Then We Take Berlin (55 page)

“
Bitte
.”

Every entrance was a world. Whether he’d been politely admitted by the front door or scrambled over the rooftops and in through a skylight, every entrance was a world, an invitation to a world made by someone else. A peeping tom’s delight. A gallery of symbols and signs, a carousel of slides waiting on him to be deciphered and rearranged into meaning—the world in a room, a life in a dozen objects.

He turned around in the tiny sitting room, coming to face her.

The room told him next to nothing. It looked like a stage set. Like am dram at the Hornchurch Players. Furnished from a props cupboard. It was pared down to blankness. It was beyond the minimalist habits of people accustomed to living in small spaces—even then there were a hundred variations on a theme, from those who kept nothing that didn’t serve a purpose, to those who hoarded everything, stacked everything and moved around in orderly piles of junk and clutter all but oblivious to it. This flat was spotless. Not a speck of dust. Not a cobweb. Not a smell of polish or disinfectant to mask emptiness or newness. As though it was uninhabited and had been vacuumed from top to bottom only hours before. The show flat in a sales brochure.

She was looking at him now. Leaning on a walking stick—a prop in both senses. Not quite smiling, as though it were too much effort. Waiting for him to speak. She spoke first.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

It was the opposite of a Rada moment. Meeting Rada had become a benchmark in his life. Meeting any older woman automatically brought her and rather unfavourable comparisons to mind. No one ever measured up. Fraulein Schneider was a good-looking woman, who looked as though she had put on her makeup in the dark. The wig was silly. A grey bird’s nest with darker hair peeping out beneath it. At least when Merle had worn wigs the disguise was effective. Fraulein Schneider’s disguise simply drew attention to itself. The loose, flowery dress looked like something she’d never choose. The ratty cardigan with its woolly bobbles and holes at the elbows was a neat touch though.

“Yes,” he said. “That would be nice.”

“Please, be seated. I won’t be long.”

She leaned her walking stick against a chair, and switched from putting weight on it to walking unaided, without a limp or any hint of pain. He watched her through the arch that separated the living bit from the kitchen bit. She lit a gas ring, stuck on a kettle and then opened a cupboard, then another and then a third and finally set out two mugs and a jar of instant coffee.

There was a picture of Steve and a woman he took to be Debbie on the sideboard. He’d seen an identical photograph in Steve’s office. There were books on a shelf next to the gas fire, set in the wall. The selection seemed random. A battered hardback of one of Fontane’s historical epics, a translation of Irwin Shaw’s
The Young Lions
, Goethe’s
Elective Affinities
—and a dozen more, all looking as though they had been bought by the yardage on a market stall. Visual ballast. The only thing that rang remotely true was there that there was a novel by Arnold Zweig—
Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa
. And how many copies of that had been printed East or West in the last forty years?

It was tempting to open the cupboards and peek inside drawers, but he knew that he’d find nothing. They’d all be empty.

She down opposite him. Set a small tray in front of him. Milk jug. Sugar bowl, teaspoons, and two mugs. They all looked new. He could see where she’d scraped the price tag off the jug with her thumbnail. No one was trying too hard. She sat in a room that reflected nothing of her. The invisible threads that might have connected her to her surroundings were not there. She touched, there was no other word for it . . . she touched nothing. She brought her own space with her, a translucent, almost visible pocket that surrounded her like a vacuum. She held herself too tightly, as though stitched and buttoned against an unwelcome reality. If he asked her now how she had survived in Berlin what would she say? Would there be a prepared story of being hidden by Aryans and dodging
Greifer
s, or of false identity papers or submitting to a tribunal and convincing them she wasn’t Jewish. There was not a single item in the room to say she was. And in his East End childhood, where every other neighbour was a Jew, Wilderness didn’t think he’d ever met one, however godless, of whom that could be said.

“May I say right now, at the beginning, that I am very grateful to you. To you, to Steven, and to his friend.”

“Frank? You mean Frank Spoleto?”

“Yes, of course. Herr Spoleto. Such a kind man.”

“But you’ve never met him.”

“No . . . I never met him, but he has . . . arranged all this.”

It seemed to Wilderness that she had barely withheld the gesture of an open hand sweeping the room. She was allowing him to think that she was referring to the operation. That Frank had brokered the deal. And Freud had led her almost to the edge of truth. That Frank had arranged all this in the most literal and immediate sense. Her “never met him” was a lie. Frank’s implied “never met her” was just another unspoken lie.

“Will I have to wait long?”

“No,” he said. “Not long. It may take a few days. Perhaps ten at the most. From the end of next week, be ready to travel. Pack a bag and leave it packed.”

“A tunnel, I believe. Will I have to crawl? Will I get wet or dirty? I only ask as it might help to know what to wear.”

“I can’t tell you about dirt or damp at the moment. I need to check one or two things first. But, no you won’t have to crawl.”

He answered all her questions. Not once did she ask about Steve or Debbie, although he made it obvious he’d seen Steve recently. Not once did she show anticipation about America, about arriving in New York. Not once did she express any emotion about things or people she might leave behind. Her questions were precise and practical. He told her it would all run smoothly, and left it at that.

As he was leaving, on the threshold, she said, far too casually, “I suppose you will have much to do in the next few days?”

“Quite a lot,” he replied and then added in English. “Wish me luck.”

“Of course,” she replied.

§183

He was furious with Frank. Frank was shafting him again and was too damn lazy even to do it well.

§184

He went in search of Erno Schreiber. Erno had not moved. Erno would never move. He was still in the same building in Grünetümmlerstraße he was living in when Wilderness first met him in 1947. He was lucky Berlin had not demolished it around him.

