Call for the Dead

by John le Carré

She paused, showing no sign of emotion beyond the burning of her dark eyes. ‘It’s an old illness you suffer from, Mr Smiley,’ she continued, taking a cigarette from the box; ‘and I have seen many victims of it. The mind becomes separated from the body; it thinks without reality, rules a paper kingdom and devises without emotion the ruin of its paper victims. But sometimes the division between your world and ours is incomplete; the files grow heads and arms and legs, and that’s a terrible moment, isn’t it? The names have families as well as records, and human motives to explain the sad little dossiers and their make-believe sins. When that happens I am sorry for you.’ She paused for a moment, then continued: ‘It’s like the State and the People. The State is a dream too, a symbol of nothing at all, an emptiness, a mind without a body, a game played with clouds in the sky. But States make war, don’t they, and imprison people? To dream in doctrines – how tidy! My husband and I have both been tidied now, haven’t we?’ She was looking at him steadily. Her accent was more noticeable now. ‘You call yourself the State, Mr Smiley; you have no place among real people. You dropped a bomb from the sky: don’t come down here and look at the blood, or hear the scream.’ She had not raised her voice, she looked above him now, and beyond. ‘You seem shocked. I should be weeping, I suppose, but I’ve no more tears, Mr Smiley – I’m barren; the children of my grief are dead. Thank you for coming, ...