Absolute Friends

by John le Carré

  “‘Oh, you have him wrong, Sasha. I believe your father has a famous sense of humor,’ he replied. ‘He merely keeps it to himself. The best jokes in life are surely those that we can laugh at when we are alone. Don’t you think so?’

  “I did not. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and told him. He then asked me whether I ever considered making up my quarrel with my father, if only for my mother’s sake. I replied that at no time in my life had such a thought occurred to me. It was my conviction that the Herr Pastor did not qualify as an object of filial affection. To the contrary, I said, he represented everything that was opportunistic, reactionary and politically amoral in society. I should add that, by this stage, the Professor had ceased to impress me intellectually. When I demanded to know at what point according to his Marxist beliefs he expected the East German state to wither away and a state of true socialism to begin, he replied with Moscow’s stock answer that, for as long as the socialist revolution was menaced by the forces of reaction, such a possibility was remote.” Sasha passes a hand through his cropped black hair as if to assure himself that the beret is not in place. “It was, however, no longer the subject of our discussion that was interesting me. It was his manner. It was the insinuation—manifested by the favors he was lavishing on me, the Obstler, the garden, and the civilized nature of our conversation—that, in ways I could sense but not define, I belonged to him by right. There was a bond between us, known to him but not to me. It was like a bond of family. In my confusion, I went so far as to speculate whether my host was homosexual, and intended to force his attentions on me. It was in the same light that I interpreted his mysterious tolerance towards the Herr Pastor. By intruding upon my filial feelings, I reasoned, he was by implication offering himself as a father substitute, and ultimately as my protector and lover. My suspicions were misplaced. The explanation for the Professor’s intimacy was far more terrible.”

  He stops. Has he run out of breath—or courage? Mundy ventures not a word, but there must be comfort in his silence, for gradually Sasha rallies.

  “It was soon clear to me that the Herr Pastor was to be the only material topic of our conversation in the garden. In the White Hotel I had touched no alcohol, except for one experience of Château Moonshine, which nearly killed me. Now the Professor was plying me with fine Obstler, and simultaneously with insinuating questions about the Herr Pastor. I would go so far as to say respectful. He referred to my father’s little ways. Did my father drink? How should I know? I replied, I hadn’t seen him for almost twenty years. Did I remember my father talking politics in the home? Here in the GDR before he fled the republic, for example? Or afterwards in West Germany when he came back from his indoctrination course in America? Did my father ever quarrel with my poor mother? Did he have other women, sleep with colleagues’ wives? Did my father take drugs, visit brothels, gamble on racehorses? Why was the Professor interrogating me like this about a father I didn’t know?”

  Not the Herr Pastor anymore, Mundy records. My father. Sasha has no defenses left. He must face his father as a man, no longer as a concept.

  “Dusk fell and we went indoors. The furnishings were not exactly proletarian: imperial-style furniture, fine paintings, everything of the best. ‘Any fool can be uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘There is nothing in the Communist Manifesto that forbids a little luxury to those who have deserved it. Why should the devil wear all the best suits?’ In a dining room with an ornate ceiling we were served roast chicken and Western wines by docile orderlies. When the orderlies retired, the Professor took me to the drawing room and beckoned me to sit beside him on the sofa, thus immediately reviving my fears regarding his sexuality. He explained that what he had to say to me was extremely secret, and that while his house was regularly swept for microphones, no word of our conversation must be overheard by the staff. He told me also that I should listen to him in complete silence, and reserve whatever comment I might have until he had finished. I can give you his exact words, since they are branded on my memory.”

  Sasha closes his eyes for a moment, as if preparing himself for a leap into the blue. Then begins again, speaking as the Professor.

