A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Karfeld is hidden until tonight,’ Bradfield said. ‘Siebkron has seen to that. They’ll expect him to try again this evening. And he will.’ He went over it again, rehearsing it as if it were a formula.

  ‘Until the demonstration, Karfeld is hidden. After the demonstration, Karfeld will again be hidden. Harting’s own resources are severely limited; he cannot reckon to be at large much longer. He will try tonight.’

  ‘Aickman’s dead,’ said Turner. ‘They killed her.’

  ‘Yes. He will want to try tonight.’

  ‘Make Siebkron cancel the rally.’

  ‘If it were in my power I would. If it were in Siebkron’s power, he would.’ He indicated the columns. ‘It’s too late.’

  Turner stared at him.

  ‘No, I cannot see Karfeld cancelling the rally, however frightened he is,’ Bradfield continued, as if a moment’s doubt had crossed his mind. ‘The rally is the culmination of his campaign in the provinces. He has organised it to coincide with the most critical moment in Brussels. He is already halfway to success.’

  He turned and walked slowly along the footpath towards the car park. The grey columns watched him silently.

  ‘Go back to the Embassy. Take a taxi. From now on there’s to be a total ban on movement. No one is to leave the Embassy perimeter on pain of dismissal. Tell de Lisle. And tell him what has happened and put aside the Karfeld papers for my return. Anything that incriminates him: the investigation report, the thesis … anything from the Glory Hole that tells the tale. I shall be back by early afternoon.’

  He opened the car door.

  ‘What’s the bargain with Siebkron?’ Turner said. ‘What’s the small print?’

  ‘There is no bargain. Either they destroy Harting, or he will destroy Karfeld. In either case I have to disown him. That is the only thing that matters. Is there something you would prefer me to do? Do you see a way out? I shall inform Siebkron that order must be restored. I shall give him my oath that we had no part in Harting’s work, and no knowledge of it. Can you suggest an alternative solution? I would be grateful.’

  He started the engine. The grey columns stirred with interest, pleased by the white Jaguar.

  ‘Bradfield!’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘I beg you. Five minutes. I’ve got a card to play as well. Something we’ve never mentioned. Bradfield!’

  Without a word, Bradfield opened the door and got out.

  ‘You say we have no part in it. We have. He’s our product, you know that, we made him what he was, crushed him between all those worlds … we ground him down into himself, made him see things no one should ever see, hear things that … we sent him on that private journey … you don’t know what it’s like down there. I do! Bradfield, listen! We owe him. He knew that.’

  ‘All of us are owed. Very few of us are paid.’

  ‘You want to destroy him! You want to make him nothing! You want to disown him because he was her lover! Because –’

  ‘My God,’ Bradfield said softly, ‘if that were the task I had set myself I would have to kill more than thirty-two. Is that all you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘Wait! Brussels … the Market … all this. Next week it’s gold, the week after it’s the Warsaw pact. We’d join the bloody Salvation Army if it pleased the Americans. What does it matter about the names? … You see it clearer than any of us: the drift. Why do you go on with it like this? Why don’t you say stop?’

  ‘What am I to do about Harting? Tell me what else I can do but disown him? You know us here now. Crises are academic. Scandals are not. Haven’t you realised that only appearances matter?’

  Turner searched frantically about him. ‘It’s not true! You can’t be so tied to the surface of things.’

  ‘What else is there when the underneath is rotten? Break the surface and we sink. That’s what Harting has done. I am a hypocrite,’ he continued simply. ‘I’m a great believer in hypocrisy. It’s the nearest we ever get to virtue. It’s a statement of what we ought to be. Like religion, like art, like the law, like marriage. I serve the appearance of things. It is the worst of systems; it is better than the others. That is my profession and that is my philosophy. And unlike yourself,’ he added, ‘I did not contract to serve a powerful nation, least of all a virtuous one. All power corrupts. The loss of power corrupts even more. We thank an American for that advice. It’s quite true. We are a corrupt nation, and we need all the help we can get. That is lamentable and, I confess, occasionally humiliating. However, I would rather fail as a power than survive by impotence. I would rather be vanquished than neutral. I would rather be English than Swiss. And unlike you, I expect nothing. I expect no more from institutions than I expect from people. You have no suggestion then? I am disappointed.’

