A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘What was that they shouted?’ Turner asked as they drove on.

  ‘Look out for the one-way signs.’ He turned left, following the blue arrow. ‘Where the hell are they taking us?’

  An electric van was scrubbing the gutter; two more policemen in greatcoats of green leather, their peak caps bent, suspiciously surveyed its progress. In a shop window a young girl was fitting beach clothes to a model, holding one plastic arm and feeding the sleeve along it. She wore boots of heavy felt and shuffled like a prisoner. They were in the station square. Black banners stretched across the road and along the awning of the station. ‘Welcome to Klaus Karfeld!’ ‘A hunter’s greeting, Klaus!’ ‘Karfeld! You stand for our self-respect!’ A photograph, larger than any which Turner had so far seen, was raised on a massive new hoarding. ‘Freitag!’ said the legend: Friday. The floodlights shone upon the world and left the face in darkness.

  ‘They’re arriving today. Tilsit, Meyer-Lothringen; Karfeld. They’re coming down from Hanover to prepare the ground.’

  ‘With Ludwig Siebkron playing host.’

  They were running along some tramlines, still following the diversion signs. The route took them left and right again. They had passed under a small bridge, doubled back, entered another square, halted at some improvised traffic lights and suddenly they were both sitting forward in their cramped seats, staring ahead of them in astonishment, up the gentle slope of the market place towards the Town Hall.

  Immediately before them, the empty stalls stood in lines like beds in a barrack hut. Beyond the stalls, the gingerbread houses offered their jagged gables to the lightening sky. But de Lisle and Turner were looking up the hill at the single pink and grey building which dominated the whole square. Ladders had been laid against it; the balcony was festooned in swathes of black; a flock of Mercedes were parked before it on the cobble. To its left, in front of a chemist’s shop, floodlit from a dozen places, rose a white scaffolding like the outline of a medieval storming tower. The pinnacle reached as high as the dormer windows of the adjacent building; the giant legs, naked as roots grown in the dark, splayed obscenely over their own black shadows. Workmen were already swarming at its base. Turner could hear the piping echo of hammers and the whine of powered saws. A stack of timber struggled upwards on a silent pulley.

  ‘Why are the flags at half mast?’

  ‘Mourning. It’s a gimmick. They’re in mourning for national honour.’

  They crossed the long bridge. ‘That’s better,’ said de Lisle with a small grunt of satisfaction, and pushed down his collar as if he had entered a warmer world.

  He was driving very fast. They passed a village and another. Soon they had entered the country and were following a new road along the eastern bank. To their right the tor of Godesberg, divided by tiers of mist, stood grimly over the sleeping town. They skirted the vineyard. The furrows, picked out by the mysterious darkness, were like seams stitched to the zig-zag patterns of the staves. Above the vineyard, the forests of the Seven Hills; above the forests, broken castles and Gothic follies black against the skyline. Abandoning the main road, they entered a short avenue which led directly to an esplanade bordered by unlit lamps and pollarded trees. Beyond it lay the Rhine, smouldering and undefined.

  ‘Next on the left,’ de Lisle said tersely. ‘Tell me if there’s anyone on guard.’

  A large white house loomed before them. The lower windows were shuttered, the front gates open. Turner left the car and walked a short way along the pavement. Picking up a stone, he flung it hard and accurately against the side of the house. The sound echoed crookedly across the water, and upwards towards the black slopes of the Petersberg. Scanning the mist, they waited for a cry or a footstep. There was none.

  ‘Park up the road and come back,’ said Turner.

  ‘I think I’ll just park up the road. How long will you need?’

  ‘You know the house. Come and help me.’

  ‘Not my form. Sorry. I don’t mind bringing you but I’m not coming in.’

  ‘Then why bring me?’

  De Lisle did not reply.

  ‘Don’t dirty your fingers, will you.’

  Keeping to the grass verge, Turner followed the drive towards the house. Even by that light, he was conscious of the same sense of order which had characterised Harting’s room. The long lawn was very tidy, the rose beds trimmed and weeded, the roses ringed with grass-cuttings and separately labelled with metal tags. At the kitchen door, three dustbins, numbered and licensed according to the local regulation, stood in a concrete bay. About to insert the key, he heard a footstep.

