The Berlin Assignment (37 page)

“I was balancing my interests against Sabine's and I'm afraid she kept winning.”

Hanbury took a moment to digest this. “I still don't know what you mean.”

“We talked about you,” she said with unconcealed triumph. “I told her you and I were getting to know each other. She didn't take that well. Then she told me all about Savignyplatz.” Hanbury didn't move. “I think you should call her,” Martina advised. Her countenance was as inscrutable as a poker player's.

It seemed the January fog was reaching in to affect his vision. He looked backwards into time, then forward, and saw nothing in the mist in either direction that provided grounds for listening to this woman. “I don't think it would be wise,” he said flatly.

“We'll discuss it next week,” Martina declared. “Tuesday, one o'clock. You know
Rheinhardt's
in the Nikolai Viertel?” He nodded. The idea that he might see Sabine again was hypnotizing. A rotund man walked up. She introduced Professor Kraft. Hanbury learned he was a linguist. He listened patiently to the professor's perfectly acquired English. Martina, not understanding a word, expressed delight that the two men shared a medium from which she was excluded. When Kraft paused for air, the consul fled.

At the table, in a slouch, hands wrapped around an empty glass, Hanbury's inner eye went through one involuntary vision after another: Sabine walking next to him along the riverbank in Spandau; Sabine
preoccupied with nest building on Savignyplatz; Sabine in a white hot rage at the Olympic Stadium; Sabine dignified at her father's funeral. The visions blurred. Sabine in the inner world was fading because in the outer one Gundula, with a jaunty step, was coming back. “Are you sad because your glass is empty?” she asked.

“Why is the quickstep so impossible?” he countered, lifting himself out of his slouch. “Let's get some more champagne.”

It was then that Gundula, sipping from a fresh glass, delivered the news. “Progress on Günther Rauch,” she announced. “Are you free Tuesday evening? I know where to meet him.” It took Hanbury's mind off Martina's disturbing interruption. “They say he's not polite to strangers,” she warned. “Half the western hemisphere has sent journalists his way and he hates story seekers.”

“What is it about him, Gundula?”

“He took on the Stasi. Pierced the dragon. He's a folk hero, a saint. St. Günther.” Hanbury wanted to know more, but she said Günther Rauch could tell his own story. What she knew of it was second hand.

A band flown in from Harlem began to play Soul and Gundula became excited. Soul was her favourite. Hanbury learned he could dance to Soul, especially the slow numbers. The band's rhythms captured them both and made them one. Between numbers they held hands. Jamaican Reggae was next so they took another walk, arms around each other.

Hours later, the space vessel, completing its long cruise, berthed back in the real world where the fog hit the disembarking passengers with the ferocity of an ice cold shower. “I'll take you home,” Hanbury said.

“You don't have to. I can get there by myself.” But he insisted. “Cowboy manners?” Gundula asked, eyes glinting. “Are they written down somewhere?”

“In a thick book.”

They scarcely spoke during the early morning cab ride back to Marzahn. Gundula was alert enough, but she and the driver lacked a common wavelength. Hanbury's mind was shutting down; he fought to keep his eyes open. Off the Allee der Kosmonauten, Gundula directed the taxi into the melancholy ant heap. When it stopped, Hanbury told the driver to wait. He took Gundula by the arm as they walked to her door. “I heard right?” she said. “You asked him to wait?” Hanbury mumbled yes and on autopilot, thanked her for a lovely evening. “Think nothing of it,” she replied. “You better run. Your taxi's waiting.”

Hanbury squeezed her hand. “See you Tuesday.
Sankt Günther
. Right?”

“Bring your book of manners,” she advised. She turned a key and was gone.

Walking back to the cab, Hanbury noticed the hoarfrost. The air's damp was settling out in coral-like formations, fairy tale beauty, even in Marzahn. “Grunewald,” he instructed the driver. The driver was surprised. “We've just come from there.” “My turn to go home.” “A circle,” observed the driver. “My wife believes in circles. I don't. I believe in sine waves.” “At this time of night,” the consul yawned, “I believe in everything.”

Monday morning in the office, the consul could have sworn the weekend frost had found its way inside. The air was warm enough, but the atmosphere was frigid. Frau Carstens's face was carved with deep lines of bitterness. When he asked what was wrong, resentment burst forth.

