The Spy Who Came in From The Cold

by Le Carre, John

  His flat was small and squalid, done in brown paint with photographs of Clovelly. It looked directly onto the gray backs of three stone warehouses, the windows of which were drawn, for aesthetic reasons, in creosote. Above the warehouse there lived an Italian family, quarreling at night and beating carpets in the morning. Leamas had few possessions with which to brighten his rooms. He bought some shades to cover the light bulbs, and two pairs of sheets to replace the Hessian squares provided by the landlord. The rest Leamas tolerated: the flower pattern curtains, not lined or hemmed, the fraying brown carpets and the clumsy dark wood furniture, like something from a seamen's hostel. From a yellow crumbling geyser he obtained hot water for a shilling.

  He needed a job. He had no money, none at all. So perhaps the stories of embezzlement were true. The offers of resettlement which the Service made had seemed to Leamas lukewarm 'and peculiarly unsuitable. He tried first to get a job in commerce. A firm of industrial adhesive manufacturers showed interest in his application for the post of assistant manager and personnel officer. Unconcerned by the inadequate reference with which the Service provided him, they demanded no qualifications and offered him six hundred a year. He stayed for a week, by which time the foul' stench of decaying fish oil had permeated his clothes and hair, lingering in his nostrils like the smell of death. No amount of washing would remove it, so that in the end Leamas had his hair cut short to the scalp and threw away two of his best suits. He spent another week trying to sell encyclopedias to suburban housewives, but he was not a man that housewives liked. or understood; they did not want Leamas, let alone his encyclopedias. Night after night he returned wearily to his flat, his ridiculous sample under his arm. At the end of a week he telephoned the company and told them he had sold nothing. Expressing no surprise, they reminded him of his obligation to return the sample if he discontinued acting on their behalf, and rang off. Leamas stalked out of the telephone booth in a fury leaving the sample behind him, went to a pub and got' very drunk at a cost of twenty-five shillings, which he could not afford. They threw him out for shouting at a woman who tried to pick him up. They told him never to come back, but they'd forgotten all about it a week later. They were beginning to know Leamas there.

  They were beginning to know him elsewhere too, the gray shambling figure from the Mansions. Not a wasted word did he speak, not a friend, neither man, woman nor beast, did he have. They guessed he was in trouble, run away from his wife like as not. He never knew the price of anything, never remembered it when he was told. He patted all his pockets whenever he looked for change, he never remembered to bring a basket, always buying shopping bags. They didn't like him in the Street, but they were almost sorry for him. They thought he was dirty, too, the way he didn't shave weekends and his shirts all grubby. A Mrs. McCaird from Sudbury Avenue cleaned for him for a week, but having never received a civil word from him withdrew her labor. She was an important source of information in the Street, where tradesmen told one another what they needed to know in case he asked for credit. Mrs. McCaird's advice was against credit. Leamas never had a letter, she said, and they agreed that that was serious. He'd no pictures and only a few books; she thought one of the books was dirty but couldn't be sure because it was in foreign writing. It was her opinion he had a bit to live on, and that that bit was running out. She knew he drew Benefit on Thursdays. Bayswater was warned, and needed no second warning. They heard from Mrs. McCaird that he drank like a fish: this was confirmed by the bartender. Bartenders and charwomen are not in the way of accommodating their clients with credit, but their information is treasured by those who are.

  * * 4 * Liz

  Finally he took the job in the library. The Labour Exchange put him on to it each Thursday morning as he drew his unemployment benefit, and he'd always turned it down.

  "It's not really your cup of tea," Mr. Pitt said, "but the pay's fair and the work's easy for an educated man."

  "What sort of library?" Leamas asked.

  "It's the Bayswater Library for Psychic Research. It's an endowment. They've got thousands of volumes, all sorts, and they've been left a whole lot more. They want another helper."

  He took his dole and the slip of paper. "They're an odd lot," Mr. Pitt added, "but then you're not a stayer anyway, are you? I think it's time you gave them a try, don't you?"

  It was odd about Pitt. Leamas was certain he'd seen him before somewhere. At the Circus, during the war.

  The library was like a church hall, and very cold. The black oil stoves at either end made it smell of paraffin. In the middle of the room was a cubicle like a witness box and inside it sat Miss Crail, the librarian.

  It had never occurred to Leamas that he might have to work for a woman. No one at the Labour Exchange had said anything about that.

  "I'm the new help," he said; "my name's Leamas."

  Miss Crail looked up sharply from her card index, as if she had heard a rude word. "Help? What do you mean, help?"

  "Assistant. From the Labour Exchange. Mr. Pitt." He pushed across the counter a form with his particulars entered in a sloping hand. She picked it up and studied it.

  "You are Mr. Leamas." This was not a question, but the first stage of a laborious fact-finding investigation. "And you are from the Labour Exchange."

  "No. I was sent by the Exchange. They told me you needed an assistant."

  "I see." A wooden smile.

