The Berlin Assignment (7 page)

“Go sometime. You'd be surprised,” Martina suggested calmly.

“I did once. It was awful. The place is full of former communist party hacks. You can tell them by the way they dress and the lifelessness in their eyes. After all the misery they caused, how is it they're running around free?”

“Try to see the bright side of the East, Sabine,” Martina said nonchalantly. “Think of all the fine bodies that won medals in the
Olympics.” She was reducing the last strips of duck breast to small pieces with her knife. Martina liked the eastern districts, and not only because her billboard company,
Ravensburg Creations
, was doing a brisk business there. She came from East Berlin herself. In the fifties, before the Wall went up, when she was twelve, her family escaped. She had been old enough at the time to know what was happening, but too young to experience the terror as her parents had. After a pause and in a softer voice, she continued, “There are fewer communists than you think. You know, if everyone had got out as I did, they'd have turned out different. They'd be like me. A few might even have turned out like you. That's what I mean. Look at the bright side.”

A fresh burst of rain rattled against the windows of Café Einstein. Sabine, continuing to feel assaulted by the season, wasn't ready to see the brighter side of anything, least of all the eastern boroughs of Berlin. She grew up distrusting the place and nothing convincing had happened yet to switch forty years of suspicion off. “The difference between you and them is that they
didn't
leave,” she argued. “That's the point. They could have before the Wall came, but they didn't. That's what's strange.”

“You try it sometime, leaving behind everything you own except a handbag with maybe only your grandmother's jewellery in it. It's not as easy as you think.”

Sabine shrugged. “So they stayed. For what? Look at what the communists accomplished. Nothing anybody can be proud of. And guess who'll have to pay to put it right.” This last sentiment was borrowed from Werner. He had strong views about the hike in taxes everyone knew was coming.

“Pass the butter, sweetie” Martina said curtly. Naysayers were everywhere – she knew that – but being reminded her best friend was one was mildly irritating. “It's early days. Things are changing for the better. Everywhere. At Rheinhardt's they now serve Brandenburg butter. Very creamy, better than these clumps from Denmark. My company has
a contract for a dozen signs to say just that.”

They continued talking in this way about the fallout from the Wall's dismantling, Sabine provoking, Martina defending: the traffic tie-ups spreading in tidal waves from the former border checkpoints; the chaos on the underground with Eastern trains mixed in with the Western ones so that the whole system was breaking down; the stench in the air from the exhausts of socialism's cars; the Poles buying up Berlin's entire stock of stereos and TVs; and the beggars from Eastern Europe transforming the city's sidewalks, turning them into obstacle courses. Martina acknowledged all this was true, but countered it was wonderful too how East Berlin was responding to freedom. “Take cabaret,” she said. “It's razor sharp there. They really know how to cut us up. I mean
all
of us, from East
and
West. It's exhilarating. You ought to go.”

After Gottfried delivered two cappuccinos, Martina said, “Have I told you about Helmut? What he says about the universities is remarkable. Students in the West want to study in the East, and vice versa. Young blood is so versatile. Some days I think we should all have a transfusion.”

No, Sabine had not heard of Helmut. “Oh…Doctor Kraft, professor at Humboldt University. An elegant man. He survived the recent academic purge. He's a linguist, a wonderful English speaker, but more than that…” Martina dropped her voice to a confidential whisper, “…he admits he's always desired Western women. The Wall stimulated his fantasies. He says that even now he finds thinking of women from the other side as erotic. What an invitation! And he's not the only one that thinks like that. We need to take advantage of such sentiments, Sabine, before they disappear. I could help you with some introductions.”

As she described Professor Kraft's longings, Martina placed her hand on Sabine's, a token of their bond. Whenever Martina described a new
lover, she took Sabine's hand this way. There was never an old lover, a fading lover, or a problem lover in Martina's life. There were only new lovers. And at their corner table in the library of Café Einstein, Martina would talk about them with the enthusiasm of a child.

The rain had eased when they finished lunch, although the leaden clouds continued racing eastward, as if on a seek-out-and-destroy mission. “Next week?” asked Sabine. “Of course,” Martina replied, jabbing her umbrella at a passing taxi. Delivering airy kisses to each of Sabine's cheeks, she solemnly remarked, “If by then I've had a chance to cheat on Helmut, you'll be the first to know.”

