Absolute Friends (32 page)

"I propose that we drink sparingly, Teddy, if that is acceptable to you. It is possible we have a long night ahead of us," says Sasha.

The Wiener schnitzel, predictably, is undercooked. In his excitement, Sasha has not waited for the fat to heat.

"But you received my letters, Teddy? Even if you failed to answer them."

"Indeed yes."

"All of them?"

"I presume so."

"Did you read them?"

"Naturally."

"My newspaper articles also?"

"Stirring stuff. Admired them."

"But you still weren't moved to reply."

"It seems not."

"Is this because we were not friends when we parted in Bad Godesberg?"

"Oh, we were probably friends. Just a bit tired. Spying takes the stuffing out of you, I always say," Mundy replies, and gives a bark of laughter because Sasha doesn't always recognize a joke, and anyway it's not a very good one.

"I drink to you, Teddy. I salute you in these wonderful, terrible times."

"And to you, old boy."

"All these years, all over the world, wherever I was, teaching or being thrown out, or locked up, you have been my secret confessor. Without you--there were places, times--I could have believed that the struggle was hopeless."

"So you wrote. Very kind of you. Not at all necessary," Mundy replies gruffly.

"And you enjoyed the recent little war, I hope?"

"Every minute. Couldn't get enough of it."

"The most necessary in history, the most moral and Christian--and the most unequal?"

"It made me sick," says Mundy.

"And still does, I hear."

"Yes. Still does."

So this is what he's come about, thinks Mundy. He knows I've been loosing off about the war and wants to enroll me in some campaign. Well, if he's wondering what got into me, join the club. I was asleep. Shelved. Yesterday's spy boring the ears off the English-Spokens at the Linderhof on an overdraft. My white cliffs of Dover lost in the fog, when suddenly-- Suddenly he's as mad as a hornet, pasting the walls of Zara's flat with press clippings, telephoning people he hardly knows, fuming at the television set, besieging our beloved British newspapers with letters they don't bloody read, let alone print.

So what had happened to him that hadn't happened before?

He'd weathered Thatcher and the Falklands. He'd watched British schoolchildren display the Churchillian spirit, bawl "Rule Britannia!" at hastily commissioned cruise liners and decrepit naval destroyers with the mothballs still rattling inside them sailing away to free the Falklands. He'd been ordered by our Leaderene to rejoice at the sinking of the _Belgrano.__ He'd nearly vomited. He was case-hardened.

As a tender schoolboy, aged nine, he had shared the Major's delirium at the sight of our gallant British forces liberating the imperiled Suez Canal--only to see it remain firmly in the hands of its rightful owners, and to discover that the government, then as now, had lied in its teeth about its reasons for taking us to war.

The lies and hypocrisies of politicians are nothing new to him. They never were. So why now? Why leap on his soapbox and rant uselessly against the same things that have been going on since the first politician on earth lisped his first hypocrisy, lied, wrapped himself in the flag, put on God's armor and said he never said it in the first place?

It's old man's impatience coming on early. It's anger at seeing the show come round again one too many times.

It's the knowledge that the wise fools of history have turned us over once too often, and he's damned if they'll do it again.

It's the discovery, in his sixth decade, that half a century after the death of empire, the dismally ill-managed country he'd done a little of this and that for is being marched off to quell the natives on the strength of a bunch of lies, in order to please a renegade hyperpower that thinks it can treat the rest of the world as its fiefdom.

And which nations are Ted Mundy's most vociferous allies when he airs these futile opinions to anybody civil enough to listen to him?

The beastly Germans.

The perfidious French.

The barbaric Russians.

Three nations who have the guts and good sense to say no, and may they long continue.

In his shining bright anger Mundy _redux__ writes to Kate his ex-wife--now, for her sins, tipped for high office in the next government. Perhaps he's not as diplomatic as he should be, but he was married to the woman, for heaven's sake, we have a child in common. Her four-line typed reply, signed in her absence, advises him that she has taken note of his position.

Well, it's a hell of a long time since she did that.