  At that moment the telephone rang: she lifted the receiver and began arguing with somebody, fiercely. Leamas guessed they argued all the time; there were no preliminaries. Her voice just rose a key and she began arguing about some tickets for a concert. He listened for a minute or two and then drifted toward the bookshelves. He noticed a girl in one of the alcoves, standing on a ladder sorting large volumes.

  "I'm the new man," he said, "my name's Leamas."

  She came down from the ladder and shook his hand a little formally.

  "I'm Liz Gold. How d'you do. Have you met Miss Crail?"

  "Yes, but she's on the phone at the moment."

  "Arguing with her mother I expect. What are you going to do?"

  "I don't know. Work."

  "We're marking at the moment; Miss Crail's started a new index."

  She was a tall girl, ungainly, with a long waist and long legs. She wore flat, ballet type shoes to reduce her height. Her face, like her body, had large components which seemed to hesitate between plainness and beauty. Leamas guessed she was twenty-two or three, and Jewish.

  "It's just a question of checking that all the books are m the shelves. This is the reference bit, you see. When you've checked, you pencil in the new reference and mark it off on the index."

  "What happens then?"

  "Only Miss Crail's allowed to ink in the reference. It's the rule."

  "Whose rule?"

  "Miss Crail's. Why don't you start on the archaeology?"

  Leamas nodded and together they walked to the next alcove where a shoe box full of cards lay on the floor.

  "Have you done this kind of thing before?" she asked.

  "No." He stopped and picked up a handful of cards and shuffled through them. "Mr. Pitt sent me. From the Exchange." He put the cards back.

  "Is Miss Crail the only person who can ink the cards, too?" Leamas inquired.

  "Yes."

  She left him there, and after a moment's hesitation he took out a book and looked at the flyleaf. It was called _Archaeological Discoveries in Asia Minor. Volume Four_. They only seemed to have Volume Four.

  It was one o'clock and Leamas was very hungry, so he walked over to where Liz Gold was sorting and said, "What happens about lunch?"

  "Oh, I bring sandwiches." She looked a little embarrassed. "You can have some of mine if that would help. There's no café for miles."

  Leamas shook his head.

  "I'll go out, thanks. Got some shopping to do." She watched him push his way through the swing doors.

  It was half past two when he came back. He smelled of whisky. He had one s
hopping bag full of vegetables and another containing groceries. He put them down in a corner of the alcove and wearily began again on the archaeology books. He'd been' marking for about ten minutes when he became aware that Miss Crail was watching him.

  "_Mister_ Leamas."

  He was halfway up the ladder, so he looked down over his shoulder and said, "Yes?"

  "Do you know where these shopping bags come from?"

  "They're mine."

  "I see. They are yours." Leamas waited. "I regret," she continued at last, "that we do not allow it, bringing shopping into the library."

  "Where else can I put it? There's nowhere else I _can_ put it."

  "Not in the library," she replied. Leamas ignored her, and returned his attention to the archaeology section.

  "If you only took the normal lunch break," Miss Crail continued, "you would not have time to go shopping anyway. Neither of _us_ does, Miss Gold or myself; _we_ do not have time to shop."

  "Why don't you take an extra half hour?" Leamas asked. "You'd have time then. If you're pushed you can work another half hour in the evening. If you're pressed."

  She stayed for some moments, lust watching him and obviously thinking of something to say. Finally she announced: "I shall discuss it with Mr. Ironside," and went away.

  At exactly half past five Miss Crail put on her coat and, with a pointed "Good night, Miss Gold," left. Leamas guessed she had been brooding on the shopping bags all afternoon. He went into the next alcove where Liz Gold was sitting on the bottom rung of her ladder reading what looked like a tract. When she saw Leamas she dropped it guiltily into her handbag and stood up.

  "Who's Mr. Ironside?" Leamas asked.

  "I don't think he exists," she replied. "He's her big gun when she's stuck for an answer. I asked her once who he was. She went all shifty and mysterious and said 'Never mind.' I don't think he exists."

  "I'm not sure Miss Crail does," said Leamas, and Liz Gold smiled.

  At six o'clock she locked up and gave the keys to the curator, a very old man with First World War shellshock who, said Liz, sat awake all night in case the Germans made a counterattack. It was bitterly cold outside.

  "Got far to go?" asked Leamas.

  "Twenty-minute walk. I always walk it. Have you?"

  "Not far," said Leamas. "Good night."

  He walked slowly back to the flat. He let himself in and turned the light switch. Nothing happened. He tried the light in the tiny kitchen and finally the electric fire that plugged in by his bed. On the doormat was a letter. He picked it up and took it out into the pale yellow light of the staircase. It was the electricity company, regretting that the area manager had no alternative but to cut off the electricity until the outstanding account of nine pounds, four shillings and eightpence had been settled.

  He had become an enemy of Miss Crail, and enemies were what Miss Crail liked. Either the scowled at him or she ignored him, and when he came close, she began to tremble, looking to left and right, either for something with which to defend herself, or perhaps for a line of escape. Occasionally she would take immense umbrage, such as when he hung his mackintosh on _her_ peg, and she stood in front of it shaking for fully five minutes, until Liz spotted her and called Leamas.

