The Innocent (7 page)

One of the workmen returned and began searching the room. Leonard signed and said, “That was a good evening. Thanks.” He wanted Bob Glass to ask him about Maria, to acknowledge his triumph. But the American had turned his back and was looking at the shelves. “As soon as they’re up, they’ll need to go under dustsheets. I’ll have some brought around.” The fitter was on his hands and knees staring at the floor. With the toe of his brogues, Glass pointed to a bradawl.

“That really was quite a place,” Leonard insisted. “In fact, I’m feeling a bit shaky this morning.”

The man picked up the tool and left. Glass kicked the door shut after him. From the tilt of the beard, Leonard knew he was in for a telling-off.

“Listen to me. You think this is unimportant, opening boxes and burning the packing. You think it’s something the janitor should do. Well, you’re wrong. Everything, but
everything
on this project is important, every detail. Is there any good reason why you should let a craftsman know that you and I were out drinking together last night? Think it through, Leonard. What would a senior liaison officer be doing out with a technical assistant from the British Post Office? This craftsman is a soldier. He could be in a bar with his buddy, and they could be talking it over in a harmless, curious sort of way. Sitting on the next stool is a bright German kid who’s learned to keep his ears open. There are hundreds of them all over town. Then he’s straight down to the Café Prag or wherever with something to sell. Fifty marks’ worth, twice that if he’s lucky. We’re digging right under their feet, we’re in their sector. If they get wise they’ll shoot to kill. They’d be well within their rights.”

Glass came closer. Leonard was uncomfortable, and not only because of the other man’s proximity. He was embarrassed for Glass. The performance was overdone, and Leonard felt the burden of being its sole audience. Once again, he was unsure how to set his face. He could smell the instant coffee on Glass’s breath.

“I want you to get into a whole new state of mind on this. Anything you’re about to do, pause and think of the consequences. This is a war, Leonard, and you’re a soldier in it.”

When Glass had gone, Leonard waited, then opened his door and looked both ways down the corridor before hurrying to the water fountain. The water was refrigerated and tasted of metal. He drank for minutes on end. When he returned to the room, Glass was there. He shook his head and held up the key Leonard had left behind. He pressed it into the Englishman’s hand and closed his fingers around it and left without a word. Leonard blushed through his hangover. To steady himself, he reached into his pocket for the address. He leaned against the
boxes and read it slowly.
Erstes Hinterhaus, fünfter Stock rechts, Adalbertstrasse 84
. He ran his hand along the surface of the box. The pale cardboard was almost skin color. His heart was a ratchet; with each thud he was wound tighter, harder. How would he open all these boxes in this state? He pressed his cheek against the cardboard. Maria. He needed relief, how else could he clear his mind? But the possibility of Glass returning again unexpectedly was equally unbearable. The absurdity, the shame, the security implications—he could not think which was worse.

With a moan, he put the scrap away and reached for a box on top of the pile and heaved it to the floor. He drew the hunting knife from its sheath and plunged it in. The cardboard yielded easily, like flesh, and he felt and heard something brittle shatter at the knife’s tip. He experienced a thrill of panic. He cut away the lid, pulled clear handfuls of wood shavings and compressed sheets of corrugated paper. When he had cut away the cheesecloth wrapping around the tape recorder, he could see a long diagonal scratch across the area that would be covered by the spools. One of the control knobs had split in two. With difficulty he cut away the rest of the cardboard. He lifted the machine out, fitted a plug and carried it up the library steps to the topmost shelf. The broken knob he put in his pocket. He could fill in a form for a replacement.

Pausing only to remove his jacket, Leonard set about opening the next box. An hour later there were three more machines on the shelf. The sealing tape was easily cut, and so too were the lids. But the corners were heavily reinforced with layers of cardboard and staples that resisted the knife. He decided to work without a break until he had unpacked his first ten machines. He had them all on their shelves by lunchtime. There was a pile of flattened cardboard by the door five feet high and beside it a heap of wood shavings that reached up to the light switch.

