The Human Pool (32 page)

 

The helicopter I had heard landing was Viessmann's. To find ourselves suddenly his passengers seemed beyond any ordinary prediction. Hoover remained silent. He seemed ashamed of his frailty compared with the robust calm and technical competence displayed by Viessmann, who appeared lofty in every sense. Viessmann the mystery bird man descending from the sky.

We took off but flew only a few minutes before landing again on the bank of the Tigris on wasteland close to the shack town, our arrival watched by a gathering crowd.

We walked up through the slums, following Viessmann. Hoover said nothing and refused to meet my eye. This was not Willi Schmidt. There was a resemblance but too much wishful thinking and speculation on Hoover's part. Viessmann wore a copper bracelet against arthritis, a very un-Willi detail, I thought. The man's charisma was undeniable. He operated in the same sort of self-contained space cultivated by the very important or very famous, as though he was always a beat ahead and in anticipation of the next move. His unblinking gaze invited nothing in return.

We spent about half an hour in the slums. Hoover and I were like strangers to each other, while Viessmann did his pied-piper act, giving his attention to the children, and talking with the adults in their own language. Hoover spoke once, in English, to ask if Viessmann knew what the new buildings were behind the slum. He replied that they were for the security forces. He pointed out another taller block built originally for refugees from the big earthquake of 1976. Compared with the cost of housing the security forces, he said it would be far cheaper to send everyone home to their villages and restock them.

We left with two children, aged around four or five. They had no parents and would be coming back with us to be looked after. Viessmann behaved like a rich man playing Schweitzer, salving his conscience with the profits of his business. He reminded me of a sportsman, an old tennis pro, concentrated, eye on the ball, in the zone. An excellent advert for the ageing process.

As we took off again and the town seemed to shoot away from us, I spoke for the first time, saying we had a car down there. Viessmann announced that a pickup would be arranged. He smiled unexpectedly. We were going to ‘his place', he said.

Getting to ‘his place' involved flying over a mountain range, through narrow gorges, past snow-capped peaks. Beyond lay Iraq, he said. Against such dramatic and implacable scenery the fleeting shadow of our helicopter looked frighteningly insubstantial.

Where we landed didn't look so different from the army barracks of our departure, except this had no stone buildings. The compound consisted of half a dozen prefabricated huts—Swiss-made, again. After such a spectacular, vertiginous flight our destination appeared makeshift and anticlimactic, until—whether spontaneous or choreographed—a crowd of thirty of forty children, their cheers just audible over the noise of the engine, ran out of the huts to greet our arrival. They were accompanied by several adults, all European, all female. None was Dora.

Viessmann gave himself over to the crowd of enthused children and introduced the new arrivals. Hoover and I stood there dazed and stupid. My head was still full of the noise of the flight. Viessmann's child-handling skills continued to look exemplary. Hoover appeared more and more sour and withdrawn.

There was an outdoor eating area, with a roof but otherwise open. We ate, more or less immediately, with the others, adults interspersed with children. Hoover and I sat together, but two children wriggled between us, making conversation impossible. Lunch was rice and a vegetable stew. Viessmann was seated at another table and made no effort to join us. Afterwards we were left to ourselves. The children disappeared into one of the buildings, and Viessmann contrived to vanish without our noticing.

Hoover was behaving like a man who has just discovered that his holy grail is nothing but a tin pot. When I asked him if we had just had lunch with Willi Schmidt, he gave me a nasty look, and I left him to himself.

Everyone was indoors. The weather had turned warmer and was nearly hot. My head was muzzy, as if I had been drinking. The solitariness of the place was emphasised by an air of self-sufficiency, with gardens and allotments. I went and lay by a stream and soon fell asleep.

I was woken by the shadow passing over my face. Viessmann was looking down at me. I had the impression he had been watching for some time. I felt vulnerable but didn't want to show it by moving. The sun made it hard to see him, and I had to shield my eyes.

‘What are we doing here?' I asked.