  “‘As you may have gathered for yourself, my colleagues in state security are divided as to how we should regard you, which explains the regrettable inconsistencies in your treatment. You have been the football between two opposing teams and for this I offer you my personal apologies. But be assured that from now on, you are in safe hands. I shall now put to you a certain question but it is a rhetorical one. Which would you prefer to have for a father? A Wendehals, a false priest, a corrupt hypocrite who consorts with counterrevolutionary agitators, or a man so dedicated to an ideal, so committed to the great cause of the revolution and the highest principles of Leninism, that he is prepared to endure the contempt of his only son? The answer, Sasha, is obvious, so you need not provide it. Now I shall put a second question to you. If such a man, from the day of his providential incarceration in the Soviet Union, had been selected by the Party organs for a life of supreme self-sacrifice—and was now lying on his deathbed far behind the enemy’s lines—would you wish, as his only beloved son, to give him comfort in his last hours, or would you leave him to the mercy of those whose conspiratorial actions he has devoted his life to frustrating?’ It was as well that he had forbidden me to speak, because I was struck mute. I sat. I stared at him. I listened in a trance when he told me that he had known and loved my father for forty years, that it was always my father’s greatest wish that I should return to the GDR and take up his sword when it fell from his hand.”

  He breaks off. His eyes widen in entreaty. “Forty years,” he repeats incredulously. “You know what that means, Teddy? They knew each other when they were both good Nazis together.” His voice recovers its strength. “I did not point out to the Professor that I had come to the GDR in the expectation of destroying my father, and that it was therefore a surprise to be asked to adulate him. Perhaps, after my intransigence in the White Hotel, I was learning to conceal my emotions. Nor did I say anything when the Professor explained to me that, though my father had long dreamed of dying in the Democratic Republic, the imperatives of his mission required him to remain in exile till the bitter end.” He assumes the Professor’s voice again. “‘The greatest joy of your beloved father’s life was your statement renouncing anarchism and embracing the party of social renewal and justice.’” Sasha seems to go to sleep for a moment, then starts awake, and becomes once more the Professor. “‘His delight at the photograph of his beloved son standing on the doorstep of his old apartment is not to be described. When it was shown to him by our trusted intermediary, your father was deeply moved. It was your father’s wish and also mine that there would be an occasion when we might smuggle you to his bedside so that you could clasp his hand, but this has been reluctantly overruled by the highest authority on security grounds. As a compromise it has been agreed that you will be informed of the truth concerning his life before it ends, and write him an appropriate letter from the heart. You will adopt a conciliatory and humble tone, begging his forgiveness and assuring him of your respect and admiration for his ideological integrity. Nothing less will lighten his passing.’

  “I do not remember how I walked the short distance from the drawing room to the desk in his study where he provided me with the necessary writing paper and pen. My head was swimming with repulsive and simultaneous revelations. From the day of his incarceration in the Soviet Union—do you know what those words meant to me? That on his arrival in Russian prison camp my father at once became a stool pigeon and gained the protection of the politkommissars, who recruited him as their spy and trained him for the future use of East German State Security. That when he returned to the GDR and set up as a good priest in Leipzig, any member of his flock who had oppositional tendencies was tempted to confide them to him, not knowing he was a professional Judas. Until this moment I believed I had plumbed the depths of my father’s baseness. Now I realized I had be
en living in a fool’s paradise. If there was any single moment when I came face to face with the idiocy of my decision to throw in my lot with the Communist cause, it was this. If a desire for retribution has a moment of conception, this was when it occurred. I do not remember what words of sycophantic adoration I wrote through my secret tears of rage and hatred. I remember the Professor’s consoling hand on my shoulder as he informed me that I was henceforth the bearer of a considerable state secret. The Party, he said, was therefore faced with the choice of returning me to the White Hotel for an indefinite period, or permitting me to enter the portals of state security in a lowly capacity so that my movements could at all times be observed. In the short term, it was accepted that I would have some transient value as an authority on aspects of West Berlin’s disintegrating anarchist and Maoist groups. In the longer view, he hoped I would aspire to become a dedicated Chekist, exhibiting my father’s aptitude for conspiracy, and following in his footsteps. Such was the Professor’s ambition for me. Such was the course of action that, as my father’s most loyal friend and controller, he had personally urged upon his illustrious comrades. ‘Now it is up to you, Sasha,’ he told me, ‘to show them I was right.’ He assured me that my future path in the Stasi would be hard and long, and that much would depend on the extent to which I submitted my temperamental personality to the Party’s will. His final words were his most vile. ‘Always remember, Sasha, that henceforth you are the Comrade Professor’s favorite child.’”

