The Berlin Assignment (34 page)

Hanbury handled his tie and allowed it to flop back down. It was in grey monotone with a faint blue stripe. “My ties are all the same,” he explained. “This one, another one. There's scarcely a difference. It
makes the mornings easier, not having to decide.”

“Fascinating. Unbridled utilitarianism. Very, very effective.”

“I was informed today would be draperies,” Hanbury said, making it sound like a lament. “Perhaps some plain ones would be best.”

“Even the material of
plain
curtains, Herr Konsul, upon close examination shows intricate work. I would not put draperies into categories such as
plain
or
patterned
any more than I would people. If I may say, my reading of you is that you wish to proceed quickly, too quickly perhaps. That may be dangerous. Decisions on the
kinds
of material to look at is often put off until a second appointment.”

“I had hoped it wouldn't be necessary to look at too many samples.”

“Is that a valid perspective?” Neumeister asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I like to avoid clutter. Clutter makes me uneasy.”

“I'm beginning to understand,” murmured Neumeister. “Normally we would first engage in an examination of the psycho-dramatic atmosphere you wish your residence to acquire. But why not? Why don't we sample first, then analyse your needs afterwards. And I do concede your point – clutter-avoidance is eminently valid. Follow me.” With the champagne bottle and glasses in hand the two men circled the second courtyard towards the very back.

They entered a room full of veils suspended from the ceiling. “It looks like a steam bath, but it's pleasantly cool,” Hanbury observed, extracting a strange comfort from the thin materials pressing in on him.

“Some say they have a feeling of protection here, like a returning to the womb.” Neumeister disappeared into the textiles, but soon returned. One by one, from somewhere, he hauled out catalogue upon catalogue of samples.

The options being put before the consul made his head spin. “I don't know,” he said repeatedly. “I just don't know.”

“You find them all equally striking?”

“Perhaps.” Hanbury estimated the accumulated books of samples
before him contained several hundred possibilities. “If you were in my position,” he said to Neumeister. “What would
your
choice be?”

“I normally hesitate to take that step on behalf of clients until the
third
session. Personalities are complex structures of ambitions, hopes, fears, anxieties. I do not move to active counselling until I have a complete understanding of the nuanced desires of my client. But, although it is early, my feeling with you, Herr Konsul – a prominent and successful diplomat – is that something in the direction of the pastel world would be appropriate. Your tie supports that. Subtle greys against a backdrop of pastels. It is a most provocative thought.” Neumeister cleft numerous layers of veils violently apart and revealed an immense set of shelves. From a lower compartment, he pulled a binder with a velvet cover. “Last week I was asked the same question by the Foreign Ministry. You are aware the foreign minister has acquired an official residence in Berlin? Here – this is the material for the sheers in his salon. And this – feel it – so divine – curtain material for the dining room. You see the unifying logic in the samples? As guests move from room to room, differences in patterns become decipherable while thematic colourations act as constants and connect. Such harmony is essential for successful entertaining. Tests show that guests are uncomfortable if the decor in one room clashes with another. These are unusually elegant materials.”

“They are,” the consul said. He asked what else had been proposed for the residence of the German foreign minister. Neumeister, with a fresh flailing of his arms, elaborated on key elements of the German Rococo, gained momentum and went forwards to Neo-classicism, then came back to the weighty excellence of the Baroque. The foreign minister had instructed that all movements in German art were to be represented in his residence.
Jugendstil
, Neumeister informed the consul, would dominate the patio. In one villa a unity would arise from all the great epochal tastes – from the first Hohenzollern king to the last
German kaiser. It required a most careful selection of accessories. Colour schemes, lighting concepts, wallpapering, tapestries, drapery railings – the entire plan for the foreign minister was described to the consul. Neumeister's pace picked up and his queenly voice developed a scratchy twang, like an old gramophone played at too high a speed. Not only that, but Hanbury's steady nodding of approval was taken by Neumeister as an impulse to go faster and faster so that at last, swamped by a wave of his own excitement, he halted in mid-sentence, half way through announcing that the manufacturer of the bidets would be the fabled KPM porcelain factory in Berlin.