‘Beate von Heimendorf said that you were making a dangerous journey and she was concerned for your safety.'

‘Beate?'

Viessmann ignored me. ‘Your friend is ill, isn't he?'

‘I thought he was supposed to be an old friend of yours, too.'

He subjected me to his disconcerting silence.

‘Do you have someone from England working here called Dora?' I asked.

‘Dora. Of course.'

I got up quickly. ‘Where is she?'

‘She moved on, last week. She was with us a few weeks, passing through.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘Perhaps we can find out later.' He sounded reasonable, less aloof.

‘My companion is sure he knows you.'

‘He is wrong. I have an excellent memory for names and faces. Besides, your friend is not well. He probably should not be travelling at all. It would be best to take him back. I know Beate would be happy to arrange a clinic. Perhaps if he has good travel insurance, the medical costs would be covered.'

After what everyone had said about Viessmann, it was odd to end up talking about something as banal as medical insurance, but maybe not. He was Swiss.

TURKEY

I COULD NOT TELL,
I really could not. I felt it was my fault. Viessmann had admitted he was Viessmann and behaved as though our presence at his godforsaken camp was because he had interceded on Beate's behalf. It also raised the question of how she had reacted to my letter.

I tried to fit what I remembered of Willi with Viessmann. The eyes. The voice. The walk. They were the things that were hardest to disguise. Sometimes it had to be Willi. There were too many similarities. Then I would look again and decide there was nothing of him.

We were treated like guests, but there was no escape. We had nothing to do. We were given no tasks. Remoteness acted like an anesthetic while the air was so clear it stung, resulting in a state of alert torpor. Clear vision was not matched by clarity of thought. My edginess was easily countered by Viessmann's messianic aloofness. It seemed to be part of his power that he could leave one in a state of exhaustion and indecision. He was plausible, we the impostors. He was honest with his kids, and they liked him. Kids are good readers of adults. I knew that from the grandchildren who had been quick to figure me for a disgruntled old fart, short of any capacity for play.

On our first tour of the camp we had been shown kids' dormitories, playrooms full of donated toys, informal classrooms, which was when I first noticed that all the helpers were female and barely more than teenagers. The office hut had computers and telephones, and was run by a couple more helpers. The technology relied on a local generator, which provided the distinctive noise we could hear, like an outboard motor. Viessmann said that we were very private, and even with satellite links communications remained variable.

In one office a whole wall was devoted to mugshots of kids. Viessmann was especially proud of this display. They were the ones who had found homes, either with middle-class Kurdish families or in the West with foster parents.

Vaughan did his best to ask questions, and was met with answers that pointed out the obvious, until he asked how running a multinational business related to what he was doing at the camp. At this, Viessmann was transformed. His imperiousness deserted him, and he was reduced to an enthusiastic babble: ‘A young mind is a healthy mind,' he said. ‘Businesses have to learn how to realign themselves for the twenty-first century, providing care as well as nuturing profit.' He advocated the study of children in group activity to promote his theory of business as play. Children were good motivators and organisers, he said, much less inclined to boredom, and up to a certain age nonexclusive. Viessmann the pedagogue: what we can learn from the little ones.

I thought of my grandchildren. Bored and whiny. Demanding. Divisive. Given to squabbling on a level that would impress the Balkans. Incapable of amusing themselves. Hostile.

 

Recognition was not instant, as I had been expecting. When it came, it was a real shock and quite unexpected, a combination of a shaft of sunlight coming through the window and the particular angle of Viessmann's head at that moment. It was not Willi Schmidt that I read into Viessmann but Beate. It was her I saw in him.

Did I faint? According to Vaughan, I stood up and fell over. Then I was in a sanatorium-like room with half a dozen beds and too weak to get up.

My first visitor was Viessmann, playing the concerned host. He laid a dry hand on my brow and asked if I shouldn't be flown to another place with better facilities. I wondered about that because the room I was in already had what looked like a lot of expensive medical equipment. Viessmann said that many of the children they found needed treatment.

