and glanced at his silver pocket watch. ‘It’s due down there at twelve thirty.’

  ‘I’ll come back after lunch if you like.’

  ‘I’d rather be done with you before,’ Meadowes said. ‘If you don’t mind.’ He put the watch away. ‘Where is he? Do you know? What’s happened to him? He’s gone to Russia, is that it?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘He might have gone anywhere, you couldn’t tell. He wasn’t like us. He tried to be, but he wasn’t. More like you, I suppose, in some ways. Perverse. Always busy but always doing things back to front. Nothing was simple, I reckon that was his trouble. Too much childhood. Or none. It comes to the same thing really. I like people to grow slowly.’

  ‘Tell me about last Monday. He changed: how?’

  ‘Changed for the better. He’d shaken himself out of it, whatever it was. The track was over. He was smiling when I came in, really happy. Johnny Slingo, Valerie, they both noticed it, same as I did. We’d all been going full tilt of course; I’d been in most of Saturday, all Sunday; the others had been coming and going.’

  ‘What about Leo?’

  ‘Well, he’d been busy too, there was no doubt to that, but we didn’t see him around an awful lot. An hour up here, three hours down there –’

  ‘Down where?’

  ‘In his own room. He did that sometimes, took a few files downstairs to work on. It was quieter. “I like to keep it warm,” he said. “It’s my old room, Arthur, and I don’t like to let it grow cold.” ’

  ‘And he took his files down there, did he?’ Turner asked, very quiet.

  ‘Then there was Chapel: that took up a part of Sunday, of course. Playing the organ.’

  ‘How long’s he been doing that, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, years and years. It was reinsurance,’ Meadowes said with a little laugh. ‘Just to keep himself indispensable.’

  ‘So Monday he was happy.’

  ‘Serene. There’s no other word for it. “I like it here, Arthur,” he said. “I want you to know that.” Sat down and got on with his work.’

  ‘And he stayed that way till he left?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘What do you mean, “More or less”?’

  ‘Well, we had a bit of a row. That was Wednesday. He’d been all right Tuesday, happy as a sandboy, then Wednesday I caught him at it.’ He had folded his hands before him on his lap and he was looking at them, head bowed.

  ‘He was trying to look at the Green File. The Maximum Limit.’ He touched the top of his head in a small gesture of nervousness. ‘He was always quizzy, I told you. Some people are like that, they can’t help it. Didn’t matter what it was; I could leave a letter from my own mother on the desk: I’m damn sure that if Leo had half a chance he’d have read it. Always thought people were conspiring against him. It drove us mad to begin with; look in anything, he would. Files, cupboards, anywhere. He hadn’t been here a week before he was signing for the mail. The whole lot, down in the bag room. I didn’t care for that at all at first, but he got all huffy when I told him to stop and in the end I let it go.’ He opened his hands, seeking an answer. ‘Then in March we had some Trade Contingency papers from London – special guidance for Econ on new alignments and forward planning, and I caught him with the whole bundle on his desk. “Here,” I said. “Can’t you read? They’re subscription only, they’re not for you.” He didn’t turn a hair. In fact he was really angry. “I thought I could handle anything!” he says. He’d have hit me for two pins. “Well, you thought wrong,” I told him. That was March. It took us both a couple of days to cool down.’

  ‘God save us,’ said Turner softly.

  ‘Then we had this Green. A Green’s rare. I don’t know what’s in it; Johnny doesn’t, Valerie doesn’t. It lives in its own despatch box. H. E.’s got one key, Bradfield’s got the other and he shares it with de Lisle. The box has to come back here to the strong-room every night. It’s signed in and signed out, and only I handle it. So anyway: lunchtime Wednesday it was. Leo was up here on his own; Johnny and me went down to the canteen.’

  ‘Often here on his own lunchtimes, was he?’

  ‘He liked to be, yes. He liked the quiet.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘There was a big queue at the canteen and I can’t stand queuing, so I said to Johnny, “You stay here, I’ll go back and do a spot of work and try again in half an hour.” So I came in unexpectedly. Just walked in. No Leo, and the strong-room was open. And there he was; standing there, with the Green despatch box.’

  ‘What do you mean, with it?’

  ‘Just holding it. Looking at the lock as far as I could make out. Just curious. He smiled when he saw me, cool as anything. He’s sharp, I’ve told you that. “Arthur,” he says, “you’ve caught me at it, you’ve discovered my guilty secret.” I said, “What the hell are you up to? Look what you’ve got there in your hands!” Like that. “You know me,” he says, very disarming. “I just can’t help it.” He puts down the box. “I was actually looking for some seven-o-sevens, you don’t happen to have seen them anywhere, do you? For March and February fifty-eight.” Something like that.’

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘I read him the Riot Act. What else could I do? I said I’d report him to Bradfield, the lot. I was furious.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Meadowes said at last. ‘You think I’m soft in the head, I know. It was Myra’s birthday Friday; we were having a special do at the Exiles. Leo had choir practice and a dinner party.’

 
‘Dinner party? Where?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘There’s nothing in his diary.’

  ‘That’s not my concern.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’d promised to drop in sometime during the evening and give her her present. It was going to be a hair-dryer; we’d chosen it together.’ He shook his head again. ‘How can I explain it? I’ve told you: I felt responsible for him. He was that kind of bloke. You and I could blow him over with one puff if we wanted.’

  Turner gazed at him incredulously.

  ‘And I suppose there was something else too.’ He looked Turner full in the face. ‘If I tell Bradfield, that’s it. Leo’s had it. There’s nowhere for him to go, is there? See what I mean. Like now, for instance: I mean I hope he has gone to Moscow, because there’s nowhere else going to take him.’

  ‘You mean you suspected him?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. Deep down I suppose I did. Warsaw’s done that for me, you know. I’d like Myra to have settled there. With her student. All right, they put him up to it; they made him seduce her. But he did say he’d marry her, didn’t he? For the baby. I’d have loved that baby more than I can say. That’s what you took away from me. From her as well. That’s what it was all about. You shouldn’t have done that, you know.’

  He was grateful for the traffic then, for any noise to fill that damned tank and take away the accusing echo of Meadowes’ flat voice.

  ‘And on Thursday the box disappeared?’

  Meadowes shrugged it away. ‘Private Office returned it Thursday midday. I signed it in myself and left it in the strong-room. Friday it wasn’t there. That was that.’

  He paused.

  ‘I should have reported it at once. I should have gone running to Bradfield Friday afternoon when I noticed. I didn’t. I slept on it. I brooded about it all Saturday. I chewed Cork’s head off, went for Johnny Slingo, made their lives hell. It was driving me mad. I didn’t want to raise a hare. We’d lost all manner of things in the crisis. People get light-fingered. Someone’s pinched our trolley, I don’t know who: one of the Military Attachés’ clerks, that’s my guess. Someone else has lifted our swivel chair. There’s a long-carriage typewriter from the Pool; diaries, all sorts, cups from the Naafi even. Anyway, those were the excuses. I thought one of the users might have taken it: de Lisle, Private Office …’