The Living Daylights

[mrs_emma_peel]

The Living Daylights ... Ian Fleming
The Spying Game
BBC Radio 4 Extra ...
Monday 24th October 2011 ... 8.30-9.00pm/Tuesday 25th October 1.30-2.00am

In The Living Daylights we first meet James Bond at the Bisley firing range in the fading twilight of a warm summer evening. Bond stares into his rifle's infra-red sniper-scope. To the 'human eye and in the late summer dusk' the six feet square target 'looked no larger than a postage stamp.' The scene ends with the range officer wondering about our man Bond who was scheduled with such urgency to practice shooting under hard visibility yet scored an incredible 'well over 90 per-cent at all distances.'

James Bond’s mission was grim. A British agent, known only as 272, will attempt to escape East Berlin by crossing the waste-land into the western section ... Bond has been assigned to protect him ... by killing the KGB's top sniper ... code-name 'Trigger' ... before the escaping British agent is shot.

'This was going to be bad news,' he realises, 'dirty news, and he didn't want to hear it from one of the section officers, or even from the Chief of Staff. This was to be murder … Let M bloody well say so.'

It is a cold twilight in Berlin, especially when the assassination is set to occur. The moment is only heightened by the dangerously open waste-land that divides the city into the eastern and western sectors of Berlin. To James Bond, who is staring out the window of a grim six-story building opposite, death has already occurred, shaped hauntingly in the form of thickly weeded, bombed waste-ground.

Bond’s selection of reading matter for the assignment is a book whose sensual cover features an erotic image of a 'half-naked girl strapped to a bed' ... was enough to prompt him to buy the novel ... and Bond delights in reading about the 'tribulations of the heroine ... Grafin Liselotte Mutzenbacher' ... realising that his choice 'turned out to be a happy one for the occasion.' The pleasure derived from a sadistic tale suggests that Bond seems to find consolation for his troubles by reading about somebody who is more unfortunate than him.

A few nights later, Bond is again nervous and frightened of the mission and drinks down a glass of whiskey and continues to read the thriller, reaching a climax and wondering how the sexy heroine is going to get out of this fix.

Now dusk was approaching, but otherwise the scene (a year later to become infamous as Checkpoint-Charlie) was like a well-remembered photograph ... the wasteland in front of him ... the bright river of the frontier road, the further wasteland, and, on the left, the ugly square block of the Haus der Ministerien with its lit and dark windows.

For a flashing and fleeting moments at least, he sees through the rifle's sniper-scope a woman's orchestra trooping along the street below and notices a very attractive blonde young woman carrying a cello case. Of course, nothing is more distracting to James Bond than the sight of a beautiful woman ... and to Bond, despite the grimness outside, she exists as a form of beauty that sends a golden image into his grim assignment.

Bond is enchanted by her image ... from the moment he discovers her and keeps her in the centre of his sniper-scope centre ... then she enters the building and disappears from sight ... and Bond feels 'a stab of grief lanced into his heart.'

Bond is perplexed at the sudden pang he feels …
This had not happened to him since he was young. And now this single girl, seen only indistinctly and far away, had caused him to suffer this sharp pang of longing, this thrill of animal magnetism!

For the next few nights, Bond's only solace is the sight of this beautiful blonde cellist at the other side of the waste land, a woman he knows he will never get to meet or touch. As he anticipates the appearance of the KGB sniper, he wonders about the woman while watching the window of the building across the street. He is tense and his face begins 'to sweat and his eye socket was slippery against the rubber of the eyepiece.' In the danger of the moment, he drifts into the warm image of the woman as he remembers her: young, with gaiety in her stride, and absorbed in the world of orchestras and rehearsals.

'How old would she be? Early twenties? Say twenty-three?' he wonders. 'With that poise and insouciance, the hint of authority in her long easy stride.' he continues to imagine her, 'she would come of good racy stock ... one of the old Prussian families probably or from similar remnants in Poland or even Russia.' Though he knows nothing of the woman, he somehow comes to a short biography of her. He has, perhaps unwittingly, transformed this beautiful woman into an illusion … a perfect lover for his private thoughts.

It is now evening, and agent 272 is finally moving in that waste-land below. The dark figure of the KGB sniper lurks in the window of the building opposite ... but the sniper's appearance suddenly reveals an terrible truth:

  Spoiler:

... through Bond's sniper-scope ... the assassin known as 'Trigger' is revealed as the beautiful blonde cellist ... 'the purity of the profile, the golden bell of hair' in tandem with the stock of the Kalashnikov. In utter disbelief, Bond hesitates for a moment ... makes a split-second decision ... then fires ... wounding the beautiful female assassin rather than killing her.

A rare radio broadcast of one of Ian Fleming’s finest short stories ... terrifically atmospheric and thrilling … so beautifully written. The Living Daylights movie uses part the basic plot outline of this superb short story.

This is my one of my favourite James Bond/Ian Fleming short stories ... the others being From A View To A Kill and For Your Eyes Only ... the film adaptation of For Your Eyes Only was one of Roger Moore’s best ... sadly, A View To A Kill, which had nothing to do with the superb short story of almost the same name, was, I think, one of the weakest films of the series.

The Living Daylights …
Read by Dan Stevens … Episode 1/ 4.

Sources: Edited from DigiGuide/The Living Daylights/GoldenEye.com
Emma