The consul shrewdly saw an opportunity. “I'll have all of that,” he said with perfect calm. “What's good for the German foreign minister can't be bad for me.”

“Everything?” Neumeister asked incredulously.

“The works. Don't substitute a screw, not even for the curtain brackets.”

“Normally all this takes six, sometimes seven sessions. Such unusual decisiveness. You are a man of truly powerful impulse.” He regarded the consul with eyes that had begun to worship. “Shall I arrange details with Herr Gifford?”

“Yes. No need to mention the foreign minister. Tell him
we
worked it out.”

“I understand, Herr Konsul.”

Outside, Sturm had been patiently parked down the street in front of a neighbourhood transvestite club. When the consul had regained the back seat of the Opel, the chauffeur shared his observations. “I've been watching the boys arrive,” he said. “Legs like pencils. One Juliette
looked at me so hard I thought he'd ask me to play Romeo. Back to the office?”

Hanbury replied he wasn't in the mood. He felt tired. “Go for a drive,” he instructed. “Have a look around.”

Sturm put the Opel into motion. “Lord Halcourt would sometimes say that.” Sturm widened his mouth, stiffened his upper lip and mimed an English accent. “
Tour time Sturm. Down to the river. Look for a trout. See how the hay is in the hollow
.” He paused. “Except this isn't Oxfordshire in summer, Herr Konsul. It's Berlin in winter in case you hadn't noticed. There's nothing to see. In the office at least there's bright pictures on the walls.”

“I've had my fill of brightness. That was a close call in there. I want to forget Neumeister. Drive Sturm, go anywhere.”

Sturm obliged by making a lengthy circle through the inner city. He used the time to describe in detail the daily rhythm of life on Lord Halcourt's Oxfordshire estate.

Hanbury for his part concentrated on the beams of light of oncoming traffic defined by damp-choked winter air. He began to see them as rapiers held by invisible fencers – attacking, fading, pouncing. An internecine war. His attention shifted to unmoving, passive bystanders – the buildings along the streets. Block after block, they squatted in silence. Hanbury studied a structure, released it, took in the next. Stony faces, deeply weathered, skin peeling off. Glowering old hags. Sturm's bearing was for East Berlin. When they crossed where the Wall once stood, the mood changed. Streets became populated by structures resembling dead torsos. Dark ruins and near ruins. Everywhere, roads were ripped open, bridges were out of action, broken tram lines disappeared into mounds of sand. Trucks transporting rubble crawled around. And as they went, Sturm presented evidence that Lord Halcourt, in his English way, had been something of a Nazi.

Hanbury wasn't listening. The hypnotic effect of the skirmishing lights provided blissful release. Quietly he took the pulse of his current situation: Müller dead, Sabine talking to him at the funeral, her friend wanting him to go for lunch, her husband interested in having a drink. There was Gundula too. She would soon have to teach him how to dance. But most immediate of all was Zella. She would be stepping off a plane in days. Hanbury admitted it. None of his previous assignments had provided a mosaic as rich and varied as this.

Sturm completed the Halcourt dynasty saga. His own role in it came next. At the age of twenty he went to explore England on a bicycle. In Oxfordshire he chanced upon a hapless British nobleman on the side of a country road studying a flat tire. Sturm took over. Soon the clipped voice sang,
I say! Well done. I've always wanted a German chauffeur! Stay on a bit
. Sturm did, married Betsy, who worked in the next village, and remained chauffeur until Lord Halcourt died. Then he brought Betsy to Berlin.

The vast circular route through the city continued. In the darkness, Sturm pointed out some sights. Back once more in the west, as they passed Tempelhof airport, scene of the airlift in '49, Hanbury perked up. He thought of von Helmholtz, the start of the great man's career, and asked if the place was still being used. Sturm, pleased there was a sound from the rear seat, said, yes, definitely yes.

The next day Gifford reached a quick understanding with
Das Meisterwerk
on the residence's interior work and furnishings. He made a show of informing the consul. Resting his thick elbows on the small table, he lingered to talk.

