The James Bond Bedside Companion (42 page)

But later, Bond discovers a different Domino. He sees through the hardened outer shell and inside finds an insecure girl yearning to break away from what could only be called captivity by Largo. And when asked if her limp bothers him (one of her legs is slightly shorter than the other), Bond replies that it "makes her something of a child." Domino is perhaps the bravest of all the Bond heroines. She doesn't confess when Largo catches her with the Geiger counter camera aboard the
Disco Volante
,
even after fiendish torture. And finally, she saves Bond's life in the nick of time by ignoring her wounds and swimming after Largo with spear in hand.

Emilio Largo is an adequate villain; he is not the main antagonist here—Blofeld is that—but he inhabits more of the story. He is a well-drawn character, full of tough malevolence. He is a handsome Italian, looking as if he came from the face of an ancient Roman coin. Fleming describes him as resembling a satyr, with ears that are almost pointed. He is a first-rate athlete with enormous hands of "steel." Largo is an adventurer; two hundred years ago he might have been a pirate, Fleming tells the reader. He is a womanizer, an evil one, and the perfect man for SPECTRE. He has nerves of iron. If his role in the novel were as large as, say, a Dr. No or a Goldfinger, Largo might have been one of the most successful Fleming villains.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE, is Bond's archenemy of the series. Because he appears in three books (hence, the Blofeld Trilogy), Blofeld, due to his intelligence and severity, becomes the antithesis of the Bond character. Although he appears in only two chapters of THUNDERBALL, enough of the character's aura is presented to allow it to penetrate into every chapter of the book. It is always Blofeld that Bond is battling, even though Bond is not aware of the fact at this time.

Blofeld's appearance changes in each successive novel. In
THUNDERBALL,
he is a man who seems to "suck the eyes out of one's head." He has a powerful animal magnetism ascribed to great men of history, such as Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon. He is a large man, weighing about 280 pounds, and had once been all muscle. His face suggests only cruelty under his black crew-cut, cruelty to an "almost Shakespearian degree." He has no vices, and has always been an "enigma to everyone who has known him." The dark irises of his eyes, like Le Chiffre's, are totally surrounded by white; they are doll-like in their effect Blofeld is meticulous, unscrupulous, and all-knowing. He sees all, hears all, and when he desires, destroys all. He is a brilliant mastermind in planning schemes and supervising details. He succeeds in every project he undertakes—until Bond comes along, of course. An amusing and significant footnote to all this is that Blofeld's birthdate, May 28, 1908, is identical to that of Fleming's.

M is his usual crusty old self in
THUNDERBALL.
He takes private pleasure in sending Bond to Shrublands at the beginning of the story. Apparently, M had tried the place himself a few weeks earlier and loved it. There is also a rare moment in the series when M, while briefing Bond on his assignment, admits that 007 is "a reliable man." He tells Bond the entire top secret details of Operation Thunderball. He reveals these secrets because of a hunch (the gambling theme again) that SPECTRE is hiding in the Bahamas. Though Bond is dubious, he goes along with his chief and travels to the islands without the slightest hope of finding any clues.

HIGHLIGHTS AND OTHER INGREDIENTS

T
here are many outstanding passages in
THUNDERBALL,
such as the entire Shrublands sequence (including Bond's ordeal with "the rack"). All of the underwater scenes involving SPECTRE' s hijacking of the bombs and Bond exploring the hull of the
Disco Volante
and the hidden Vindicator plane are eerie and atmospheric. But the most exciting sequence, and perhaps one of Fleming's most brilliant evocations of tension, is the
chemin de fer
game between Bond and Largo. Note in the following excerpt the dramatic tension between the two characters:

Largo turned round to face Bond. Smiling with his mouth, he narrowed his eyes and looked carefully, with a new Curiosity, at Bond's face. He said quietly, "But you are hunting me, my dear
I
fellow. You are pursuing me. What is this? Vendetta?"

Bond thought: I will see if an association of words does something to him. He said, "When I came to the table I saw a spectre." He said the word casually, with no hint at double meaning.

The smile came off Largo's face as if he had been slapped. It was at once switched on again, but now the whole face was tense, strained, and the eyes had gone watchful and very hard. His tongue came out and touched his lips. "Really? What do you mean?"

Bond said lightly, "The spectre of defeat I thought your luck was on the turn. Perhaps I was wrong." He gestured at the shoe. "Let's see."

The table had gone quiet. The players and spectators felt that a tension had come between these two men. Suddenly there was the smell of enmity where before there had been only jokes. A glove had been thrown down, by the Englishman. Was it about the girl? Probably. The crowd licked its lips.

Largo laughed sharply. He switched gaiety and bravado back on his face. "Aha!" His voice was boisterous again. "My friend wishes to put the evil eye upon my cards. We have a way to deal with that where I come from." He lifted his hand, and with only the first and little fingers outstretched in a fork, he prodded once, like a snake striking, toward Bond's face. To the crowd it was a playful piece of theater, but Bond, within the strong aura of the man's animal magnetism, felt the ill temper, the malevolence behind the old Mafia gesture.

Bond laughed good-naturedly. "That certainly put the hex on me. But what did it do to the cards? Come on, your spectre against my spectre!"

Again the look of doubt came over Largo's face. Why again the use of this word? He gave the shoe a hefty slap. "All right, my friend. We are wrestling the best of three falls. Here comes the third."

