The Berlin Crossing (34 page)

She lifted her head, the amazing eyes smiled at him over the glasses. ‘It’s not finished yet, Michael,’ she said.

Maybe she was thinking of Roland’s story, hurriedly written in
the hours after they had loved each other in the cellar. She no longer had the small notebook. She had no need of it, could
still remember it line for line, word for word. She’d given the book to Pastor Bruck on that last visit, all those years ago.
‘It might be safer,’ Pastor Bruck had said, ‘to destroy it.’

A shake of the blond head, the rich blue eyes looking into some private future.

‘Someone,’ Petra said, ‘might come.’

1994

It was, at first sight anyway, something less than impressive, this town that my father had written about in the hasty pages
of that old notebook. A straggly square of patchy grass looked up at you as you made your way downhill from the railway station;
a nondescript hotel building flanked the bottom end of the square, while the top end offered all the usual glories of a car
park. A steady flow of traffic puffed and panted around the perimeter of the square. In his hurried, scribbled words Roland
Feldmann had invested this Irish backwater with a touch of romance, but even eyes as sympathetic as mine could see only a
run-of-the-mill provincial town that couldn’t hold a candle to the derelict beauty of Brandenburg.

Stop it, I told myself. You’re not here to study architecture or compare streetscapes.

You’re on the last leg of a journey that has taken you from Bad Saarow to Berlin to London to the west of Ireland, in search
of some kind of truth.

Closure
, the psychologists would say. They’d be wrong. I wanted an opening, daybreak on a new day that would offer me some replacement
for my lost country, my aborted life. Or maybe I was searching for the father I never had, for the mother I had lost.

The voice in my head said: your country was your father, your
mother. Now you’re a 31-year-old orphan on a wild-goose chase in a remote corner of Europe.

Shut it
. Truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted, not beyond finishing what I’d started.

What had started in Brandenburg, with my dying mother’s words about Roland, had to end somewhere. It might as well be here.
The public records I’d scoured in Berlin and London had yielded dates, information. What I was seeking in this obscure town
was a touch of reality: flesh and blood and a human voice.

And there it was, opposite me, a few steps from the square, on what seemed to be the town’s main street: Feldmann, Watchmakers
and Jewellers. There was a cafe to the left, a clothing store to the right, but the Feldmann sign and window lorded it over
the entire block. Looking across the street at the shop I was, for a few moments, unaware of pedestrians pushing past me on
the pavement or of the traffic going up and down on the busy road. For those moments it seemed as if the words in the cellar
notebook had come to life. Sometimes, wading through records in Berlin and Kew, it had almost seemed that what I was engaged
in was no more than a post-doctoral research project. Now, looking across the street at this jeweller’s shop in Galway, words
had leapt into life. I had to shake my head, clear it, before crossing the road to stand in front of the shop.

The long, plate-glass window gleamed in the August sunshine. Rings and watches, bracelets and brooches, necklaces and crosses
– they shone in clearly defined sections of the long window. Everything sparkled, gold and silver and diamonds, on backgrounds
of glass, mirrors and velvet. Feldmann, Watchmakers and Jewellers, was no common-or-garden emporium: this establishment reeked
of money.

The door stood open. The cool interior offered more lights, more glitter, more velvet displays. The marble floor of the doorway
was decorated with the name ‘Feldmann’ in a heraldic-style scroll. I stepped over it gingerly, reluctant to tread on it.

The long L-shaped counter was a series of display cases, the facing wall a bank of more display cabinets. The air was rich,
self-satisfied, like the voice of the assistant showing diamond rings to a young couple at the counter. Another assistant
was displaying watches to a middle-aged fellow in a suit; a third was winding a grandfather clock that stood in a corner of
the shop. All of the assistants were young women; all of them wore white blouses and black skirts – nothing so tacky as a
uniform, the outfits seemed to say, just something refined, classy, like the elegant House of Feldmann itself.

The whole place was an affront to me. While my mother had eked out a living for both of us in our spartan flat opposite Brandenburg
railway station, the House of Feldmann had preened and purred its comfortable way through a shopkeeper’s life. I stared unseeing
into a glass wall cabinet and told myself to get a grip, that I hadn’t come all this way simply to lose my rag over the injustices
of twentieth-century capitalism.

