A Perfect Spy
John Le Carre
Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton. First published 1986.
I read it first in 1986, as soon as it was published. This is probably the third time I am reading it. I think it ranks as Le Carre's best, a little above a few others that occupy the next rung: 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy', 'The Honourable Schoolboy', 'The Little Drummer Girl', all of which, of course, are excellent. 'A Perfect Spy' is a little more personal, written with more feeling than the rest. To use a term from carnatic music, it diplays more 'bhava' than his other books. It traces the search of Magnus Pym for love and friendship, to make up for their lack from his parents, especially his crooked father, Ricky Pym, who, as Le Carre has noted on more than one occasion, is faithfully based on his own father.
Ricky is a heartless con artist, and though he goes to jail off and on, and though he is forever followed by his creditors, he is able to rise more often than fall, and design and carry off larger and larger cons. He floats fake companies, he blackmails people, and he uses his undeniably charming manners to swindle several vulnerable people out of their lifetime savings. And he almost immediately looses all the money in betting or in an over-lavish lifestyle. Through it all, he makes the odd payment, now and then, to the schools Magnus goes to. The son manages to survive, barely, his school years, and then, being sent on a fake 'business' trip to Vienna, finds that the 'business' contacts are even greater cheats than his father. They run off with all the money, and Magnus is thrown on to his own devices in the Austrian capital, warned by his father not to come back lest he face the same awful legal consequences the parent is having to deal with. Magnus strikes up some deep friendships and manages to go through University. One of these friends, a Czech illegal resident in Vienna, is particularly close. Another is a diplomat, actually intelligence officer, in the British embassy, who sees Magnus's potential, and recruits him as a kind of apprentice spy. Magnus now has two father figures, both of whom take a deep interest in 'educating' and mentoring him, and both of whom he grows to love. When asked however, he unhesitatingly betrays his Czech friend to his British one, exposing his illegal status. The Czech is deported. Magnus continues to rise in the ranks of British spydom, until a few years later, he suddenly meets up again with the Czech, who is himself now a spy for the Czech government, and who now persuades him to betray the other side. Thus begins Magnus's career as a double agent situated snugly deep within the British secret service. All this while he is still hiding and running from Ricky, who is now degenerating fast, and constantly putting his hands in Magnus's pockets, asking the son to give not only money, but also prestige and authority to his own mean and shady ends. Breathtakingly, Ricky Pym persuades himself that his son's success is entirely owing to the training, help and support all through their lives, that he, the father, has given him, the son. Magnus does what he can, when he can, torn between duty and some residual love for a parent on the one hand, and a refined distaste for the latter's ways, on the other. The son is like his father in his deceptions, but entirely unlike him in the purpose of those deceptions. While the father's double dealings serve wretched and mean minded ends, those of the son, serve a higher purpose than just self-promotion. But despite all his deceptions, he does not deceive his father. Magnus Pym has betrayed his country, his wife, and all his friends. But he is unable to betray Ricky Pym and throw him off. Magnus is liberated from his father only by the latter's death, and at that point the deceptions of both come to an end.
Le Carre probably uses the format of the spy novel, with all the lovely jargon he has invented, to purge himself of at least some of his complexes. In the process he has written a terrific dissertation of a certain type of relationship, more common than one might imagine.
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