A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Herr Bradfield?’ the pale detective asked. He had not changed his leather coat since that dawn in Königswinter, but there were two teeth missing from his black mouth. The moon faces of his colleagues stirred in recognition of the name.

  ‘I’m Bradfield, yes.’

  ‘We are ordered to free the steps for you.’ His English was rehearsed: a small part for a newcomer. The radio in his leather pocket crackled in urgent command. He lifted it to his mouth. The diplomatic gentlemen had arrived, he said, and were safely in position. The gentleman from Research was also present.

  Turner looked pointedly at the broken mouth and smiled.

  ‘You sod,’ he said with satisfaction. The lip was badly cut as well, though not as badly as Turner’s.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Sod,’ Turner explained. ‘Sodomite.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Bradfield.

  The steps commanded a view of the entire square. Already the afternoon had turned to twilight; the victorious arclights divided the numberless heads into white patches which floated like pale discs upon a black sea. Houses, shops, cinemas had fallen away. Only their gables remained, carved in fairytale silhouette against the dark sky, and that was the second dream, Tales of Hoffman, the woodcut world of German make-believe to prolong the German childhood. High on a roof a Coca-Cola sign, winking on and off, tinged the surrounding tiles with cosmetic pink; once an errant spotlight ran across the facades, peering with a lover’s eye into the empty windows of the stores. On the lower step, the detectives waited, backs towards them, hands in pockets, black against the haze.

  ‘Karfeld will come in from the side,’ de Lisle said suddenly.

  ‘The alley to the left.’

  Following the direction of de Lisle’s outstretched arm, Turner noticed for the first time directly beneath the feet of the scaffold a tiny passageway between the pharmacy and the Town Hall, not more than ten foot wide and made very deep by the high walls of the adjacent buildings.

  ‘We remain here, is that clearly understood? On these steps. Whatever happens. We are here as observers; merely observers, nothing more.’ Bradfield’s strict features were strengthened by dilemma. ‘If they find him they will deliver him to us. That is the understanding. We shall take him at once to the Embassy for safe custody.’

  Music, Turner remembered. In Hanover he tried when the music was loudest. The music is supposed to drown the shot. He remembered the hair-dryers too and thought: he’s not a man to vary the technique; if it worked before, it will work again, and that’s the German in him; like Karfeld and the grey buses.

  His thoughts were lost to the murmur of the crowd, the pleasurable growl of expectation which mounted like an angry prayer as the floodlights died. Only the Town Hall remained, a pure and radiant altar, tended by the little group which had appeared upon its balcony. The names rose in countless mouths as, all around him, the slow liturgical commentary began:

  Tilsit, Tilsit was there, Tilsit the old General, the third from the left, and look, he is wearing his medal, the only one they wanted to deny him, his special medal from the war, he wears it round his neck, Tilsit is a man of courage. Meyer-Lothringen, the economist! Yes, der Grosse, the tall one, how elegantly he waves, it is well known that he is of the best family; half a Wittelsbach, they say; blood will tell in the end; and a great academic; he understands everything. And priests! The Bishop! Look, the Bishop himself is blessing us! Count the movements of his holy hand! Now he is looking to his right! He has reached out his arm! And Halbach the young hothead: look, he is wearing a pullover! Fantastic, his impertinence: a pullover on such an occasion! In Bonn? Halbach! Du toller Hund! But Halbach is from Berlin, and Berliners are famous for their arrogance; one day he will lead us all, so young and yet already so successful.

  The murmur rose to a roar, a visceral, hungry, loving roar, deeper than any single throat, more pious than any single soul, more loving than any single heart; and died again, whispering down, as the first quiet chords of music struck. The Town Hall receded and the scaffolding stood before them. A preacher’s pulpit, a captain’s bridge, a conductor’s rostrum? A child’s cradle, a plain coffin of boldly simple wood, grandiose yet virtuous, a wooden grail, housing the German truth. Upon it, alone but valiant, the truth’s one champion, a plain man known as Karfeld.