Mundy _redux__ next appeals to his son, Jake, after several false starts now in his final year at Bristol, urging him to get his fellow students onto the streets, put up barricades, boycott lectures, occupy the vice chancellor's lodgings. But Jake relates better to Philip these days, and has little time for menopausal offshore fathers who haven't got e-mail. A handwritten reply is beyond his powers.

So Mundy _redux__ marches, the way he used to march with Ilse, or with Sasha in Berlin, but with a conviction he never felt before because convictions until now were essentially what he borrowed from other people. It is a little surprising, of course, that the beastly Germans should bother to demonstrate against a war that their government condemns but, bless them, they do. Perhaps they know better than most just how easy it is to seduce a gullible electorate.

And Mundy _redux__ marches with them, and Zara and Mustafa come, and so do their friends, and so do the ghosts of Rani, Ahmed, Omar and Ali, and the Kreuzberg cricket club. Mustafa's school marches and Mundy _redux__ marches with the school.

The mosque marches and the police march alongside, and it's a new thing for Mundy _redux__ to meet policemen who don't want war any more than the marchers do. After the march he goes with Mustafa and Zara to the mosque, and after the mosque they sit sadly over coffee in a corner of Zara's kebab house with the enlightened young imam who preaches the value of study as opposed to dangerous ideology.

It's about becoming real after too many years of pretending, Mundy decides. It's about putting the brakes on human self-deception, starting with my own.

"Your little prime minister is not the American president's _poodle,__ he is his _blind dog,__ I hear," Sasha is saying, as if he has been looking in on Mundy's thoughts. "Supported by Britain's _servile corporate media,__ he has given _spurious respectability to American imperialism.__ Some even say that it was you British who led the dance."

"I wouldn't be at all surprised," says Mundy, sitting upright as he recalls something he has read somewhere, probably in the _Süddeutsche,__ and repeated.

"And since the so-called coalition, by making an unprovoked attack on Iraq, has already broken _half the rules in the international law books, and intends by its continued occupation of Iraq to break the other half,__ should we not be insisting that the principal instigators be forced to account for themselves before the International Courts of Justice in The Hague?"

"Good idea," Mundy agrees dully. If not exactly his own, it's certainly one he has lifted, and used to stunning effect.

"Despite the fact, of course, that America has _unilaterally declared itself immune from the jurisdiction of such courts.__"

"Despite it." He has made the same point to a packed meeting at the Poltergeist just two weeks ago, after something he heard on the BBC World Service.

And suddenly that does it for Mundy. He's had enough and not just of this evening. He's sick to death of sly games. He doesn't know what Sasha's up to, but he knows he doesn't like it nor the superior grin that goes with it. And he's about to say some of this and perhaps all of it when Sasha barges in ahead of him. Their faces are very close and lit by the Christmas candles from the Berlin attic. Sasha has grasped him by the forearm. The dark eyes, for all their pain and desperation, radiate an almost pathetic enthusiasm.

"Teddy."

"What the hell is it?"

"I have only one question for you. I already know the answer but I must hear it from you personally, I have promised. Are you ready?"

"I doubt it."

"Do you believe your own rhetoric? Or is all your huffing and puffing some kind of self-protection? You are an Englishman here in Germany. Perhaps you feel you must strike an attitude, speak louder than you feel? It would be understandable. I don't criticize you, but I'm asking you."

"For Christ's _sake,__ Sasha! You wear the beret. You drag me out here. You smirk at me like Mata Hari. You throw my own words in my face. Now will you kindly lay your egg and tell me what the fuck is going on?"

"Teddy, please answer me. I bring unbelievable hope. For both of us. An opportunity so great you cannot imagine. For you, immediate release from your material worries. Your role as teacher restored, your love of the multicultural community made real. For me--a platform greater than I ever dreamed of. And nothing less than a hand in the making of a new world. I think you are going to sleep."

"No, Sasha. Just listening without looking at you. Sometimes it's a better way."

"_This is a war of lies.__ Do you agree? _Our politicians lie to the press, they see their lies printed and call them public opinion.__"

"Are these your words or something I stole?"

"They are the words of a great man. Do you agree with them? Yes or no."

"All right: Yes."