(THUNDERBALL, Chapter 15)

Another aspect of
THUNDERBALL
needs mentioning, and that is the invention of SPECTRE itself. When Fleming and his colleagues were writing the screen treatment in 1959, the Cold War was beginning to thaw; the conflict between East and West was not as critical as people had believed earlier in the fifties. Therefore, it became unfashionable to have the Soviets as villains. SMERSH, although mentioned from time to time in remaining novels, was not to be used again as the enemy organization. In its place was born SPECTRE, an international group of terrorists. Fleming and his collaborators unwittingly created a foreshad
owing of today's fear of international terrorists. Kingsley Amis calls THUNDERBALL one of the most implausible of all the books. This may have been true in the early sixties, but today, in the nervous eighties, the situation in THUNDERBALL is frighteningly real. It is highly possible for a terrorist group to gain control of an atomic weapon. The consequences of such an occurrence would be disastrous, and it is this aspect of THUNDERBALL which makes it more realistic and alarming today. As a result, THUNDERBALL is more relevant now than it was two decades ago. Fleming, in letting his imagination run away with SPECTRE and its plot of hijacking atomic bombs (with the help of the imaginations of Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham), produced, unwittingly, a strong case against the arms race.

T
he tenth James Bond novel is unique among the series. It stands alone as an enigma; it is a truly strange, experimental book for Ian Fleming. This is because the story is told in first person from the point of view of the heroine. And James Bond doesn't enter the tale until two-thirds into the book! It is also controversial—Bond fans either love it or hate it. Women tend to like it more than male readers, which is not surprising. It may have been a novel written expressly for female readers. There are several fine points in the novel, but there are just as many weak ones. In short, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is a mixed bag.

The opening section of the story outlines heroine Vivienne Michel's growth to maturity, focusing mainly on her first two relationships with men. Both experiences leave her feeling rejected by men, London, and the world, so Vivienne decides to travel abroad. She flies to Canada, purchases a Vespa motor scooter, and sets off from Quebec to Florida. The road eventually leads her to the Dreamy Pines Motor Court in New York State. After spending one night here, the managers offer her a temporary job for a few days until the motel is closed for the season. She is left alone on closing day with a promise that the owner will arrive in the morning to pay her. But that night, two hideous gangsters, Horror and Sluggsy, arrive, explaining they're from the "insurance company." Before she is badly beaten, a stranger appears at the door. Vivienne discreetly lets him know her situation, and the man gallantly offers to help. He introduces himself as James Bond, and says he is a policeman. The thugs reluctantly allow him to stay after Bond insists he must have a room for the night Later, 007 tricks the thugs into thinking they have shot him in his bed, and they proceed to set the cabins on fire. Bond rescues Vivienne from her cabin and finally confronts Horror and Sluggsy in a furious gun battle. Both men end up in the nearby lake. Bond and Vivienne retire to the only remaining cabin, but Sluggsy, still alive, attempts to kill the couple one more time. The ever-alert 007 whips out his gun from under the pillow and kills the hoodlum. In the morning, Bond is gone, but Vivienne finds a poignant note left by the mysterious agent who will "live in her heart forever."

STYLE AND THEMES

U
ntil Bond enters the picture, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME might be called Fleming's unintentional attempt at a "true confessions" tale. Vivienne's love life is right out of a soap opera; yet this is
contrasted with
the gritty, brutal terror which envelops the last third of the novel.

Stylistically, the best thing the book has going for it is its brevity. Since it is the shortest novel Fleming wrote (even shorter than CASINO ROYALE), the corniness of the soap opera exposition and flashbacks does not intrude too much. The chapters still contain the distinctive Fleming Sweep and rich detail (even though, in a disclaimer at the beginning of the book, Fleming insists he found the manuscript on his desk one day—it is "co-authored" by Vivienne Michel herself). Reading THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is a breeze due to the pace of the writing.

The female perspective is imaginative and revealing. It's almost as if a female Fleming were narrating the tale. For the most part, one can believe that the author is female until the subject centers on sex. Somehow, things Vivienne Michel says about sex do not always ring true. In the following excerpt, Vivienne relates how she feels after first making love with Bond:

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful. That and the coinciding of nerves completely relaxed after the removal of tension and danger, the warmth of gratitude, and a woman's natural feeling for her hero. I had no regrets and no shame. There might be many consequences for me—not the least that I might now be dissatisfied with other men. But whatever my troubles were, he would never hear of them. I would not pursue him and try to repeat what there had been between
us. I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road, where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn't care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn't care, because none of them would ever own him—own any larger piece of him than I now did. And for all my life I would be grateful to him, for everything. And I would remember him forever as my image of a man.

(THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, Chapter 14)

To be sure, many women would argue with the statement that "all women love to be semi-raped." Also, there is a touch of egotism in Fleming's writing—is this a woman thinking about her idea of a perfect man, or is it Ian Fleming imagining that he or his hero actually is the perfect man?

Probably the most interesting aspect of the novel is the objective view of James Bond; it is a view that hasn't been taken in previous novels. It is a more depersonalized look at the man—he is seen from the outside rather than from the inside, as is usually the case. For instance, despite what Bond personally believes about women, in this book he is genuinely a kind, considerate man who treats Vivienne with utmost respect and care. He doesn't appear at all to be the ruthless, cold-hearted, and jaded male Bond believes himself to be. Because of this viewpoint, many new revelations are made about the James Bond character.

The themes in the novel are very black and white. The story can easily be paralleled with St. George and the dragon once again. A handsome knight saves the damsel in distress from the dragon, which in this case, is represented by the two thugs, Horror and Sluggsy. The only difference is that the knight does not ride away with the damsel in his arms at the story's end. He rides off alone, leaving the maiden safe but with a permanent scar on her heart.