Gauloise cigarettes: SPOILER

Remember when Smiley searched the General's apartment, looking for the reason for Vladimir's insistance for a crash meeting regarding "the Sandman," Karla?
Smiley finds an open carton of...Gauloise cigarettes...with one pack missing. He makes a mental note because no such pack was found on the General's body in Hampsted Heath.

Later, he walks Vladimir's final path on the Heath in daylight. He stops by the oak tree and looks up and...there!!! The familiar violet blue pack of Gauloise's resting in a nook in a lower limb! Smiley fishes the pack down with his cane and when he checks the wrapper, he finds the "mother's milk" of all spies: microfilm!

That was a nifty bit by John leCarre, utilizing that pungent dark symbol of French identity, Gauloise cigs. Up to the 1980s, it was the cool thing to smoke among the French, even if they were a tad overpowering. As the New York Times in a recent article said, "...Praised in song, featured in films, dragged on by such addicts as Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso or singer Serge Gainsbourg, Gauloises were choked on in cafes from Calais to Cannes and were once as much a symbol of French identity as berets or Bordeaux wine."

Well...times and tastes change. The lighter, smoother American brands are now prefered in France and Gauloise went from 80% of the market in 1980 to less than 20% now in 2005. The cigarette plant making the Gauloises in Lille shut down in August, 2005, after 90 years of operations. Amazing. At one time, the plant produced 12 billion cigs a year.

Now, a small amount will be made each year by a company in Spain. Spanish Gauloises? Sacre bleu!

The spies will have to smoke something else.

CmdrCody