'So they shoot Jim from behind. Maybe Jim was running away, what the hell? They put Jim in prison. That's not so good for Jim. For my friends also. Not good.' He started counting: 'Pribyl,' he began, touching his thumb. 'Bukova Mirek, from Pribyl's wife the brother.' He took a finger. 'Also Pribyl's wife.' A second finger, a third: 'Kolin Jiri, also his sister, mainly dead. This was network Aggravate.' He changed hands. 'After network Aggravate come network Plato. Come lawyer Rapotin, come Colonel Landkron, and typists Eva Krieglova and Hanka Bilova. Also mainly dead. That's damn big price, George' - holding the clean fingers close to Smiley's face-'that's damn big price for one Englishman with bullet-hole.' He was losing his temper.'Why you bother, George? Circus don't be no good for Czec... (查看原文)
Jerry Westerby screwed up his face in perplexity. 'That's what the boy wanted to tell me, you see, George. That's what he was trying to put over in Stan's bar. What all the rumours were about. The Russians moved in on Friday. They didn't shoot Hajek till Saturday. So the wise lads were saying: there you are, Russians were waiting for Hajek to turn up. Knew he was coming. Knew the lot. Lay in wait. Bad story, you see. Bad for our reputation, see what I mean? Bad for big chief. Bad for tribe. How.' (查看原文)
[Here followed a biographical summary of surprisingaccuracy:... Lycée Lakanal in Paris, put down for Eton never went there, Jesuit day-school Prague, two semesters Strasbourg, parents in European banking, small aristo, live apart... ]
'He has that heavy quiet that commands. Hard-headed, quite literally. One of those shrewd quiet ones that lead the team without anyone noticing. Fan, you know how hard it is for me to act. You have to remind me all the time, intellectually remind me, that unless I sample life's dangers I shall never know its mysteries. But Jim acts from instinct... he is functional... He's my other half, between us we'd make one marvellous man, except that neither of us can sing. And Fan, you know that feeling when you just have to go out and find someone new or the world wil... (查看原文)
' "Yavas Lagloo," says I, which I understand is Russian for meet me in the woodshed or something similar, and he says "Oh hullo," which I think he would have said to the Archangel Gabriel if he'd happened to be passing.
"What is your dilemma?" says I.
"I haven't got one," says he, after about an hour's thought.
"Then what are you doing here? If you haven't a dilemma how did you get in?"
'So he gives a big placid grin and we saunter over to the great Khlebnikov, shake his tiny paw for a while then toddle back to my rooms. Where we drink. And drink. And Fan, he drank everything in sight. Or perhaps I did, I forget. And come the dawn, do you know what we did? I will tell you, Fan. We walked solemnly down to the Parks, I sit on a bench with a stopwatch, big Jim gets into his running kit and lo... (查看原文)
'Was I now? And how did you take to it, Jim, to Control's theory? How did the idea strike you, overall?'
'Damn silly. Poppycock.'
'Why?'
'Just damn silly,' he repeated in a tone of military stubbornness. 'Think of any one of you - mole - mad!'
'But did you believe it?'
'No! Lord alive, man, why do you-'
'Why not? Rationally we always accepted that sooner or later it would happen. We always warned one another: be on your guard. We've turned enough members of other
outfits: Russians, Poles, Czechs, French. Even the odd American. What's so special about the British, all of a sudden?' Sensing Jim's antagonism, Smiley opened his door and let the cold air pour in. (查看原文)
Smiley asked: 'It never crossed your mind to drop the job?'
'No. It did not,' Jim snapped, his voice rising in a threat.
'Although, right from the start, you thought the idea was poppycock?' There was nothing but deference in Smiley's tone. No edge, no wish to score: only a wish to have the truth, clear under the night sky. 'You just kept marching. You'd seen what was on your back, you thought the mission absurd, but you still went on, deeper and deeper into the jungle.'
'I did.'
'Had you perhaps changed your mind about the mission? Did curiosity draw you after all, was that it? You wanted passionately to know who the mole was, for instance? I'm only speculating, Jim.'
'What's the difference? What the hell does my motive matter in a damn mess like this?'