  Does the story end here? For the time being it seems so, for Sasha, volatile as ever, has looked at his watch and, with an exclamation, sprung to his feet.

  “Teddy. We must be quick. They will waste no time.”

  “To do what?” For now it is Mundy’s turn to lose his way.

  “I must seduce you. Secure you for the cause of Peace and Progress. Not all at once, but from me a compelling overture, and from you a less than convincing rejection of my advances. And tonight you will be morose—it is arranged, yes?”

  Yes, tonight it is arranged that I will be morose.

  “And a little drunk?”

  Also a little drunk, though not as drunk as I may appear.

  Sasha takes the tape recorder from his pocket, then a fresh cassette, which he brandishes in Mundy’s face in warning. He slips the cassette into its housing, presses the start button, replaces the recorder in an inside pocket of his jacket, puts on his beret and with it the impassive scowl of the apparatchik who has submitted his temperamental personality to the Party’s will. His voice hardens and acquires a hectoring edge.

  “Teddy, I will ask you this frankly. Are you telling me you have turned your back on everything we fought for together in Berlin? That you are leaving the revolution to take care of itself—undermining it even? That you are in love with your bank account, and your sweet little house, and you have put your social awareness to sleep? Okay: we didn’t change the world that time! We were kids, playing soldiers of the revolution. But what about joining the real revolution? Your country’s fallen under the spell of a fascistic warmonger—but you don’t give a fuck! You are the paid lackey of an antidemocratic propaganda machine—and you don’t give a fuck! Is this what you will be telling your petit bourgeois when it grows up? I didn’t give a fuck? We need you, Teddy! It makes me sick to watch you, for two nights already, how you flirt with us, show us one tit then put it back in your shirt, then show us the other one! Smirking while you sit there with the fence halfway up your arse!” His voice drops. “You know something else, Teddy? Shall I tell you something in very great confidence, just you and me and the rabbits? We’re not proud. We understand human nature. When it’s necessary we even pay people to listen to the voice of their political conscience.”

  Everyone is charmed by the sight of a lanky Englishman on a bobby’s bicycle arriving at the British Embassy gates dressed in a dark suit and tie and cycle-clips. And Mundy, as always when he is called upon to do so, plays the part for all it’s worth. He sounds the silver bell on his handlebars as he weaves precariously between parking and departing cars, he yells, “Pardon me, madam,” to a diplomatic couple whom he narrowly misses scything down, he flings up an arm to assist the braking process, and gives a drayman’s “Whoa, there, girl!” as he brings his steed to a halt and takes up his place at the back of the ragged queue of fellow guests—Czech officials, British cultural representatives, dance masters and mistresses, organizers and performers. Shuffling his bike towards the sentry box, he chatters merrily with whomever he happens to be alongside, and when it’s his turn to show his passport and invitation card, he takes exaggerated umbrage at the suggestion that he might leave his bicycle in the street rather than inside the embassy compound.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, old boy! Your gallant citizens would pinch it in five minutes cold. Got a bike shed? Bike stand? Anywhere you say except on the roof. How about over there in the corner?”

  He’s in luck. His protests have been heard by a member of the embassy staff who happens to be hovering at the opening of the tented walkway that leads to the front door.

  “Problem?” he inquires blandly, taking a casual look at Mundy’s passport. He is the chubby man with circular spectacles who complained that Mundy had bowled him out first ball.

  “Well, not really, officer,” says Mundy facetiously. “I just need somewhere to park my bike.”

  “Here. Hand it over. I’ll shove it round the back. You’ll be going home on it, I take it?”

