Call for the Dead

by John Le Carré

But gossip must see its characters in black and white,

‘Thank you, but I can scarcely hope to sleep today. Sleep is not a luxury I enjoy.’ She looked down wryly at her own tiny body; ‘My body and I must put up with one another twenty hours a day. We have lived longer than most people already.

Ann would be content – she’d found a way to like him. And having done so, forgotten him.

I shouldn’t think we’ve got the plan any more, though I’ve never thrown anything away in my life. Things just evaporate, don’t they?

‘Dieter had a theory that was pure Faust. Thought alone was valueless. You must act for thought to become effective. He used to say that the greatest mistake man ever made was to distinguish between the mind and the body: an order does not exist if it is not obeyed.

“Can’t you see it’s the same? The same guns, the same children dying in the streets? Only the dream has changed, the blood is the same colour. Is that what you want?”

“They will win because they know and the others will perish because they do not: men who work for a dream will work for ever”