The canteen was deserted but for one table of black tunneling sergeants, who paid him no attention. He ordered steak and french fries and lemonade again. The sergeants spoke in
low murmurs and chuckles. Leonard strained to overhear. He discerned the word
shaft
several times and assumed they were being indiscreet by talking shop. He had just finished eating when Glass came in and sat down at his table and asked how the work was going. Leonard described his progress. “It’s going to take longer than you thought,” he concluded.

Glass said, “It sounds right to me. You’ll do ten in the morning, ten in the afternoon, ten in the evening. Thirty a day. Five days. Where’s the problem?”

Leonard’s heart was racing because he had decided to speak his mind. He downed his lemonade. “Well, actually, as you know, my field is circuitry, not box opening. I’m prepared to do anything within reason because I know it’s important. But I do expect to have some time to myself in the evenings.”

At first Glass did not reply, nor did he show any expression. He watched Leonard, waiting for more. Finally he said, “You want to talk about hours? And job demarcation? Is this the British Commie trade union talk we keep hearing about? From the moment you got your clearance, your job here is to do what you’re told. If you don’t want the job, I’ll cable Dollis Hill and have them recall you.” Then he stood and his expression relaxed. He touched Leonard on the shoulder and said before walking away, “Stick with it, pal.”

And so for a week or more Leonard did nothing but stab open cardboard boxes and burn them and fit a plug on each machine, label it and stow it on the shelves. He worked a fifteen-hour day. He spent hours commuting. From Platanenallee he took the U-Bahn as far as Grenzallee, where he caught the 46 bus to Rudow. From there it was a twenty-minute walk along a charmless stretch of country road. He ate in the canteen and at a
Schnellimbiss
on Reichskanzlerplatz. He could think about her while he traveled or poked at burning cardboard boxes with his long pole or stood up to his diet of bratwurst. He knew that if only he had a little more leisure and were a little less tired he could be obsessed, he could be a man in love. He needed to sit down without dozing off and give the matter mental devotion. He needed that time edged with
boredom in which fantasy could flourish. The work itself obsessed him; even the repetition of demeaning low-level tasks was mesmerizing for one of his orderly nature, and presented a genuine distraction.

Dressed like Father Time in a school play, in a borrowed bush hat, an Army cape that reached to his ankles, and overshoes, and equipped with a long wooden pole, he spent many hours tending his fire. The incinerator turned out to be a perpetual, feeble bonfire, inadequately protected on three sides against the wind and rain by a low brick wall. Nearby were two dozen dustbins and beyond them a workshop. Across a muddy track was a loading bay where Army trucks backed in and out all day with a grind of low gears. He was under strict instructions not to leave the fire until it had burned right down each time. Even with the help of gasoline, there were some sheets that could do little more than smolder.

In his room he was obsessed by the diminishing pile of boxes on the floor and the growing number of machines on the shelves. He persuaded himself he was emptying the boxes for Maria. This was the test of endurance, the labor he had to perform to be worthy. This was the work he dedicated to her. He tore into the cardboard with his hunting knife and destroyed it for her sake. He also thought how much bigger his room would be when his task was complete, and of how he would rearrange his work space. He planned lighthearted notes to Maria, suggesting with skillful unconcern that they meet in a pub near her flat. By the time he was home in Platanenallee, not so long before midnight, he was too tired to remember the precise order of words, and too tired to begin again.

Years later, Leonard had no difficulty at all recalling Maria’s face. It shone for him, the way faces do in certain old paintings. In fact there was something almost two-dimensional about it; the hairline was high on the forehead, and at the other end of this long and perfect oval, the jaw was both delicate and forceful, so that when she tilted her head in a characteristic and endearing way, her face appeared as a disk, more of a plane
than a sphere, such as a master artist might draw with one inspired stroke. The hair itself was peculiarly fine, like a baby’s, and often wriggled free of the childish clips women wore then. Her eyes were serious, though not mournful, and were green or gray, according to the light. It was not a lively, animated face. She was a habitual daydreamer, often distracted by a line of thought she was unwilling to share, and her most typical expression was one of dreamy watchfulness, the head slightly lifted and tipped an inch or so to one side, the forefinger of her left hand playing with her lower lip. If one spoke to her after a silence, she might jump. It was the sort of face, the sort of manner, onto which men were likely to project their own requirements. One could read womanly power into her silent abstraction, or find a childlike dependency in her quiet attentiveness. On the other hand, it was possible she actually embodied these contradictions. For example, her hands were small, and she cut her fingernails short, like a child’s, and never painted them. But she did take care to paint her toenails a lurid red or orange. Her arms were thin, and it was surprising what slight loads she could not raise, what unjammed windows she could not shift. And yet her legs, though slim, were muscular and powerful, perhaps from all the cycling she did before the gloomy treasurer scared her off and her bike was stolen from the communal cellar.