  ‘Peter.’ Turner gently pointed into the tiny alley. His hand was shaking but his eye was quite steady. A shadow? A guard taking up his post?

  ‘I wouldn’t point any more if I was you,’ de Lisle whispered. ‘They might misunderstand you.’

  But in that moment, no one paid them any heed, for Karfeld was all they saw.

  ‘Der Klaus!’ the crowd was calling. ‘Der Klaus is here!’ Wave to him, children; der Klaus, the magic man, has walked all the way to Bonn on stilts of German pine.

  ‘He is very English, der Klaus,’ he heard de Lisle murmur. ‘Although he hates our guts.’

  He was such a little man up there. They said he was tall; and it would have been easy enough, with so much artifice, to raise him a foot or so, but he seemed to wish to be diminished, as if to emphasise that great truths are found in humble mouths; for Karfeld was a humble man, and English in his diffidence.

  And Karfeld was a nervous man too, bothered by his spectacles, which he had not had time to clean, apparently, in these busy days, for now he took them off and polished them as if he did not know he was observed: it is the others who make the ceremony, he was telling them, before he had said a word; it is you and I who know why we are here.

  Let us pray.

  ‘The lights are too bright for him,’ someone said. ‘They should reduce the lights.’

  He was one of them, this isolated Doctor; a good deal of brain power no doubt, a good deal above the ears, but still one of them at the end of it, ready to step down at any time from that high place if someone better came along. And not at all a politician. Quite without ambition, in fact, for he had only yesterday promised to stand down in favour of Halbach if that was the people’s will. The crowd whispered its concern. Karfeld looks tired, he looks fresh; he looks well; Karfeld looks ill, older, younger, taller, shorter … It is said he is retiring; no, he will give up his factory and work full time on politics. He cannot afford it; he is a millionaire.

  Quietly he began speaking.

  No one introduced him, he did not say his name. The note of music which announced his coming had no companions, for Klaus Karfeld is alone up there, quite alone, and no music can console him. Karfeld is not a Bonn windbag; he is one of us for all his intellect: Klaus Karfeld, doctor and citizen, a decent man decently concerned about the fate of Germany, is obliged, out of a sense of honour, to address a few friends.

  It was so softly, so unobtrusively done, that to Turner it seemed that the whole massive gathering actually inclined its ear in order to save Karfeld the pain of raising his voice.

  Afterwards, Turner could not say how much he had understood, nor how he had understood so much. He had the impression, at first, that Karfeld’s interest was purely historical. The talk was of the origin of war and Turner caught the old catch-words of the old religion: Versailles, chaos, depression and encirclement; the mistakes that had been made by statesmen on both sides, for Germans cannot shirk their own responsibilities. There followed a small tribute to the casualties of unreason: too many people died, Karfeld said, and too few knew the cause. It must never happen again, Karfeld knew: he had brought back more than wounds from Stalingrad: he had brought back memories, indelible memories, of human misery, mutilation and betrayal …

  He has indeed, they whispered, the poor Klaus. He has suffered for us all.

  There was no rhetoric still. You and I, Karfeld was saying, have learnt the lessons of history; you and I can look on these things with detachment: it must never happen again. There were those, it was true, who saw the battles of fourteen and thirty-nine as part of a continuing crusade against the enemies of a German heritage, but Karfeld – he wished it to be known to al
l his friends – Klaus Karfeld was not, altogether, of this school.

  ‘Alan.’ It was de Lisle’s voice, steady as a captain’s. Turner followed his gaze.

  A flutter, a movement of people, the passing of a message? Something was stirring on the balcony. He saw Tilsit, the General, incline his soldier’s head and Halbach the student leader whisper in his ear, saw Meyer-Lothringen leaning forward over the filigree rail, listening to someone below him. A policeman? A plain clothes man? He saw the glint of spectacles and the patient surgeon’s face as Siebkron rose and vanished; and all was still again except for Karfeld, academic and man of reason, who was talking about today.

