Smiley's People

by John le Carré

  Following the footpath, Smiley entered a graveyard with no graves. Lines of headstones made up the perimeter, a climbing frame and three standard-pattern new houses occupied the central ground. The first house was called Zion, the second had no name at all, the third was called Number Three. Each had wide windows but Number Three had lace curtains, and when he pushed the gate all he saw was one shadow upstairs. He saw it stationary, then he saw it sink and vanish as if it had been sucked into the floor, and for a second he wondered, in a quite dreadful way, whether he had just witnessed another murder. He rang the bell and angel chimes exploded inside the house. The door was made of rippled glass. Pressing his eye to it, he made out brown stair carpet and what looked like a perambulator. He rang the bell again and heard a scream. It started low and grew louder and at first he thought it was a child, then a cat, then a whistling kettle. It reached its zenith, held it, then suddenly stopped, either because someone had taken the kettle off the boil or because it had blown its nozzle off. He walked round to the back of the house. It was the same as the front, except for the drain-pipes and a vegetable patch, and a tiny goldfish pond made of pre-cast slab. There was no water in the pond, and consequently no goldfish either; but in the concrete bowl lay a yellow wooden duck on its side. It lay with its beak open and its staring eye turned to Heaven and two of its wheels were still going round.

  “Party bought a wooden duck on wheels,” the minicab driver had said, turning to illustrate with his white hands. “Yellow job.”

  The back door had a knocker. He gave a light tap with it and tried the door handle, which yielded. He stepped inside and closed the door carefully behind him. He was standing in a scullery that led to a kitchen and the first thing he noticed in the kitchen was the kettle off the gas with a thin line of steam curling from its silent whistle. And two cups and a milk jug and a teapot on a tray.

  “Mrs. Craven?” he called softly. “Stella?”

  He crossed the dining-room and stood in the hall, on the brown carpet beside the perambulator, and in his mind he was making pacts with God: just no more deaths, no more Vladimirs, and I will worship You for the rest of our respective lives.

  “Stella? It’s me. Max,” he said.

  He pushed open the drawing-room door and she was sitting in the corner on an easy chair between the piano and window, watching him with cold determination. She was not scared, but she looked as if she hated him. She was wearing a long Asian dress and no make-up. She was holding the child to her, boy or girl he couldn’t tell and couldn’t remember. She had its tousled head pressed against her shoulder and her hand over its mouth to stop it making a noise, and she was watching him over the top of its head, challenging and defying him.

  “Where’s Villem?” he asked.

  Slowly she took her hand away and Smiley expected the child to scream but instead it stared at him in salute.

  “His name’s William,” she said quietly. “Get that straight, Max. That’s his choice. William Craven. British to the core. Not Estonian, not Russian. British.” She was a beautiful woman, black-haired and still. Seated in the corner holding her child, she seemed permanently painted against the dark background.

  “I want to talk to him, Stella. I’m not asking him to do anything. I may even be able to help him.”

  “I’ve heard that before, haven’t I? He’s out. Gone to work where he belongs.”

  Smiley digested this.

  “Then what’s his lorry doing outside?” he objected gently.

  “He’s gone to the depot. They sent a car for him.”

  Smiley digested this also.

  “Then who’s the second cup for in the kitchen?”

  “He’s got nothing to do with it,” she said.

  He went upstairs and she let him. There was a door straight ahead of him and there were doors to his left and right, both open, one to the child’s room, one to the main bedroom. The door ahead of him was closed and when he knocked there was no answer.

  “Villem, it’s Max,” he said. “I have to talk to you, please. Then I’ll go and leave you in peace, I promise.”

  He repeated this word for word, then went down the steep stairs again to the drawing-room. The child had begun crying loudly.

  “Perhaps if you made that tea,” he suggested between the child’s sobs.

  “You’re not talking to him alone, Max. I’m not having you charm him off the tree again.”

  “I never did that. That was not my job.”