  It was unmistakably a footstep. It had the double imprint, slurred yet infallibly human, of a heel falling on gravel and the toe immediately following. A cautious footstep perhaps; a gesture half made and then withheld, a message sent and revoked; but beyond all argument a footstep.

  ‘Peter?’ He’s changed his mind again, he thought. He’s being soft-hearted. ‘Peter!’

  There was still no answer.

  ‘Peter, is that you?’ He stooped, quickly picked up an empty bottle from the wooden crate beside him and waited, his ears tuned to the lightest sound. He heard the crowing of a cock in the Seven Hills. He heard the prickling of the sodden earth, like the tingling of pine needles in a wood; he heard the rustling of tiny waves along the river’s shore; he heard the distant throbbing of the Rhine itself, like the turning of an unearthly machine, one tone made of many, breaking and joining like the unseen water; he heard the mutter of hidden barges, the shoot of anchor chains suddenly released; he heard a cry, like the lowing of lost cattle on a moor, as a lonely siren echoed on the cliff face. But he did not hear another footstep, nor the comfortable tones of de Lisle’s courteous voice. Turning the key he pushed open the door, hard; then stood still and listened again, the bottle rigid in his hand, while the faint aroma of stale cigar rose lovingly to his nostrils.

  He waited, letting the room come to him out of the cold gloom. Gradually, the new sounds began. First from the direction of the serving hatch came the chink of glass; from the hall, the creak of wood; in the cellar, a hollow box was dragged over a concrete floor; a gong rang, one tone, imperious and distinctive; and from everywhere now, all about him there rose a vibrant, organic hum, obscure yet very close, pressing upon him, louder with every minute, as if the whole building had been struck with a flat hand and were trembling from the blow. Running to the hall, he charged into the dining-room, put on the lights with a single sweeping movement of his palm and glared savagely round him, shoulders hunched, bottle clenched in his considerable fist.

  ‘Harting!’ he shouted now. ‘Harting?’ He heard the shuffle of scattering feet, and thrust back the partition door.

  ‘Harting!’ he called again, but his only answer was the soot slipping in the open hearth, and the banging of an errant shutter on the poor stucco outside. He went to the window and looked across the lawn towards the river. On the far bank, the American Embassy, brilliant as a power house, drove yellow shafts through the mist deep into the elusive water. Then at last he recognised the nature of his tormentor: a chain of six barges, flags flying, radar-lights glittering above them like the blue stars nailed to the mast, was swiftly disappearing into the fog. As the last vessel vanished, so the strange domestic orchestra put aside its instruments. The glass ceased to chime, the stairs to creak, the soot to fall, the walls to tremble. The house settled again, ruminative but not yet reassured, waiting for the next assault.

  Putting the bottle on the window-sill, Turner straightened himself and walked slowly from room to room. It was a wasteful, thinly built barrack of a place, built for a colonel out of reparation costs, at a time when the High Commission was stationed on the Petersberg; one of a colony, de Lisle had said, but the colony was never completed, for by then the Occupation had ended and the project was abandoned. A left-over house for a left-over man. It had a light side and a dark side according to whether the rooms looked on to the river or the Petersberg; the plaster
was rough and belonged out of doors. The furniture was equivocal, as if no one had ever decided how much prestige Harting was entitled to. If there was emphasis, it fell upon the gramophone. Flexes ran from it in all directions and speakers to either side of the chimney had been set upon pivots to assist directional adjustment.

  The dining table was laid for two.

  At the centre, four porcelain cherubs danced in a circle. Spring pursued Summer, Summer recoiled from Autumn, Winter drew them all forward. To either side, two places were set for dinner. Fresh candles, matches, a bottle of Burgundy, unopened, in the wine basket; a cluster of roses withering in a silver bowl. Over it all lay a thin layer of dust.

