52
DORIS LESSING
other people to pull your chestnuts out of the fire, she said.
If
he was
rude to you, then it's your place to tell him so."
He got frustrated, like an intimate friend or lover with paralysis
of the tongue. And there was another thing, his involvement was al–
ways at a remove. He was listening to events, emotions, several hours
old. Sometimes weeks old, as for instance when he went on leave
and had to catch up with a month's dangerous material all in one
exhausting twenty-four hours. He found that he was getting posses–
sive about certain of his charges, resented his colleagues listening
in to "my suspects." Once he had to wrestle with temptation because
he longed to seek out a certain woman on the point of leaving her hus–
band for another man. Due to his advantageous position he knew
the other man was not what she believed. He imagined how he
would
trail
her to the cafe which he knew she frequented, sit near
her, then lean over and ask: "May I join you? I have something of
importance to divulge." He knew she would agree: he knew her
character well. She was unconventional, perhaps not as responsible
as she ought to be, careless for instance about the regularity of meals,
but fundamentally, he was sure, a good girl, with the potentiality of
good wifehood. He would say to her: "Don't do
it,
my dear! No,
don't ask me how I know, I can't tell you that. But if you leave
your husband for that man, you'll regret it!" He would press her
hands in his, looking deeply into her eyes - he was sure they were
brown, for her voice was definitely the voice of a brown-eyed blonde
- and then stride forever out of her life. Afterward he could check
on the success of his intervention through the tapes.
To cut a process short that took some years, he at last went
secretly to a communist bookshop, bought some pamphlets, attended
a meeting or two, and discovered that he would certainly become
a Party member if it were not that his job, and a very well paid
one with good prospects, was to spy on the Communist party. He
felt in a false position. What to do? He turned up at the offices of
the Communist party, asked to see the Secretary, and confessed his
dilemma. Roars of laughter from the Secretary.
These roars are absolutely obligatory in this convention, which
insists on a greater degree of sophisticated understanding between
professionals, even if on opposing sides and even if at war - party
officials, government officials, top-ranking soldiers and the like - and
the governed, ever a foolish, trusting and sentimental lot.
