The Innocent (15 page)

They met again on the ground floor by the lift shaft two days later. It was not quite dark. Leonard had come in from Altglienicke by way of Kreuzberg and his customary two liters of lager. The lights in the lobby had not been turned on. When Leonard reached the man’s side, the lift had just risen to the fifth floor. In the time it took to come back down, the man offered his hand, and without smiling or, as far as Leonard could tell, altering his expression at all, said, “George Blake. My wife and I live right under your feet.”

Leonard gave his name and said, “Do I make a lot of noise?”

The lift came and they stepped inside. Blake pushed the fourth and fifth buttons, and when they were moving looked from Leonard’s face to his shoes and said in a neutral way, “Carpet slippers would help.”

“Well, sorry,” Leonard said with as much aggression as he dared. “I’ll get some.”

His neighbor nodded and pressed his lips together, as if to say,
That’s the spirit
The door slid back and he went off without another word.

Leonard reached his apartment resolved to pound the floors
harder than ever. But he could not quite bring himself to it. He hated to be in the wrong. He trod heavily along his hall and took his shoes off in the kitchen.

Over the months that followed he occasionally saw Mrs. Blake about the place. She had a beautiful face and a very straight back, and although she smiled at Leonard and said hello, he avoided her. She made him feel shabby and awkward. He overheard her talking in the lobby and thought she sounded intimidating. Her husband became a little friendlier over the summer months. He said he worked for the Foreign Office at the Olympic Stadium, and he was politely interested when Leonard told him he worked for the Post Office, installing internal lines for the Army. Thereafter, he never failed to say on the few occasions they passed each other in the lobby or shared the lift, “How are the internal lines?” with a smile that made Leonard wonder if he was being mocked.

At the warehouse the tap had been declared a success. One hundred and fifty tape recorders stopped and started day and night, triggered by the amplified Russian signals. The place emptied rapidly. The horizontal diggers, the tunneling sergeants, had long departed. The British vertical men had left just as the excitement was growing, and no one noticed them go. All kinds of other people—experts whose fields, it seemed, were known only to themselves—drifted away, as did the senior Dollis Hill staff. MacNamee called in once or twice a week. All that remained were the men monitoring or distributing the take, and these were the busiest and least communicative. There were also a few technicians and engineers keeping the systems running, and the security people. Leonard sometimes found himself eating in an empty canteen. His instructions were that he should stay on indefinitely. He carried out routine checks on the integrity of the circuits and replaced faulty valves in the tape recorders.

Glass stayed away from the warehouse, and at first Leonard was relieved. Until he was reconciled with Maria, he did not want to hear news of her through Glass. He did not want Glass to have the power of an intermediary over him. Then he began
to find excuses to walk past the American’s office several times a day. Leonard was often at the water fountain. He was certain that Maria would be cleared, but he had his doubts about Glass. The interviews would be opportunities for seduction, surely. If Maria was still angry and Glass was sufficiently energetic, the worst might be happening even as Leonard stood outside the locked room. Several times he almost phoned Glass from home. But what was he to ask? How would he bear the confirmation, or believe the denial? Perhaps the very question would seem to Glass a form of incitement.

As the weather grew warmer in May, the off-duty Americans set up softball games in the rough ground between the warehouse and the perimeter fence. They were under strict instructions to wear the insignia of radar operatives. The Vopos over by the cemetery watched the games through field glasses, and when a long ball sailed over the sector boundary they ran forward willingly and lobbed it back. The players cheered, and the Vopos waved good-naturedly. Leonard sat out with his back to the wall watching the games. One reason he refused to join in was that softball looked like nothing more than rounders for grown-ups. The other reason was that he was useless at any game with a ball. In this one the throws were hard and low and pitilessly accurate, and the catches were all taken in an obligatory offhand manner.