  He wrote quickly in his notebook, then continued to the kitchen. It might have been confected for a women’s magazine. He had never seen so many gadgets. Mixers, cutters, toasters, openers. A plastic tray lay on the counter, the remnants of a single breakfast. He lifted the lid of the teapot. It was a herbal tea, bright red. Dregs of it remained in the teacup, staining the spoon. A second cup lay upside down in the plate rack. A transistor radio, similar to the one he had seen in the Embassy, stood on top of the refrigerator. Having once again noted the wavelengths, Turner went to the door, listened, then began pulling open cupboards, extracting tins and bottles, peering inside. Occasionally he recorded what he found. In the refrigerator half-litre cartons of Naafi milk stood in neat order along the inside shelf. Taking out a bowl of pâté he gently sniffed it, testing its age. On a white plate, two steaks were set side by side. Strips of garlic had been threaded into the flesh. He prepared it on the Thursday night, he thought suddenly. On Thursday night he still didn’t know he was going to defect on Friday.

  The upstairs corridor was carpeted with thin runners of coconut matting. The pine furniture was very rickety. He pulled out the suits one by one, thrusting his hands into the pockets, then throwing them aside as if they were spent. Their cut, like that of the house, was military; the jackets were waisted, with a small pocket midway on the right side; the trousers were tapered and had no turn-ups. Occasionally, as he continued his search, he drew out a handkerchief, a scrap of paper or a bit of pencil, and these he would examine, and perhaps record, before tossing the suit aside and seizing another from the rickety wardrobe. The house was trembling again. From somewhere – it seemed this time to be from the very depths of the building – came the sound of clanking metal like a goods train braking, one place calling and another answering, ascending from floor to floor. Barely had it died before he heard another footfall. Dropping the suit he sprang to the window. He heard it again. Twice. Twice he had heard the solid tread of feet. Pushing back the shutter he leaned into the twilight and stared down at the driveway.

  ‘Peter?’

  Was it the dark that moved, or a man? He had left the lights on in the hall and they cast a patchwork of shadows on the drive. There was no wind to set the beech trees nodding. A man then? A man hurrying past the window on the inside? A man whose shape had flickered on the gravel?

  ‘Peter?’

  Nothing. No car, no guard. The neighbouring houses still lay in darkness. Above him, Chamberlain’s mountain woke slowly to the dawn. He closed the window.

  He worked faster now. In the second wardrobe another half dozen suits confronted him. Recklessly he dragged them from their hangers, struck at the pockets and cast them away; and then that extra sense warned him: go slowly. He had come upon a suit of dark blue gabardine, a summer suit but very much for formal wear, more creased than the others and set aside from them as if it were awaiting the cleaner, or tomorrow. He weighed it cautiously in his hand. Laying it on the bed, he felt in the pockets and drew out a brown envelope carefully folded upon itself. A brown OHMS envelope, the kind of thing they use for income tax. There was no writing on the outside and the flap had been sealed and ripped open. It was a key: a Yale key of dull, leaden colour, not newly cut but worn with age or use, a long, old-fashioned, complicated key for a deep and complicated lock, quite unlike the standard keys which comprised the Duty Officer’s bunch. A despatch-box key? Returning it to the envelope, he put it between the pages of his notebook and carefully examined the remaining pockets. Three cocktail sticks, one with grime at the point as if he had used it for cleaning his nails. Olive stones. Some loose change, four marks eighty, made up in small denominations. And a bill for drinks, undated, from a hotel in Remagen.

  He left the study till last. It was a mean room, filled with cartons of whisky and tinned food. An ironing board stood beside the shuttered window. On an old card table, piles of catalogues, trade brochures and diplomatic price lists lay in uncharacteristic confusion. A small notebook recorded the commodities which Harting was evidently pledged to obtain. Turner glanced through it, then put it in his pocket. The tins of Dutch cigars were in a wooden box; there must have been a gross of them or more.

