（外文电子版资料）John le Carré - Smileys People.pdf

Smileys People by John le Carr茅 Smileys People John le Carr茅 Published 1980. ISBN 0-330-26272-6. For my sons, Simon, Stephen, Timothy and Nicholas, with love ONE Two seemingly unconnected events heralded the summons of Mr George Smiley from his dubious retirement. The first had for its background Paris, and for a season the boiling month of August, when Parisians by tradition abandon their city to the scalding sunshine and the busloads of packaged tourists. file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/LE%20CARRE,%20John%20-%20Smileys%20People%20v1new.htm (1 of 973) [18.01.2003 20:23:55] Smileys People by John le Carr茅 On one of these August days - the fourth, and at twelve oclock exactly, for a church clock was chiming and a factory bell had just preceded it - in a quartier once celebrated for its large population of the poorer Russian 茅migr茅s, a stocky woman of about fifty, carrying a shopping bag, emerged from the darkness of an old warehouse and set off, full of her usual energy and purpose, along the pavement to the bus-stop. The street was grey and narrow, and shuttered, with a couple of small h么tels de pass茅 and a lot of cats. It was a place, for some reason, of peculiar quiet. The warehouse, since it handled perishable goods, had remained open during the holidays. The heat, fouled by exhaust fumes and unwashed by the slightest breeze, rose at her like the heat from a lift-shaft, but her Slavic features registered no complaint. She was neither file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/LE%20CARRE,%20John%20-%20Smileys%20People%20v1new.htm (2 of 973) [18.01.2003 20:23:55] Smileys People by John le Carr茅 dressed nor built for exertion on a hot day, being in stature very short indeed, and fat, so that she had to roll a little in order to get along. Her black dress, of ecclesiastical severity, possessed neither a waist nor any other relief except for a dash of white lace at the neck and a large metal cross, well fingered but of no intrinsic v