Every day now there were hours of idleness. He often leaned against the wall in the sun below an open window. One of the Army clerks propped a wireless on the sill and broadcast AFN to the players. When a lively song came up, the pitcher might pat out a rhythm on his knees before a throw, and the men out on the bases would snap their fingers and practice little shuffles. Leonard had never seen popular music taken so seriously. Only one performer could temporarily halt the game. If it was Bill Haley and the Comets, and especially if it was “Rock Around the Clock,” there would be shouts for more volume, and players would drift toward the window. For two and a half minutes no one could strike out. To Leonard, the unrestrained exhortation to dance for hours on end seemed
puerile. It was a counting song that girls with a skipping rope might chant in the playground. It was “Hickory Dickory Dock,” it was “One potato, two potato, three potato, four….” But with repetition, the thumping rhythm and the virile insistence of the guitar began to stir him, and he moved from hating the song to pretending to hate it.

Soon he was glad when the mail clerk crossed his office at a cue from the announcer and turned up the volume. More than half a dozen players would come and stand around where he was sitting. They were mostly sentries in their late teens, clean and huge, with bristling heads. All of them knew his first name by now, and they were always friendly. For them the song seemed to have more than musical importance. It was an anthem, a rite; it bound these players and separated them from the older men who stood waiting on the field. This state of affairs lasted only three weeks before the song lost its power. It was played loudly, but it did not interrupt the game. Then it was ignored altogether. A replacement was needed, but it did not come until April of the following year.

It was at the height of Bill Haley’s triumph at the warehouse, just as the young Americans were jostling around the open window one afternoon, that John MacNamee came looking for his spy. Leonard saw him walking from the administration offices toward the din. MacNamee had not yet seen him, and there was just time to dissociate himself from what the government scientist was bound to despise. However, he felt a certain defiance, and a degree of loyalty to the group. He was an honorary member. He compromised by standing and pushing his way through to the edge of the crowd, where he waited. As soon as MacNamee saw him, Leonard went toward him, and together they set off for a walk along the perimeter fence.

MacNamee had his lit pipe between his baby teeth. He leaned toward his charge. “I suppose you’ve had no luck.”

“Not really,” Leonard said. “I’ve been in five different offices with time to look around. Nothing. I’ve made approaches to various technical people. They’re all very security-conscious. I couldn’t press too hard.”

The truth was he had had one unsuccessful minute in Glass’s office. He did not find it easy to fall into conversation with strangers. He had tried a couple of locked doors, that was all.

MacNamee said, “Did you have a go at that chap Weinberg?”

Leonard knew the one, a whippet-shaped American with a skullcap who played chess with himself in the canteen. “Yes. He didn’t want to talk.”

They stopped and MacNamee said, “Ah well …” They were looking toward the Schönefelder Chaussee, more or less along the line of the tunnel. “That’s too bad,” MacNamee said. He spoke with an unfamiliar tightness, Leonard thought, a deliberation that seemed more than disappointment.

Leonard said, “I did try.”

MacNamee looked away while he spoke. “We’ve got other possibilities, of course, but you keep trying.” His flat emphasis on this last word, an echo of Leonard’s, suggested skepticism, an accusation of some sort.

With a farewell grunt, MacNamee set off for the administration section. There came to Leonard an image of Maria walking away from him too, across the rough ground. Maria and MacNamee, showing him their backs. Across the grass the Americans were already back at their game. He felt his failure as a weakness in his legs. He had been about to walk back to his place by the window, but for the moment he did not feel like it, and remained where he was, out by the wire.

L
eonard stepped out of the lift onto his landing the following evening and found Maria waiting for him by his door. She was standing in the corner, her coat buttoned up, both hands on the strap of her handbag, which hung down in front of her, covering her knees. It might have been an attitude of contrition, but she held her head up and her eyes were on his. She defied him to assume that by seeking him out she had forgiven him. It was almost dusk, and very little natural light reached the landing through the east-facing window. Leonard had pushed the timed light switch at
his elbow, and it had begun to tick. The sound resembled the panicked heartbeat of a minute creature. The doors slid shut behind him and the lift sank away. He said her name, but he made no move toward her. The single overhead light made deep shadows under her eyes and nose and gave her face a hard appearance. She had not spoken yet, she had not moved. She was staring at him, waiting for whatever he had to say. The buttoned coat and formal grip on the handbag hinted that she was ready to leave if she was not satisfied.

