The Tailor of Panama

by John le Carré

  At which everybody seemed to decide they really ought to be getting back—to the ailing child, to the baby-sitter, to the dog, to whatever they had that was a safe distance from where they were right now.

  But what does Harry do when he has soothed his guests, escorted them to their cars and waved goodbye to them from the doorstep? Deliver a Statement to the Board.

  “It’s expansion, Lou”—patting her back while he hugs her— “that’s all it is. Massaging the customers”—dabbing away her tears with his Irish linen handkerchief. “It’s expand or die, Lou, is what it is these days. Look what happened to dear old Arthur Braithwaite. First his business went, then he did. You wouldn’t want that to happen to me, would you? So we expand. We open the club. We socialise. We put ourselves about, because it’s got to be. Eh, Lou? Right?”

  But by now his patronising attentions have hardened her, and she pulls free of him.

  “Harry, there are other ways of dying. I wish you to think about your family. I know of too many cases, and so do you, where men of forty have suffered heart attacks and other stress-related maladies. If your shop is not expanding I’m surprised, since I recall a lot of stories recently of increased sales and output. But if you are truly worried about the future and not just using it as a pretext, we have the rice farm to fall back on and we would surely all prefer to live in reduced circumstances practising Christian abstinence than try to keep pace with your rich, immoral friends and have you die on us.”

  At which Pendel grasps her to him in a fiery bear hug and promises to be home really early tomorrow—maybe take the kids to the fun fair, do a movie. And Louisa cries and says, Oh yes, let’s do it, Harry! Really let’s. But they don’t. Because when tomorrow comes he remembers the reception for the Brazilian Trade Delegation—lot of important players, Lou—why don’t we do it tomorrow instead? And when that tomorrow comes, I’m a liar, Lou, there’s this dinner club I’ve gone and got myself elected to. They’re throwing a jamboree for some heavy hitters down from Mexico, and did I see you had the new Spillway on your desk?

  Spillway being the Canal newsletter.

  And on Monday came the usual weekly phone call from Naomi. Louisa could tell at once from Naomi’s voice that she had momentous news. She wondered what it was going to be this time. Guess who Pepe Kleeber took on his business trip to Houston last week, perhaps. Or: have you heard about Jaqui Lopez and her riding instructor? Or: who do you think Dolores Rodríguez goes to visit with when she tells her husband she’s comforting her mother after her bypass operation? But this time Naomi didn’t come on with any of that stuff, which was as well, because Louisa was of a mind to hang up if she did. Naomi just needed to catch up with all the lovely Pendels, and how was Mark making out with his exam work, and was it true Harry was buying Hannah her first pony? It was? Louisa, Harry is just the most generous man on earth; my wicked husband should take lessons from him! Not until, between them, they had painted a treacly picture of the entire deliriously happy Pendel family did Louisa realise that Naomi was commiserating with her:

  “I’m so proud for you, Louisa. I’m proud you’re all healthy, and the kids are progressing, and you love each other, and that God is kind to you, and Harry appreciates what he has. And I’m very proud that I knew right off that what Letti Hortensas just told me about Harry could not possibly be true.”

  Louisa remained frozen to the telephone, too scared to speak or ring off. Letti Hortensas, heiress and slut, wife of Alfonso. Alfonso Hortensas, Letti’s husband, brothel owner, P & B customer and crook.

  “Sure,” Louisa said, not knowing what she was agreeing to, except that by assenting to anything at all she was saying “go on.”

  “You and I know very well, Louisa, that Harry is not a person to visit some seedy downtown hotel where you pay by the hour. ‘Letti dear,’ I said, ‘I think it’s time you bought yourself a new pair of eyeglasses. Louisa is my friend. Harry and I have a long platonic friendship going way back, which Louisa has always known about and understood. That marriage is built on rock,’ I told her. ‘It makes no difference your husband owns the Hotel Paraiso and you were sitting in the lobby waiting for him when Harry stepped out of the elevator with a bunch of whores. A lot of Panamanian women look like whores. A lot of whores do their business at the Paraiso. Harry has many customers from many walks of life.’ I want you to know I was loyal to you, Louisa. I supported you. I scotched the rumour. ‘Shifty?’ I said to her. ‘Harry never looks shifty. He wouldn’t know how. Have you ever seen Harry looking shifty? Of course you haven’t.’ ”

  It took a long while for the feeling to return to Louisa’s body. She was into serious denial. Her outburst at the dinner party had scared her stiff.

