The Berlin Assignment (21 page)

Hanbury thought about this. He thought about the doctor, Sophia, and Elisabeth. “It was delightful,” he said.

Now Sturm did all the talking, mostly light gossip. Hanbury knew the chauffeurs had few secrets and, as the Opel passed through opulent neighbourhoods in the midnight stillness, he decided to keep von Helmholtz's dinner invitation to himself.

The next day Sturm produced the log for Gifford and was peppered with questions. No, no unexpected stops on the way. Yes, it had been routine at the mansion. No, the consul made no unusual remarks, except – wait a minute – he hinted he suspected someone was tampering with his mail. Yes, he had gone directly home. Yes, he was alone. “And he didn't burp or fart, in case you want to know that too.” Sturm was irritated by all the pumping for trivia.

As the chauffeur was being cross-examined, Hanbury received a direct call from von Helmholtz's office with information on the place and time for the dinner. He instructed Frau Carstens to decline a conflicting invitation to a sporting event, claiming he needed an evening at home. Frau Carstens, who loathed all sport, agreed this was wise. The information was passed to Gifford, who instructed Sturm that on Friday night he could stand down.

That Friday the weather was miserable. Gusting winds sent cloud banks scudding by all afternoon. As darkness fell, the city was attacked by sheets of rain. The consul rode in silence in a taxi to the Dahlem address. The street was difficult to find; the driver stopped twice to consult a map.

What did the Chief of Protocol mean when he said an impromptu dinner for some friends? Two hundred guests in black tie? How many more people, Hanbury asked himself, could he meet before they'd blur and become totally interchangeable? Contacts, contacts, contacts. Frau Carstens was insatiable. Every hour of the day seemed devoted to scheming and making more contacts. Some days he felt she whipped him on – as if he were a tired workhorse hauling an impossible burden. Hanbury hoped this dinner would be small. For once it would be nice to remember at the end of the evening the guests he met at the beginning.

The Chief of Protocol's villa was nestled behind tall evergreens. The front door opened as he walked up. Inside, a butler helped him with his coat. Von Helmholtz came into the vestibule. “You found it.”

“Sorry I'm late.” Hanbury noted the absence of the sound of two hundred babbling voices. The house was dignified and still.
Von Helmholtz took him into a sitting room where his other guests, six of them, nested agreeably around a coffee table. The introduction of the consul over with, they went back to anecdotes about their previous summer's vacations. Hanbury listened to the camaraderie and stole glances at the women. Lovely women, veiled more than dressed, reposed in comfortable chairs, wearing thin silky materials plunging at the front and back. One of them – with her size and shape he was sure she was a fashion model – wore an exquisite lavender minidress. Hanbury's attention shifted to the room. Paintings were crowded together on the walls. It came as no surprise that von Helmholtz was an art lover, but why so many landscapes? Meadows in spring, dramatic forests, lakes between mountains, strong skies. Pretty paintings. Von Helmholtz saw Hanbury studying them. “My wife,” he said. “Most of them are hers. I love the countryside and she did too. Shall we go in for dinner?”

The table was round. Hanbury sat directly opposite the host. A chandelier hung low so that the light fused the group into a warm conspiracy. Von Helmholtz rose and began to speak.

“I once heard a story about a caliph who remarked that although he had a thousand friends, he had not one to spare.” His voice was introspective. “With the many intrigues in the caliph's court no doubt he needed all of them. I don't have a thousand, but those I have I treasure. I too have none to spare.”

Before-dinner speeches are opportunities to express what otherwise is merely thought. The dinner table was still. Where would von Helmholtz's remarks take the guests? They waited, scarcely hearing pots distantly clanging in the kitchen.

“I met all of you professionally, but we soon reached past that. We went through the professional veneer. I value that.” Von Helmholtz asked them to listen to a quote from Longfellow.

“Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.”