Leonard was flustered. Too many half-sentences were crowding before him. He had been handed a gift he could easily destroy in the unwrapping. The light-switch mechanism by him raced softly, making it harder to settle on a coherent thought. He said her name again—the sound simply left his throat—and took a half-step toward her. From the shaft came the rumble of the cables hauling their burden upward, the sigh of the lift settling on the floor below, then the doors opening and Mr. Blake’s voice, urgent and muted. It was abruptly cut off by the sound of his front door closing.

Nothing in her expression had changed. Finally he said, “Did you get those letters?”

She blinked in acknowledgment. The three letters of love and breathless apology and the chocolates and the flowers were not to be considered here. He said, “What I did was very stupid.” She blinked again. This time the lashes touched for a fraction longer, suggesting a softening, a form of encouragement. He had his tone now, simplicity. It was not so difficult. “I ruined everything. I’ve been desperate since you went. I wanted to come and find you in Spandau, but I was ashamed. I didn’t know how you would ever be able to forgive me. I was ashamed of approaching you in the street. I love you very much, I’ve been thinking about you all the time. I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me. It was a horrible and stupid thing …”

Leonard had never in his life spoken about himself and his feelings in such a way. Nor had he even thought in this manner. Quite simply, he had never acknowledged in himself a
serious emotion. He had never gone much further than saying he quite liked last night’s film, or hated the taste of lukewarm milk. In fact, until now, it was as though he had never really had any serious feelings. Only now, as he came to name them—shame, desperation, love—could he really claim them for his own and experience them. His love for the woman standing by his door was brought into relief by the word, and sharpened the shame he felt for assaulting her. As he gave it a name, the unhappiness of the past three weeks was clarified. He was enlarged, unburdened. Now that he could name the fog he had been moving through, he was at last visible to himself.

But he was not in the clear. Maria had not shifted her position or her gaze. He said, after a pause, “Please forgive me.” At that moment the time mechanism clicked and the light went out. He heard Maria breathe in sharply. When his eyes had adjusted he could see the gleam of the window behind him reflected on the clasp of her handbag and in the whites of her eyes as she seemed to glance away. He took a risk and came away from the light switch without pressing it. His elation gave him confidence. He had behaved badly; now he was going to put things right. What was demanded of him was truth and simplicity. He would no longer sleepwalk through his misery, he would name it accurately and in that way dispel it. And with the opportunity provided by this near darkness, he was about to re-establish by means of touch the old bond between them, the simple, truthful bond. The words could come later. For now, all that was required, he was convinced, was that they should hold hands, perhaps even kiss lightly.

As he crossed toward her she moved at last, back into the corner of the landing, deeper into the shadows. When he came close he put out his hand, but she was not quite there. He had brushed her sleeve. Again, he caught sight of the whites of her eyes as her head appeared to duck away. He found her elbow and held it gently. He whispered her name. Her arm was crooked tight and unyielding, and through the material of her coat he could feel her trembling. Now he was close, he was aware of her breathing fast and shallow. There was a sweaty
taste in the air. For an instant he thought that she had mounted swiftly to the extremities of sexual arousal, a thought rendered instantly blasphemous when he moved his hand to her shoulder and she half called out, half screamed an inarticulate sound, followed by
“Mach das Licht an. Bitte!
Turn on the light!” and then, “Please, please.” He placed a second hand on her shoulder. He shook her gently, reassuringly. All he wanted to do was wake her from this nightmare. He had to remind her who he was really, the young innocent she had sweetly coaxed and brought on. She screamed again, this time at full strength and piercingly. He backed off. A door opened on the floor below. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs that ran around the lift shaft.