A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘You’ll find him, won’t you? You’ll go easy with him? He needs all the help he can get.’

  ‘So do we all,’ said Bradfield, still gazing at the river.

  ‘He isn’t a Communist. He isn’t a traitor. He thinks Karfeld’s a threat. To us. He’s very simple. You can tell from the files –’

  ‘I know his kind of simplicity.’

  ‘He’s our responsibility, after all. It was us who put it into his mind back in those days: the notion of absolute justice. We made him all those promises: Nuremberg, de-Nazification. We made him believe. We can’t let him be a casualty just because we changed our minds. You haven’t seen those files … you can’t imagine how they thought about the Germans then. Leo hasn’t changed. He’s the stay-behind man. That’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘I know very well how they thought. I was here myself. I saw what he saw; enough. He should have grown out of it; the rest of us did.’

  ‘What I mean is, he’s worthy of our protection. There’s a kind of integrity about him … I felt that down there. He’s not put off by paradox. For you and me there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing. Leo’s made the other way round. In Leo’s book there’s only one reason for doing something: because he must. Because he feels.’

  ‘I trust you are not offering him as an example to be followed?’

  ‘There’s another thing that puzzled him.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘In cases like this, there are always external documents. In the SS headquarters; with the clinic or the transport unit. Movement orders, letters of authority, related documents from somewhere else that would give the game away. Yet nothing’s come to light. Leo kept on pencilling annotations: why no record in Koblenz? Why no this or that? As if he suspected that other evidence had been destroyed … by Siebkron for instance.

  ‘We can honour him, can’t we?’ Turner added, almost in supplication.

  ‘There are no absolutes here.’ His gaze had not left the distant scene. ‘It is all doubt. All mist. The mist drains away the colours. There are no distinctions, the Socialists have seen to that. They are all everything. They are all nothing. No wonder Karfeld is in mourning.’

  What was it that Bradfield studied on the river? The small boats struggling against the mist? The red cranes and the flat fields, or the far vineyards that have crept so far away from the south? Or Chamberlain’s ghostly hill and the long concrete box where they had once kept him?

  ‘The Glory Hole is out of bounds,’ he said at last and again fell silent. ‘Praschko. You said he lunched with Praschko on Thursday?’

  ‘Bradfield –’

  ‘Yes?’ He was already moving to the door.

  ‘We feel differently about him now, don’t we?’

  ‘Do we? Perhaps he is still a Communist after all.’ There was a strain of irony in Bradfield’s tone. ‘You forget he has stolen a file. You seem to think all of a sudden you can look into his heart.’

  ‘Why did he steal it? What was in that file?’

  But Bradfield was already pushing his way between the beds and the clutter of the corridor. Notices had sprung up everywhere: First Aid Post this Way … Emergency Rest Room … No Children Allowed Beyond this Point. As they passed Chancery Registry, they heard a sudden cheer followed by a desultory handclap. Cork, white in the face, ran out to greet them.

  ‘She’s had it,’ he whispered. ‘The hospital just telephoned. She wouldn’t let them send for me while I was on shift.’ His pink eyes were wide with fear. ‘She didn’t even need me. She didn’t even want me there.’

  17

  Praschko

  There is a tarmac driveway at the back of the Embassy. It leads from the eastern part of the perimeter northwards through a settlement of new villas too costly for British habitation. Each has a small garden of great value in terms of real estate, each is distinguished from its neighbour by those cautious architectural deviations which are the mark of modern conformity. If one house has a brick-built barbecue and a patio of reconstituted stone, the next will match it with an external wall of blue slate, or quarried rock daringly exposed. In summer, young wives sun themselves beside minuscule swimming-pools. In winter black poodles burrow in the snow; and every midday from Monday to Friday, black Mercedes bring the masters home for meals. The air smells all the time, if distantly, of coffee.

