from KIM

Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it from his mound of books - French and German, with photographs and reproductions.

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park; the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the Curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts. And they went at it all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of Urdu and Tibetan. He had heard of the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, Fu-Hiouen and Hwen-Tsiang, and was anxious to know if there was any translation of their record. He drew in his breath as he turned helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas Julien. "Tis all here. A treasure locked."

Then he composed himself reverently to listen to fragments hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the Holy Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced with yellow. The brown finger followed the Curator's pencil from point to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One's death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in silence for a while, and the Curator lit another pipe. Kim had fallen asleep. When he waked, the talk, still in spate, was more within his comprehension.

'And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to the Holy Places which His foot had trod - to the Birthplace, even to Kapila; then to Mahabodhi, which is Buddh Gaya - to the Monastery - to the Deer-park -to the place of His death.'

The lama lowered his voice. 'And I come here alone. For five - seven - eighteen - forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry. Even as the child outside said but now. Ay, even as the child said, with but-parasti.'

'So it comes with all faiths.'

'Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were dried pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed Law have cumbered ourselves - that, too, had no worth to these old eyes. Even the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion. But I have another desire' - the seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the Curator, and the long forefinger-nail tapped on the table. 'Your scholars, by these books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all their wanderings; but there are things which they have not sought out. I know nothing - nothing do I know - but I go to free myself from the Wheel of Things by a broad and open road.' He smiled with most simple triumph. 'As a pilgrim to the Holy Places I acquire merit. But there is more. Listen to a true thing. When our gracious Lord, being as yet a youth, sought a mate, men said, in His father's Court, that He was too tender for marriage. Thou knobbiest?'

The Curator nodded, wondering what would come next. 'So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. And at the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which they gave Him, called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou knowest?'

'It is written. I have read.'

'And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far beyond sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth, there broke out a stream which presently became a River, whose nature, by our Lord's beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere He freed himself, is that who so bathes in it washes away all taint and speckle of sin.'

'So it is written,' said the Curator sadly.

The lama drew a long breath. "Where is that River? Fountain of Wisdom, where fell the arrow?"

'Alas', my brother, I do not know,' said the Curator.

...from Rudyard Kipling's KIM. The complete text of this classic work can be found on Project Gutenburg.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE at 50 by Adam Henry Carriere

“The naked man who laid splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead.”

With quintessential pulp menace, thus begins Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel From Russia with Love. Written fifty years ago and published in 1957 to warm reviews and torrid sales that continued for years after its debut, From Russia with Love looms largest among Fleming’s smash 007 oeuvre not only for its exceptional story-telling qualities but for the literary and cinematic bar it set, and remains to this day.

The plot of From Russia with Love is both simple and deliciously baroque, befitting the Soviet nemesis Fleming pits here against 007: Embarrassed by a series of setbacks and under possibly lethal scrutiny by the nascent post-Stalin Central Committee, Soviet intelligence targets James Bond for death ‘with ignominy’, via a lurid sex, spies, and murder scandal with a beautiful descendant of the Romanovs as the lure and a super secret Russian decoder as the bait.

Even though this may sound like small beer compared to, say, capturing the gold of Fort Knox, it is but one indication of From Russia with Love’s one thousand fine qualities. Hardly an avatar of hot-blooded ‘entertainments’, The New Yorker proclaimed, “Mr. Fleming has never concocted a richer brew.” While every bit the trademark Bond novel (insert sex, sadism, and sensationalism here), however, From Russia with Love is also uniquely grounded in a real Cold War world uncommonly associated with both the literary and cinematic 007.

When James Bond enters the novel (on page 99!), he is deep in an inter-organization tangle, serving on a board of inquiry set up following the mortifyingly real defections of British agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviets. Bond’s feelings on the matter, at once rueful and combative, reveal Fleming’s own prescient thoughts on how the game of ‘red Indians’ was already morphing out of its World War II & Cold War templates into something unpleasantly new to its players. The parallels to our post-9/11 playing field are striking.

But so too is the essence of the Soviet plot. Killing Bond, or any other enemy of the State, is a simple matter. According to Fouche (as quoted by the master planner - and literal chess master - behind the plot) “it is no good killing a man unless you also destroy his reputation”. Today, a British agent caught in a web of secretly-filmed sex with a beautiful enemy agent and a subsequent jealous murder on the Orient Express might result in a place on the cable news crawl for a cycle or two. But in the mid 1950’s, you might bring down a Government over it. The 21st Century demands more, aside from the inevitable YouTube posting.

