Pavel & I (12 page)

Outside, Anders stopped and watched the police clear the square in front of the station. A few trucks had come to the scene and inside were more police, clutching truncheons.

‘What's going on?'

‘The refugee train arrived,' she told him. ‘From the east. Many of the passengers froze to death.'

‘Okay,' he said, like it didn't matter to him. He turned his back on the scene and started walking.
God,
she thought,
we are breeding monsters.
And then, when they were almost back at their building, he made her feel ashamed for the word.

‘Promise me,' he said, ‘that you're not in love with him.'

‘In love? With the Colonel?'

‘No. Pavel. Promise me you don't love Pavel.'

She burst out laughing and stuck her key in the front door.

Love. No wonder she started laughing. The truth, though, is that I am not at all sure what she thought about Pavel at this point. I asked her about it later, but later is no good, of course, not when it's about something like this, an impression, a feeling, things that come and go. She maintained, in any case, that she didn't think too much of him. I reminded her that she had helped him, unprompted; had come to his rooms, closed the door behind herself, and helped him undress the midget.

‘Yes,' she admitted, ‘that I did.'

‘You didn't care for him then?'

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘He was, you know, pathetic. And – honest.'

‘You care that much for honesty?'

‘No,' she answered, ‘I don't. Back then I thought it a disease.'

She smiled without humour and checked her lipstick in a pocket mirror.

‘Stop your questions,' she said. ‘They'll lead you nowhere but to words.'

I didn't know what to say to that, and let it slide. Up until then it hadn't occurred to me that there could be any problems with words.

Find Belle.
Pavel knew where to start looking. He'd grabbed all the remaining packs of cigarettes he still owned, along with the war photo of Boyd and himself, the two of them sitting on their helmets, eating soup. There had been no time for breakfast, and he'd bought two rolls and a cup of
Ersatzkaffee
at a baker's on the way over to the American sector. The tram at that hour of the morning was full of workers in overalls and old
Wehrmacht
coats. He got out at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz and noted the change of uniform amongst the privates walking along the streets: American colours and farm-boy faces. Half of Wisconsin seemed to be in Berlin just then. By the time he reached the ‘Unknown Soldier' his body had started hurting from the cold. He stood panting in the entrance for a minute, then walked into the bar and looked around for Doug Priestley, a decommissioned sergeant major whom everyone called ‘Tex', along with a thousand other GIs who shared his provenance or sounded like they might. Tex was working behind the bar, a leather butcher's apron wrapped around his wiry frame. He recognized Pavel at once. They shook hands, lit cigarettes and cupped them in their hands. The bar was quiet with
only a handful of soldiers having a breakfast of scrambled eggs and beer. Tex poured Pavel a double shot of rye, and one for himself.

‘Boyd's dead,' Pavel told Doug, his hand around the glass.

Doug wasn't surprised. ‘Heard it on the grapevine,' he said. ‘The Russians, they say. NKVD hatchet job. You look rough, Jay-Pee.'

Pavel had often wondered what it was about a war that made soldiers avoid one another's name. Something about the uniform seemed to suggest it.

‘I had some kidney trouble. Listen, I'm looking for one of his girls.'

‘A hooker?'

‘Yes, and a little bit more than that. Name's Belle.'

‘That's French, right?'

‘I don't think it's her real name.'

‘Yeah, right.'

Doug shrugged his shoulders and pulled out a leather-bound notepad that served as his address book. He leafed through its loose pages, stopping on occasion to take a drag at his cigarette. Eventually he found what he was looking for and scribbled a number on a scrap of paper.

‘Best call Franzi. She used to work for Boyd. Nice girl. Big thighs.'

‘She has a phone?'

Doug nodded yes. ‘Boyd arranged it. He spoilt them rotten, his girls.' He lifted a heavy black telephone from behind the bar and stood it on the counter. ‘Go ahead if you like.'

Pavel thanked him, then ran a finger through the dial. He let it ring a dozen times, hung up, and tried again. When she finally picked up, her voice sounded tired and hostile.

‘Is this Franzi?' he asked in German, and introduced himself. ‘My name's Jean Pavel Richter. I'm a friend of Boyd White's.'

‘Boyd's dead. What do you want? He owe you money or something?'

‘Do you mind if I come over? I need to talk to you.'

‘Talk, sugar?'

‘I'm willing to pay for it. I've got two packs of cigarettes here for you. More if I get what I need. Five minutes, that's all it's going to take.'

‘Five minutes? That's all it ever takes.'

She gave him an address further east in the American sector, and reminded him to bring the smokes. ‘If you change your mind about talking,' she said, ‘make sure you bring some rubbers, too.'

Pavel thought about taking the bus but ended up walking, placing one foot before the other, oblivious to the cold. His body hurt, the lungs and the kidneys, but his mind had slipped into a strange reverie, was caught up in the joy of being alive, conscious of it, too, an animal thawing that had started during yesterday's lunch of ham and potatoes, and continued now, as yet fragile and inarticulate, but welling up in him, inexorable like a burp. Of the many people who were milling about in the street, he was the only one who was smiling.