She had seen him at the ball. On her TV. Twice. First in a moving
camera shot. He looked nice enough in his evening dress, but ridiculous too, since he was leaning idly against a pillar, hanging out alone, when everybody else was there in couples. The commentator had suggested in that posture he looked like a
ballroom cowboy
. The pain! And later the camera focussed on him on the dance floor. Why hadn't he told her he wanted to go? She would have fixed him up with a companion. “Also,” she continued icily, “why would you dance with a total stranger like that columnist!”

“
That
columnist?” he asked.

“The one in the flimsy dress. Gundula Jahn is her name, if you want to know.”

“How did that come out?”

“Society spotters identified you both.”

“I didn't know…”

“Her name? You didn't introduce yourself when you asked her to dance?”

“I didn't need to do that…”

“You didn't ask her escort whether you might dance with her?”

“How utterly ridiculous…”

Under the relentless attack the consul had no chance to explain. Frau Carstens, eyes blazing as if conducting a blitzkrieg, pushed on. “I'm informed she is not held in high regard.” She got up and disappeared in the direction of the washroom. Hanbury, shaken by the depth of her feeling and the enormity of the misunderstanding, thought of waiting at her desk to explain, then changed his mind. It was all too preposterous for words.

The next day communication continued to be sparse, so Frau Carstens was not informed of his lunch at Rheinhardt's. Late in the morning he simply took his coat and quietly walked out.

Hanbury took the S-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, then came back to the Nikolai Viertel, crossing the space where he and Günther Rauch used to
meet. The Stasi's playground had disappeared into the impenetrable brew. The weather had been explained in a front page article quoting a professor at the university. The cause was an inversion, warm air up high trapping cold air below. There being no mixing, oxygen was being used up, the professor estimated, at a rate of a half-percent a day, adding that in ten more days it would get serious. He used a stoppered bottle with a burning candle to demonstrate the smothering. The story went on to describe how in the city's pubs customers were belting out the famous ode to Berlin's clean air –
Berliner Luft
– with special verve, and prayers of thanksgiving were reportedly being given in cabarets that the factories in the East which once belched like volcanoes had closed. All the same, crossing Alexanderplatz, the consul smelled the unmistakable, acidic pungency of burnt brown coal.

Martina arrived at
Rheinhardt's
shortly after he did. She was out of breath. “A big day. Closed a deal. I'm glad you're here. Someone to celebrate with.” Hanbury politely asked what the deal was about. “Firewalls in Mitte.” A beautification project. “Have you counted the firewalls in Mitte, Herr Konsul?” He answered he had not, but he'd seen a few. Gaping cavities in the urban landscape where buildings once stood were now defined by austere walls of solid brick. Ravensberg Creations, Martina claimed, had landed a contract to turn 300 of them into works of art. “If only my papa were alive.” They ordered drinks.

“Has your papa been dead long?” he inquired solicitously.

“Quite long. He did not experience the Wall coming down. Too bad. We escaped before it went up. We used to live in Pankow. I've moved back there now into our old house. You need to feel the eastern pulse if you want to profit from it.”

Hanbury had heard dozens of escape stories. Every third person in West Berlin has one. Tunnels, balloons, snorkelling, scuba diving, fake hulls in boats, concealed compartments in meat transport trucks, false fuel tanks in small aircraft – the ingenuity of people in the people
smuggling business has no limits.

So, how did Papa Ravensberg get out?

“You're interested?” Martina said. “We had a routine escape. We left what we had behind and walked out. Mama with my brother into the French Sector. Papa took me into the American Sector. We met up at Rathaus Schöneberg where we all wept.” Martina laughed quietly remembering how nervous her papa had been. “Shall we look at the menu?”

The lunch had the makings of an endurance test the way Martina was talking. She looked disinterestedly at her food and indifferently past Hanbury while her mind wandered. Finding cheap artists for
Creations
(luckily there were plenty in the East); living in Pankow (friendlier than Dahlem); advertising in the East (it had to be done differently from the West). She became personal too. Her mother throughout the years complaining about poverty; her father reacting defiantly.
What do you want me to do
, Martina mimicked him,
ask the Almighty to take out a rib and turn it into something better?
Martina as a young girl: withdrawn in a world of fantasies. Sabine as a young girl: acting hers out. The monologue had no direction. Or did it? When she got to Müller's funeral, most of her life's terrain had haphazardly been sketched in.