  Today, he said, as never before, Germany was the plaything of her allies. They had bought her, now they were selling her. This was a fact, Karfeld said, he would not deal in theory. There were too many theories in Bonn already, he explained, and he did not propose to add to the confusion. This was fact, and it was necessary, if painful, to debate among good and reasonable friends how Germany’s allies had achieved this strange state of affairs. Germany was rich, after all: richer than France, and richer than Italy. Richer than England, he added casually, but we must not be rude to the English for the English won the war after all, and were a people of uncommon gifts. His voice remained wonderfully reasonable as he recited all the English gifts: their mini-skirts, their pop singers, their Rhine Army that sat in London, their Empire that was falling apart, their national deficit … without these English gifts, Europe would surely fail. Karfeld had always said so.

  Here they laughed; it was a warming, angry laugh, and Karfeld, shocked and perhaps the tiniest fraction disappointed that these beloved sinners, whom God had appointed him in his humility to instruct, should fall to laughing in the temple; Karfeld waited patiently until it died.

  How then, if Germany was so rich, if she possessed the largest standing army in Europe, and could dominate the so-called Common Market, how was it possible for her to be sold in public places like a whore?

  Leaning back in the pulpit, he removed his spectacles and made a cautious, pacifying gesture of the hand, for there were noises now of protest and indignation, and Karfeld quite clearly did not care for this at all. We must try to resolve this question in a pious, reasonable and wholly intellectual manner, he warned, without emotion and without rancour, as befits good friends! It was a plump, round hand and it might have been webbed, for he never separated his fingers, but used the whole fist singly like a club.

  In seeking, then, a rational explanation for this curious – and, for Germans at least, highly relevant – historical fact, objectivity was essential. In the first place – the fist shot upward again – we had had twelve years of Nazism and thirty-five years of anti-Nazism. Karfeld did not understand what was so very wrong about Nazism that it should be punished eternally with the whole world’s hostility. The Nazis had persecuted the Jews: and that was wrong. He wished to go on record as saying it was wrong. Just as he condemned Oliver Cromwell for his treatment of the Irish, the United States for their treatment of the blacks and for their campaigns of genocide against the Red Indians and the yellow peril of South East Asia; just as he condemned the Church for its persecution of heretics, and the British for the bombing of Dresden, so he condemned Hitler for what he had done to the Jews; and for importing that British invention, so successful in the Boer War: the concentration camp.

  Directly in front of him Turner saw the young detective’s hand softly feel for the partition of his leather coat; he heard again the little crackle of the radio. Once more he strained his eyes, scanning the crowd, the balcony, the alleys; once more he searched the doorways and the windows; and there was nothing. Nothing but the sentinels posted along the rooftops and the militia waiting in their vans; nothing but a countless throng of silent men and women, motionless as God’s anointed before the Presence of the Word.

  Let us examine, Karfeld suggested – since it will help us to arrive at a logical and objective solution to the many questions which presently assail us – let us examine what happened after the war.

  After the war, Karfeld explained, it was only just that the Germans should be treated as criminals; and, because the Germans had practised racism, that their sons and grandsons should be treated as criminals too. But, because the Allies were kind people, and good people, they would go some way towards rehabilitating the Germans: as a very special treat, they would admit them to Nato.

  The Germans were shy at first; they did not want to rearm, many people had had enough of war. Karfeld himself belonged to that category: the lessons of Stalingrad were like acid in the young man’s memory. But the Allies were determined as well as kind. The Germans should provide the army, and the British and the Americans and the French would command it … And the Dutch … And the Norwegians … And the Portuguese; and any other foreign general who cared to command the vanquished:

  ‘Why: we might even have had African generals commanding the Bundeswehr!’

  A few – they belonged to the front, to that protective ring of leather-coated men beneath the scaffold – a few started laughing, but he quelled them at once.