  “He still thinks the world of you. That’s enough for me.”

  “It’s about Vladimir,” Smiley said.

  “I know what it’s about. They’ve been ringing half the night, haven’t they?”

  “Who have?”

  “‘Where’s Vladimir? Where’s Vladi?’ What do they think William is? Jack the Ripper? He hasn’t had sound nor sight of Vladi for God knows how long. Oh, Beckie, darling, do be quiet!” Striding across the room, she found a tin of biscuits under a heap of washing and shoved one forcibly into the child’s mouth. “I’m not usually like this,” she said.

  “Who’s been asking for him?” Smiley insisted gently.

  “Mikhel, who else? Remember Mikhel, our Freedom Radio ace, Prime Minister designate of Estonia, betting tout? Three o’clock this morning while Beckie’s cutting a tooth, the bloody phone goes. It’s Mikhel doing his heavy-breathing act. ‘Where’s Vladi, Stella? Where’s our leader?’ I said to him: ‘You’re daft, aren’t you? You think it’s harder to tap the phone when people only whisper? You’re barking mad,’ I said to him. ‘Stick to racehorses and get out of politics,’ I told him.”

  “Why was he so worried?” Smiley asked.

  “Vladi owed him money, that’s why. Fifty quid. Probably lost it on a horse together, one of their many losers. He’d promised to bring it round to Mikhel’s place and have a game of chess with him. In the middle of the night, mark you. They’re insomniacs, apparently, as well as patriots. Our leader hadn’t shown up. Drama. ‘Why the hell should William know where he is?’ I ask him. ‘Go to sleep.’ An hour later who’s back on the line? Breathing as before? Our Major Mikhel once more, hero of the Royal Estonian Cavalry, clicking our heels and apologising. He’s been round to Vladi’s pad, banged on the door, rung the bell. There’s nobody at home. ‘Look, Mikhel,’ I said. ‘He’s not here, we’re not hiding him in the attic, we haven’t seen him since Beckie’s christening, we haven’t heard from him. Right? William’s just in from Hamburg, he needs sleep, and I’m not waking him.’”

  “So he rang off again,” Smiley suggested.

  “Did he, hell! He’s a leech. ‘Villem is Vladi’s favourite,’ he says. ‘What for?’ I say. ‘The three-thirty at Ascot? Look, go to bloody sleep!’ ‘Vladimir always said to me, if ever anything went wrong, I should go to Villem,’ he said. ‘So what do you want him to do?’ I said. ‘Drive up to town in the trailer and bang on Vladi’s door as well?’ Jesus!”

  She sat the child on a chair. Where she stayed, contentedly cropping her biscuit.

  There was the sound of a door slammed violently, followed by fast footsteps coming down the stairs.

  “William’s right out of it, Max,” Stella warned, staring straight at Smiley. “He’s not political and he’s not slimy, and he’s got over his dad being a martyr. He’s a big boy now and he’s going to stand on his own feet. Right? I said ‘Right?’”

  Smiley had moved to the far end of the room to give himself distance from the door. Villem strode in purposefully, still wearing his track suit and running shoes, about ten years Stella’s junior and somehow too slight for his own safety. He perched himself on the sofa, at the edge, his intense gaze switching between his wife and Smiley as if wondering which of them would spring first. His high forehead looked strangely white under his dark, swept-back hair. He had shaved, and shaving had filled out his face, making him even younger. His eyes, red-rimmed from driving, were brown and passionate.

  “Hullo, Villem,” Smiley said.

  “Wil
liam,” Stella corrected him.

  Villem nodded tautly, acknowledging both forms.

  “Hullo, Max,” said Villem. On his lap, his hands found and held each other. “How you doing, Max? That’s the way, huh?”

  “I gather you’ve already heard the news about Vladimir,” Smiley said.

  “News? What news, please?”

  Smiley took his time. Watching him, sensing his stress.