  Leamas went over to her and said, "What's troubling you, Miss Crail?"

  "Nothing," she replied in a breathy, clipped way, "nothing at all."

  "Something wrong with my coat?"

  "Nothing at all."

  "Fine," he replied, and went back to his alcove. She quivered all that day, and conducted a telephone call in a stage whisper for half the morning.

  "She's telling her mother," said Liz. "She always tells her mother. She tells her about me too."

  Miss Crail developed such an intense hatred for Leamas that she found it impossible to communicate with him. On paydays he. would come back from lunch and find an envelope on the third rung of his ladder with his name misspelled on the outside. The first time it happened he took the money over to her with the envelope and said, "It's L-E-A, Miss Crail, and only one s." Whereupon she was seized with a veritable palsy, rolling her eyes and fumbling erratically with her pencil until Leamas went away. She conspired into the telephone for hours after that.

  About three weeks after Leamas began work at the library Liz asked him to supper. She pretended it was an idea that had come to her quite suddenly, at five o'clock that evening; she seemed to realize that if she were to ask him for tomorrow or the next day he would forget or just not come, so she asked him at five o'clock. Leamas seemed reluctant to accept, but in the end he did.

  They walked to her flat through the rain and they might have been anywhere--Berlin, London, any town where paving stones turn to lakes ol light in the evening rain, and the traffic shuffles despondently through wet streets.

  It was the first of many meals which Leamas had at her flat. He came when she asked him, and she asked him often. He never spoke much. When she discovered he would come, she took to laying the table in the morning before leaving for the library. She even prepared the vegetables beforehand and had the candles on the table, for she loved candlelight. She always knew that there was something deeply wrong with Leamas, and that one day, for some reason she could not understand, he might break and she would never see him again.

  She tried to tell him she knew; she said to him one evening: "You must go when you want. I'll never follow you, Alec."

  His brown eyes rested on her for a moment: "I'll tell you when," he replied.

  Her fiat was a bed-sitting-room and a kitchen. In the sitting room were two armchairs, a sofa-bed, and a bookcase full of paperback books, mainly classics which she had never read.

  After supper she would talk to him, and he would lie on the sofa, smoking. She never knew how much he heard, she didn't care. She would kneel by the sofa holding his hand against her cheek, talking.

  Then one evening she said to him, "Alec, what do you believe in? Don't laugh--tell me." She waited and at last he said:

  "I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don't believe it's driven by Father Christmas."

  She seemed to consider this and at last she asked again: "But what do you believe in?"

  Leamas shrugged.

  "You must believe in something," she persisted: "something like God--I know you do, Alec; you've got that look sometimes, as if you'd got something special to do, like a priest. Alec, don't smile, it's true."

  He shook his head.

  "Sorry, Liz, you've got it wrong. I don't like Americans and public schools. I don't like military parades and people who play soldiers." Without smiling he added, "And I don't like conversations about Life."

  "But Alec, you might as well say--"

  "I should have added," Learnas interrupted, "that I don't like people who tell me what I ought to think." She knew he was getting angry but she couldn't stop herself any more.

  "That's because you don't _want_ to think, you don't dare! There's some poison in your mind, some hate. You're a fanatic, Alec, I know you are, but I don't know what about. You're a fanatic who doesn't want to convert people, and that's a dangerous thing. You're like a man who's. . . sworn vengeance or something."

  The brown eyes rested on her. When he spoke she was frightened by the menace in his voice.

  "If I were you," he said roughly, "I'd mind my own business."

  And then he smiled, a roguish Irish smile. He hadn't smiled like that before and Liz knew he was putting on the charm.

  "What does Liz believe in?" he asked, and she replied:

  "I can't be had that easy, Alec."

  Later that night they talked about it again. Leamas brought it up--he asked her whether she was religious.

  "You've got me wrong," she said, "all wrong. I don't believe in God."

  "Then what do you believe in?"

  "History."

  He looked at her in astonishment for a moment, then laughed.

  "Oh Liz . . . oh _no!_ You're not a bloody Communist?"
>
  She nodded, blushing like a small girl at his laughter, angry and relieved that he didn't care.

  She made him stay that night and they became lovers. He left at five in the morning. She couldn't understand it; she was so proud and he seemed ashamed.

  He left her flat and turned down the empty street toward the park. It was foggy. Some way down the road--not far, twenty yards, perhaps a bit more-- stood the figure of a man in a raincoat, short and rather plump. He was leaning against the railings of the park, silhouetted in the shifting mist. As Leamas approached, the mist seemed to thicken, closing in around the figure at the railings, and when it parted the man was gone.

  * * 5 * Credit

  Then one day about a week later, he didn't come to the library. Miss Crail was delighted; by half-past eleven she had told her mother, and on returning from lunch she stood in front of the archaeology shelves where he had been working since he came. She stared with theatrical concentration at the rows of books, and Liz knew she was pretending to work out whether Leamas had stolen anything.

  Liz entirely ignored her for the rest of that day, failed to reply when she addressed her, and worked with assiduous application. When the evening came she walked home and cried herself to sleep.