The guests absorbed this. The silence remained immaculate. The host's drift was, if anything, becoming more inscrutable, not less. Von Helmholtz began to talk of art, of Longfellow's view of art, how it reaches into the future. He implied that artists, through their work, acquire immortality. How do we measure up, he seemed to be asking, or rather, how did
he
measure up? Some guests thought he was saying he had lived a life devoid of art, that he was hearing muffled drums, that soon his friends would be all he would have left and without them, without them remembering him, he had no chance of reaching beyond the grave. The guests, trying to fathom if this was his meaning, didn't move a muscle. But if a gate to some secret garden of vulnerability was creaking open, in the next instant it resolutely clicked shut. From one breath to the next, the sentimentality in von Helmholtz's posture disappeared. In the muted chandelier light, he drew himself to his full height. He shifted grounds, beginning to describe the times. He called them alienating. Reason enough, he said, echoing the caliph, for being careful with one's friends.

Von Helmholtz looked them over. His attention lingered on the slender woman wearing the lavender minidress on his immediate right who, Hanbury saw, was the least solemn at the table. Her faint smile at the silver-haired aristocrat had a touch of amusement. It seemed to say he deserved full marks for dramatic effort, but was this the right occasion? She had some influence on him, because von Helmholtz met her eyes and immediately shook off his introspection. He began narrating stories of crossed paths and the web of events which brought them together that evening. Cordula, a theatre director, Viktoria, in
charge of Berlin's heritage office, Jürgen, a writer, Anna, a designer, Richard, a lawyer married to Viktoria.

Von Helmholtz went around the table introducing each guest. The name of Hanbury's birth place, Indian Head, was mentioned. “I found it in the atlas,” von Helmholtz said. “A dot on North America's Great Plains. I have a passion for studying maps of continents. ‘How do people live there?', one asks. What are the customs and traditions? What characterizes the landscape? When Consul Hanbury told me about the prairies, I visualized people spread thinly over a vast area, living without limitations.” Hanbury wasn't comfortable with this focus on his home town. He never thought that Indian Head was a place to be idealized, to be seen as some kind of earthly paradise.

The host turned last to the teasingly bemused, black-haired woman on his right, Gundula Jahn. Hanbury was sure one of her forebears millennia ago must have been a model too, sitting for one of those perfect, priceless Greek statues. The expression of irony etched around her eyes said she viewed everything around her as a spectacle to enjoy. She was new in Berlin also and wouldn't be at this dinner were it not for German reunification. Von Helmholtz said she was a journalist and described her talent, the first East German reporter hired by the largest paper in West Berlin. “I can always read what's on Gundula's mind,” he added fondly, a hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “The first thing I do every day is turn to her column.” The friendly mockery in the journalist's smile intensified.

During dinner Hanbury observed that von Helmholtz's hand occasionally touched Gundula Jahn's, massaging it, letting go. The touching scenes came and went. Young people, Sturm said, that's what he likes. The dinner conversation, as always in Berlin, turned to Berlin. Berlin then, Berlin now, and Berlin to come. Viktoria, sitting beside Hanbury, guardian of the city's heritage, talked of its architecture, what was gone, what remained, what would come. He admired her strong
facial features, auburn hair and a bare shoulder so close he could brush it with his own. She talked about the extraordinary decade of transition now in full swing. Living in Berlin was like being in a newsreel, Viktoria declared. Endless, fascinating footage day after day.

Richard, her husband, had a bullying appearance. He attacked East Berlin, which he said was filled with buildings that resembled bunkers. “It's incredible what the East Germans destroyed,” he said. “Take one example. They destroyed the Kaiser's Palace because they couldn't separate architecture from politics. The French Revolution didn't blow up Versailles. The Bolsheviks didn't take down the Kremlin. But the East Germans blew up the palace. A country that dynamites its heritage dynamites its people.”

“The palace was bombed in the war,” Gundula Jahn said. She had been quiet until then.

“But it could have been saved,” Richard countered. “It could have been restored. Had Stalin slept there once they would have kept it. They wanted a big square in East Berlin – like Red Square in Moscow – for the May Day parades. That's why they blew it up. I'm for rebuilding a replica. We need our traditions back.”

