December 19, 2020
Any reflection on the renewed world order has its respective questions. The missions accomplished are not the end. They require solutions. They are unclosed circles. Like the snake that bites its tail. The conflicts, neither full stops nor concluded chapters. Its origin is in the shadows. In stealth. This is how government intelligence services operate. They do it with an apparent contradiction: they join links without concatenating the chain, but they know more than their leaders. Those grand, tragic and pathetic scenarios are splendidly portrayed in John le Carré’s (1931-2020) spy novels. George Smiley, agent of the British Secret Service, his most faithful and famous character, emerged in the 1960s, explains his actions with a paraphrase by Hermann Hesse: “In the fog, everyone is alone in it. No tree knows its neighbor. Each one is alone ”.
In the field of fiction or journalism, John Le Carré, who died last December 12, never had reservations when denouncing abuses of power, whether political or business. I can only imagine him satisfied to see Donald Trump with his tail between his legs for his defeat in the recent elections to the US presidency, but also extremely curious about what Joe Biden will bring to the planet. On the other hand, I think of an aphorism that he concocted according to his life and work: “The journey of man, from the cradle to the grave, is an incessant learning.”
In essence, Le Carré, who was actually called John Moore Cornwell, a former professor of literature, found in the foreign service and at MI6, where he also worked, the stories that encouraged him to become a writer. Embassies, you know, are the kitchens of spies. His plots take place at the time of the honeymoon between communism and the universities or deal with violence by vendettas of peoples or races.
At first he wrote about the way in which the Cold War was carried out, in which, he notes in his memoirs, “nothing, absolutely nothing is what it seems. They all have a second intention, if not a third one ”, actions not exempt from blunders:“ When the Berlin wall fell, no intelligence service had predicted it ”. But it also dealt with terrorism and its sources of financing and containment, all with due precautions to avoid copycats.
In The girl with the drum (1983), a cruel mirror in which the fierce struggle between Palestine and Israel is reflected, appreciates the advice of the famous Lieutenant Colonel John Gaff, “who patiently demonstrated to me the sterile horrors of homemade bombs, and took the necessary precautions to that I did not inadvertently give the formula for its manufacture ”.
In the pages of Le Carré, many of them, throughout the decades, brought with singular success to the cinema and television series, the mistakes of the postwar period are documented, in particular those of Great Britain, which lost its colonies and its prestige.
In Fly in circles (2016), a long-awaited memoir, explains how it was that he set about creating environments and scenes that should never, for safety, pettiness or illegal nature, ever come to light: “From the secret world I knew, I have tried create a theater for the larger worlds we inhabit. Imagination comes first; then the search for reality. Then the imagination again and, finally, the desk at which I am sitting ”.
As a former secret agent, Le Carré defended his right to offer his version of events, especially because of the harmless author-reader relationship: “How many of our tormented spies would have preferred that Edward Snowden write a novel?”
Finally, John Le Carré left in peace despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whom he detested, and despite Brexit, “a test of terrible political ability on our part,” he pointed out in one of his last interviews with John Banville, Irish novelist who also uses a pseudonym. “I think my own ties to England have loosened in recent years, and it’s kind of a liberation, albeit sad.” In this case, the homeland betrayed the spy.
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