Now, were you to employ, say, weapons-grade radioactive material in a State-sanctioned killing, you would rather spectacularly be following Fouche’s dictum: the collateral benefits of such a murder would far exceed the actual value of the murder itself. Half a century ago, Ian Fleming had his fingers on this pulse. Quoting Fouche, with typical ‘Fleming effect’, is one thing; identifying and dramatizing the keen Russian appreciation of Fouche is quite another. A lot of history has passed under the bridge in the last fifty years, yet, what some would lightly regard as a plot point appears in fact to be an astonishing Realpolitik analysis by Fleming delivered with the spoonful of sugar otherwise known as a thriller.

Defying narrative convention and at the thumping heart of the novel’s authentic sense of dread, the entire first third of From Russia with Love treats its readers to an unprecedented glimpse into the intelligence apparat of the Soviet Union and its ‘central horror’, SMERSH, the Soviet ‘organ of death’. No doubt drawing upon Ian Fleming’s real-life adventures as a journalist in Russia during the 1930’s (expertly detailed in Andrew Lycett’s 1995 biography of him), Fleming devotes nearly one hundred pages to SMERSH’s sinister ‘konspiratsia’ that targets 007 as well as the masterful rogue’s gallery behind the plot.

While the trove of fact-based details regarding Soviet intelligence in this extended overture might suggest Tom Clancy, the sheer literary quality of From Russia with Love surely suggests writing other than Clancy’s. Even though the previous four 007 novels remain widely praised for their colorful (if sadistic and/or lascivious) characters and exciting (if fantastic) narratives, here Fleming’s narrative skills reached new heights he himself struggled to reach in later 007 adventures.

In their online synopsis of the novel, Universalexports.net calls From Russia with Love’s cast “the best feature of this tour de force. Every character is fully and artistically developed, none lacking in depth and dimension.” In a body of work as well as a novel chock full of such characters, few Ian Fleming creations are more terrifyingly memorable than From Russia with Love’s Donovan ‘Red’ Grant and Colonel Rosa Klebb.

Described by his own Soviet masters as an asexual narcissist and advanced manic depressive whose periods coincided with the full moon, Red Grant, the result of ‘a midnight union between a German professional weight-lifter and an Irish waitress on the damp grass behind a circus tent in Belfast’, is a one-man portal to Hell. No bone-chilling highlight is spared, from Grant’s journey from troubled Irish childhood and British Army defector to becoming Chief Executioner to SMERSH, right down to the animal fear a masseuse feels as she works on his fine yet malevolent naked body. There is enough vivid material in Grant’s back-story alone to launch a miniseries.

Yet he is nothing compared to his control, Rosa Klebb, Director of Otdyel II (Operations and Executions) of SMERSH.

Turning inside out the device of his own recurrent father figure, Fleming gives us a mother from beyond Hell. Throughout the 007 novels, a goodly number of super villains - and, crucially, M. himself – serve to ‘dress down’ a naughty Bond (and his prurient admirers, we) from the inescapable psychic lairs of Dad’s room, the Principal’s office, etc.. Rosa Klebb, on the other hand, is the nurturing mother, the warm bosom, the safe place wrought foulest foul as only the Soviet Union (and Fleming) could.

How does one, much less, a Russian woman in the 1950’s, become Head of Operations and Executions for the Soviet state organ of death? By being a murderous Medea to the nicotine-yellowed teeth, Fleming replies. Colonel Rosa Klebb employs a veritable Freudian buffet of maternal roles to conduct tortures in the SMERSH dungeons. And, as if that weren’t hair-raising enough, Klebb is also a physical horror. Compared to the tricoteuses of the French Revolution, her uniform ‘looked like a badly packed sandbag’, her figure within uproariously likened to a cello, the picture of Rosa Klebb is still incomplete.

Both Rosa Klebb and From Russia with Love are catapulted into immortality when, after ‘interviewing’ the terrified young Romanov beauty chosen by SMERSH to trap 007 (and squirmingly headed to seducing her), Klebb appears in an orange crepe night-gown, satin knickers, pink feathered slippers, and enough make-up to suffocate the walking dead: ‘She looked like the oldest and ugliest whore in the world.’

