Smiley had a fleeting vision of Elsa Fennan as a child—a spindly, agile tomboy like George Sand’s “Petite Fadette”—half woman, half glib, lying girl. He saw her as a wheedling Backfisch, fighting like a cat for herself alone, and he saw her too, starved and shrunken in prison camp, ruthless in her fight for self-preservation. It was pathetic to witness in that smile the light of her early innocence, and a steeled weapon in her fight for survival.