For the twenty-five-year-old Leonard, who had not seen her for five days, who struggled all day with cardboard and wood shavings, and whose only token was the smaller piece of cardboard bearing her address, the face was elusive. The more intensely he summoned it, the more provocative was its disintegration. In fantasy he had only an outline to play with, and even that wavered in the heat of his scrutiny. There were scenes he wanted to play out, approaches that had to be tested, and all his memory would permit was a certain presence, sweet and alluring, but invisible. And the inner ear was deaf to the way she had intoned an English sentence. He began to wonder if he would recognize her in the street. All he knew for certain was the effect on himself of spending ninety minutes
with her at a table in a dance hall. He had loved the face. Now the face was gone and all that remained was the love, with too little to feed on. He had to see her again.

He had lost count of the days. It was on the eighth or ninth that Glass let him rest. All the machines had been unpacked, and twenty-six of them had been tested and fitted with signal activation. Leonard slept in an extra two hours, dozing in an erotic fug of bed warmth. Then he shaved and took a bath, and with only a towel around his waist strolled about the apartment, rediscovering it and feeling grand and proprietorial. He heard the scrape of the decorators’ stepladder downstairs. It was a workday for everyone else, Monday perhaps. He had time at last to experiment with his ground coffee. It was not an outright success, with the grounds and undissolved milk powder rolling with the convection in the cup, but he was happy to be breakfasting alone on Belgian chocolate, poking his bare feet between the blades of the scalding radiator and planning his campaign. There was a letter from home to read. He opened it casually with a knife, as though receiving letters was what he did every morning at breakfast.
“Just a line to say thanks for yours and glad you’re settling in …”

He had it in mind to work on his undemanding note to Maria, but it did not seem right to start that until he was fully dressed. Then, when he was, and the letter was written
(You were kind enough to give me your address last week when we met at the Rest, so I hope you won
’t
be troubled to hear from me, or feel obliged to reply …)
, the thought of waiting at least three days for her answer was more than he could bear. By then he would be back in the dream world of his windowless room and fifteen-hour day.

He poured a second cup of coffee. The grounds had sunk. He had another plan. He would deliver a note for her to find when she came in from work. He would write that he happened to be passing and would be in a certain
Kneipe
on a certain nearby street at six o’clock. He could fill the blanks in later. He set to immediately. Half a dozen drafts later he was still not satisfied. He wanted to be eloquent and casual. It was important
that she should think he had scribbled the note as he stood outside her door, that he had called by hoping to find her in and only then remembered that she went out to work. He did not want her to feel under pressure, and, more important, he did not want to appear earnest and foolish.

By lunchtime his attempts lay all about him and the final copy was in his hands.
I happened to be in your area so I thought I’d pop up and say hello
. He folded it into an envelope, which he sealed in error. He took the knife and opened it, imagining himself to be her, alone at her table, just in from work. He spread the letter out and read it twice, as she might. It was perfectly judged. He found another envelope and stood. There were all the hours of the afternoon before him, but he knew there was nothing he could do to stop himself leaving now. He was in the bedroom changing into his best suit. He was taking the worn scrap of cardboard from yesterday’s trousers, even though he had memorized the address. He had the street plan opened out on the unmade bed. He was thinking of his bright red knitted tie. He was unbuttoning his traveling shoe-care kit and buffing his best black shoes as he studied his route.