It is this kind of flesh-and-blood prose, combined with the precision of crack story-telling abilities and real world knowledge, that has given Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love the reputation it enjoys fifty years after its well-regarded initial appearance. Still, the longest lasting impact of the novel remains outside its sumptuously written pages.

In 1960, presidential aspirant John F. Kennedy named From Russia with Love one of his 10 favorite books (the only fiction title on the list). As a result, the steady U.S. sales enjoyed by Ian Fleming’s novels went through the roof, where they remained for years to come. This guaranteed James Bond would soon find his way onto the silver screen, something Fleming had been laboring for years to accomplish.

Over four decades and twenty three films later, the worldwide box office success of 2006’s Casino Royale is attributed by fans and critics alike to the filmmaker’s re-dedication toward Ian Fleming’s vision of James Bond. It is no coincidence that the template of this cinematic tack is the second and perhaps most respected 007 film…1963’s From Russia with Love.

...first published in Popular Culture Review Winter 2006 issue

from THE SECRET AGENT

These words affected her physically too. Her throat became convulsed in waves to resist strangulation; and the apprehension of the jerk was so vivid that she seized her head in both hands as if to save it from being torn off her shoulders. "The drop given was fourteen feet." No! that must never be. She could not stand _that_. The thought of it even was not bearable. She could not stand thinking of it. Therefore Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to go at once and throw herself into the river off one of the bridges.

This time she managed to refasten her veil. With her face as if masked, all black from head to foot except for some flowers in her hat, she looked up mechanically at the clock. She thought it must have stopped. She could not believe that only two minutes had passed since she had looked at it last. Of course not. It had been stopped all the time. As a matter of fact, only three minutes had elapsed from the moment she had drawn the first deep, easy breath after the blow, to this moment when Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to drown herself in the Thames. But Mrs Verloc could not believe that. She seemed to have heard or read that clocks and watches always stopped at the moment of murder for the undoing of the murderer. She did not care. "To the bridge--and over I go."...

But her movements were slow. She dragged herself painfully across the shop, and had to hold on to the handle of the door before she found the necessary fortitude to open it. The street frightened her, since it led either to the gallows or to the river. She floundered over the doorstep head forward, arms thrown out, like a person falling over the parapet of a bridge. This entrance into the open air had a foretaste of drowning; a slimy dampness enveloped her, entered her nostrils, clung to her hair. It was not actually raining, but each gas lamp had a rusty little halo of mist. The van and horses were gone, and in the black street the curtained window of the carters' eating-house made a square patch of soiled blood-red light glowing faintly very near the level of the pavement. Mrs Verloc, dragging herself slowly towards it, thought that she was a very friendless woman. It was true. It was so true that, in a sudden longing to see some friendly face, she could think of no one else but of Mrs Neale, the charwoman. She had no acquaintances of her own. Nobody would miss her in a social way. It must not be imagined that the Widow Verloc had forgotten her mother. This was not so. Winnie had been a good daughter because she had been a devoted sister. Her mother had always leaned on her for support. No consolation or advice could be expected there. Now that Stevie was dead the bond seemed to be broken. She could not face the old woman with the horrible tale. Moreover, it was too far. The river was her present destination. Mrs Verloc tried to forget her mother.

Each step cost her an effort of will which seemed the last possible. Mrs Verloc had dragged herself past the red glow of the eating-house window. "To the bridge--and over I go," she repeated to herself with fierce obstinacy. She put out her hand just in time to steady herself against a lamp-post. "I'll never get there before morning," she thought. The fear of death paralysed her efforts to escape the gallows. It seemed to her she had been staggering in that street for hours. "I'll never get there," she thought. "They'll find me knocking about the streets. It's too far." She held on, panting under her black veil.

...from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. The complete text of this classic work can be found on Project Gutenburg.

