The Safety Net (16 page)

“I was also just thinking of the countess, I used to sit with her up here sometimes. She’d send for me and open up her little bag of raw coffee beans, roast a handful in the earthenware pot, I had to grind the freshly roasted coffee, then she would pour on the hot water—and we would sit there enjoying the aromas of Arabia, looking out on the park, on the vegetable beds, the potato fields, on the tarred black roofs of the orangery where at my suggestion we were growing mushrooms, and talk about your family.… She spoke rather contemptuously of her son, also quite openly about Gerlind, who at that time was traipsing around Holland, and she would say to me so often: ‘I suppose you two will live here one day’—how could she know that, have even an inkling, when you were just a raw, impecunious lieutenant in the artillery—and I, well, I was a mixture of working girl, bookbinder, secretary, maid, housekeeper, friend—yes, she was fond of us, but how could she know …?”

“She wished it, wanted it, may have had a hunch, may
have thought that we might lease the place and work it—she couldn’t have known what would really happen. She never had much confidence in my own efficiency—quite rightly, too, I have never been efficient—but I was thinking of something quite different, of antlers, Defregger, and Katharina von Bora.…”

“Yes,” said Käthe, “I often think of that too, and always with pleasure, yes—and not because you got me out of that ghastly chaos there; not only because of that … you took away my fear of—well, I was very happy, after all the things one hears in hospitals … there’s no telling how something like that will end, how it will start. And you had such a bad reputation, you know, in that respect … it was quite delectable.”

“What was?”

“It was delectable, but let’s not have any confessions here … don’t worry, I don’t expect any confessions. The countess was almost totally ignorant about Holger, thought he was stupid, which he never was—he was never stupid, never. But she knew more about Gerlind than I’ve ever known about Sabine. And yet I was in Sabine’s confidence, one would imagine.”

“Sabine?” That touched a nerve, the fear in her voice, in her eyes. She hadn’t known fear even when Rolf had behaved so stupidly.

“Yes, Sabine,” she said, “the child she’s expecting is not Fischer’s. She’s in her sixth month, and five months ago Fischer was away the whole time.”

He pushed aside his teacup, put down the piece of toast, reached for the malachite box: “I suppose it’s no use my saying ‘No, no, not Sabine’—no, surely not Sabine, and when I confess that I have wished for her to have a lover I realize the thoughtlessness of that wish—because it’s Sabine, because she was always such a serious, devout child.…”

“And yet you know that religious devotion doesn’t guarantee a thing. Probably even Kohlschröder is still devout.”

“From whom—with whom?”

“I didn’t ask her because I know she won’t tell me. Let’s hope he isn’t married. I’ve brought her here, she’s with Kit in
the guest apartment. She won’t and she can’t go on living with Fischer—she’s watching TV at the moment, and it’s a bad sign, when she watches TV—some stupid program that happens to be on the screen.…”

“Does she intend to go to the other man—does she …?”

“I don’t know, she doesn’t know. Only one thing is certain, and that’s serious: she’s through with Erwin. By the way, I’ve had to move Eva Klensch, Sabine simply must have the apartment now. Blurtmehl is too bashful to have her sleep with him. Kulgreve has moved her to the second floor, I believe, into Bleibl’s room—by the way, we’ll have to warn Bleibl, you know—I must talk to you, not only about Bleibl.”

