I barely
had a chance
To take
her out to supper and a dance;
She was
betraying me quite brazenly—
I might as
well have been George Lazenby.
I: A Number Of Possibilities
According to the book,
Vesper Lynd was born on
a dark and stormy night.
She rose to become PA to
the head of Section S
(In the 1967 film she’s
Ursula Andress),
Who forced her on
Bond—but not without a fight
From 007—to assist him
in his mission
To bankrupt Le Chiffre,
an international crook
Who bankrolls a shady
trade union (that’s in the book;
In the film he’s all
baccarat, conjuring tricks and nuclear fission—
And on top of that, he’s
Orson Welles).
The shady union is of
course controlled
By SMERSH, which tells
Us (as if we needed to be
told)
What Ian Fleming thought
of organised labour—his creation,
Bond, felt the same. And
they shared similar views
On Jews: the working
classes and “The Jews”
Were hostile tribes
hell-bent on world domination.
Le Chiffre first appears
in the Displaced
Persons’ Camp that
Dachau became at the cease of hostilities.
He seems to be beset
with disabilities:
Amnesia and an inability
to speak
Prevent him from giving
his interrogators
(Who are searching for
collaborators)
The kind of information
that they seek.
With directories of
names and a world of nationalities
To choose from, he opts
for a final res-
-ort: takes a passport that’s stateless,
Defies elective
rationalities
And picks a name that is
no name at all—
Le Chiffre: The Cypher,
Die Ziffer, The Number…
Why would he want to
encumber
Himself with a name when
he’d never answer the call?
II: How
Clever Of You To Shave Off Your Moustache
Ears
small, with large lobes, indicating some Jewish blood...
He either doesn’t know
what place he came
From, or else he doesn’t
want to tell;
And even though he doesn’t
say “Oy vey!”
Certain clues do tend to
give the game away.
This fat, fastidious little man without a name
Is sallow of complexion—and opal-eyed.
His pomaded hair is silky, dark and fine;
Small, rather feminine mouth; wet, sensuous lips that hide
False teeth of expensive quality; ring a bell?
Meticulously dressed; his tiny
hands
Meticulously manicured; his tiny
feet, his pride
And joy, are shod in
Spanish leather
(As fifth columnists’
feet often are, I gather)
And polished to an unhealthy shine.
Racially, subject is probably a mixture:
Mediterranean (a word of shoddy texture:
As “Levantine”) with Prussian or Polish strains.
This fellow
sounds pretty louche, eh?
Such precision, such
abundance of detail must narrow
A teeming world of
possibilities down to just one man:
Gentlemen, meet Agatha
Christie’s Hercule Poirot,
As portrayed by David
Suchet!
We’ll send him back to
Belgium in a van.
III:
Superior Intelligence
Some women respond to the whip,
Some
to the kiss.
Most
of them like
A
mixture of both.
The head of Section S
explains:
“This group disdains
Observation and analysis
In favour of less
orthodox techniques
And a range of esoteric
practices.
When the mouth is
silent, the ear speaks:
Listen! (And by listen I
mean look!)
No man can hide inside
his own ear, nor a word in an open book;
My strategies are nought
but common sense.
Otomancy.
Nothing fancy.
“His wardrobe
speaks of many foreign lands,
But still he doesn’t
speak to our demands,
So... to circumvent this
block of his,
Let’s listen at another
orifice
(And by listen I mean
look). Gaze on his ears
Until they yield their
secrets: hopes and fears
And history, lies and
lusts, dead families and desires,
Fantastic dreams of loss
and violence
And home and beauty,
duty and delight
And women far from home,
the appetite
For death—and death
itself…
Let’s try this eloquence:
Listen! Look and learn.
One who aspires
To go into the dark
And dig up secrets buried
in the heart
Must take the gated
turnpike of the ear.
There are things that
you should know before you start,
Alors, mes chers
explorateurs, hark!
“The Turnpike Keeper’s needs should be seen to
So that he can see to yours. So pay him twice
The price he asks for hire of spade and lantern
And you’ll never have to use them. If you mean
to
Succeed, bring a bone for his lurcher, Wincanton.
The Turnpike Keeper’s Lodge is rather nice—
Praise the inglenook, admire the fine finials,
flatter
His taste, accept a cup of tea and let him
natter—
And natter back. Give as good as you get
(Of course you never will, since he hears
everything
And you want what he’s heard). He won’t forget
Your kindness or your company, so never think
Of him as someone you can threaten or kill.
Cultivate his favour, foster his goodwill,
Laugh at his jokes, create a good impression—
And most of all, encourage indiscretion.
He’ll no doubt tell you stories designed to
alarm a
Red Army rapist let loose in Koblenz,
But you must never register disgust.
