Free Absolute Friends by John le Carré Page A
Authors: John le Carré
observes with relief.
No kind lady in blue curls from the University Delegacy of Lodgings is on hand with mimeographed lists of addresses where he must behave himself. Priced out of the better parts of town, West Berlin's unruly students have set themselves up in bombed-out factories, abandoned railway stations and tenement blocks too close to the Wall for the sensibilities of property developers. The Turkish shantytowns of asbestos and corrugated iron, so reminiscent of Mundy's childhood, sell neither academic books nor squash rackets, but figs, copper saucepans, halva, leather sandals and strings of plastic yellow ducks. The scents of jeera, charcoal and roasting lamb are a welcome-home to Pakistan's lost son. The handbills and graffiti on the walls and windows of the communes do not proclaim college productions of the plays of minor Elizabethan dramatists, but pour invective on the Shah, the Pentagon, Henry Kissinger, President Lyndon Johnson and the Napalm Culture of U. S. Imperialist Aggression in Vietnam.
Yet Ilse's advice is not misplaced. Bit by bit, in cafés, impromptu clubs, at street corners where students lounge, smoke and rebel, the name Sasha raises the odd smile, rings a distant bell. Sasha? You mean Sasha the Great Rouser--_that__ Sasha? Well now, we have a problem here, you see. We don't give just anybody our addresses these days. The Schweinesystem has long ears. Best leave your name with Students for Democratic Socialism and see if he wants to get in touch with you.
Schweinesystem, Mundy the new boy repeats to himself. Remember that phrase. The Pig System. Does he feel a momentary wave of resentment against Ilse for launching him into the eye of the radical storm with no charts or instruments? Perhaps. But evening is drawing in, his path is set and despite his state of mourning he has a great appetite to begin his new life.
"Try Anita, Commune Six," a somnolent revolutionary advises him, in a clamorous cellar dense with pot smoke and Vietcong flags.
"Maybe Brigitte can tell you where he is," another suggests, over the strains of a girl guitarist in a Palestinian keffiyeh giving her rendering of Joan Baez. A child sits at her feet, a big man in a sombrero at her side.
In a bullet-pocked former factory as high as Paddington railway station hang likenesses of Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. A portrait of the late Che Guevara is draped in black bunting. Hand-daubed slogans on bedsheets warn Mundy that _It Is Forbidden to Forbid,__ urge him to _Be Realistic,__ _Demand the Impossible, Accept No Gods or Masters.__ Strewn across the floor like survivors from a shipwreck, students doze, smoke, breast-feed babies, play rock music, fondle and harangue each other. Anita? Left, oh, hours ago, says one advisor. Brigitte? Try Commune Two and fuck America, says another. When he asks to use a lavatory, a tender Swede escorts him to a line of six, each with its door smashed in.
"Personal privacy, comrade, that's a bourgeois barrier to communal integration," the Swede explains in earnest English. "Better that men and women piss together than bomb Vietnamese kids.... Sasha?" he repeats, after Mundy has courteously declined his advances. "Maybe you find him at the Troglodyte Club, except they call it the Shaven Cat these days." He detaches a cigarette paper from its packet and, using Mundy's back to press on, draws a map.
The map leads Mundy to a canal. With the knapsack slapping his hip, he sets off along the towpath. Sentry towers, then a patrol boat bristling with guns, glide past him. Ours or theirs? It is immaterial. They are nobody's. They are part of the great impasse he is here to unblock. He turns into a cobbled side street and stops dead. A twenty-foot-high cinder-block wall with a crown of barbed-wire thorns and a sickly halo of floodlights bars his way. At first he refuses to recognize it. You're a fantasy, a film set, a construction site. Two West Berlin policemen call him over.
"Draft dodger?"
"English," he
No kind lady in blue curls from the University Delegacy of Lodgings is on hand with mimeographed lists of addresses where he must behave himself. Priced out of the better parts of town, West Berlin's unruly students have set themselves up in bombed-out factories, abandoned railway stations and tenement blocks too close to the Wall for the sensibilities of property developers. The Turkish shantytowns of asbestos and corrugated iron, so reminiscent of Mundy's childhood, sell neither academic books nor squash rackets, but figs, copper saucepans, halva, leather sandals and strings of plastic yellow ducks. The scents of jeera, charcoal and roasting lamb are a welcome-home to Pakistan's lost son. The handbills and graffiti on the walls and windows of the communes do not proclaim college productions of the plays of minor Elizabethan dramatists, but pour invective on the Shah, the Pentagon, Henry Kissinger, President Lyndon Johnson and the Napalm Culture of U. S. Imperialist Aggression in Vietnam.
Yet Ilse's advice is not misplaced. Bit by bit, in cafés, impromptu clubs, at street corners where students lounge, smoke and rebel, the name Sasha raises the odd smile, rings a distant bell. Sasha? You mean Sasha the Great Rouser--_that__ Sasha? Well now, we have a problem here, you see. We don't give just anybody our addresses these days. The Schweinesystem has long ears. Best leave your name with Students for Democratic Socialism and see if he wants to get in touch with you.
Schweinesystem, Mundy the new boy repeats to himself. Remember that phrase. The Pig System. Does he feel a momentary wave of resentment against Ilse for launching him into the eye of the radical storm with no charts or instruments? Perhaps. But evening is drawing in, his path is set and despite his state of mourning he has a great appetite to begin his new life.
"Try Anita, Commune Six," a somnolent revolutionary advises him, in a clamorous cellar dense with pot smoke and Vietcong flags.
"Maybe Brigitte can tell you where he is," another suggests, over the strains of a girl guitarist in a Palestinian keffiyeh giving her rendering of Joan Baez. A child sits at her feet, a big man in a sombrero at her side.
In a bullet-pocked former factory as high as Paddington railway station hang likenesses of Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. A portrait of the late Che Guevara is draped in black bunting. Hand-daubed slogans on bedsheets warn Mundy that _It Is Forbidden to Forbid,__ urge him to _Be Realistic,__ _Demand the Impossible, Accept No Gods or Masters.__ Strewn across the floor like survivors from a shipwreck, students doze, smoke, breast-feed babies, play rock music, fondle and harangue each other. Anita? Left, oh, hours ago, says one advisor. Brigitte? Try Commune Two and fuck America, says another. When he asks to use a lavatory, a tender Swede escorts him to a line of six, each with its door smashed in.
"Personal privacy, comrade, that's a bourgeois barrier to communal integration," the Swede explains in earnest English. "Better that men and women piss together than bomb Vietnamese kids.... Sasha?" he repeats, after Mundy has courteously declined his advances. "Maybe you find him at the Troglodyte Club, except they call it the Shaven Cat these days." He detaches a cigarette paper from its packet and, using Mundy's back to press on, draws a map.
The map leads Mundy to a canal. With the knapsack slapping his hip, he sets off along the towpath. Sentry towers, then a patrol boat bristling with guns, glide past him. Ours or theirs? It is immaterial. They are nobody's. They are part of the great impasse he is here to unblock. He turns into a cobbled side street and stops dead. A twenty-foot-high cinder-block wall with a crown of barbed-wire thorns and a sickly halo of floodlights bars his way. At first he refuses to recognize it. You're a fantasy, a film set, a construction site. Two West Berlin policemen call him over.
"Draft dodger?"
"English," he