  The glass-fronted bookcase was locked. Crouching, Turner studied the titles, rose, listened again, then fetched a screwdriver from the kitchen and with a single powerful wrench ripped the wood so that the brass came through suddenly like a bone through flesh, and the door swung uselessly open. The first half dozen volumes were German bound and pre-war, heavily ribbed and gilded. He could not read all the titles precisely, but some he guessed; Stundinger’s Leipziger Kommentar zum Strafgesetzbuch; Verwaltungsrecht; and someone else on the Statute of Limitations. In each was written the name, Harting Leo, like the name on the coathanger; and once he came upon the printed emblem of a Berlin bear over-written in a spiky German hand, very faint on the curves and very bold on the downstrokes, ‘Für meinen geliebten Sohn Leo’. The lower shelf was a medley: a Code of Conduct for British Officers in Germany, a German paperback on the flags of the Rhine, and an English–German phrase book published in Berlin before the war, annotated and very fingered. Reaching right to the back, he drew out a handful of slim, cloth-bound monthly newsletters of the Control Commission of Germany for the years forty-nine to fifty-one; some volumes were missing. As he opened the first volume the spine creaked and the dust rose swiftly to his nostrils. ‘No. 18 Field Investigation Unit, Hanover,’ the inscription read, written out, every word, in a good clerical hand, very bold on the downstrokes and refined at the curves, in a black, powdery ink which only governments can buy. A thin line cancelled the title and a second title replaced it: ‘No. 6 General Enquiry Unit, Bremen.’ Beneath it again (for Bremen too had been crossed out) he read the words: ‘Property of the Judge Advocate General’s Department, Moenchengladbach,’ and beneath that again, ‘Amnesty Commission, Hanover. Not to be taken away.’ Selecting a page at random, he found himself suddenly arrested by a retrospective account of the operation of the Berlin airlift. Salt should be slung under the wings of the aircraft and on no account carried inside the fuselage … the transportation of petrol presented high risks on landing and taking off … it was found preferable, in the interests of morale if not of economy, to fly in coal and corn rather than to make the bread in advance and deliver it ready-baked … by using dehydrated instead of fresh potatoes, seven hundred and twenty tons could be saved on a daily ration of nine hundred tons for the civilian population. Fascinated, he slowly turned the yellow pages, his eye halting at phrases of unexpected familiarity. ‘The first meeting of the Allied High Commission was held on 21st September at the Petersberg, near Bonn …’ A German Tourist Office was to be opened in New York … The festivals of Bayreuth and Oberammergau were to be resuscitated as swiftly as time allowed … He glanced at the summary of minutes of the High Commission meetings: ‘Methods of broadening opportunities and responsibilities of the Federal Republic of Germany in the field of foreign and economic activity were considered … The wider powers for the German Federal Republic in the field of foreign trade, decided upon under the Occupation statute, were defined … Direct German participation in two more international organisations was authorised …’

  The next volume opened naturally at a page dealing with the release of German prisoners detained under cert
ain arrest categories. Once again, he found himself compelled to read on: three million Germans presently in captivity … those detained were faring better than those at liberty … the Allies faced with the impossibility of separating the wheat from the chaff … Operation Coalscuttle would send them down the mines, Operation Barleycorn would send them to the harvest … One passage was sharply sidelined in blue ballpoint: On 31st May, 1948, therefore, as an act of clemency, an amnesty was granted from proceedings under Ordinance 69 to all members of the SS not in automatic arrest categories, except for those who had been active as concentration camp guards. The words ‘act of clemency’ had been underscored, and the ink looked uncommonly fresh.

  Having examined each, he grasped hold of the covers and with a savage twist wrenched them from the binding as if he were breaking the wings of a bird; then turned over what remained and shook it, searching for hidden matter; then rose and went to the door.

  The clanking had begun again and it was far louder than before. He remained motionless, his head to one side, his colourless eyes vainly searching the gloom; and he heard a low whistle, a long monotone, resonant and mournful, patiently summoning, softly coaxing, eerily lamenting. A wind had risen; it was the wind for sure. He could hear the shutter again, slamming against the wall: yet surely he had closed the shutter? It was the wind: a dawn wind which had come up the river valley. A strong wind, though, for the creaking of the stairs was taut, and mounted its own scale like the creaking of a ship’s ropes as the sails fill; and the glass, the dining-room glass, it was jingling absurdly; far louder than before.

  ‘Hurry,’ Turner whispered. He was talking to himself.