“You don’t need to whisper, speak up! Everything is monitored, it has to be. We might have secrets that conceal clues—if they really want to protect us, they have to listen to and analyze every nuance. Remember Kortschede and his young tough, who whispered to him one night: ‘I belong to the hard core, I am the hard core, I’m the hardest core you can imagine’—and they had let him slip through because Kortschede vouched for him. It turns out that the boy is actually the head of a gang of criminals, the toughest bunch you can possibly imagine. They’ve picked up the whole lot—we simply have to endure these things, whether one’s a homo or not. Can you imagine all the awkward problems that arise at a closed conference like this: women, for instance? Some of the men used to send out for girls or bring them along, not only hookers and stewardesses but also the kind we call girlfriends—hardly ever their wives. Particularly Bleibl—they say he can’t spend the night without a woman—fair enough, he was satisfied with casuals, he’d put them into a taxi, a bit rumpled, and send them home. The male pickup problem that became such a disaster for Kortschede is a new one for us, it may be that they smuggled them in as secretaries, chauffeurs, assistants. I never had any inkling, never knew, not even with Kortschede—but of course he’s the very opposite of Bleibl: discreet, suave, reserved, apprehensive, although he ruled over an even greater empire
than Bleibl’s. But these security measures have, of course, put an end to both, after all you can’t take every casual girl or every casual boy and give them a thorough going-over before letting them in: some of them come from East Germany, some of them are intellectual and liberated hookers who are considered particularly dangerous—they hear, see, discover, and analyze too much. And so now we have those ‘dry nights,’ as Bleibl calls them, evenings that have to be spent sitting together, being bored, watching TV, playing a bit of cards. Music perhaps—or a talk, on tape of course—and then some of them start belting out wartime stuff, Nazi songs, till Bleibl leaves for some ‘house’—and the security guards have to go along to the ‘house.’ I’d like to know what goes on in their heads; at any rate, there are no secrets anymore—everything out in the open, eye and ear—and after all we, that’s to say, we of the Association, are no worse skirt-chasers than anybody else.”

“And the Fischers, I mean both, senior and junior?”

“Oh no, my dear, no gossip there. I won’t tell you a thing about old Fischer, not a thing—read it in his face, his mouth, his hands—and as for Erwin, you can follow his love life in the weeklies, and I’m willing to bet it’s not half as riotous as it’s made out to be. Even Russian women are said to find his charms irresistible, and he has publicly aired his views on the specific erotic qualities of the women of East Germany, who produce more than half of his Beehive stuff. And he
—he
is the man Sabine insisted on having because, apart from whatever else he might be, he’s also a Catholic. Now she has him—and he doesn’t have her anymore.”

“That sounds as though you were relieved, and the poor child is taking it so hard.”

“All the same, I am relieved. He actually wrote to the police suggesting that everyone be automatically listed for investigation who named a child Holger after November ’seventy-four. Even the most rabid bloodhounds there found that a bit extreme—after all, Holger is an ancient, honorable name, Old Swedish or Icelandic, meaning something like: island dweller
with spear.”

“I must say, you’ve done your homework.”

“Well, I do have two grandsons by that name. And if Sabine should have a boy—well, Holger’s a fine name.”

“It’s no laughing matter, Fritz—look at your daughter, she’s so serious it’s destroying her. I’m sure she really loves that man—that—the one whose child it is.…”

“Yes, you’re right, and I won’t joke about it—then there’s still the problem of Kit—Fischer will mobilize a whole battalion of lawyers, and Zummerling will supply him with headlines free of charge. One thing is sure, she won’t be voted the ‘most charming child of the year,’ I take it.…”

“There we go—Zummerling again—can’t you people think of anything else? I find him very nice, I’ve sat next to him twice at dinner, he was a real charmer—and Bleibl’s not so bad either, he has more charm than he thinks, and is concerned about his two sons, though unfortunately we almost never see them.”

“I grant you Zummerling is charming, a charming person—and yet without batting an eye he would grab my whole clutch of newspapers for himself with a single stranglehold. It’s the era of nice monsters, Käthe, and we must count ourselves among them. They’re all nice, Veronica’s nice too, Beverloh was nice, he was a regular paragon of niceness.…”

“It wouldn’t have taken much for Sabine to marry him—I shudder to think of it—just imagine, loyal as she is she would have gone with him.”

“Hm, she doesn’t appear to be all
that
loyal.”

“Of course she’s loyal—and Veronica is loyal too! That’s the terrible thing about them, that’s what’s driving them all into this misery. They have to go on, they have to stick with it. And if Sabine Fischer had merely been unfaithful to Fischer she wouldn’t be suffering as much, she would regard it as a lapse, confess—and finish; the point is, she is being true to herself … she can’t be other than she is and transfer her loyalty to someone else. She’s the type whose heart is broken by loyalty—if
only I knew who it was—she says she wants to work, live and work somewhere anonymously.…”

“Anonymously! That’ll be a pipe dream for a while. Fischer has seen to that, he’s spread pictures of her in every rotten paper, in every Beehive catalogue, in
Sport and Society
, you can even see her in the business supplement. It’ll be at least a year, I’d say, before she can think of anonymity.”