  It was a cold grey morning still, but the earth was lit with the clarity which follows rain. They drove very slowly, with the windows right down. Passing a hospital, they entered a more sombre road where the older suburb had survived; behind shaggy conifers and blue-black laurel bushes, leaden spires which once had painted donnish dreams of Weimar stood like lances in a mouldering forest. Ahead of them rose the Bundestag, naked, comfortless and uncomforted; a vast motel mourned by its own flags and painted in yellowing milk. At its back, straddled by Kennedy’s Bridge and bordered by Beethoven’s hall, the brown Rhine pursued its uncertain cultural course.

  Police were everywhere: seldom could a seat of democracy have been so well protected from its democrats. At the main entrance, a line of schoolchildren waited in a restless queue, and the police guarded them as if they were their own. A television team was setting up its arclights. In front of the camera a young man in a suit of mulberry corduroy thoughtlessly pirouetted, hand on hip, while a colleague measured his complexion; the police watched dangerously, bewildered by his freedom. Along the kerb, scrubbed as jurymen, their banners straight as Roman standards, the grey crowd obediently waited. The slogans had changed: German Unity First European Unity Second: This is a Proud Nation Too: Give us Back our Country First! The police faced them in line abreast, controlling them as they controlled the children.

  ‘I’ll park down by the river,’ Bradfield said. ‘God knows what it will be like by the time we come out.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘A debate. Amendments to the Emergency Legislation.’

  ‘I thought they’d finished with that long ago.’

  ‘In this place, nothing is resolved.’

  Along the embankment as far as they could see on either side, grey detachments waited passively like unarmed soldiers. Makeshift banners declared their provenance: Kaiserslautern, Hanover, Dortmund, Kassel. They stood in perfect silence, waiting for the order to protest. Someone had brought a transistor radio and it blared very loud. They craned their necks for a sight of the white Jaguar.

  Side by side they walked slowly back, up the hill, away from the river. They passed a kiosk; it seemed to contain nothing but coloured photographs of Queen Soraya. Two columns of students made an avenue to the main entrance. Bradfield walked ahead, stiff backed. At the door the guard objected to Turner and Bradfield argued with him shortly. The lobby was dreadfully warm and smelt of cigar; it was filled with the ringside murmur of dispute. Journalists, some with cameras, looked at Bradfield curiously and he shook his head and looked away. In small groups, deputies talked quietly, vainly glancing all the time over one another’s shoulders in search of someone more interesting. A familiar figure rose at them.

  ‘The best piece! My very words. Bradfield, you are the best piece! You have come to see the end of democracy? You have come for the debate? My God, you are so damn efficient over there! And the Secret Service is still with you? Mr Turner, you are loyal, I hope? My God, what the devil’s happened to your face?’ Receiving no answer he continued in a lower voice, furtively. ‘Bradfield, I must speak to you. Something damned urgent, look here. I tried to get you at the Embassy but for Saab you are always out.’

  ‘We have an appointment.’

  ‘How long? Tell me how long. Sam Allerton wishes also; we wish together to have a discussion.’

  He had bent his black head to Bradfield’s ear. His neck was still grimy; he had not shaved.

  ‘It’s impossible to say.’

  ‘Listen, I will wait for you. A most important matter. I will tell Allerton: we will wait for Bradfield. Deadlines, our newspapers: small fish. We mu
st talk with Bradfield.’

  ‘There’s no comment, you know that. We issued our statement last night. I thought you had a copy. We accept the Chancellor’s explanation. We look forward to seeing the German team back in Brussels within a few days.’

  They descended the steps to the restaurant.

  ‘Here he is. I’ll do the talking. You’re to leave him entirely to me.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘You’ll do better than that. You’ll keep your mouth shut. He’s a very slippery customer.’

  Before anything else, Turner saw the cigar. It was very small and lay in the corner of his mouth like a black thermometer; and he knew it was also Dutch, and that Leo had been providing them for nothing.

