‘We were not pitiless, Peter. We were never pitiless. We had the larger pity. Arguably, it was misplaced. Certainly it was futile. We know that now. We did not know it then.’
For the first time in my memory of him, he ventured to lay a hand on my shoulder, only to withdraw it as if I had burned him.
‘But you knew, Peter! Of course you did. You and your good heart. Why else would you seek out poor Gustav? I admired you for that. True to Gustav, true to his poor mother. She was a great loss to you, I’m sure.’
I had had no idea that he was aware of my half-baked effort to offer Gustav a helping hand, but I was not unduly surprised. This was the George I remembered: all-knowing about the frailty of others, while stoically refusing to acknowledge his own.
‘And your Catherine is well?’
‘Yes, indeed, very, thank you.’
‘And her son, is it?’
‘Daughter, actually. She’s fine.’
Had he forgotten that Isabelle was a girl? Or was he still thinking of Gustav?
*
An ancient coaching inn close to the cathedral. Hunting trophies on black panelling. The place has been here for ever, or it was bombed flat and reassembled with the help of old prints. Today’s house speciality is jugged venison. George recommends it, and a Baden wine to match. Yes, I still live in France, George. He is pleased with me. Has he made his home in Freiburg? I ask. He hesitates. Temporarily, yes, Peter, he has. How temporary remained to be seen. Then, as if the thought has only now come to him, though I suspect it has been between us all this while:
‘I believe you came to accuse me of something, Peter. Am I right?’ And while it is my turn to hesitate: ‘Was it for the things we did, would you say? Or why we did them at all?’ he enquired in the kindliest of tones. ‘Why did I do them, which is more to the point. You were a loyal foot soldier. It wasn’t your job to ask why the sun rose every morning.’
I might have questioned this, but I feared to interrupt the flow.
‘For world peace, whatever that is? Yes, yes, of course. There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace not a stone will be left standing, as our Russian friends used to say.’ He fell quiet, only to rally more vigorously: ‘Or was it all in the great name of capitalism? God forbid. Christendom? God forbid again.’
A sip of wine, a smile of puzzlement, directed not at me, but at himself.
‘So was it all for England, then?’ he resumed. ‘There was a time, of course there was. But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I’m a European, Peter. If I had a mission – if I was ever aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was of leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.’
A silence, deeper, longer than any I remembered, even from the worst times. The fluid contours of the face frozen, the brow tipped forward, shadowy eyelids lowered. A forefinger rises absently to the bridge of his spectacles, checking that they are still in place. Until, with a shake of the head as if to rid it of a bad dream, he smiled.
‘Forgive me, Peter. I am pontificating. We have a ten-minute walk to the station. You will allow me to escort you?’
14
I write this as I sit at my desk in the farmhouse at Les Deux Eglises. The events I have described happened long ago, but they are as real to me today as that pot of begonias sitting over there on the windowsill, or my father’s medals glistening in their mahogany case. Catherine has acquired a computer. She tells me she is making strides. Last night we made love, but it was Tulip I held in my arms.
I still go down to the cove. I take my stick. It’s tough going, but I manage. Sometimes my friend Honoré is there ahead of me, squatting on his customary bit of rock with a flagon of cidre wedged between his boots. In the spring, the two of us took the bus to Lorient, and on his insistence walked the waterfront where my mother used to take me to watch the big ships set out for eastern parts. Today it is defaced by monstrous concrete bastions built by the Germans for their U-boats. No amount of Allied bombing could dent them, but the town was laid flat. So there they stand, six storeys high, as eternal as the pyramids.
I was wondering why Honoré had brought me here until he came to a sudden halt and gesticulated angrily up at them.
‘The bastard sold them the cement,’ he protested in his quirkish Breton voice.
Bastard? It takes me a moment to cotton on. Of course: he is referring to his late father, who was hanged for collaborating with the Germans. He is wishing me to be shocked, and is gratified that I am not.
On Sunday we had the first snow of winter. The cattle are desolate at being locked up. Isabelle is a big girl now. Yesterday when I spoke to her, she smiled straight into my face. We believe that one day she will speak after all. And here comes Monsieur le Général, weaving up the hill in his yellow van. Perhaps he will have a letter from England.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Théo and Marie Paule Guillou for their generous and illuminating guidance through Southern Brittany; to Anke Ertner for her tireless researches into Berlin East and West in the nineteen sixties, and the precious tidbits of personal recollection; to Jürgen Schwämmle, scout extraordinaire, for finding out the escape route taken by Alec Leamas and Tulip from East Berlin to Prague and escorting me along it; and to our impeccable driver Darin Damjanov, who made the snowy journey a double delight. I must also thank Jörg Drieselmann, John Steer and Steffen Leide of the Stasi museum in Berlin, for a personal tour of their dark domain, and for the gift of my very own Petschaft. And finally, my special thanks to Philippe Sands, who, with a lawyer’s eye and a writer’s understanding, guided me through the thickets of parliamentary committees and legal process. The wisdom is his. If there are errors, they are mine.
John le Carré
About the Author
JOHN LE CARRÉ was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British intelligence during the Cold War. For the last fifty-five years, he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.
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* Following Mayflower’s recruitment by this Service, it was decided to reduce his visible trips to West Berlin to a minimum. Berlin Station therefore supplied him with the identity of Friedrich Leibach, construction worker resident in Lichtenberg, East Berlin, where by his own devices Mayflower obtained the use of a garden shed for his pushbike and worker’s clothing.
* Cover name for Tulip.
* Theatre is a prototype American short-range high-frequency communications system, purpose-built for covert East–West communications within Berlin city area. Leamas has described the system in a DO letter to H/technical dept as ‘unwieldy, bloody fiddly, over-produced and typical Yank’. It has since been abandoned.
A Legacy of Spies Page 25