  “Bitch!” she screamed through her tears.

  But not till she had rung off and poured herself a large vodka from Harry’s newly instated hospitality chest.

  It was the new clubroom that had started it, she was convinced. The top floor of P & B had for years been the subject of Harry’s most visionary fantasies.

  I’m going to put the fitting room under the balcony, Lou, he used to say. I’m putting the Sportsman’s Corner next to the boutique. Or: maybe I’ll leave the fitting room where it is and put up an outside staircase. Or: I’ve got it, Lou! Listen. I’m going to throw out a cantilevered extension at the back, install a health club and sauna, open a small restaurant, P & B customers only, soup and catch of the day, how’s that?

  Harry had even had a model made and done the initial costing by the time that plan too was shelved. Thus the top floor had till now been a perennial armchair voyage that was enjoyed only in the planning. And anyway where would the fitting room go? The answer, it turned out, was nowhere. The fitting room would stay right where it was. But the Sportsman’s Corner, Harry’s pride, would be squashed into Marta’s glass box.

  “So where will Marta go?” Louisa asked, half hoping with the shameful side of her that “go” meant just that, because there were things about Marta’s injuries that Louisa had never understood. Harry’s sense of being responsible for them, for instance, but then Harry felt responsible for everyone; it was part of what she loved about him. Things he let slip. Things he knew about. Radical students and how the poor lived in El Chorrillo. And there was something about the power Marta could exert over him that was a little too like Louisa’s own.

  I’m jealous of everyone, she thought, fixing herself an essential dry martini cocktail to get her off the vodka. I’m jealous of Harry, I’m jealous of my sister and of my children. I’m practically jealous of myself.

  And now the books. On China. On Japan. On the Tigers, as he called them. Nine volumes in all. She counted. They had arrived without warning by night on the table in his den, and stayed there ever since, a silent, sinister, occupying army. Japan down the ages. Its economy. The rise and rise of the yen. From empire to imperial democracy. South Korea. Its demography, economy, and constitution. Malaysia, its past and future role in world affairs, collected essays of great scholars. Its traditions, language, lifestyle, destiny, cautious marriage of industrial convenience with China. China, whither Communism? The corruption of the Chinese oligarchy after Mao, human rights, the population time bomb, what’s to be done? It’s time I educated myself, Lou. I feel stuck. Old Braithwaite was right as usual. I should have gone to university. In Kuala Lumpur? In Tokyo? In Seoul? They’re the coming places, Lou. They’re the next century’s superpowers, you’ll see. Ten years from now, they’ll be my only customers.

  “Harry, I wish you please to define profit to me”—mustering the last of her courage—“Who pays for the cold beers and the Scotches and wine and sandwiches and Marta’s overtime? Do your customers buy suits from you because they keep you up talking and drinking until eleven o’clock? Harry, I do not understand you anymore.”

  She was going to throw the Hotel Paraiso at him as well but her courage had run dry and she needed another vodka from the top shelf in the bathroom. She couldn’t see Harry very clearly
and she suspected it was the same for him. There was a film of hot mist across her eyes and what she saw in place of Harry was herself made older by a lot of grief and vodka, standing here in the drawing room after he had walked out on her, and watching the children wave goodbye to her through the window of the four-track because it was Harry’s turn to have them for the weekend.

  “I’m going to make it all right for us, Lou,” he promised, patting her shoulder to console the invalid.

  So what was wrong that had to be made right? And how the fuck did he propose to correct it?