  He looked as if he had been editing a newspaper half the night. He appeared from the door leading to the shopping arcade, and he walked with his hands in his pockets and his jacket pulled away from his shirt, bumping into the tables and apologising to no one. He was a big dirty man with grizzly hair cut short and a wide chest that spread to a wider stomach. His spectacles were tipped back over his brow like goggles. A girl followed him, carrying a briefcase. She was an expressionless, listless girl, either very bored or very chaste; her hair was black and abundant.

  ‘Soup,’ he shouted across the room, as he shook their hands. ‘Bring some soup. And something for her.’ The waiter was listening to the news on the wireless, but when he saw Praschko he switched it low and sauntered over, prepared to oblige. Praschko’s braces had brass teeth which held doggedly to the grimy waistband of his trousers.

  ‘You been working too? She doesn’t understand anything,’ he explained to them. ‘Not in any damn language. Nicht wahr, Schatz? You are as stupid as a sheep. What’s the problem?’ His English was fluent, and whatever accent he possessed was heavily camouflaged by the American intonation. ‘You Ambassador these days?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Who’s this guy?’

  ‘Visiting.’

  Praschko looked at Turner very carefully and then at Bradfield, then at Turner again.

  ‘Some girl get angry with you?’

  Only his eyes moved. His shoulders had risen a little into his neck, and there was a tautening, an instinctive alertness in his manner. His left hand settled on Bradfield’s forearm.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘That’s fine. I like a change. I like new people.’ His voice was on a single plane; heavy but short; a conspirator’s voice, held down by the experience of saying things which should not be overheard.

  ‘What you guys come for? Praschko’s personal opinion? The voice of the opposition?’ He explained to Turner: ‘When you got a coalition, the opposition’s a damned exclusive club.’ He laughed very loud, sharing the joke with Bradfield.

  The waiter brought a goulash soup. Cautiously, with small, nervous movements of his butcher’s hand, he began feeling for the meat.

  ‘What you come for? Hey, maybe you want to send a telegram to the Queen?’ He grinned. ‘A message from her old subject? OK. So send her a telegram. What the hell does she care what Praschko says? What does anyone care? I’m an old whore’ – this too for Turner – ‘they tell you that? I been English, I been German, I been damn nearly American. I been in this bordello longer than all the other whores. That’s why no one wants me any more. I been had all ways. Did they tell you that? Left, Right and Centre.’

  ‘Which way have they got you now?’ Turner asked.

  His eyes still upon Turner’s battered face, Praschko lifted his hand and rubbed the tip of his finger against his thumb. ‘Know what counts in politics? Cash. Selling. Everything else is a load of crap. Treaties, policies, alliances: crap … Maybe I should have stayed a Marxist. So now they’ve walked out of Brussels. That’s sad. Sure, that’s very sad. You haven’t got anyone to talk to any more.’

  He broke a roll in two and dipped one half into the soup.

  ‘You tell the Queen that Praschko says the English are lousy, lying hypocrites. Your wife okay?’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I got to dinner up there. Still live in that ghetto, do you? Nice place. Never mind. Nobody likes me for too long. That’s why I change parties,’ he explained to Turner. ‘I used to think I was a Romantic, always looking for the blue flower. Now I think I just get bored. Same with friends, same with women, same with God. They’re all true. They all cheat you. They’re all bastards. Jesus. Know another thing: I like new friends better than old ones. Hey, I got a new wife: what do you think of her?’ He held up the girl’s chin and adjusted her face a little to show her to the best advantage and the girl smiled and patted his hand. ‘I’m amazing. There was a time,’ he continued before either of them could make an appropriate comment, ‘there was a time when I would have laid down on my fat belly to get the lousy English into Europe. Now you’re crying on the doorstep and I don’t care.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m truly amazing. Still, that’s history I guess. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m only interested in power: maybe I loved you because you were strong and now I hate you because you’re nothing. They killed a boy last night, you hear? In Hagen. It’s on the radio.’

  He drank a Steinhäger from the tray. The mat stuck to the stem of the glass. He tore it off. ‘One boy. One old man. One crazy woman librarian. Okay, so it’s a football team; but it isn’t Armageddon.’