  ‘Bradfield, I know her. I know you, and I know what you feel! You hate him! You hate him more than you dare admit. You hate him for feeling: for loving, even for hating. You hate him for deceiving and for being honest. For waking her. For putting you to shame. You hate him for the time she spent on him … for the thought, the dream she had of him!’

  ‘But you have no suggestion. I imagine your five minutes are over. He has offended,’ he added casually, as if passing the topic once more in review. ‘Yes. He has. Not as much against myself as you might suppose. But against the order that results from chaos; against the built-in moderation of an aimless society. He had no business to hate Karfeld and none to … He had no business to remember. If you and I have a purpose at all any more, it is to save the world from such presumptions.’

  ‘Of all of you – Listen! – Of all of you he’s the only one who’s real, the only one who believed, and acted! For you, it’s a sterile, rotten game, a family word game, that’s all; just play. But Leo’s involved! He knows what he wants and he’s gone to get it!’

  ‘Yes. That alone should be enough to condemn him.’ He had forgotten Turner now. ‘There’s no room for his kind any more. That’s the one thing we have learnt, thank God.’ He stared at the river. ‘We’ve learnt that even nothing is a pretty tender flower. You speak as if there were those who contribute and those who do not. As if we were all working for the day when we are no longer needed; when the world could pack up and cultivate its allotment. There is no product. There is no final day. This is the life we work for. Now. At this moment. Every night, as I go to sleep, I say to myself: another day achieved. Another day added to the unnatural life of a world on its deathbed. And if I never relax, if I never lift my eye, we may run on for another hundred years. Yes.’ He was talking to the river. ‘Our policy is that tide, taken at its three-inch flood. Three inches of freedom up and down the bank. That’s the limit of our action. Beyond it is anarchy, and all the romantic claptrap of protest and conscience. We are all looking for the wider freedom, every one of us. It doesn’t exist. As long as we accept that, we can dream at will. Harting should never have gone down there in the first place. And you should have returned to London when I told you. The Statute has made a law of forgetting. He broke it. Praschko is quite right: Harting has broken the law of moderation.’

  ‘We’re not automatons! We’re born free, I believe that! We can’t control the processes of our own minds!’

  ‘Good Lord, whoever told you that?’ He faced Turner now and the small tears showed. ‘I have controlled the processes of my own mind for eighteen years of marriage and twenty years of diplomacy. I have spent half of my life learning not to look, and the other half learning not to feel. Do you think I cannot also learn to forget? God, sometimes I am bowed down by the things I do not know! So why the devil couldn’t he forget as well? Do you think I take pleasure in what I have to do? Do you think he does not challenge me to do it? He set all this in motion, not I! His damned immodesty –’

  ‘Bradfield! What about Karfeld? Hasn’t Karfeld stepped over the line as well?’

  ‘There are quite different ways of dealing with his case.’ The shell had closed again around his voice.

  ‘Leo fo
und one.’

  ‘The wrong one as it happens.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Never mind why.’

  He began walking slowly back to the car, but Turner was calling to him.

  ‘What made Leo run? Something he read. Something he stole. What was in that Green File? What were those Formal and Informal Conversations with German Politicians? Bradfield! Who was talking to who?’

  ‘Lower your voice, they’ll overhear.’

  ‘Tell me! Have you been having conversations with Karfeld? Is that what sent Leo on his night walk? Is that what it was all about?’

  Bradfield did not reply.

  ‘Holy God,’ Turner whispered. ‘We’re like the rest of them, after all. Like Siebkron and Praschko; we’re trying to make our number with tomorrow’s lucky winner!’

  ‘Take care!’ Bradfield warned.

  ‘Allerton … what Allerton said –’

  ‘Allerton? He knows nothing!’