  Who was driving him? What was? If she was not enough for him, who was getting the rest of him? Who was Harry being, one minute pretending she didn’t exist, the next showering her with gifts and going to ridiculous lengths to please the children? Putting himself about town as if his life depended on it? Accepting invitations from people he used to avoid like poison, except as customers—grubby tycoons like Rafi, politicians, entrepreneurs from the drug fringe? Pontificating about the Canal? Creeping out of the Hotel Paraiso with an elevatorload of hookers late at night? But the darkest episode of all was last night’s.

  It was a Thursday, and on Thursdays she brought work home in order to be sure of clearing her office desk on Friday and having the weekend free for family. She had left her father’s briefcase on her desk in her den, thinking she might grab an hour between putting the children to bed and cooking supper. But then she had a sudden intimation that the steaks had mad cow disease, so she drove down the hill to get a chicken. Returning, she discovered to her pleasure that Harry had come back early: there was his four-track, crookedly parked as usual and no space in the garage for the Peugeot, so she had to leave it way down the hill, which she did willingly, and trudge back up the sidewalk with the shopping.

  She was wearing sneakers. The house door was unlocked. Harry at his most forgetful. I’ll surprise him, tease him about his parking. She stepped into the hall, and through the open doorway of her den she saw him standing with his back to her and her father’s briefcase open on her desk. He had taken all the papers out of it and was flipping through them like someone who knows what he is looking for and isn’t finding it. A couple of the files confidential. Personal reports on people. A draft paper by a newly joined member of Delgado’s staff on services that could be provided for ships awaiting transit. Delgado was worried because the author had recently formed his own chandlering company and might therefore be trying to push contracts in its direction. Maybe Louisa would look it over and give him her opinion?

  “Harry,” she said.

  Or perhaps she yelled. But when you yell at Harry he doesn’t jump. He just puts down whatever he’s doing and waits for further orders. Which is what he did now: froze, then very slowly, so as not to alarm anybody, laid her papers on her desk. Then stepped one pace back from the desk and hunched himself in that self-effacing way he had, eyes on the ground six feet in front of him while he smiled a Librium smile.

  “It’s that bill, dear,” he explained in an underdog voice.

  “What bill?”

  “You remember. From the Einstein Institute. Mark’s extra music. The one they say they sent us and we haven’t paid.”

  “Harry, I paid that bill last week.”

  “Now that’s what I told them, you see. Louisa paid last week. She never forgets, I said. They wouldn’t listen.”

  “Harry, we have bank statements, we have cheque stubs, we have receipts, we have a bank that we can call, and we have cash in the house. I do not understand why you have to ransack my briefcase in my den in search of a bill we have already paid.”

  “Yes, well, as long as we have, I won’t bother, will I? Thank you for the information.”

  And acting injured, or whatever he thought he was acting, he walked past her to his own den. And as he crossed the courtyard she saw him slip something into his trousers pocket and realised it was the revolting cigarette lighter that he had taken to carrying around with him these days—a present from a customer, he had said, waving it in her face, flicking it off and on for her, proud as a child with his new toy.

  Then she panicked. Vision slipping, ears jangling, knees no good. Smell of burning, the children’s sweat running down her own body, the whole scene. She saw El Chorrillo in flames, and Harry’s face as he came back into the house from the balcony, and the oily red light still glowing in his eyes. She saw him coming over to where she was cringing in the broom cupboard. And embracing her. Embracing Mark as well, because she wouldn’t let Mark go. Then stammering something to her that she had never understood or contemplated rationally until this minute, preferring to dismiss it as part of the demented exchange between traumatised witnesses to disaster:

  “If I’d started one that size, they’d have put me away forever,” he said.

  Then he bowed his head and stared at his feet like a man praying standing up, the same gesture he had made just now but worse.

  “I couldn’t move my legs, you see,” he had explained. “They were stuck. It was like a cramp. I should have run down there but I couldn’t.”

  Then worrying about what had happened to Marta.