“Sturm tells me you saw Tempelhof,” he said pleasantly.

“Yes. Time I saw it. Apparently it still functions.”

“Allows you to fly into the heart of the city and back out.”

“Useful for some people I guess.”

“For who? What's your view?”

Hanbury shrugged and switched subjects. He was distantly interested to know where the administrator had found the money to pay for so much interior decoration. “It's a game,” Gifford replied. “One learns to play it as one goes along.”

In the run-up to Christmas the office mood was light. The consul gave each lady flowers and invited the staff out for lunch.

“And how will you celebrate, Herr Konsul?” Frau von Ruppin asked at the lunch, sufficiently inflamed by a second glass of wine to dare ask a personal question.

“Church on Christmas eve,” he replied. “The
Missa Solemnis
on Christmas day.”

“We were thinking we might go to church this year,” a mellow Frau Carstens said. She was moved – by the wine, by the season, by the piety of the consul.

When the meal was over, they trooped off in different directions to spend Christmas with their kin. Except the consul. The staff lunch had delayed him and he hurried to the airport in a taxi. He nearly missed Zella's arrival. Running through the terminal, he saw her dragging a suitcase on rollers to the exit. Breathing hard he caught up. “Hi, Zella!” He took her by the shoulders and apologized. “I wanted to meet you at the gate.”

“Hi, Tony.” She kissed him on both cheeks. For a moment they were silent, gauging how they should behave towards each other – and how much they could assume – then Zella pushed on. “I've arrived in dinkier places than this and managed,” she said cheerfully. “I've been shouted at three times so far. Are people around here always so friendly?”

“It's good to see you. You must be tired.”

In the taxi, once or twice looking out the back, Zella talked about her flight and the passengers she met. Hanbury used the time to prepare her for the bungalow, making a small joke about not living in a palace. But when Zella saw his place, if she had expected a mansion, she didn't show it. She called it snug. Hanbury lugged her suitcase to a spare room where he had tacked some posters on the walls the night before. Afterwards in the living room, seeing the armchair squatted before a stereo system flanked by two huge speakers, Zella asked if he always sat there by himself. Hanbury, seeing the room from her perspective, quickly pushed the armchair to the side and pulled the sofa out of a corner into the middle. “More livable already,” he puffed, switching on the stereo and putting in a disc.

They gossiped on the sofa for a bit. Zella bubbled with news of people Hanbury had forgotten. She was excited about being in Berlin and wanted to know the main attractions. What would they do? He proposed a Christmas concert, dinner at Kempinski, a visit to a Christmas market the next day followed by searching out some remnants of the Wall. Decisions on museums and nightlife could be made as they went along. “Three days is too short,” he said. Zella yawned and laughed at once. “Jet lag,” she explained. He urged her to get some rest.

In the early evening, Zella's batteries recharged, they left for the Berlin Cathedral, that cavernous temple, testimony to a hubristic concept of the Christian deity. Still, for a well-staged Christmas concert it was splendid. They stood amongst two thousand believers.
Oratorios
and
Glorias
rose into the apex of the great dome and echoed down. Zella sang the carols in English while Hanbury, never a singer, croaked out a toneless second voice. Over dinner at Kempinski, Zella passed along the latest news of Irving Heywood.

“He's no longer in the Priory,” she said. “A promotion. Investitures Priest. He's a real fan of yours. Did you know that?”

“I never much liked how he sermonized.”

“But he thinks the world of you. I showed him your note. He loved it. He asked me to tell you he misses the Priory. He said when you were in Disarmament the place was full of zip. He remembers how you stirred up the Russians.”

“Stirred up the Russians?” Hanbury exclaimed in a voice rising with disbelief. “That's what he said? He was joking.”

“Well sure,” Zella laughed. “It was just his way of reminiscing.”

Changing the subject, Hanbury asked Zella about herself. She told him stories of her upbringing in Yellowknife. “Did you know I'm half Cree?” she asked. “My mother's a full blood. She's still there. I don't know who my father was.”