The half moon was free of clo... (查看原文)
Jim's answer came out like an army order. 'He reckoned that after Bill Haydon's fling with her, she might care to redraft the inscription.' He swung away towards the car. 'I told him,' he shouted furiously. 'Told him to his wrinkled little face. You can't judge Bill by things like that. Artists have totally different standards. See things we can't see. Feel things that are beyond us. Bloody little man just laughed. "Didn't know his pictures were that good," he said. I told him, George. "Go to hell. Go to bloody hell. If you had one Bill Haydon in your damned outfit, you could call it set and match." I said to him: "Christ Almighty," I said, "what are you running over here? A service or the bloody Salvation Army?" '
'That was well said,' Smiley remarked at last, as if commenting on some di... (查看原文)
'Bill was never much of a one for regulations, though, was he?' said Smiley, in a reminiscent tone.
'And you were never one to see him straight,' Jim barked. (查看原文)
Then for a moment one part of Smiley broke into open revolt against the other. The wave of angry doubt which had swept over him in Lacon's garden, and ever since had pulled against his progress like a worrying tide, drove him now on to the rocks of despair, and then to mutiny: I refuse. Nothing is worth the destruction of another human being. Somewhere the path of pain and betrayal must end. Until that happened, there was no future: there was only a continued slide into still more terrifying versions of the present. This man was my friend and Ann's lover, Jim's friend and for all I know Jim's lover too; it was the treason, not the man, that belonged to the public domain.
痛苦与背叛终止一天不终止，就没有未来可言。而眼前这一幕，是如此可怕：这个人——我的朋友，我妻子的情人，Jim的朋友，据我所知也是Jim的情人，他的背叛，对于我来说是私人的。
<原文开始>Haydon had betrayed. As a... (查看原文)
More, far more. Now that he saw, he knew. Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torchbearer of a certain kind of antiquated romanticism, a notion of English calling which - for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive - had made sense of Guillam's life till now. In that moment, Guillam felt not merely betrayed; but orphaned. His suspicions, his resentments for so long turned outwards on the real world - on his women, his attempted loves - now swung upon the Circus and the failed magic which had formed his faith. With all his force he shoved open the door and sprang inside, gun in hand. (查看原文)
'Was Stevcek's original offer genuine, by the way?' Smiley
asked.
'Good Lord no,' said Haydon, actually shocked. 'It was a fix from the start. Stevcek existed, of course. He was a distinguished Czech general. But he never made an offer to
anyone.'
Here Smiley sensed Haydon falter. For the first time, he actually seemed uneasy about the morality of his behaviour. His manner became noticeably defensive. (查看原文)
'Obviously, we needed to be certain Control would rise, and how he would rise... and who he would send. We couldn't have him picking some half-arsed little pavement artist: it had to be a big gun to make the story stick. We knew he'd only settle for someone outside the mainstream and someone who wasn't Witchcraft cleared. If we made it a Czech, he'd have to choose a Czech speaker, naturally.'
'Naturally.'
'We wanted old Circus: someone who could bring down the temple a bit.'
'Yes,' said Smiley, remembering that heaving, sweating figure on the hilltop: 'Yes, I see the logic of that.'
'Well, damn it, I got him back,' Haydon snapped.
'Yes, that was good of you. Tell me, did Jim come to see you before he left on that Testify mission?'
'Yes, he did, as a matter of fact.'
'To say what?'
... (查看原文)
'Why did you bring him back?' he asked. 'For friendship's sake? Because he was harmless and you held all the cards?'
It wasn't just that, Haydon explained. As long as Jim was in a Czech prison (he didn't say Russian) people would agitate for him, and see him as some sort of key. But once
he was back, everyone in Whitehall would conspire to keep him quiet: that was the way of it with repatriations.
'I'm surprised Karla didn't just shoot him. Or did he hold back out of delicacy towards you?'
But Haydon had drifted away again into half-baked political assertions. Then he began speaking about himself, and already, to Smiley's eye, he seemed quite visibly to be shrinking to something quite small and mean. He was touched to hear that Ionesco had recently promised us a play in which the hero k... (查看原文)
They drove to Sarratt at a mad speed, and there, in the open night under a clear sky, lit by several hand torches and stared at by several white-faced inmates of the Nursery, sat Bill Haydon on a garden bench facing the moonlit cricket field. He was wearing striped pyjamas under his overcoat; they looked more like prison clothes. His eyes were open and his head was propped unnaturally to one side, like the head of a bird when its neck has been expertly broken. (查看原文)
