There is this strange, opalescent, dialog near the middle of Smiley's People. Smiley meets Tatiana, posing as a man sent to substitute for her minder. She has been locked away, but gently - in a far away health clinic. All the forces that hold her there are shadowy, distant, yet somehow paternal. Smiley asks her if she knows who her father is. "He is a man too important to exist." And a few lines later, she asks if Smiley is God. "No. I am an ordinary man." "I have heard that a little of God exists in every ordinary man," she replies. And Smiley says "I too have heard that said."
Hearing her and he talk so obliquely about what Job talked about, in tones like those of an oboe and bassoon - well, I marvel at it.
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