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Authors: John le Carré
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play music? Piano?â
Iâd like to, but Iâm afraid I donât.
âYou just make lousy pictures of Adenauer, okay?â â with a huge pat on the shoulder and roars of laughter. âListen. I got too small apartment. We make music, everybody complain. You call me once, okay? Invite us your house, we play you good music. I am Ivan, okay?â
David.
Rule One of the Cold War: nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems. Everyone has a second motive, if not a third. A Soviet official openly invites himself and his wife to the house of a Western diplomat he doesnât even know? Whoâs making a pass at who in this situation? Put another way, what had I said or done to encourage such an improbable proposal in the first place? Letâs go over this again, David. You say you never met him before. Now you say you may have done?
A decision was reached, not mine to ask who by. I should invite Serov to my house exactly as he suggested. By telephone, not in writing. I should call the number he gave me, which was the official number of the Soviet Embassy in Bad Godesberg. I should state my name and ask to speak to Cultural Attaché Serov. Each of these seemingly normal acts was spelt out to me with huge precision. On being connected with Serov â if I am â I should enquire casually what day and hour suit him and his wife best for that musical event we discussed. I should aim for as early a date as possible, since potential defectors were prey to impulse. I should be sure to convey my compliments to his wife, whose inclusion in the approach â whose mere acknowledgement â was exceptional in such cases.
On the telephone, Serov was brusque. He spoke as if he vaguely remembered me, said he would consult his diary and call me back. Goodbye. My masters predicted that it was the last I would hear of him. A day later he called me back, I guessed from another phone since he sounded more like his jolly self.
Okay, eight oâclock Friday, David?
Both of you, Ivan?
Sure. Serova, she come also.
Great, Ivan. See you eight oâclock. And my best to your wife.
Throughout the day, sound technicians dispatched from London had been fiddling with the wiring in our living room, and my wife was worried about scratches in the paintwork. At the appointed hour an enormous chauffeur-driven ZiL limousine with blackened windows rolled into our drive and came slowly to a halt. A rear door opened and Ivan emerged, rump first, like Alfred Hitchcock in one of his own movies, pulling a man-sized cello after him. Then nobody. Was he alone after all? No, he was not. The other rear door is opening, the one I canât see from the porch. I am about to have my first glimpse of Serova. But itâs not Serova. Itâs a tall, agile man in a sharp, single-breasted black suit.
âSay hullo to Dimitri,â Serov announces on the doorstep. âHe come instead of my wife.â
Dimitri says he loves music too.
Before dinner, Serov, evidently no stranger to the bottle, drank whatever was offered him and wolfed a plateload of canapés before playing us an overture from Mozart on his cello, which we applauded, Dimitri loudest. Over a dinner of venison, which Serov greatly relished, Dimitri enlightened us about recent Soviet accomplishments in the arts, space travel and the furtherance of world peace. After dinner, Ivan played us a difficult composition by Stravinsky. We applauded that too, again led by Dimitri. At ten oâclock the ZiLrolled back into the drive, and Ivan left bearing his cello, with Dimitri at his side.
A few weeks later, Ivan was recalled to Moscow. I was never allowed to know what was in his file, whether he was KGB or GRU , or whether his real name was indeed Serov, so I am free to remember him in my own way: as Cultural Serov , as I called him to myself, jovial lover of the arts, who now and then flirted wistfully with the idea of coming over to the West.
Iâd like to, but Iâm afraid I donât.
âYou just make lousy pictures of Adenauer, okay?â â with a huge pat on the shoulder and roars of laughter. âListen. I got too small apartment. We make music, everybody complain. You call me once, okay? Invite us your house, we play you good music. I am Ivan, okay?â
David.
Rule One of the Cold War: nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems. Everyone has a second motive, if not a third. A Soviet official openly invites himself and his wife to the house of a Western diplomat he doesnât even know? Whoâs making a pass at who in this situation? Put another way, what had I said or done to encourage such an improbable proposal in the first place? Letâs go over this again, David. You say you never met him before. Now you say you may have done?
A decision was reached, not mine to ask who by. I should invite Serov to my house exactly as he suggested. By telephone, not in writing. I should call the number he gave me, which was the official number of the Soviet Embassy in Bad Godesberg. I should state my name and ask to speak to Cultural Attaché Serov. Each of these seemingly normal acts was spelt out to me with huge precision. On being connected with Serov â if I am â I should enquire casually what day and hour suit him and his wife best for that musical event we discussed. I should aim for as early a date as possible, since potential defectors were prey to impulse. I should be sure to convey my compliments to his wife, whose inclusion in the approach â whose mere acknowledgement â was exceptional in such cases.
On the telephone, Serov was brusque. He spoke as if he vaguely remembered me, said he would consult his diary and call me back. Goodbye. My masters predicted that it was the last I would hear of him. A day later he called me back, I guessed from another phone since he sounded more like his jolly self.
Okay, eight oâclock Friday, David?
Both of you, Ivan?
Sure. Serova, she come also.
Great, Ivan. See you eight oâclock. And my best to your wife.
Throughout the day, sound technicians dispatched from London had been fiddling with the wiring in our living room, and my wife was worried about scratches in the paintwork. At the appointed hour an enormous chauffeur-driven ZiL limousine with blackened windows rolled into our drive and came slowly to a halt. A rear door opened and Ivan emerged, rump first, like Alfred Hitchcock in one of his own movies, pulling a man-sized cello after him. Then nobody. Was he alone after all? No, he was not. The other rear door is opening, the one I canât see from the porch. I am about to have my first glimpse of Serova. But itâs not Serova. Itâs a tall, agile man in a sharp, single-breasted black suit.
âSay hullo to Dimitri,â Serov announces on the doorstep. âHe come instead of my wife.â
Dimitri says he loves music too.
Before dinner, Serov, evidently no stranger to the bottle, drank whatever was offered him and wolfed a plateload of canapés before playing us an overture from Mozart on his cello, which we applauded, Dimitri loudest. Over a dinner of venison, which Serov greatly relished, Dimitri enlightened us about recent Soviet accomplishments in the arts, space travel and the furtherance of world peace. After dinner, Ivan played us a difficult composition by Stravinsky. We applauded that too, again led by Dimitri. At ten oâclock the ZiLrolled back into the drive, and Ivan left bearing his cello, with Dimitri at his side.
A few weeks later, Ivan was recalled to Moscow. I was never allowed to know what was in his file, whether he was KGB or GRU , or whether his real name was indeed Serov, so I am free to remember him in my own way: as Cultural Serov , as I called him to myself, jovial lover of the arts, who now and then flirted wistfully with the idea of coming over to the West.
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