  ‘Listen!’ he told them. ‘My friends, you must listen! That is what we deserved! We lost the war! We persecuted the Jews! We were not fit to command! Only to pay!’ Their anger gradually subsided. ‘That,’ he explained, ‘is why we pay for the British Army as well. And that is why they let us into Nato.’

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘I have seen them.’

  Two grey buses were parked beside the pharmacy. A floodlight touched their dull coachwork, and was moved away. The windows were quite black, sealed from inside.

  And we were grateful, Karfeld continued. Grateful to be admitted to such an exclusive club. Of course we were. The club did not exist; its members did not like us; the fees were very high; and as the Germans were still children they must not play with weapons which might damage their enemies; but we were grateful all the same, because we were Germans and had lost the war.

  Once more the indignant murmur rose, but he scotched it again with a terse movement of his hand. ‘We want no emotion here,’ he reminded them. ‘We are dealing with facts!’

  High up, on a tiny ledge, a mother held her baby. ‘Look down,’ she was whispering. ‘You will not see his like again.’ In the whole square, nothing moved; the heads were still, staring with cavernous eyes.

  To emphasise his great impartiality, Karfeld once more drew back in the pulpit and, taking all his time, tilted his spectacles a little and examined the pages before him. This done, he hesitated, peered doubtfully downwards at the faces nearest him and deliberated, unsure how far he could expect his flock to follow what he was about to say.

  What then was the function of the Germans in this distinguished club? He would put it this way. He would state the formula first and afterwards he would give one or two simple examples of the method by which it could be applied. The function of the Germans in Nato was briefly this: to be docile towards the West and hostile towards the East; to recognise that even among the victorious Allies there were good victors and bad victors …

  Again the laughter rose and fell. Der Klaus, they whispered, der Klaus knows how to make a joke; what a club that Nato is. Nato, the Market, it’s all a cheat, it’s all the same; they are applying the same principles to the Market which they applied to Nato. Klaus has told us so and that is why the Germans must stay away from Brussels. It is just another trap, it is encirclement all over again …

  ‘That’s Lésère,’ de Lisle murmured.

  A small, greying man who obscurely reminded Turner of a bus conductor had joined them on the steps and was writing contentedly in his notebook.

  ‘The French counsellor. Big chum of Karfeld’s.’

  About to return his gaze to the scaffold, Turner happened to look into the side street; and thus he saw for the first time the mad, dark, tiny army that waited for the signal.

  Directly across the square, assembled in the unlit side street
, the silent concourse of men waited. They carried banners that were not quite black in the twilight and there stood before them, Turner was certain there stood before them, the remnants of a military band. The oblique arclights glinted on a trumpet, caught the laced panels of the drum. At its head stood a solitary figure; his arm, raised like a conductor’s, held them motionless.

  Again the radio crackled, but the words were drowned in laughter as Karfeld made another joke; a harsh joke, enough to raise their anger, a reference to the decay of England and the person of the monarch. The tone was new and hard: a light blow on their backs, brisker, a purposeful caress, promising the sting to come, tracing like a whip’s end the little vertebrae of their political resentment. So England, with her allies, had re-educated the Germans. And who better qualified? After all, Churchill had let the savages into Berlin; Truman had dropped atom bombs on undefended cities; between them they had made a ruin of Europe: who better qualified, then, to teach the Germans the meaning of civilisation?

  In the alley, nothing had stirred. The leader’s arm was still raised before the little band as he waited for the signal to begin the music.

  ‘It’s the Socialists,’ de Lisle breathed. ‘They’re staging a counter-demonstration. Who the devil let them in?’

  So the Allies set to work: the Germans must be taught how to behave. It was wrong to kill the Jews, they explained; kill the Communists instead. It was wrong to attack Russia, they explained; but we will protect you if the Russians attack you. It was wrong to fight for your borders, they explained; but we support your claims for the territories of the East.

  ‘We all know that kind of support!’ Karfeld held out his hands, palms upwards. ‘Here you are, my dear, here you are! You can borrow my umbrella as long as you like; until it rains!’