‘Can I help you?’

The grandfather clock lady was smiling at me.

‘I’m – I’m just looking.’
At tanned skin, even teeth, shoulder-length dark hair
.

‘Let me show them to you.’ In her hands she held a long silver chain, at the end of it a cluster of small, shiny keys.

‘But it’s not – I mean, I’m just—’

‘It’s no problem.’ She turned a key in the lock, slid the door sideways. ‘Anything in particular you’d like to look at?’

I realized I was looking at a display of fine chains and small crosses.

I shrugged. ‘I really am just having a look around,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just arrived in town.’

‘Your first time here?’ Another smile; a barely discernible perfume.

‘Yes, first day in Ireland, first day in Galway.’

‘We get a lot of tourists in here; they’ve read about our handmade stuff.’ She looked straight at me then. ‘Was that it? You
heard about us before you came?’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

Another turn of the small silver key, chains and crosses safely locked up again. Now that she seemed about to go back to her
grandfather-clock duties, I wanted her to stay: her and her faint perfume and her creamy skin.

‘The name,’ I said. ‘It’s from Germany, like myself.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Feldmann, it’s a German name.’

‘Oh.’ A flash of the even teeth. ‘Yes, old Mr Feldmann. I suppose that was a long time ago. Feldmann’s is part of the furniture
here now.’

Old Mr Feldmann
. It wasn’t possible, was it? A hint of interest now in her smile. ‘Which part of Germany are you from?’

‘Brandenburg. It’s a small place, not too far from Berlin.’

Over her shoulder I could see a door opening at the back of the store, a glimpse of carpeted stairs before the door swung
shut again. The man who had entered the shop from the stairway had an obvious proprietary air about him: white shirt, silver
tie with a gold clip, dark grey suit.

He seemed to know the customer looking at watches: heads nodded, greetings were exchanged.

He looked across to where we were standing in front of the cabinet of crosses.

‘Jennifer?’ From such a short, paunchy body the voice was oddly high-pitched, wheezy. ‘Excuse me.’ A nod directed at me. ‘When
you’re free, could you pop up to see me for a moment?’ A
flash of stiff white cuff and gold cufflink as he raised his hand, pointing at the ceiling.

‘Be right with you, Terry.’

‘Good.’ Another managerial smile at me. ‘Sorry to interrupt. You’re in good hands with Jennifer.’

Terry
. Hard to believe that this sleek, suited fellow was the same person as the whingeing teenager of the handwritten statement
in the reading room at Kew, the tearful asthmatic who had injudiciously swung a rolled-up newspaper in the tube station at
High Street Kensington.

I needed to make sure.

‘Is that “old Mr Feldmann”?’

She grinned, amused. ‘No, that’s Terry, Mr Feldmann’s son. Terry is the manager but Mr Feldmann himself still comes in once
or twice a week. He likes to keep his hand in, you know.’

‘Old Mr Feldmann is still alive?’

The look she gave me was sharp. ‘Are you
sure
you’ve never been here before?’

‘No, never.’ I fumbled for words, embarrassed, as though I’d lied and been caught out. ‘I guess I just like stories.’

‘Stories?’ Sceptical, immaculate eyebrows raised.

‘Yes, stories.’ Somehow her good opinion was necessary now. ‘I write stories . . .’ I shrugged, knew I was blushing. ‘I’ve had
one book published.’
Shut up, you sound like a boastful kid seeking approval
.

‘So we have a distinguished author on the premises.’

I searched for sarcasm but her smile was open, kind.

‘It’s in German,’ I said lamely.

‘I think that’s why Mr Feldmann hired me –
old
Mr Feldmann.’

‘Sorry?’

‘German was one of my subjects – I think Mr Feldmann liked
that.’ She fiddled with the ring of keys. ‘Ireland is booming now, Mr . . .?’

‘Ritter, Michael Ritter.’

‘The economy is booming here, they’re talking about something called a “Celtic tiger”, but when I graduated seven or eight
years ago, jobs were scarce and I was glad when Mr Feldmann offered me the job here.’

