58
DORIS LESSING
A long discussion ensued.
It
was all no use. The Russians could
not be made to see that what they asked was unnecessary. Nor could
they understand that to arrive in a small suburban street in a small
English town in a car the length of a battleship was to draw the
wrong sort of attention.
"But why is that?" they enquired. "Representatives of the coun–
try where the workers hold power should use a good car. Of course,
comrade. You have not thought it out from a class position!"
The climax came when, despairing of the effects of rational
argument, they said: "And comrade, these presents, the bear, the
carpet, the chocolates, the vodka, are only a small token in apprecia–
tion of your work for our common cause. Of course you will
be
properly recompensed."
At which point he was swept by, indeed taken over entirely by,
atavistic feelings he had no idea were in him at all. He stood up and
pointed a finger shaking with rage at the door: "How dare you
imagine," he shouted, "that my wife and 1 would take money.
If
1 were going to spy, I'd spy for the love of mankind, for duty, and
for international socialism. Take those bloody things out of here.
Wait, I'll get that teddy bear from the kids. And you can take your
bloody car out of here too."
His wife, when she came back from the supermarket and heard
the story, was even more insulted than he was.
But emotions like these are surely possible with only the lowest
possible levels of spy material- in this case so low they didn't qualify
for the first step, entrance into the brotherhood.
Full circle back to Our Man in the Post Office, or rather, the
first of three.
Mter sedulous attendance at a lot of left-wing meetings, semi–
private and public - for above all Tom was a methodical man who,
if engaged in a thing always gave it full value - he put his hand
up one evening in the middle of a discussion about agrarian re–
form
in
Venezuela, and said: "I must ask permission to ask a
question."
Everyone always laughed at him when he did this, put up his
hand to ask permission to speak, or to leave or to have opinions
about something. Little did we realize that we were seeing here not
just a surface mannerism, or habit, but his strongest characteristic.