And when he tells you things a sewage farmer
Would turn from in terrified abhorrence
Just tell him you appreciate his trust.
“The rounded auricles
declare
Large sexual appetites—the
line of hair
On top suggests
something quite colossal,
Much more than any
normal man could bear.
The pronounced inner
whorl, as in a fossil
Ammonite, denotes
insatiable lust,
While incongruence in
the angle of aural thrust
Reveals a frequent urge
to masturbate,
A need for constant
manual relief.
The pronounced anterior
notch presents
Overwhelming evidence
Of a rare and very
sinister intelligence.
The hairy lobule, sign
of the flagellant,
Should not be read
outside the context
Of the elongated tragi,
which demonstrate
A total absence of
religious belief.
This is not the lobule
of a devout itinerant
Who mortifies his flesh
at time of plague
And whips his own back
with zeal both fierce and vague,
On the heady but
somewhat dubious pretext
That his
self-inflicted
Harm will be a balm to
the afflicted.
“Certain modes of highly-refined
intelligence
May be identified and
measured
By their exceptional
tolerance
To other people’s pain.
They tend to exercise a
focused diligence
In cold pursuit of the treasured
And intensely gratifying
experience
Of inflicting pain.”
(And those screeds of canting
prurience
Comprise an extra hazard
For those others who
endure the pain
Of being whipped by a
highly-refined intelligence).
IV: Death
Saves The Day
I sensed
in her some conflict
That would
always give the sex between us
The sweet
tang of rape.
Brothels and baccarat: a
fortune in figures,
A taste for the whip and
a gift for addition:
He finances the union
(all workers are liggers),
Pays for his pleasures
and bankrolls ambition.
Arithmetic measures the
pleasure of winning,
There’s no game to play
if you know in advance;
This is not Graham
Greene, there’s no pleasure in sinning,
No sense of religion and
an absence of chance.
But the law is not
subject to rules he might play by;
The brothels are closed
all over the nation.
World domination must
wait in a lay-by,
Mr. No-Name takes stock
with some stern masturbation.
With odds short against
him he cleaves to the long game,
He’ll play at the table
he knows he can’t leave,
Draw a bead on his
quarry, James Bond—Mr. Wrong-Name;
Vesper Lynd is the card
that he’ll keep up his sleeve.
SMERSH’s income sans
brothels is vastly diminished:
The union laundered the
money The Banker
(Their name for Le
Chiffre) supplied—now he’s finished.
What use is he now that
he’s nought but a wanker?
Death’s not familiar
with Royale-les-Eaux,
But Death loves a
casino, Death loves a big bet,
And there’s something
besides that Death doesn’t know:
Death has a double that
Death’s never met.
James Bond laughs at
fate and fears no man alive,
Obeys the dark summons
with carefree aplomb;
Royale’s a long drive on
D1015,
Just north of Dieppe, near the mouth of the Somme.
Just north of Dieppe, near the mouth of the Somme.
Vesper steps out of the
cone of bright light
That sprays like a
shower on the horseshoe-shaped table
As Death wanders in and
he sits at Bond’s right;
She’s unseen in the dark
in her sheath of silk sable.
It goes badly for Bond
from the very beginning,
Le Chiffre takes bank
and he won’t be unseated;
The numbers keep coming,
he knows that he’s winning
And he goes on and on until
Bond is defeated.
“If you were a number I’d
permit you to write a
Postdated cheque—to me
all names are tox-
-ic, but especially
yours— ” And up steps Felix Leiter
And bankrolls James Bond
from the vaults of Fort Knox.
Bond seizes the moment—Fortune
has spoken:
His cards are delivered
from baccarat heaven
And in just ninety
minutes Le Chiffre is broken:
“You wanted a wanted a
number? How’s this—007?”
Death smiles with relief—there’s
a plot at last shaping
That will give him the
space to perform his stern duty,
But the flash of a gun
in the dark leaves him gaping—
A glimpse of a scream, a
terrible beauty!
Vesper Lynd has been
kidnapped, Bond goes to save her,
He’s captured and
tortured by Le Chiffre, who’d kill him,
But an agent from SMERSH
comes and murders Le Chiffre:
Before killing the
agent, Bond takes time to grill him.
Vesper comes visiting
while Bond recovers,
Healing takes time and
she takes the trouble,
And Bond takes the bait
and soon they are lovers;
When Death comes to
visit, he encounters his double.
The road out
of Samarra has only one lay-by,
Le Chiffre awaits you
with his whip and his bell.
It was Death who created
the rules that you play by,
The road from Samarra
will take you to hell.
Vesper Lynd is a dish
that’s best eaten cold.
In the morning she’s
lying quite cold in her bed,
And Death’s having
breakfast, a pleasure untold,
And Bond’s on the blower
to London: “The bitch is dead.”