We then embarked on a surreal conversation, starting with my asking if he was Beate's father. He didn't miss a beat. He said he had no children apart from the ones I saw here. He said the special quality of the local air made for lightheadedness and poor judgement. I looked for signs of guile and found none (saw only Viessmann and nothing of Beate now). Every question he met with expert deflection: Betty Monroe he admitted to knowing, no more; Carswell was Beate's former husband, no more; Karl-Heinz he passed on, without a pause. ‘I am sorry I don't know that name.'

‘Willi Schmidt,' I said. Viessmann turned and looked at me. Not a glimmer, not even a chink. ‘I was pretty sure Willi Schmidt was a friend we had in common.' I said it slowly.

He repeated the name, sounding as if he was saying it for the first time. ‘No,' he decided.

He offered me something to help me sleep. I declined and asked for Vaughan. He told me Vaughan had gone for provisions with one of the trucks. The news scared me. He paused by the door and again offered me a sedative, then asked, ‘Who was this Willi Schmidt?'

The first betrayal of curiosity. Mischief made me bold. ‘Willi was the most interesting man I ever met. A pity you didn't know him.'

A truck came in the evening. Through the window I saw Viessmann in the compound talking to armed men in plain clothes. They stayed fifteen minutes before driving off. I imagined Viessmann telling them where they could find Vaughan. I imagined Viessmann shooting me full of something while I slept to ensure I didn't wake up. Willi Schmidt's casual remark in Strasbourg as he had prepared to shoot me: ‘It's making me hard doing this,' said in an offhand way, with an air of pleasure and mild surprise, that old delight in himself. ‘Go fuck yourself, Willi,' I had told him, and he chided me for my lack of originality.

Viessmann found me stumbling around the compound in the dark and guided me back to bed. I felt old and impotent mocked by the memory of Willi's curiosity at his own tumescence, and tired to death. I asked Viessmann what the camp had by way of entertainment. He looked as though the word didn't exist in his book. Would he show me where helived? I asked Viessmann, man of manners, too polite to refuse. His living quarters included a sitting room with armchairs. I didn't think he would have any drink, but he produced a bottle of Scotch, raised his glass, and said ‘Cheers!'

We asked polite questions of each other. He did not wince when I told him of my suburban Floridian background, but I sensed distaste. He had a house, as I had guessed, in the hills of Buda. Before that he had lived in Locarno. He confirmed that he was executive director of a pharmaceutical concern, based in Switzerland but in the process of relocating to Malaysia. I asked about the Kurds bombing his factory and was surprised by his answer: ‘They were quite right. These are practices that must be stopped.' The First World could not continue to exploit the less fortunate in the way that it had.

Did the rebels know that he was the man whose factory they had bombed? I asked. Yes, he said. He had talked to them about it and now employed Kurdish doctors to ensure that there was no more malpractice.

We had drunk most of the Scotch, yet Viessmann remained so sober that he was able to refute anything I threw at him.

I asked how he managed to look so fit and young. Diet, yoga, and exercise, he said. And plastic surgery, I wanted to add. Viessmann didn't have Willi's teeth. I had expected more tension between us. I had expected him to give off something, some scent that let me know he knew I was on to him. But he looked as if he had done years of controlled breathing and could take any lie detector test.

He asked about my sickness. I said it was undiagnosed. I had run away before the tests could be done. ‘It could be nothing, or it could be galloping through me. Unlike you, I have treated my body abysmally.'

‘Are you afraid of death, Mr Hoover?'

It was the first time he had called me by name. I didn't like the way he placed it directly after the word
death
.

‘Foolish not to be,' I said.

Viessmann stared at me, unfathomable. The lights of an approaching vehicle moved across the room.

‘That'll be Mr Vaughan and the others with the supplies,' said Viessmann.

I stood up, drunk and dizzy. Viessmann said I should get some sleep. I said we called it insomnia where I came from.