  Through the window, the long grey columns waited on the esplanade. Praschko waved a hand round the room. ‘Look at this crap. Paper. Paper democracy, paper politicians, paper eagles, paper soldiers, paper deputies. Doll’s house democracy; every time Karfeld sneezes, we wet our pants. Know why? Because he comes so damn near the truth.’

  ‘Are you in favour of him then? Is that it?’ Turner asked, ignoring Bradfield’s angry glance.

  Praschko finished his soup, his eyes on Turner all the time. ‘The world gets younger every day,’ he said. ‘Okay, so Karfeld’s a load of crap. Okay. We’ve got rich, see, boy? We’ve eaten and drunk, built houses, bought cars, paid taxes, gone to church, made babies. Now we want something real. Know what this is, boy?’

  His eyes had not left Turner’s damaged face.

  ‘Illusions. Kings and queens. The Kennedys, de Gaulle, Napoleon. The Wittelsbachs, Potsdam. Not just a damn village any more. Hey, so what’s this about the students rioting in England? What does the Queen think about that? Don’t you give them enough cash? Youth. Want to know something about youth? I’ll tell you.’ Turner was his only audience now. ‘ “German youth is blaming its parents for starting the war.” That’s what you hear. Every day some crazy clever guy writes it in another newspaper. Want to hear the true story? They’re blaming their parents for losing the damn war, not for starting it! “Hey! Where the hell’s our Empire?” Same as the English I guess. It’s the same horseshit. The same kids. They want God back.’ He leaned across the table until his face was quite close to Turner’s. ‘Here. Maybe we could do a deal: we give you cash, you give us illusions. Trouble is, we tried that. We done that deal and you gave us a load of shit. You didn’t deliver the illusions. That’s what we don’t like about the English any more. They don’t know how to do a deal. The Fatherland wanted to marry the Motherland but you never showed up for the wedding.’ He broke out in another peal of false laughter.

  ‘Perhaps the time has now come to make the union,’ Bradfield suggested, smiling like a tired statesman.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Turner saw two men, blond-faced, in dark suits and suede shoes, quietly take their places at an adjoining table. The waiter went to them quickly, sensing their profession. At the same moment a bevy of young journalists came in from the lobby. Some carried the day’s newspapers; the headlines spoke of Brussels or Hagen. At their head Karl-Heinz Saab, father of them all, stared across at Bradfield in flatulent anxiety. Beyond the window, in a loveless patio, rows of empty plastic chairs were planted like artificial flowers into the breaking concrete.

  ‘Those are the real Nazis
, that scum.’ His voice pitched high enough for anyone to hear, Praschko indicated the journalists with a contemptuous wave of his fat hand. ‘They put out their tongues and fart and think they’ve invented democracy. Where’s that damn waiter: dead?’

  ‘We’re looking for Harting,’ Bradfield said.

  ‘Sure!’ Praschko was used to crisis. His hand, drawing the napkin across his cracked lips, moved at the same steady pace. The eyes, yellow in their parched sockets, barely flickered as he continued to survey the two men.

  ‘I haven’t seen him around,’ he continued, carelessly. ‘Maybe he’s in the gallery. You guys have a special box up there.’ He put down the napkin. ‘Maybe you ought to go look.’

  ‘He’s been missing since last Friday morning. He’s been missing for a week.’

  ‘Listen: Leo? That guy will always come back.’ The waiter appeared. ‘He’s indestructible.’

  ‘You’re his friend,’ Bradfield continued. ‘Perhaps his only friend. We thought he might have consulted you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the problem,’ Bradfield said with a little smile. ‘We thought he might have told you that.’

  ‘He never found an English friend?’ Praschko was looking from one to the other. ‘Poor Leo.’ There was an edge to his voice now.

  ‘You occupied a special position in his life. After all, you did a great many things together. You shared a number of experiences. We felt that if he had needed advice, or money, or whatever else one needs at certain crises in one’s life, he would instinctively seek you out. We thought he might even have come to you for protection.’

  Praschko looked again at the cuts on Turner’s face.