Then We Take Berlin (59 page)

“I won’t be asking her that, Erno.”

§196

Erno burnt more vanities. Independent states East and West had hit hard these last few years. The cold war was nowhere near as good for business as military occupation. It was in the nature of things military that there was always a fiddle to be worked—and the beauty of things military is that they were all paid for by the taxpayer. Stealing them was not theft, forging them was hardly a crime so much as a challenge. PX and NAAFI were the initials on the gates of heaven. But the sad truth was that there were not enough fiddles left in the world.

He’d clipped his toenails onto a twenty-year-old page of the
Der Angriff
, and flung them into the stove. He’d got one sock on and was just pulling on the other when he became aware of someone else in the room.

“Joe?”

A woman sat down opposite him. The only light was the light from the burning fire, a flickering golden arc—he could see a pair of shapely legs and the hem of a skirt and little else.

“Joe, he says, Joe. I might have known.” And she leaned down, her face half in shadow half out, “You old rogue.”

“Nell?”

“I saw him this morning. The porters at the Kempinski brought a car round for him. He got in and drove off. I watched the car until I lost sight of it somewhere near the Kranzler. He still hasn’t got the hang of tipping. How long has he been back?”

“Just a few days.”

“A few days.”

“Maybe a week. You know. In and out. He’s been back before. This isn’t the first time.”

“Just the first time I’ve seen him. The British sent him?”

Erno had no idea how much to tell her.

“No. He’s not with the British any more. He’s a civilian these days.”

“So, what brings him back to Berlin?”

Erno knew she’d get it out of him, one way or another. He hoped to tell her something of nothing and hang on to the vital detail.

“He’s working for Frank Spoleto.”

“For Frank? Has he gone mad?”

Erno shrugged.

“You know Joe, Lenchen. Always the chancer.”

“Chance? What chance? Erno — tell me everything.”

§197

Nell had her regular Monday meeting with Brandt. The last such before Kennedy’s entourage arrived in two days’ time. There’d be other, impromptu meetings, but this was the last scheduled meeting before Brandt flew to Bonn to act the role of the most important non-person in the world—just visible in the shadows cast by the West German chancellor and the West German president.

“I have two fears,” Brandt said. “An anti-Russian demonstration of any kind—and who knows, Kennedy enthusiasm could well bubble over into that, and we would be compelled to react. Secondly, an escape. Either would constitute an ‘incident.’”

“What do we have to lose by an escape?”

“If it succeeds, nothing. Perhaps at the very worst a distraction. If one were to fail . . . neither farce nor tragedy would describe the consequences adequately.”

That word again
Vorkommnis
. Incident.

It required no thought—she wasn’t ever going to tell him.

§198

Wednesday June 26, 1963

Nell rode in the lead press bus. Just behind the open car that carried Kennedy, Brandt, and Adenauer. They all stood. She wondered if they had tied Adenauer to a post to keep him upright. Next to Brandt—tall—or Kennedy—handsome—the chancellor looked decrepit, a dying tortoise. She turned over Brandt’s “It can’t ever look like a Nuremburg rally” in her mind. It didn’t. It looked nothing like anything ever seen in Europe. This was America transplanted—a New York ticker tape parade, the uncontainable joy of a young country that did not prize restraint over enthusiasm. Asked how many Berliners were on the streets that June 26, Nell would have replied “all of them.”

Shortly after leaving Tegel airport the cavalcade had passed a construction site—every crane had pointed its arm skyward, and every strut was gripped or stood upon by a hard-hatted worker—a metal forest with human leaves.

Bouquets of flowers had been forbidden by the US Secret Service, so the celebration became more and more improvised. Flags at every window, the Stars and Stripes, the occasional flag of Berlin itself and in the absence of any flags just bedsheets, huge, white, flapping bedsheets. And . . . confetti, pink confetti. Shower upon shower of pink confetti. No one had thought to forbid confetti.

Ahead of the presidential car was a trailer of photographers, more than she could count, all with their lenses trained on Kennedy. Nell had had no say in this—she had been content that her route across the centre of West Berlin, around the zoo, along the rebuilt Ku’damm—had finally been approved—but it looked awful to her. She imagined it looked awful to Kennedy, to be looking at a camera lens at every turn of the head, but concluded he was used to it. A life lived in public. He might even like it. After all, he never stopped smiling.

At the Brandenburg Gate the president stopped smiling. A platform had been erected to enable him to see over the wall. Brandt’s prediction had been fulfilled as had his fear—the five arches of the gate were draped in red flags—the Russian stunt—utterly obscuring any view down Unter den Linden. The last time Nell had seen this had been in 1938—but then every red flag had borne a swastika—the German stunt. Today it was a touch, just a touch of a Nuremburg rally. A touch too far. And in front of the gate was a wide yellow placard explaining to the president in English and German that only the East had thoroughly denazified and that the promises of the West had all been broken.

Kennedy passed her as he came down the wooden steps from the platform, from his fleeting glimpse of the East, with not a flicker of a smile. He’d been smiling from the moment the stepped off the plane—but he wasn’t smiling now.

§199

They had thirty minutes rest before the main speeches of the day in front of the
Rathaus
in Schöneberg. Kennedy had Brandt’s office. Brandt had hers.

“There’s going to be a slight change of plan.”

“Slight” in politics never meant slight.