I nodded, flattered by the confidence, unable to come up with anything to keep the conversation going. The young couple at
the engagement rings were saying they’d go and have a think about it over a coffee, the fellow with the watches was handing
over his credit card. In a moment my lady with the keys would also be gone.

‘You could read my book, I mean, if you wanted to.’

‘That would be lovely, thank you.’

‘It’s in my bag, at the station.’ Her eyes were grey, flecked with amber. ‘It’s in German.’ I was repeating myself.

‘Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?’

I laughed sheepishly. ‘Yes, it would be.’

‘So you’ll drop it in to me here?’

‘Tomorrow, when I get it from my bag.’

‘At the station.’

‘Yes, at the station.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘The station – the railway station.’

‘I mean the book.’

I had to think. ‘
Workers’ Dawn.
’

‘It comes every day.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Dawn comes every morning for workers, when you have to get up and face the day.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I look forward to reading your book, Michael Ritter.’ Another smile. ‘I’d better go, Terry will be thinking I’ve got lost.’

I watched her as she high-heeled her way across the carpet. I hadn’t touched a woman in almost a year; Steffi had stopped
coming round to the flat after I’d said I was too tired.

The door at the back of the shop closed behind Jennifer of the grey eyes and the white teeth. The faint trace of perfume lingered
where she had stood beside me.

Not to mention Terry and ‘old Mr Feldmann’. I stepped out of the shop, telling myself that I had just seen my uncle for the
first time.

It was after five. The street outside was busier now with traffic, the pavement more crowded with what I took to be office
workers released from their pens. Like the lady had said, workers’ dawn was an experience that had to be endured daily.

I shouldered my rucksack, making my way along the busy street. I needed to find a place to stay, then locate ‘old Mr Feldmann’.
I wondered if my first sighting of my grandfather would seem as unremarkable as my first glimpse of my Uncle Terry.

The house stood on a busy road not far from the town centre. A few trees, guarded by shoulder-high metal cages, tried unsuccessfully
to take the bare look off the place. I wondered, looking across at the Feldmanns’ flat-roofed house, what it must be like
to have a permanent view of the stone wall behind me and, beyond that, the forbidding bulk of what looked like a barracks
but was probably a school.

Flat roofs seemed to be the style here: the school was also flat-roofed, as were several of the houses on either side of the
Feldmanns’. I hoped the fashion in roofs didn’t extend to brains and outlook: the story I planned to tell ‘old Mr Feldmann’
wouldn’t find much of a welcome from someone who harboured a flat-earth view of the world.

Although I really didn’t care very much if Herr Klaus Feldmann believed me or not. For me, standing here outside the house
of Roland Feldmann, this was just the end of a journey. What it might mean for the old fellow inside this pebble-dashed, flat-roofed
house was not my concern.

It had been easier than I’d expected to find out where Roland’s family lived. In the bed-and-breakfast I’d booked into near
the docks I’d asked for the local phone directory and there it was,
Feldmann Klaus
, staring back at me.

And here I was, within touching distance of words scribbled on small pages over thirty years before.

You tell yourself you don’t care but there’s an unexpected dryness in your throat as you cross the road and open the garden
gate. The wrought-iron gate is freshly done in silver paint; it swings easily on well-oiled hinges. The long narrow lawn that
fronts the house is smooth as a golf green; roses bloom along the edges. The gardeners at work in the newly liberated mansions
of Bad Saarow do not seem so distant.

The white bell in the frame of the pale blue door has PRESS printed on it. I am trying to distract myself by wondering what
else you could do with this bell, apart from pressing it, when the door opens.

The woman looking out of the doorway at me is of medium height, bespectacled, her short hair the colour of straw.

‘Yes?’ In the gloom of the doorway it is hard to see her features but the single word is enough to let you know that this
woman dislikes answering the door at eleven o’clock on a mid-week morning. Perhaps she dislikes opening the door at any time.

I have my own plan: I speak in German.

‘I’m from Germany. I wonder if I might see Herr Klaus Feldmann, please?’

‘Pardon?’ In English. Her eyes narrowing behind the thick lenses.