M. lives in a narrow guest-house. There are four floors. One room on each floor and he lives in the third one up. On the floor above lives a prostitute. She's East European or something, there! he doesn't even know that much about her. He's never heard her name called out. When she first moved in, he remembers that she looked young and a lady friend helped her with the boxes, so he wasn't needed. M. has never spoken to her, but a few times he has nodded 'hello' in the lobby, something which can be a distant intimacy. That's her home, upstairs, it's not where she works, ever.
People in this town have run-of-the-mill minds that wear predictable opinions. Their view on prostitution is predictable enough. A living-room here will sometimes cool to the sound of a housewife leaning forward with straight arms and a thin contempt of a prostitute and her clients, all the while nodding at her friend who in her turn tilts her own head up and gives tight little agreeing nods right back.
M. doesn't care. For ten years now, he's been the guardian of the woman upstairs, but she's never known it of course. For he stands on guard at the bottom of her stairs (right outside his own door in fact) whenever she is in. And if ever he hears her door open and the sharp tap of her heels approaching the stairs-top, he slips quietly back behind his own door with barely a click. He guards the stairs in a makeshift uniform (to give the impression of a security officer or private policeman) and he waits for trouble-makers. He hasn't had many (barely a score he supposes in his ten years as sentinel) but when they do come, he can invariably tell them, they give themselves away so blatantly, such obvious people with no class.
Do you know something? They always come in pairs! The men are always red-faced drunk and loud and daring each other to rush up the stairs and bang provokingly on the prostitute's door. The women who come are sometimes drunk too; or else daytime vicious; he hears them sniping well before they round the corner at the foot of his stairs. Then they look up and behold the most impressive attitude he can cut. Unfortunately he is a slightly-built man but they don't realize how determined he is, it happens every tedious time, and he always wins the struggle, he's not lost a single one yet. For his part, the difficulty is in maintaining silence, for he doesn't wish the prostitute (who is probably listening quietly to her radio) to be disturbed, or to discover him. So he has to first get a hand clamped over his enemy's mouth before turning to the wrestle and the scuffle, all the while getting in some cunning blows with his other free hand, if he can. He insists on a silent struggle, you see. If the second enemy (the other one of the pair) starts to shout, he can drop the first and leap at the mouth of this second enemy before a single word is fully formed. If you were there, all you would hear is the sound of scudding shoes on the tiled landing.
One time, the prostitute descended the stairs and caught him red-handed, caught him with a woman in a neck-grip, one hand over her working mouth, her legs all bent (her friend had already fled, but this enemy thought she saw him flagging and fancied a second try to get past). The prostitute took them for a loving couple having an argument (ha!) and slid along the wall opposite to get past the kicks which she took to be backward hacks from the woman to get at M.'s ankles, but which he knew to be directed at her own self. As I've said already, no one has ever got past him.
You must understand - M.'s not interested in the prostitute. He's not interested in those who criticize her: they are beneath his contempt. But he is interested in thwarting them. You see, the point is that all these trouble-makers come, not with a clear criticism of prostitution, but with a fogged opinion, and he'll not accept that. Let me point you towards these opinions - the problem of trafficking (so a non-trafficked prostitute is acceptable then? No?); poverty, pimped, self-hatred (so a wealthy healthy contented prostitute is ok then? No?); all these men are using the women merely as sex-objects (in the same way that women treat waitresses merely as waitress-objects? No?). Well what do you mean then? All those criticisms full of false facts, and phrases that seem to mean something but really don't. They feed M.'s resolve on the landing.
There is one person he shall have to let pass, however. M.'s seen him in his mind's eye. He is a man with a slightly run-down but distinguished air about him, hair turning grey at the edges, bespectacled maybe, he wears a heavy dark overcoat against the winter chill. George Smiley without the spying. To the point though - he has a clear-thinking mind, possibly a Cambridge-trained mind. He mounts the stairs with an outstretched hand, puffing slightly, and in it he's holding a note sealed in a personal envelope, a watertight criticism. The evil of prostitution incontrovertibly revealed. As he mounts M.'s stairs, his untroubled eyes will meet M.'s own and though he would be no match for M.'s practiced arm-lock, M. will know he has been defeated already.
M.'s waiting for the footsteps on the tiled floor to his sentinel landing, and he'll have to let him pass. He'll know him. He's not sure he'll ever come though.
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