Connie Sachs Quotes

Seit wir die Zeit als etwas abbilden, das sich von links nach rechts bewegt, richten sich nicht nur Früher und Später, sondern auch Tiefer und Höher, Weniger und Mehr, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart nach der Uhr. Und jeder hält sich daran, als handele es sich um eine ganz natürliche Sache. Ich finde nichts natürlich. Ich übe regelmäßig, entgegen dem Uhrzeigersinn zu denken.

And I remember Connie Sachs, too, my Circus researcher, an archetype for the last generation of secret service vestals—clever, unhappy ladies of the English upper classes, who, having joined the service in the war, stayed on to fight the peace, making a kind of granary of their extraordinary memories for us young turks to plunder.

Connie Sachs, in her early twenties already the unchallenged wunderkind of research into Soviet and Satellite intelligence agencies, has recently flounced out of Joint Steering in a huff, straight into George’s waiting arms. She is a brisk, chubby little body, bluestocking, born into the clover, and impatient of lesser minds like mine.

Connie Sachs has been doing some arithmetic on Karla’s handwriting in analogous cases,” Smiley announced. “Handwriting?” Lacon echoed, as if handwriting were a vice. “Tradecraft. Karla’s habits of technique. It seems that where it was operable, he ran moles and sound-thieves in tandem.” “Once more now, in English, George—do you mind?” Where circumstance allowed, said Smiley, Karla had backed up his agent operations with microphones. Though Smiley was satisfied that nothing had been said within the building which could compromise any “present plans,” as he called them, the implications were unsettling.

They were, in all, five: Smiley himself; Peter Guillam his cupbearer; big, flowing Connie Sachs the Moscow-gazer; Fawn the dark-eyed factotum, who wore black gym shoes and manned the Russian-style copper samovar and gave out biscuits; and lastly Doc di Salis, known as “the Mad Jesuit,” the Circus’s head China-watcher. When God had finished making Connie Sachs, said the wags, He needed a rest, so He ran up Doc di Salis from the remnants.

They had run in all directions, these shady night animals, down old paths and new paths and old paths grown over till they were rediscovered; and now at last, behind their twin leaders—Connie Sachs alias Mother Russia, and di Salis alias the Doc—they crammed themselves, all twelve of them, into the very throne-room itself, under Karla’s portrait, in an obedient half-circle round their chief, Bolshies and yellow perils together. A plenary session, then: for people unused to such drama, a monument of history indeed.

You’re right, Con. Karla never does anything without a fall-back.” “He’s a professional, darling,” Connie Sachs murmured. “Like you.” “Not like me.