“Can’t you find a spot for her somewhere on the paper? She’ll do what your sons never wanted to do, work
on
the paper
for
the paper.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I might send her to Paris to work without pay for Schneiderplin—her French is so good, she could work her way up, become a correspondent. But with two small children—we would have to pay for a maid.…”

“About Fischer she said: never, never, never again. As for the other man, she doesn’t mention him at all. I must say I’m curious—but I suppose guessing won’t help.…”

“I’m curious too, and the only thing I’m sure of is that it’s nobody from the Fischer clique, where everything is now synchronized with porn and pop and dope—I imagine she has found a serious, old-fashioned lover with whom she has committed old-fashioned adultery—perhaps she was longing for the good old sins, the way others long for the good old days.…”

“For which we have never longed.”

“No, never: the good old days, for her that’s Eickelhof. For me it was never Eickelhof, never Tolmshoven, it wasn’t my childhood home, nor yours. I was too happy with the good new days, which are now over, Käthe. The good new days will be the old days we long for. What’s coming now is the very, very new era which nobody will look back on with longing.”

“Rolf’s era?”

“No, not Rolf’s. Perhaps it will come after this very new era—not Herbert’s era, not Sabine’s or Kortschede’s. It is Beverloh’s era and Amplanger’s era—sometimes I think of Beverloh sitting there, figuring, figuring, figuring—like when the barrier
is lowered, when the baker’s van starts off, and how it must be held up for how long so that it has to wait at the barrier and the genuine cake can be exchanged for the ‘hot’ one. Of him sitting there and figuring—and smiling, smiling, casually stroking Holger’s hair, giving Veronica a friendly kiss—smiling the way Amplanger smiles. It always turns me ice-cold, as if someone had thrown me out over the Arctic Ocean. No, the good new days have imperceptibly become the old ones, Käthe, and it is their era, also Bleibl’s era, who in his own way is timeless. Sabine is in for a hard time, worse if that man is married—that wretched confessional, which she couldn’t break away from, still hasn’t destroyed her conscience. And of course she had to get pregnant right away, when even the priests know how to do it without having to worry about pregnancy—if they were smart they would found a monastery where adultery can be committed in the truly old-fashioned way, where women find a lover—after all, even illegitimate children are still children. But, Käthe my dear, now I’d like to go out for a bit, get away from here, even if it’s under escort.…”

“No more meetings, no more appointments today?”

“I don’t have to take possession of my big office till the day after tomorrow. Then I’ll also have to put in an appearance at the paper, have to be there when they decide what to do with the
Gerbsdorfer Bote.”

“You’re afraid of that?”

“Of that, yes. I’ve lost all proper perspective on all the papers of which I’m supposed to be the lord and master. I’m afraid of those nine hundred square feet of office where nothing happens, where I do a bit of signing, drink a few cups of tea. I’m afraid of Amplanger senior. Not that he’s cheating me, he doesn’t need to—he’s had a whole collection of blown-up mastheads hung on the wall facing my desk, all the ones we’ve captured since 1945. He calls me the license Napoleon without an army—and tomorrow the masthead of the
Gerbsdorfer Bote
will hang there: one more captured province, county, or city.…”

“Amazing what a little English major’s actions can lead
to—with a piece of paper that is then called a license—have you ever found out what became of him?”

“Two weeks before he was due to retire he was killed on Cyprus—for the sake of his wife’s pension he was posthumously promoted to lieutenant colonel; his name was Weller, he was one of those very dry fellows, a Labour man of course. I sometimes think of him when I’m sitting in my huge office—with nothing to do but approve Amplanger’s policy, which I do—I can’t hold back the growth and proliferation—my function is that of headhunter. By means of a license, empires are founded that grow on their own, a license, newsprint, a few good people on the staff—all that’s lacking is the crown prince, and the head collecting could go on.”

“The crown prince chose to throw rocks and set fire to cars—I wonder whether he really intends to stay in that neck of the woods, growing tomatoes and picking apples to the end of time. Bleibl was saying the other day that he would have become one of our most dynamic bankers, if he hadn’t … was saying that he had experience, organizing ability, an eye for relationships, political, economic.… It almost sounded as if he were envious. He praised Rolf’s cool, organizational intelligence.”