“How long has it been, Joe?”

“Only a couple of years Erno. Your memory must be playing up if it seems longer than that.”

“So, so . . . I am getting old. Rub it in, why don’t you.”

He led Wilderness to the back of the room, down corridors of newspapers. As big a tip as ever. Wilderness could almost swear the pile of magazines teetering on the tabletop was the same one he’d seen in ’61, ’58, or ’47. Erno hadn’t added to it. He’d probably taken nothing off it. He hadn’t even dusted.

Only the cat was new. Hegel had gone to the great linen basket in the sky. This one was tabby.

Erno put a match to a gas ring, set a kettle to boil.

“What can I do for you, Joe?”

“Same old thing, Erno.”

He handed him the American passport in the name of James Johnson.

“You want me to copy it?”

“No. I want to know who faked it.”

Erno flicked on an anglepoise lamp. It shed its hoop of light onto his worktop, the only spotless point in the room, a fresh sheet of blotting paper every day—and yesterday’s burnt.

Erno took several minutes to go through the passport. Every page under scrutiny.

“You go East on this?”

“Just once, so far.”

He took a magnifying glass to the personal details page. After a minute or so more, he swapped this for a jeweller’s eyepiece, and when he took that out he turned to Wilderness and said, “Fake? What fake? This is real.”

“Real American? Made in America?”

“Pure Uncle Sam. Where did you get it?”

Wilderness paused. But Erno had never let him down.

“From Frank,” he said.

Erno chuckled.

“Oh my God. You and Frank together again? Joe, Joe, Joe . . . he’ll steal your trousers while you take a crap. He told you this was a fake? Now why would he want you to think that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. But . . . while I do, can you kit me out with another?”

“Of course. Another American?”

“No. Not American. I won’t be using Checkpoint Charlie again. I’d rather use one of the others. Make me German.”

“What would you rather be, West German or West Berliner?”

“West Berliner. I’ll play safe. Better not to trust to my vanity over getting accents right. Make me from Berlin. I can still do a pretty good Berlin. I’ll use . . . Bornholmer Straße . . . yes, Bornholmer Straße.”

“The bridge? No problem. Now . . . age?”

“My age will do. Thirty-five.”

“My, my. Joe. Almost the grown-up. Make tea while I find the Leica.”

Erno pushed the curtain aside. Wilderness could hear him rummaging around in the next room as he poured boiling water onto tea leaves, an act he could never perform without thinking of rationing.

“Erno, while I’m running up a bill. There’s one more thing.”

“Ask.”

“A gun. Automatic. Nine mill. Could you arrange that?”

“Cash?”

“Of course cash.”

The curtain moved. Erno reappeared blowing the dust off his camera.

“If you’ll settle for a 7.65 I have a Walther PPK I could let you have. Unless of course you’re trying to kill a grizzly bear.”

“I’m not trying to kill anyone.”

“Then you can have it later today.”

“Make it the day after tomorrow, will you. A spare clip and a holster, if that’s possible.”

“Day after tomorrow. For sure. Going somewhere are you?”

§185

On the landing, outside Erno’s apartment, Wilderness glanced up the stairs.

“It’s empty,” said Erno, reading his mind. “Nell left in 1951. Since then a succession of young women. But right now it’s empty. Take a look if memory has you in its grip. I am out of matches and must dash to the
Tabak
on the corner.”

He ran down the stairs, lightly for a man of his age, and left Wilderness to make up his mind.

The door opened to a touch, swung inwards on emptiness, an emptiness he could fill to bursting.

There were four dents in the floorboards where their bed had stood. There was a line on the wall where Nell had hung a picture. No one had ever redecorated, but ten years and more of other people’s occupancy had left no more trace of Nell than this thin line of dirt along the stained plaster. He could smell scent, the faint lingering odour of some woman’s perfume. But that wasn’t Nell. He couldn’t remember the name of Nell’s perfume any more, such was time and erasure, but this wasn’t it.

He stood with his back to the window, his mind reconstructing the room his eye could not see. Here stood her desk, there her dressing table, and there the plaster statue on which she draped her scarves and hung her hats. Then he turned to the window—the window box in which Nell had grown straggly thyme and parsley, and in the summer of ’48 three heads of lettuce, was still there, empty of soil, its boards splitting. He looked across into the window on the other side of the street, a room he had glanced into so many times without ever meaning to—it had been an old lady’s apartment, trapped in the deep, dark colours and bloated fashions of the Empire, now completely stripped and redecorated in a garish yellow. And down into the street, a fantasy that he might see her returning home.

There was a small man on the opposite pavement. The same ridiculous goblin-green overcoat, but no Tyrolean hat. He ran for the stairs took them three at a time and hit the ground floor just as Erno was coming in the doorway.

“Did you see him?”

“Did I see who?”

He looked down the street. No man in a green coat. He looked down the nearest alley. Walked back to a perplexed Erno, hovering on the threshold.

“You didn’t pass a little man, all in green.”

Erno shrugged.

“I wasn’t looking. Unless he was a horned goblin I doubt I would have noticed. All in green? Did I miss Rumpelstiltskin?”

§186

He called Frank at the Connaught. But he’d take no risks with Frank.

“Stop what you’re doing. We need to meet.”

“Joe . . . not so fast. Why do we need to meet?”

“Not over the phone.”

“Jesus H. Christ . . . OK. Where?”

“Where we met in ’51.”

“Fifty-one . . . fifty-one . . .”

Wilderness heard the penny drop like a threepenny bit into a pinball machine.