  ‘Karfeld came in from Hanover that Friday night. Secretly to Bonn. For a conference. He even arrived and left on foot, it was so secret. You didn’t go to Hanover after all, did you, that Friday night? You changed your plans, cancelled your ticket. Leo found that out from the Travel Clerks –’

  ‘You’re talking utter nonsense.’

  ‘You met Karfeld in Bonn. Siebkron laid it on, and Leo followed you because he knew what you were up to!’

  ‘You’re out of your mind.’

  ‘No, I’m not. But Leo is, isn’t he? Because Leo suspected. All the time, in the back of his mind, he knew that you were secretly reinsuring against the Brussels failure. Until he saw that file, until he actually saw and knew, he thought he might still act within the law. But when he saw the Green File he knew: it really was happening again. He knew. That’s why he was in a hurry. He had to stop you, he had to stop Karfeld before it was too late!’

  Bradfield said nothing.

  ‘What was in the Green File, Bradfield? What’s he taken with him as a keepsake? Why was that the only file he stole? Because it contained the minutes of those meetings, was it? And that’s what’s drawn your fire! You’ve got to get the Green File back! Did you sign them, Bradfield? With that willing pen of yours?’ His pale eyes were alight with anger. ‘When did he steal the despatch box, let’s just think: Friday … Friday morning he had his verification, didn’t he? He saw it in black and white: that was the other proof he was looking for. He took it to Aickman … “They’re up to their old tricks, we’ve got to stop it before it’s too late … we’re the chosen ones.” That’s why he took the Green File! To show them! Children, look, he wants to say, history really is repeating itself, and it isn’t comedy at all!’

  ‘It was a document of the highest secrecy. He could go to prison for years for that alone.’

  ‘But he never will, because you want the file and not the man. That’s another part of the three-inch freedom, is it?’

  ‘Would you prefer me to be a fanatic?’

  ‘What he’d suspected for months, picked up in the wind of Bonn gossip and the scraps he got from her; now he had the proof: that the British were hedging their bets. Taking out a with-profits policy on the Bonn–Moscow axis. What’s the deal, Bradfield? What’s the small print now? Christ, no wonder Siebkron thought you were playing a treble game! First you put all your chips on Brussels and very wise too. “Let nothing disturb the enterprise.” Then you hedge the bet with Karfeld and you get Siebkron to hold your stake. “Bring me secretly to Karfeld,” you say to him. “The British also are interested in a Moscow axis.” Very informally interested, mind. Purely explanatory talks and no witnesses, mind. But an eventual trade alignment with the East is not at all out of the question, Herr Doktor Karfeld, if you should ever happen to become a credible alternative to a crumbling coalition! As a matter of fact we’re quite anti-American ourselves these days, it’s in the blood, you know, Herr Doktor Karfeld …’

  ‘You missed your vocation.’

  ‘And then what happens? No sooner has Siebkron brought Karfeld to your bed than he learns enough to make his blood run cold: the British Embassy is compiling a dossier on Karfeld’s unsavoury past! The Embassy already has the records – the only records, Bradfield – and now they’re sizing up to blackmail him on the side. And that’s not all!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Siebkron and Karfeld have hardly got used to that little shock before you provide a bigger one. One that really rocks them. Not even Albion, they thought, could be that perfidious: the British are actually trying to assassinate Karfeld. It makes no sense of course. Why kill the man you want to blackmail? They must have been puzzled to death. No wonder Siebkron looked so sick on Tuesday night!’

  ‘Now you know it all. You share the secret: keep it.’

  ‘Bradfield!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Who do you want to win? This afternoon, out there, who’s your money on this time, Bradfield? On Leo; or the cut-price ally?’

  Bradfield switched on the engine.

  ‘Cut-price friends! They’re the only kind we can afford! They’re the only kind we’ve got the guts to make! We’re a proud nation, Bradfield! You can get Karfeld for twenty-five per cent off now, can’t you! Never mind if he hates us. He’ll come round! People change! And he thinks about us all the time! That’s an encouraging start! A little push now and he’ll run for ever.’