  Harry was about to torch the fucking house! she screamed at herself as she shivered and sipped her vodka and listened to his classy music from across the courtyard. He’s bought a lighter and he’s going to incinerate his family! He came to bed, she raped him and he seemed grateful. Next morning none of it had ever happened. In the mornings it never had. Not for Harry, not for Louisa. That was how they survived together. The four-track broke down and Harry had to borrow the Peugeot to drive the kids to school. Louisa went to work by taxi. The tile-cleaning maid found a snake in the larder and had hysterics. Hannah had a tooth out. It rained. Harry was not put away forever, neither did he burn down the house with his new cigarette lighter. But he stayed out late, pleading yet another late customer.

  “Osnard?” Louisa repeated, not believing her ears. “Andrew Osnard? Who in heaven’s name is Mr. Osnard, and why has he been invited to join us on our Sunday picnic on the island?”

  “He’s British, Lou, I told you. Joined the embassy a couple of months ago. He’s the ten-suit one, remember? He’s all alone here. He was living in a hotel for weeks until he got his flat.”

  “Which hotel?” she asked, thinking, Please, God, let it be the Paraiso.

  “The El Panama. He wants to meet a real family. You can understand that, can’t you?”—the whipped hound, ever faithful, never understood.

  And when she could think of nothing to say:

  “He’s fun, Lou. You’ll see. Bouncy. Go down like a house on fire with the kids, I’ll bet you.” His unhappy choice of phrase was followed by the new false laugh he had. “It’s my English roots raising their nasty little heads, I expect. Patriotism. Comes to us all, they say. You too.”

  “Harry, I do not understand what your love of country or mine has to do with inviting Mr. Osnard to join us for an intimate family outing on Hannah’s birthday when as we have all noticed you have little enough time for your children as it is.”

  At which his head fell forward and he pleaded with her like an old beggar on the doorstep.

  “Old Braithwaite made suits for Andy’s dad, Lou. I used to tag along and hold the tape.”

  Hannah wanted to go to the rice farm for her birthday. And so, for different reasons, did Louisa, because she couldn’t understand why the rice farm had disappeared from Harry’s conversational repertoire. In her worst moments she convinced herself he had installed a woman there—that greasy Angel would pimp for anyone. But as soon as she suggested the farm, Harry turned all haughty and said big changes were afoot up there, best leave it to the lawyers till the deal was set.

  So instead they rode in the four-track to Anytime, which was a house without walls perched like a wooden bandstand on its own round hazy island sixty yards across, in a vast sweltering flooded valley called Lake Gatún, twenty miles inland from the Atlantic at the summit of the Canal’s course, which is marked
by a curling avenue of coloured buoys disappearing in pairs into the dripping haze. The island lay at the lake’s western edge in a jigsaw of steaming jungle bays and inlets and mangrove swamps and other islands, of which Barro Colorado was the largest, and the least significant was Anytime, so named by the Pendel children after Paddington Bear’s marmalade and rented by Louisa’s father from his employers for a few forgotten dollars every year and now bequeathed to her in charity.

  The Canal smouldered to the left of them, and the mist coiled over it like an eternal dew. Pelicans dived through the mist and the air inside the car smelled of ship’s oil and nothing in the world had changed or ever would, Amen. The same boats that had passed here when Louisa was Hannah’s age passed now, the same black figures propped their bare elbows on the sweating railings, the same wet flags drooped from their masts and nobody in the world knew what they meant—her father used to joke—except for one blind old pirate in Portobelo. Pendel, strangely ill at ease in Mr. Osnard’s presence, drove in sulky silence. Louisa lounged beside him, which was what Mr. Osnard had insisted upon; he swore he preferred it in the back.

  Mr. Osnard, she repeated drowsily to herself. Portly Mr. Osnard. Ten years my junior at least, yet I’ll never be able to call you Andy. She had forgotten, if she had ever known, how disarmingly polite an English gentleman could be when he put his insincere mind to it. Humour and politeness together, her mother used to warn her, make a dangerous heap of charm. So does being a good listener, Louisa reflected as she lay with her head back, smiling at the way Hannah pointed out the sights to him as if she owned them, and Mark letting her because it was her birthday—and besides, Mark in his way was quite as besotted by their guest as Hannah was.