"_By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed. Then we have a war. This war.__ These are also his words. Do you agree with them? Please, Teddy! Yes or no?"

"Yes again. So what?"

"_The process is incremental. As more lies become necessary, more wars are needed to justify them.__ Do you still agree?"

With the anger rising inside him Mundy waits with seeming impassivity for the next salvo.

"_The easiest and cheapest trick for any leader is to take his country to war on false pretenses. Anyone who does that should be hounded out of office for all time.__ Am I being too strident for you, Teddy, or do you agree with this sentiment also?"

Mundy finally explodes. "_Yes, yes, yes.__ All right? I agree with _my__ rhetoric, _your__ rhetoric and your latest _guru's__ rhetoric. Unfortunately, as we have learned to our cost, rhetoric doesn't stop wars. So goodnight and thank you, and let me go home."

"Teddy. Twenty miles from here sits a man who has pledged his life and fortune to the Arms Race for Truth. That expression also is his own. To listen to him is to be inspired. Nothing you hear will alarm you, nothing will be to your peril or your disadvantage. It is possible he will make a proposal to you. An amazing, unique, completely electrifying proposal. If you accept it, and he accepts you, you will come away with your life immeasurably enriched, spiritually and materially. You will enjoy a renaissance as never before. If no agreement is achieved, I have given him my word that his secret will be safe with you." The grip on Mundy's forearm tightens. "Do you want me to flatter you, Teddy? Is that what you are waiting for? Do you want me to woo you the way our beloved Professor wooed you? Hours of foreplay over expensive meals? Those times are over too."

Mundy feels older than he wants to feel. Please, he thinks. We've been here. We've done this stuff. At our age there are no new games anymore. "What's his name?" he asks wearily.

"He has many names."

"One will do fine."

"He is a philosopher, a philanthropist, a recluse and a genius."

"And a spy," Mundy suggests. "He comes and listens to me at the Poltergeist and he tells you what I said."

Nothing can prick Sasha's enthusiasm. "Teddy, he is not a spy. He is a man of huge wealth and power. Information is brought to him as a tribute. I mentioned your name to him, he said nothing. A week later he summoned me. 'Your Teddy is at the Linderhof, spouting bullshit to English tourists. He has a Muslim wife and a good heart. First you will establish whether he is as sympathetic as he claims. If he is, you will explain to him the principle. Then you will bring him to me.'"

The _principle,__ Mundy repeats to himself. There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle not a stone will be left standing. "Since when have you been attracted to rich and powerful men?" he asks.

"Since I met him."

"How? What happened? Did he jump out of a cake?"

Impatient of Mundy's skepticism, Sasha releases his arm. "At a Middle Eastern university. Which one is unclear to me and he will not reveal it. Perhaps it was Aden. I was in Aden for a year. Maybe Dubai or Yemen, or Damascus. Or further east in Penang, where the authorities promised to break my legs if I wasn't gone by morning. He tells me only that he slipped into the Aula before the doors closed, that he sat at the back and was profoundly moved by my words. He left before questions but immediately ordered his people to obtain a copy of my lecture."

"And what was the subject of this lecture?" Mundy wants to suggest the social genesis of knowledge, but a merciful instinct restrains him.

"It was the enslavement of the global proletariat by corporate-military alliances," Sasha declares with pride. "It was the inseparability of industrial and colonialist expansion."

"I'd break your legs for that one. How did He of Many Names make his money?"

"Disgracefully. He is fond of quoting Balzac. 'Behind every great fortune lies one great crime.' Balzac was talking bullshit, he assures me. It requires many crimes. Dimitri has committed all of them."

"So that's his name. Or one of them. Dimitri."

"For tonight, for us, it is his name."

"Dimitri who?"

"Mr. Dimitri."

"From Russia? Greece? Where else do Dimitris come from? Albania?"

"Teddy, you are being irrelevant. This man is a citizen of the entire world."

"We all are. Which bit of it?"

"Would it impress you if I told you he had as many passports as Mr. Arnold?"

"Answer my question, Sasha. How did he make his bloody money? Arms dealing? Drugs? White slaving? Or something really bad?"