On Wednesdays, Sabine did not return to the bookstore after lunch, a concession won from Geissler when Nicholas was an infant. When she first asked for a shorter working week – Wednesday afternoons off – the discussion faltered before it began. Shaking his head, he had lumbered away into the store's dark recesses, hiding there until closing time. But on her third attempt he relented, even though afterwards he sulked for weeks. Even now, ten years later, Geissler could still be strange on Wednesdays. When her stepmother died, Nicholas being older by then, Sabine transferred her few hours of free time each week from her son to her father.

Müller was suspicious at first. “I'm too busy,” he said when his daughter called to say she wanted to come around. She tried to make light of her plans. “Children have a right to see their parent.”

“You think you have a right to see me?” the old lawyer grumbled. “That's different. Your generation thinks mostly about inheritance rights. But visiting rights? They exist. Of course they do. In prisons. What are you trying to say? That I'm a prisoner of old age?” The daughter
laughed. The father continued. “I can't keep track of all the rights nowadays. Soon there will be a law that creates a right to die. Then someone will claim it has to be balanced with the right
not
to die. The world will then be divided into two camps – those that want to live forever and those that want to die forever. But if you insist, I suppose you can come. Don't stay long though. I'm very busy.” Although he tried not to show it, her father was delighted by the visit. Sabine could tell. It was the first afternoon they spent together since she was a girl and he was as playful as he used to be. It was because he was free, she thought, with her stepmother gone. Müller muttered complaints about each Wednesday afternoon that followed, whether they went walking in summer or visited museums in winter, but he was always on time.

Sabine's route from Einstein's took her down Kurfürstenstrasse, past the Urania in the direction of Charlottenburg. At the end of the last war, this area consisted of bombed-out, black shells of buildings rising out of piles of rubble. Since most were not worth salvaging, they got levelled. The new hurried blocks of flats replacing them were square and grey, hardly better than bunkers. In a way it was the war's destruction continuing. Sabine had long since ceased seeing the architectural dreariness. She preferred to focus on the old baroque Berlin that remained. A few of the apartment blocks had been faithfully restored. Their façades were decorated with sculptures of nymphs or other exotic figures, had balconies propped up by classical columns, and stood guarded by centaurs hewn from stone, one on each side of the great doorways. Sabine loved such buildings.

Huddling under the umbrella, she hurried to just such a house, on Fasanenstrasse, where she and Werner and Nicholas lived in a spacious apartment. Wet leaves drifted around. A smell of organic decay rose from the gutter. Wind blasts tried to steal her scarf. She was late. In the apartment, she scribbled a note to Nicholas telling him to take some
cookies and to be sweet to his papa. She called her father. She felt relief when he picked up the phone. “You're fine?” she asked.

“Of course not,” the bothered lawyer complained. “Work is piled up sky high.”

“I'm leaving now,” she said. “The Pergamon?”

“Sabine!” the father replied wearily. “We were there last year. No more Greek vases. Please. The cracks in the glazing remind me of myself.” He sounded raspy, as if he had sand in his voice. A flu coming on? It worried Sabine.

“The Egyptian Museum then?”

“Worse,” declared Müller. “Those mummies make me think I should have a cremation. And that bust of Nefertiti with the bad eye looks too sad. Would you like to be remembered for all eternity with an eye off like that?”

“The National Gallery? Casper David Friedrich is showing.”

“Him? Pictures of departing ships? You sure we can cope with poetic painting?”

“I'll meet you there,” Sabine told her father. She looked forward to it. Casper David Friedrich was a favourite.