  ‘Either you’re in or you’re out. Either you’re involved or you’re not.’ He hesitated. ‘Or would you rather be Swiss?’

  Without another word or glance, Bradfield drove up the hill, turned right and vanished in the direction of Bonn. Turner waited until he was out of sight before walking back along the river path towards the cab rank. As he went there rose suddenly behind him an unearthly rumble of feet and voices, the saddest, deepest sound he had ever heard in his life. The columns had begun to move; they were shuffling slowly forward, mediocre, ponderous and terrifying, a mindless grey monster that could no longer be held back, while beyond them, almost hidden in the mist, stood the wooded outline of Chamberlain’s hill.

  Epilogue

  Bradfield led the way; de Lisle and Turner followed. It was early evening and the streets were empty of traffic. In all Bonn, nothing stirred but the mute, grey-clad strangers who swarmed the alleys and hastened towards the market square. The black bunting, becalmed, drifted in idle swathes over the ebbing tide.

  Bonn had never seen such faces. The old and the young, the lost and the found, the fed and the hungry, the clever, the dull, the governed and the ungoverned, all the children of the Republic, it seemed, had risen in a single legion to march upon her little bastions. Some were hillsmen, dark-haired, straddle-legged and scrubbed for the outing; some were clerks, Bob Cratchits nipped by the quick air; some were Sunday men, the slow infantry of the German promenade, in grey gabardine and grey Homburg hats. Some carried their flags shamefully, as if they had outgrown them, some as banners borne to the battle, others as ravens strung for market. Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane.

  Bradfield waited for them to catch up.

  ‘Siebkron reserved space for us. We should enter the square higher up. We shall have to force our way to the right.’

  Turner nodded, barely hearing. He was looking everywhere, into every face and every window, every shop, corner and alley. Once he seized de Lisle’s arm, but whoever it was had gone, lost again in the changing mass.

  Not just the square itself: balconies, windows, shops, every foothold and crevice was filled with grey coats and white faces, and the green uniforms of soldiers and police. And still they came, more of them, cramming the mouths of the darkening alleys, craning their necks for a sight of the speaker’s stand, searching for a leader, faceless men searching for one face; while Turner peered desperately among them for a face he had never seen. Overhead, in front of the floodlights, loudspeakers hung like warnings from their wires; beyond them, the sky was failing.

  He’ll never make it, Turner thought dully; he’ll never pen
etrate a crowd like this. But Hazel Bradfield’s voice came back to him: I had a younger brother, he played scrum-half, you could hardly tell them apart.

  ‘To the left,’ Bradfield said. ‘Make for the hotel.’

  ‘You are English?’ a woman’s voice enquired, teatime in a friendly house. ‘My daughter lives in Yarmouth.’ But the tide carried her away. Furled banners barred their path, dropped like lances. The banners formed a ring, and the gypsy students stood inside it, gathered round their own small fire. ‘Burn Axel Springer,’ one boy shouted, not with much conviction, and another broke a book and threw it on the flames. The book burned badly, choking before it died. I shouldn’t have done that to the books, Turner thought; I’ll be doing it to people next. A group of girls lounged on mattresses and the fire made poems of their faces.

  ‘If we’re separated, meet on the steps of the Stern,’ Bradfield ordered. A boy heard him and ran forward, encouraged by the others. Two girls were already shouting in French. ‘You are English!’ the boy cried, though his face was young and nervous. ‘English swine!’ Hearing the girls again, he swung his small fist wildly over the lances. Turner hastened forward, but the blow fell on Bradfield’s shoulder and he paid it no attention. The crowd gave way, suddenly, its will mysteriously gone, and the Town Hall appeared before them at the far end of the square, and that was the night’s first dream. A magic baroque mountain of candy pink and merchant gold. A vision of style and elegance, of silk and filigree and sunlight. A vision of brilliance and Latin glory, palaces where de Lisle’s unplayed minuets pleased the plumper burgher’s heart. To its left the scaffold, still in darkness, cut off by the screen of arclights trained upon the building, waited like an executioner upon the imperial presence.