What struck her at the funeral when everyone was standing around outside, Martina said, was the way Sabine walked up to Hanbury. “She was determined. I was keeping an eye on her and saw that when she noticed you nothing else mattered. Who is that man, I asked. Who has Sabine been keeping from me?”

“She didn't say much,” Hanbury said, putting up a defence.

“True, and you said less. When a man and a woman say that little to each other, something is going on. And then the Wintergarten, Herr Konsul. When I recognized you and you told me who you were, the mystery became oh-so-delightful.”

Martina described how she confronted Sabine. “At first she didn't want to talk about it, so I threatened, a little.” Martina giggled. “I said
I had started seeing you, that you had a nice feel about you. Was I going too far?” She described how Sabine became livid. Why the anger? Martina asked. What's so special about the consul? To her he seemed like just another interesting man. The consul was none of Martina's business, was Sabine's answer. Martina said she didn't understand. Anyway she was planning to make him her business. Another prize exhibit for her den of tomcats? Sabine asked acidly. Why didn't Martina hang out on the Strasse des 17. Juni after sundown with all the other public women if she couldn't keep her nymphomania under control. Martina was grateful for the suggestion. And, since Sabine wasn't pulling punches, she wouldn't either. She accused Sabine of leading an overly orderly existence, an act normal people can't follow. Normal people can't be that perfect, Martina said. That's why she had her tomcats. She
needed
them and wasn't afraid to admit it.

Sabine broke down.
That isn't true
, she said,
I know disorder. I've had as much as anyone
. She claimed that Tony Hanbury, a stray student, caused more disorder in her life than anyone should ever wish to have. Haltingly, then torrentially, and in much more detail than with her husband, the Savignyplatz story once more came out. The waiter in
Café Einstein
avoided their table. Only when a soggy handkerchief was returned to Sabine's purse did he approach to tell them that the dessert special of the day was built up around the passion fruit.

And now, in
Rheinhardt's
, the consul focussed on one word. “Disorder?”

“That's what Sabine said. Other than the problems with her stepmother, I think you are the only disorder she ever had. You're special.”

“Did she mention the Olympic Stadium?”

“Oh yes. And then, after her father died, she found your letters to him. As far as I could make out, they came from everywhere. You
have
travelled. That's clear. She's angry with you for creating disorder. She's angry you wrote her father, but not her. She's angry with her father for
not saying he was in touch with you all those years. All in all, she is, well, angry. But I think she wants to see you.”

“I doubt it would be wise,” said Hanbury. “Her husband would wonder.”

“Her husband? He plays no role. Husbands, wives, pah, of no consequence. People like you and me, we ignore them. You don't look convinced. I'll be indiscreet. Her husband is the cause of Sabine's need for order. She has a natural weakness for it, true, but he has turned her into an addict. Someone should help her kick the habit. Why not you?”

“You don't understand. I don't want to pick up with Sabine where we left off. I only want to get re-acquainted, maybe become friends.”

“Friends? Nonsense! It would do Sabine a world of good to have a side interest, a dependable lover. Take my advice, Herr Hanbury, go to
Bücher Geissler
where she works. Stir things up.” Martina patted his hand with a wise affection. “And I want to be kept informed how you make out.”

Hanbury looked at the expensive platinum-blond coiffure, the steady eyes that seemed to come at him from two directions, the determination that hung around Martina's glistening red mouth, and understood why Ravensberg Creations was winning contracts.

For the remainder of the afternoon, a distracted consul immersed himself in other people's lives. Strangers marched into his office. Passports, oaths, authentications of wills, certificates stating that marriages could proceed: his stamping hand dealt with all such needs. But another part of him was not there. That part of his mind hung motionless at the centre of several competing and perfectly balanced forces – Sabine and Gundula. He was silent when Sturm drove him home. Only later, when the sputtering
of Trabi's engine and a tinny horn sounded outside, did he come out of suspension.