“President Kennedy thinks, and I agree, that his speech should be interpreted by a German, not simply a German speaker. He’s asked for a Berliner. He’s asked for you.”

“What? He’s never heard of me.”

“Apparently he has. He asked for you by name.”

Nell struggled to believe what sounded to her ears to be unbelievable.

“Alright. I don’t really have a choice. Do I?”

“Am I forcing privilege upon you, Nell?”

She ignored this.

“We have less than thirty minutes. When can I see the speech?”

“Ah . . . we have a slight problem there, too.”

That word again.

“They haven’t finished it.”

Brandt’s delivery was deadpan, conveying nothing of the apprehension he surely felt. Everything planned—from the order of greeting, to the motorcade route, to the choice of hors d’oeuvres at lunch . . . to the text. And now the Americans had begun to ad lib.

“The president’s in my office with McGeorge Bundy. They’d appreciate your help right now. But not half as much as I would.”

Brandt swept Nell into his office without knocking. Kennedy and Bundy were hunched over the desk with a few scraps of paper and a stack of index cards in front of them, talking softly as though they might be overheard—but then that had been the tone of the entire visit. Public statements amplified by a thousand microphones, private utterances at whisper level—the uncertainty of what was going down to posterity and what was not.

Brandt introduced Nell as “my right hand, my Girl Friday.”

Kennedy shook her hand, said, “I’ve been hearing about Fraulein Burkhardt from Mac for weeks now.”

Then, so suddenly she could hear herself breathing, Brandt and Bundy had ducked out and left her to it—and left her to him.

“It’s the hook.”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“The speech needs a hook. Mac and I agree it should be in German. I don’t speak a word, as I’m sure you know. I’ve been trying to remember that speech Mayor Reuter made during the airlift . . . ‘The world should come to Berlin’?”

“Reuter said ‘
Völker der Welt, schaut auf Berlin.
’ People of the world
look
at Berlin. I was there, Mr. President. I heard him.”

“You were there? You must have been no more than a girl.”

“I was, just a girl.”

“So we were thinking of something like, the world must watch Berlin. It just doesn’t have the ring . . . it isn’t a hook. People of the world, look at Berlin? It’s a great line, but I’d feel I’d borrowed it. It’s a moment to be original if that’s at all possible.”

“Mr. President. Does this have anything to do with what you just saw?”

“It has
everything
to do with what I just saw.”

“May I see your notes?”

Kennedy sat in Brandt’s chair, motioned for her to sit down and handed her the index cards. Nell read them through and leafed back to the third card, the one on which the typed script had been subject to crossings out and scribblings in two hands. This recently, instantly revised version read:

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.

There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future.

And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists.

And there are even a few who say that it is true that Communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Let them come to Berlin.

The anger was palpable.

The tone of the visit was about to change.

“Here,” she said. “This is your hook. Say ‘Let them come to Berlin’ at the end of each statement. Build up the emphasis. I will be translating for you, I shall do my best to be as emphatic in German as you are in English. But the last time say it in German. Just the last. You say. ‘
Laßt sie nach Berlin kommen
,’ and then I will repeat exactly what you said word for word . . . I shall be less your interpreter and more your echo.”

Kennedy liked this.

“It has . . . passion.”

“It should. I’m passionate about Berlin.”

“You’re a Berliner, right?”

“
Ich bin ein Berliner
,” Nell said, the metaphorical foot stamping down, the po-face rippling into a smile.

“Would you mind writing that down.”

Nell flipped an index card and wrote “
Ich bin ein Berliner
” on the back.

He looked over, said, “Say it again, slowly.”

She watched as Kennedy wrote down a sloppy phonetic of the phrase.

“
Ish bin ein Bearleener
.”

“I think we’re done,” he said.

§200

If pressed Nell could probably have recited Kennedy’s speech in either language in full, even years after.

Her ad hoc, instant memory was of the crowd . . .

“Ken-Ned-Dy Ken-Ned-Dy.”

Half a million, a million—who could tell?—Berliners on the street.

“Ken-Ned-Dy Ken-Ned-Dy.”

At lunch, immediately afterwards, Kennedy had Nell moved up the table. Not next to him, but where with a little leaning and tilting of the head he could address remarks to her. His capacity for chitchat did not surprise or disappoint her. You worked for Brandt you got used to flirting. What stuck in her mind was nothing he said to her, it was a remark to one of the generals, and there seemed to be so many US generals, “If I told them to they’d tear down the wall with their bare hands.”

“Ken-Ned-Dy Ken-Ned-Dy.”

At a quarter to six Air Force One took off from Tegel and Nell heard the slow hiss as the balloon deflated.

§201

Nell went back to her office. It felt like one of the longest days of her life. To go home would have been both sensible and impractical.

She rearranged the pencils on her desk in order of length. Brandt had jumbled the pencils. Brandt had left a note.

Can that man never stick to a script? Let me know if the Wall is still there in the morning. WB

To pass without incident—that had been Brandt’s phrase. Kennedy had been the “incident,” as much as the tanks that had squared off on either side of Checkpoint Charlie two years ago. Kennedy had been the “incident.” And she had made it worse. Brandt had sent her in there to keep Kennedy on script, and she’d helped him raise the temperature of the cold war to simmering—“
Laßt sie nach Berlin kommen!”
Perhaps a million joyous Berliners would tear down the wall. Or pigs might fly.