Wednesday, August 12, 2009

James Bond Daily: 007 Wonders If a Woman Really Is In Love With Him

From pp.151-152 of From Russia with Love, in which he thinks about a woman he just spied on, and tries to decide if it's plausible that she fell in love while spying on him:
Bond finished his drink and lit another cigarette. He put the problem away and turned his mind to the girl.

Tatiana Romanova. A Romanov. Well, she certainly looked like a Russian princess, or the traditional idea of one. The tall, fine-boned body that moved so gracefully and stood so well. The thick sweep of hair down to the shoulders and the quiet authority of the profile. The wonderful Garboesque face with its curiously shy serenity. The contrast between the level innocence of the big, deep blue eyes and the passionate promise of a wide mouth. And the way she had blushed and the way the long eyelashes had come down over the lowered eyes. Had that been the prudery of a virgin? Bond thought not. There was the confidence of having been loved in the proud breasts and the insolently tilting behind -- the assertion of a body that knows what it can be for.

On what Bond had seen, could he believe that she was the sort of girl to fall in love with a photograph and a file? How could one tell? such a girl would have a deeply romantic nature. There were dreams in the eyes and in the mouth. At that age, twenty-four, the Soviet machine would not yet have ground the sentiment out of her. The Romanov blood might well have given her a yearning for men other than the type of modern Russian office she would meet -- stern, cold, mechanical, basically hysterical, and, because of their Party education, infernally dull.

It could be true. There was nothing to disprove her story in her looks. Bond wanted it to be true

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