  “That he’s disappeared,” Smiley replied quite lightly, at last. “I gather his friends have been ringing you up at unsocial hours.”

  “Friends?” Villem shot a dependent glance at Stella. “Old émigrés, drink tea, play chess all day, politics? Talk crazy dreams? Mikhel is not my friend, Max.”

  He spoke swiftly, with impatience for this foreign language, which was such a poor substitute for his own. Whereas Smiley spoke as if he had all day.

  “But Vladi is your friend,” he objected. “Vladi was your father’s friend before you. They were in Paris together. Brothers-in-arms. They came to England together.”

  Countering the weight of this suggestion, Villem’s small body became a storm of gestures. His hands parted and made furious arcs, his brown hair lifted and fell flat again.

  “Sure! Vladimir, he was my father’s friend. His good friend. Also of Beckie the godfather, okay? But not for politics. Not any more.” He glanced at Stella, seeking her approval. “Me, I am William Craven. I got English home, English wife, English kid, English name. Okay?”

  “And an English job,” Stella put in quietly, watching him.

  “A good job! Know how much I earn, Max? We buy house. Maybe a car, okay?”

  Something in Villem’s manner—his glibness perhaps, or the energy of his protest—had caught the attention of his wife, for now Stella was studying him as intently as Smiley was, and she began to hold the baby distractedly, almost without interest.

  “When did you last see him, William?” Smiley asked.

  “Who, Max? See who? I don’t understand you, please.”

  “Tell him, Bill,” Stella ordered her husband, not moving her eyes from him for a moment.

  “When did you last see Vladimir?” Smiley repeated patiently.

  “Long time, Max.”

  “Weeks?”

  “Sure. Weeks.”

  “Months?”

  “Months. Six months! Seven! At christening. He was godfather, we make a party. But no politics.”

  Smiley’s silences had begun to produce an awkward tension.

  “And not since?” he asked at last.

  “No.”

  Smiley turned to Stella, whose gaze had still not flinched.

  “What time did William get back yesterday?”

  “Early,” she said.

  “As early as ten o’clock in the morning?”

  “Could have been. I wasn’t here. I was visiting Mother.”

  “Vladimir drove down here yesterday by taxi,” he explained, still to Stella. “I think he saw William.”

  Nobody helped him, not Smiley, not his wife. Even the child kept still.

  “On his way here Vladimir bought a toy. The taxi waited an hour down the lane and took him away again, back to Paddington where he lives,” Smiley said, still being very careful to keep the present tense.

  Villem had found his voice at last. “Vladi is of Beckie the godfather!” he protested with another flourish, as his English threatened to desert him entirely. “Stella don’t like him, so he must come here like a thief, okay? He bring my Beckie toy, okay? Is a crime already, Max? Is a law, an old man cannot bring to his godchild toys?”

  Once again neither Smiley nor Stella spoke. They were both waiting for the same inevitable collapse.

  “Vladi is old man, Max! Who knows when he sees his Beckie again? He is friend of family!”

  “Not of this family,” said Stella. “Not any more.”

  “He was friend of my father! Comrade! In Paris they fight together Bolshevism. So he brings to Beckie a toy. Why not, please? Why not, Max?”

  “You said you bought the bloody thing yourself,” said Stella. Putting a hand to her breast, she closed a button as if to cut him off.

  Villem swung to Smiley, appealing to him: “Stella don’t like the old man, okay? Is afraid I make more politics with him, okay? So I don’t tell Stella. She goes to see her mother in Staines hospital and while she is away Vladi makes a small visit to see Beckie, say hullo, why not?” In desperation he actually leapt to his feet, flinging up his arms in too much protest. “Stella!” he cried. “Listen to me! So Vladi don’t get home last night? Please, I am so sorry! But it is not my fault, okay? Max! That Vladi is an old man! Lonely. So maybe he finds a woman once. Okay? So he can’t do much with her, but he still likes her company. For this he was pretty famous, I think! Okay? Why not?”