Franzi lived in a house a half of which had been destroyed in one of the bomb raids. Some of the rubble had been cleared, and now the house stood in a gap-toothed block, cut precisely in two. If one stood a little to the side of it, one had a perfect view into the shell of half a living room, half a bathroom, and a few yards of corridor. Even the toilet in the bathroom looked like it had cracked right down its middle. In the muddy field next to it, snow had collected in soot-coloured drifts.

Pavel ran an eye over the doorbells and learned that Franzi rented the ground-floor flat. Its windows were covered by net curtains. She had hung some Christmas decorations from the curtain rail, but these were barely visible through the frost that clung to the glass. He rang the bell and Franzi opened the door for him immediately.

‘Come in,' she said gruffly. ‘It's freezing outside.' She did not move to take his coat, and in fact it was too cold to take it off.

Franzi was thirty going on forty, her hair dyed a henna-red and no money for make-up. A short woman with a big rump and, yes, generous thighs. These were wrapped in thick woollen tights and peeked out between her morning gown's careless gape. Puffy skin, especially around the eyes, booze on her breath and her curls still lopsided from the way she'd slept on them. Pavel shook her hand and followed her into the living room. There was a shabby divan and a table full of drinking things. The apartment stank from lack of airing.

‘Have a seat.'

He sat down on the edge of a chair as she wrapped herself into a blanket upon the divan. ‘There's no electricity for coffee,' she warned, and he passed over the first of the packs of cigarettes that he had promised.

‘I'm looking for a woman called Belle. One of Boyd's other girls. He told me they were close.'

‘Belle, huh? Guess they were. He hung around her like some puppy dog. Thought her something special, God knows why. A society girl, you know, ever such a nice accent. Airs and fucking graces. Let me tell you one thing, though: a whore's a whore. Am I right or am I right?'

‘Do you know where she is?'

‘Haven't seen her in a while. Four, five days, maybe a week. Some of the girls went home for Christmas, or tried to, the trains are a mess. Maybe she did, too. I know where Boyd put her up if that's any help.'

‘Please.' Pavel passed over a second pack of cigarettes, and exchanged it for a hastily scribbled address.

‘Second or third floor, I think, overlooking the main road. Chances are she's holed up there, crying crocodile tears.'

‘You don't think she cared for him?'

‘Jesus Christ and Mary. He was her pimp, and a real sleazebag, too, when he put his mind to it.'

She looked him up and down real funny, and Pavel realized he must have betrayed displeasure about her comments.

‘Sorry, sugar, speakin' ill of the dead.' She made the sign of the cross, kissing her fingers lightly when she was finished. The gesture smelled of convent school.

‘He wasn't all bad, never slapped us around much, you know. You two were close?'

He nodded yes.

‘The army, right? Boyd wouldn't shut up about it. Made it sound like he took France all by himself. Special unit and all.' She eyed him shrewdly. ‘He save your life or something?'

‘Nothing like that. We sat in foxholes. Swapped jokes, shared tins of corned beef. Fired bullets across muddy fields.'

She cackled, her mouth ugly like a wound. ‘Sounds real romantic.' He glared at her sullenly.

‘Sore spot, is it? Brings back bad memories, I guess. Go on, spill yer guts. We girls are used to it.'

‘The war's over,' he whispered, and she wrinkled her lips like she'd tasted something sour.

‘Suit yourself, sugar,' she said derisively, and got up to show him the door. ‘You got a third pack for me, like you promised?'

Pavel held it out and clasped her hand for a moment as she took the pack. ‘I'm sorry,' he told her earnestly, looking to reach the woman inside the tramp.

‘Whatever for?' she asked him gruffly. ‘You got whatever you came for, and I, well, I got my smokes.'

She closed the door in his face and he stood there for a moment longer, wishing the boy were there to tell him that the woman was talking sense. Then Pavel turned on his heel and made for the address she had given him. He never saw the one-eyed man who followed
him at a discreet distance, hands buried in his pockets and his scarf hitched high enough to reach all the way up to his patch.

The boy refused to come in until she had looked into all of her apartment's rooms and proven to him that the Colonel wasn't hiding anywhere. Then he asked her to go down and look in on Pavel's flat. The door was locked and nobody answered her knocking.

‘You see,' she told him, ‘we are quite safe.'

The boy bit his lip and sat down uneasily on one of her sofas, his eyes on the door and his ears cocked for Fosko's agile tread. Sonia ignored him and got the monkey some water and food. It had shat itself again, and there was no way of cleaning its fur. She let it off its leash and watched it climb the living-room cupboard, rattling the cut glass and china on the way up.

She started to fix Anders and herself some bread and cold cuts, but the boy stopped her and demanded to see the coat. Wordlessly, she led him over to her wardrobe and pulled out a camel-coloured duffel coat.