DOUBLE-O-SEVEN - A Sonnet by Robert David Michael Cerello

He sets a spear gun down. Wet-suit unzipp'd,
He smoothes a tuxedo and adjusts his tie.
Then, t''ward his next encounter, unsurpris'd,
With dead foes in his wake, he goes. All this--
Ambushes, battles, secrecy, camouflage,
Codes microdots, weapons, hegemonists' 'games'--
This is his realm...Here, danger wears a name;
"Double-O" operatives war--with no entourage,
Mostly for small reward... He checks his gun,
Walther, worn secret; next, with tigerish stride,
He heads to the great casino. What he will
find--
Is 'the unexpected'. Enemies--one,
Or many; beauty--a hazard, dark-tress'd or
blond;
Progress (the masterspy risks life to achieve);
Fortune? Death? Smiling, he enters--our agent,
Bond...

...Robert David Michael Cerello writes from San Diego, California.

007/3 Reads...

Sir Roger Moore narrates Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, featuring Janine Jansen (not pictured at left).

from THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS

The tide was swirling into the harbour in whorls of chocolate froth, and as it rose all Bensersiel, dominated as before by Herr Schenkel, straggled down to the quay to watch the movements of shipping during the transient but momentous hour when the mud-hole was a seaport.

The captain's steam-cutter was already afloat, and her sailors busy with sidelights and engines. When it became known that we, too, were to sail, and under such distinguished escort, the excitement intensified.

Again our friend of the customs was spreading out papers to sign, while a throng of helpful Frisians, headed by the twin giants of the post-boat, thronged our decks and made us ready for sea in their own confused fashion. Again we were carried up to the inn and overwhelmed with advice, and warnings, and farewell toasts. Then back again to find the Dulcibella afloat, and von Brüning just arrived, cursing the weather and the mud, chaffing Davies, genial and débonnaire as ever.

'Stow that mainsail, you won't want it,' he said. 'I'll tow you right out to Spiekeroog. It's your only anchorage for the night in this wind--under the island, near the Blitz, and that would mean a dead beat for you in the dark.'

The fact was so true, and the offer so timely, that Davies's faint protests were swept aside in a torrent of ridicule.

'And now I think of it,' the commander ended, 'I'll make the trip with you, if I may. It'll be pleasanter and drier.'

We all three boarded the Dulcibella, and then the end came. Our tow-rope was attached, and at half-past six the little launch jumped into the collar, and amidst a demonstration that could not have been more hearty if we had been ambassadors on a visit to a friendly power, we sidled out through the jetties.

It took us more than an hour to cover the five miles to Spiekeroog, for the Dulcibella was a heavy load in the stiff head wind, and Davies, though he said nothing, showed undisguised distrust of our tug's capacities. He at once left the helm to me and flung himself on the gear, not resting till every rope was ready to hand, the mainsail reefed, the binnacle lighted, and all ready for setting sail or anchoring at a moment's notice. Our guest watched these precautions with infinite amusement. He was in the highest and most mischievous humour, raining banter on Davies and mock sympathy on me, laughing at our huge compass, heaving the lead himself, startling us with imaginary soundings, and doubting if his men were sober. I offered entertainment and warmth below, but he declined on the ground that Davies would be tempted to cut the tow-rope and make us pass the night on a safe sandbank. Davies took the raillery unmoved. His work done, he took the tiller and sat bareheaded, intent on the launch, the course, the details, and chances of the present. I brought up cigars and we settled ourselves facing him, our backs to the wind and spray. And so we made the rest of the passage, von Brüning cuddled against me and the cabin-hatch, alternately shouting a jest to Davies and talking to me in a light and charming vein, with just that shade of patronage that the disparity in our ages warranted, about my time in Germany, places, people, and books I knew, and about life, especially young men's life, in England, a country he had never visited, but hoped to; I responding as well as I could, striving to meet his mood, acquit myself like a man, draw zest instead of humiliation from the irony of our position, but scarcely able to make headway against a numbing sense of defeat and incapacity. A queer thought was haunting me, too, that such skill and judgement as I possessed was slipping from me as we left the land and faced again the rigours of this exacting sea. Davies, I very well knew, was under exactly the opposite spell--a spell which even the reproach of the tow-rope could not annul. His face, in the glow of the binnacle, was beginning to wear that same look of contentment and resolve that I had seen on it that night we had sailed to Kiel from Schlei Fiord.

Heaven knows he had more cause for worry than I--a casual comrade in an adventure which was peculiarly his, which meant everything on earth to him; but there he was, washing away perplexity in the salt wind, drawing counsel and confidence from the unfailing source of all his inspirations--the sea.

...from Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Seas. The complete text of this classic work can be found on Project Gutenburg.