As she balanced, first on one foot then the other, to pull on boots more suited to the weather, the phone rang. Annoyed, she hesitated, mentally running through a list of acquaintances who liked to talk. The ringing continued as she took her coat. It planted a seed of doubt. Geissler's store was full of books with characters whose lives were changed forever by tiny twists of fortune. Maybe Nicholas had been in an accident in school. She gave in. “
Ja?
” she said brusquely. A voice said her name. It was not quite German and she couldn't place it. She thought back to recent vacations, someone British? Or American? “
Wer ist da?
” she asked, impatience growing. She stiffened. “
Ich kenne Sie nicht
,” I don't know you, but she did. More words of explanation came
at her. Walls, floor, furniture, the world began spinning. She experienced a stressful, split-second of absolute inactivity, the same as when Nicholas frightened her with a trick. Finally she said, “
Wo bist Du?
” Where are you? It was a reflex only; she didn't want to know. Her mind, flung back through time, became disconnected from the present. Explanations kept arriving. She snapped, “
Was machst Du hier?
” What are you doing here? Then, as still more words pummelled her, she slammed down the phone and ran out.

Street noise wrapped around her like a blanket. She fell in with the crowd. Years ago, readying herself for this moment, she had practised a lecture, a bitter monologue. But now, with the opportunity there, she was dumbstruck, as if the intervening years had gagged her. As she walked, the shock subsiding, anger flooded in. The old monologue was coming back too. She couldn't help rehearsing it. Stepping into the U-bahn, a pimply boy with a bike cut her off. Sabine bared her fangs. He snarled back. “
Halt die Klappe
,” “shut your trap”, he told her. “We all pay the same fare.” She almost wrung his neck.

In a Berlin hotel room, Hanbury on the end of a dead phone connection sat numbed. Sabine's questions had come at him like a volley of punches. The parting words –
Go away!
– were a hard left hook that sent him to the canvas.

He did his best – fresh off the plane, a few hours rest, a deep last breath before dialling – and hoped for a good conversation. He melted when she answered. “
Was dann?
” That tone of impatience! When they lived in the Savignyplatz apartment, when Sabine had sunk away inside a book, she'd sting back just like that if he broke her concentration. Sometimes he sought her attention solely for the pleasure of hearing that instinctive indignation.
This is a great piece of music, Sabine
, he'd say, taking off the earphones.
You sure you don't want me to play it through the speakers?
The answer? A cold
Nein danke
. Though soon enough, as befits two lovers, it was followed by a pacifying smile.

That was Hanbury's purpose: reconciliation, offering her an olive
branch. He had planned to be enthusiastic, to tell Sabine her voice was
wonderful
, hoping similar words –
It's marvellous to hear from you!
– would echo back. But the exchange didn't get that far. The hostile rapid-fire questions gave it no chance. Her transition from
Sie
to
Du
, from formal to familiar address – when she seemed to want to know his location – it was momentarily encouraging.
I'm here. In a hotel
, he answered eagerly. But the Du must have been pure reflex, something from the past meaningless in the present, because when he passed her the news that he was planning to stay –
I'm in Berlin for good
– she became silent and the phone went dead. In those initial seconds, knowing he had miscalculated, Hanbury recoiled. A cold hand reached in. It squeezed his heart and soul until the hopes of the preceding weeks were crushed. The hand stirred some more and placed a dead weight in his gut. Disorientation, pessimism, failure. Feelings he knew from the other places.

Earlier in the day at the airport – Sturm, the consulate driver, attending – the arrival had gone smoothly enough. Sturm didn't know exactly what to look for, but the solitary figure marching through customs was easy to pick out. After introductions Sturm took the suitcase and asked politely about the flight. The new consul replied in German. He claimed the language had become rusty, but he looked forward to bringing it back. We'll speak German, he proposed.
Wir sprechen Deutsch
. It came out sounding like a ground rule.

Sturm deferred. “
Wie Sie wollen, Herr Konsul
.” As the consul wished. Sturm didn't want to object to anything at the very start. All the same, he was a little piqued. Half his working life had been spent in England chauffeuring Lord Halcourt around, and Sturm's mimic of an
Oxfordshire accent wasn't all that bad. The regulars in Sturm's local banged their glasses on the table and laughed until the tears flowed when he pronounced
tea time
, or
port, please
, with Lord Halcourt's upper class, crusty intonation. Sturm liked to show his English off. Outside the terminal the new consul remarked that during the descent the clouds turned black. “How long has it been like this?” he asked. “I expect it will improve,
Herr Konsul
.” Until the day he died Lord Halcourt expected optimism from his chauffeur.