  “Absolutely, if I’m sober. Got to get my deposit back.”

  “Well, give me a yell when you decide it’s time to go. If I’m AWOL, ask for Giles. No troubles on the road?”

  “None.”

  He walks. This is how tarts feel. Who are you, what do you want and how much will you pay for me? He is in Prague on a perfect moonlit night, striding down cobbled alleys. He is drunk, but drunk to order. He could drink twice as much and not be drunk. His head is swirling, but from Sasha’s story, not from alcohol. He feels the weightlessness that he felt in Berlin on Christmas Eve when Sasha told him for the first time about the Herr Pastor. He feels the shame that comes on him when he encounters pains he can only imagine, never share. He is walking Sasha-style, one leg leading as he pounds unsteadily along. His head is everywhere, now with Kate at home, now with Sasha in his White Hotel. The streets are lit by wrought-iron lanterns. Dark shrouds of washing drift across them. The ornate houses are slatternly, their doorways barred, windows shuttered. The eloquent silence of the city accuses him, the atmosphere of quelled revolt is palpable. While we gallant students of Berlin were hoisting our red flags over the rooftops, you poor bastards were pulling yours down and getting crushed by Soviet tanks for your trouble.

  Am I being followed? First assume it, then confirm it, then relax. Am I sufficiently morose, distraught? Am I wrestling with a great decision, angry with Sasha for putting me on the spot? He no longer knows which parts of him are pretending. Perhaps all of him is. Perhaps he has never been anything but pretended man. A natural. A naturally pretended man.

  At the embassy reception he was also a natural, the soul of wit. The British Council should be proud of him, but he knows it isn’t. Then I’m sorry too, says Personnel, the fairy godmother he never had.

  From the embassy, he has ridden the policeman’s bicycle triumphantly back to his hotel and left it in the forecourt for Sasha to reclaim. Did it feel different after Giles had removed its contents? Lighter? No, but I did. He has again telephoned Kate from his hotel room and this time he made a better job of it, even if in retrospect his end of the conversation sounds more like a letter home from school.

  This city is more beautiful than you can imagine, darling . . . I just so wish you were here, darling . . . I never knew I liked watching dance so much, darling . . . Tell you what, I’ve had a brilliant idea!—it comes to him as he speaks. He hadn’t thought of it till now—When I get home, let’s take out a couple of those season tickets to the Royal Ballet. The Council might even come
up with the cost. After all, it’s their fault I’ve become a dance junkie. Oh and to confirm: the Czechs are really super. It’s always the way, isn’t it, with people who have to make do on next to nothing? . . . And you too, darling. Deeply, truly . . . And our baby. Sleep well. Tschüss.

  He is being followed. He has assumed it, he has confirmed it, but he has not relaxed. Across the road from him, he has recognized the staid couple who were sitting in the corner of the bar last night. Behind him two dumpy men in baggy hats and raincoats are playing Grandmother’s Footsteps with him at thirty yards’ distance. Abandoning the tenets of the Edinburgh School of Deportment, he stops, squares himself, swings round, cups his hands to his mouth and screams blue murder at his pursuers.

  “Get off my fucking back! Get out of my hair, all of you!” His voice ricochets up and down the street. Windows are slapping open, curtains are being cautiously parted. “Fuck off, you ridiculous little people. Now!” Then he plonks himself on a convenient Hapsburg bench and demonstratively folds his arms. “I’ve told you what to do, so now let’s see you do it!”

  The footsteps behind him have stopped. The staid couple across the road have disappeared up a side street. In about half a minute they’ll be popping up pretending to be someone else. Great. Let’s all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we’ll find out who we are. A large car crawls into the square but he refuses to be interested in it. It rolls past him, stops, reverses. Let it. His arms are still folded. He has his chin on his chest and his eyes down. He is thinking of his new baby, his new novel, tomorrow’s dance contest. He is thinking of everything except what he is thinking about.