A debate on this and related issues was in full swing. “Why?” Cordula said suddenly, coming out of a slouch. “Why?” she repeated loudly. “Why would we want that palace rebuilt? I don't find that part of the past too edifying. That's the problem here. The past is too recent; it hangs over us. We're dwarfed by it. Ever thought about all the patched bullet holes on the Reichstag? Do we need those kinds of reminders every day on every street? There's only one solution to this problem. Run away. I vote we run to Consul Hanbury's country. Let's be dwarfed by nature for a change.”

A silence settled as this perspective was digested. Von Helmholtz, who had been leaning back, came forward. Having seen the fires of war in his youth, night after night, block after block, everything going
up in flames, he talked of the fickleness of urban landscapes. Without warning, he turned to Hanbury. “And what about towns on the Canadian prairies? Tell us about Indian Head.” Hanbury was taken aback, unsure where to start. “Yes,” said Richard sarcastically. “Indian Head.
Indianerkopf
. What happened? Did the cavalry charge and decapitate the savages?”

“Oh no,” Hanbury answered pleasantly. “That kind of thing happened further south. No, no. The name is taken from a nearby butte, the forward edge of a small range of hills. When the sun rises above the horizon and the butte lights up, it has the profile of a head. The Indians called it that. They used it to spot buffalo.” Viktoria's husband scowled, seemingly disappointed no blood had flowed. Hanbury continued. “The prairies are always changing. One day they're barren and cruel, then they become like the garden of Eden. Strong contradictions. People get addicted to it. No place for Berliners. It's too wide open.” He looked at Richard.

“You underestimate Berliners,” Richard replied coldly.

Gundula Jahn's gaze had been shifting back and forth between Hanbury and Viktoria's husband, but now came to rest on the consul.

“You must explain, Tony,” von Helmholtz interrupted. “Cruel landscapes? Garden of Eden? A touch dramatic?”

“I'll tell you,” Hanbury said feeling the journalist's steady, marble-chiselled gaze. “Imagine a place so flat that the horizon circles around, the feeling of being on an ocean where space is difficult to define. And no reference points, apart from a river valley here or there cut out over the millennia. The horizon is the boundary. Where's the horizon in Berlin? The façade across the street?”

“Nothing wrong with a façade across the street,” Richard said. “I'm explaining why some people here wouldn't cope with the openness there.”

“But you're the exception,” said Cordula lazily from deep back in her chair.

“An exceptional man, no doubt about it,” mocked Richard.

“Go on,” said Anna, the designer who had said little. “Tell us more.”

The consul shrugged. “There's not much more. Well, there's the climate. One year it's paradise, the next, the land shrivels up. Scorching heat in summer. No limits to the cold in winter. The only constant all year round is light. In winter the light is so hard you think the sky will crack. Even at night there's light, the northern light, dancing light. Colours leaping through the sky reflected on the snow. What's light like in Berlin in winter?”

This forced a pause. Wine glasses were refilled. The party sought a new topic. Richard's combativeness had been filed down and he was quieter. It seemed Anna was the only one who didn't want to depart the notion of wide open spaces just yet. “I would like to go to a place with light like that. I've always wanted to go to Russia to absorb its soul. But maybe it's simpler to go to your prairies. Do they have soul?”

“Soul!” said Cordula rising up once more. “That's my favourite subject. Good theatre is pure soul. Good actors need ample soul. And fine directors have magnificent soul.” Cordula's energy gathered. “I want to mention another kind of soul – soul as a weapon that goes to battle for others. I know only one person who has that kind of soul. Gerhard, a toast to you.” Von Helmholtz protested, but seven glasses pointed in his direction. Following this, they retired to his study where a relieved Hanbury wasn't pressed to answer Anna's question about prairie soul.

The party was ending. Viktoria was the first to say she was tired and departed with her husband. Cordula asked that a taxi be called and shared the ride with Jürgen and Anna. Soon, only von Helmholtz, Gundula Jahn and Hanbury remained. Together they engaged in small talk. Suddenly it dawned on Hanbury that the two would want to
be alone. “I had no idea it's become so late. I'm sorry.” He wanted to call a taxi too.

Von Helmholtz saw no need for the consul to rush off. “I'm a night owl,” he explained.