  “And before yesterday?” Smiley asked, after an age. Villem seemed not to understand, so Smiley paced out the question again: “You saw Vladimir yesterday. He came by taxi and brought a yellow wooden duck for Beckie. On wheels.”

  “Sure.”

  “Very well. But before yesterday—not counting yesterday—when did you last see him?”

  Some questions are hazard, some are instinct, some—like this one—are based on a premature understanding that is more than instinct, but less than knowledge.

  Villem wiped his lips on the back of his hand. “Monday,” he said miserably. “I see him Monday. He ring me, we meet. Sure.”

  Then Stella whispered, “Oh, William,” and held the child upright against her, a little soldier, while she peered downward at the haircord carpet waiting for her feelings to right themselves.

  The phone began ringing. Like an infuriated infant, Villem sprang at it, lifted the receiver, slammed it back on the cradle, then threw the whole telephone onto the floor and kicked the receiver clear. He sat down.

  Stella turned to Smiley. “I want you to go,” she said. “I want you to walk out of here and never come back. Please, Max. Now.”

  For a time Smiley seemed to consider this request quite seriously. He looked at Villem with avuncular affection; he looked at Stella. Then he delved in his inside pocket and pulled out a folded copy of the day’s first edition of the Evening Standard and handed it to Stella rather than to Villem, partly because of the language barrier and partly because he guessed that Villem would break down.

  “I’m afraid Vladi’s disappeared for good, William,” he said in a tone of simple regret. “It’s in the papers. He’s been shot dead. The police will want to ask you questions. I have to hear what happened and tell you how to answer them.”

  Then Villem said something hopeless in Russian, and Stella, moved by his tone if not his words, put down one child and went to comfort the other, and Smiley might not have been in the room at all. So he sat for a while quite alone, thinking of Vladimir’s piece of negative film—indecipherable until he turned it to positive—nestling in its box in the Savoy Hotel with the anonymous letter from Paris that he could do nothing about. And of the second proof, wondering what it was, and how the old man had carried it, and supposing it was in his wallet; but believing also that he would never know.

  Villem sat bravely as if he were already attending Vladimir’s funeral. Stella sat at his side with her hand on his, Beckie the child lay on the floor and slept. Occasionally as Villem talked, tears rolled unashamedly down his pale cheeks.

  “For the others I give nothing,” said Villem. “For Vladi everything. I love this man.” He began again: “After the death of my father, Vladi become father to me. Sometimes I even say him: ‘my father.’ Not uncle. Father.”

  “Perhaps we could start with Monday,” Smiley suggested. “With the first meeting.”

  Vladi had telephoned, said Villem. It was the first time Villem had heard from him or from anybody in the Group for months. Vladi telephoned Villem at the depot, out of the blue, while Villem was consolidating his load and checking his transshipment papers with the office before leaving for Dover. That was t
he arrangement, Villem said, that was how it had been left with the Group. He was out of it, as they all were, more or less, but if he was ever urgently needed he could be reached at the depot on a Monday morning, not at home because of Stella. Vladi was Beckie’s godfather and as godfather could ring the house any time. But not on business. Never.

  “I ask him: ‘Vladi! What you want? Listen, how are you?’”

  Vladimir was in a call-box down the road. He wanted a personal conversation immediately. Against all the employers’ regulations, Villem picked him up at the roundabout and Vladimir rode half the way to Dover with him: “black,” said Villem—meaning “illegally.” The old boy was carrying a rush basket full of oranges, but Villem had not been of a mood to ask him why he should saddle himself with pounds of oranges. At first Vladimir had talked about Paris and Villem’s father, and the great struggles they had shared; then he talked about a small favour Villem could do for him. For the sake of old times a small favour. For the sake of Villem’s dead father, whom Vladimir had loved. For the sake of the Group, of which Villem’s father had once been such a hero.

  “I tell him: ‘Vladi, this small favour is impossible for me. I promise Stella: is impossible!’”