Edge of Eternity (114 page)

A few minutes before one she pulled off the road at a country restaurant called the Worcester Sauce. George sped by, then U-turned a mile down the road and came back. He drove into the restaurant parking lot and took a slot from which he could see the Jaguar. Then he settled down to wait.

He brooded. He knew he was being stupid. He knew this could end in embarrassment or worse. He knew he should drive away.

But he had to know who his wife's lover was.

They came out at three.

He could tell by the way Verena walked that she had had a glass or two of wine with her lunch. They came across the lot hand in hand, she giggling at something the man said, and hot fury boiled inside George.

The man was tall and broad, with thick fair hair, quite long.

As they came closer, George recognized Jasper Murray.

“You son of a bitch,” he said aloud.

Jasper had always had a yen for Verena, right from the first time they had met, at the Willard Hotel on the day of Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech. But lots of men had a yen for Verena. George had never imagined that Jasper, of all of them, would be the betrayer.

They walked to the Jaguar and kissed.

George knew he should start his car and drive away. He had learned what he needed to know. There was nothing else to be done.

Verena's mouth was open, George could see. She leaned into Jasper with her hips. Both had their eyes closed.

George got out of his car.

Jasper grasped Verena's breast.

George slammed the car door and strode across the tarmac toward them.

Jasper was too absorbed in what he was doing but Verena heard the slam and opened her eyes. She saw George, pushed Jasper away, and screamed.

She was too late.

George reached back with his right arm then hit Jasper with a punch that had all the force of his back and shoulders in it. His fist connected with the left side of Jasper's face. George felt the deeply satisfying squish of soft flesh, then, a split second later, the hardness of teeth and bones. Then pain blazed in his hand.

Jasper staggered backward and fell to the ground.

Verena yelled: “George! What have you done?” She knelt beside Jasper, careless of her stockings.

Jasper lifted himself on one elbow and felt his face. “Fucking animal,” he said to George.

George wanted Jasper to get up off the ground and hit back. He wanted more violence, more pain, more blood. He stared at Jasper for a long moment, seeing through a red mist. Then the fog cleared, and he realized Jasper was not going to get up and fight.

George turned around, went back to his car, and drove away.

When he got home, Jack was in his bedroom, playing with his collection of toy cars. George closed the door, so that Nanny Tiffany could not hear. He sat on the bed, which was covered by a counterpane that looked like a racing car. “I've got something very difficult to tell you,” he said.

“What happened to your hand?” Jack said. “It's all red and puffed up.”

“I banged it on something. You have to listen to me.”

“Okay.”

This was going to be hard for a four-year-old to understand. “You know I'll always love you,” George said. “Just like Grandma Jacky loves me, even though I'm not a little boy anymore.”

“Is Grandma coming today?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“She brings cookies.”

“Listen. Sometimes mommies and daddies stop loving each other. Did you know that?”

“Yeah. Pete Robbins's daddy doesn't love his mommy anymore.” Jack's voice became solemn. “They got
divorced.
”

“I'm glad you understand that, because your mom and I don't love each other anymore.”

George watched Jack's face, trying to see whether he understood or not. The boy looked bewildered, as if something apparently impossible seemed to be happening. The look on his face wrenched George's heart. He thought: How can I be doing something this cruel to the person I love most in the world?

How did I get here?

“You know I've been sleeping in the guest room.”

“Yeah.”

Here comes the hard part. “Well, I'm going to sleep at Grandma's house tonight.”

“Why?”

“It's because Mom and I don't love each other.”

“Okay, then, I'll see you tomorrow.”

“I'm going to be sleeping at Grandma's a lot from now on.”

Jack began to see that this would affect him. “Will you read my bedtime story?”

“Every night, if you like.” George vowed to keep this promise.

Jack was still working out the implications. “Will you make my warm milk for breakfast?”

“Sometimes. Or Mom will. Or Nanny Tiffany.”

Jack knew prevarication when he heard it. “I don't know,” he said. “I think you better not sleep at Grandma's.”

George ran out of courage. “Well, we'll see,” he said. “Hey, how about some ice cream?”

“Yeah!”

It was the worst day of George's life.

•   •   •

Driving from the Capitol homeward to Prince George's County, George brooded on hostages. This year in Lebanon, four Americans and a Frenchman had been kidnapped. One of the Americans had been released, but the rest were languishing in some prison, unless they were already dead. George knew that one of the Americans was the CIA head of station in Beirut.

The kidnappers were almost certainly a militant Muslim group called Hezbollah, “the Party of God,” founded in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. They had been bankrolled by Iran and trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The United States regarded Hezbollah as an arm of the Iranian government, and classified Iran as a sponsor of terrorism, therefore a country that should not be allowed to buy weapons. George found that ironic, given that President Reagan was sponsoring terrorism in Nicaragua by funding the Contras, a brutal antigovernment group that carried out assassinations and kidnappings.

All the same, George was angry about what was happening in Lebanon. He wanted to send the marines into Beirut with all guns blazing. People should be taught the cost of abducting American citizens!

He felt this strongly, but he knew it was an infantile response. Just
as the Israeli invasion had bred Hezbollah, so a violent American attack on Hezbollah would spawn more terrorism. Another generation of young Middle Eastern men would grow up swearing revenge upon America, the great Satan. George and all thinking people realized, when the blood cooled, that revenge was self-defeating. The only answer was to break the chain.

Which was easier said than done.

George was also aware that he had personally failed that test. He had punched Jasper Murray. Jasper was no wimp, but he had sensibly resisted the temptation to fight back. As a result the damage had been limited—no credit to George.

George was living with his mother again—at the age of forty-eight! Verena was still in the family home with little Jack. George presumed that Jasper spent nights there, but he did not know for sure. He was struggling to find a way to live with divorce—just like millions of other men and women.

It was Friday night, and he turned his mind to the weekend. He was on his way to Verena's house. They had settled into a routine. George picked up Jack on Friday evening and took him to Grandma Jacky's house for the weekend, then brought him back home on Monday morning. It was not how George had wanted to raise his child, but it was the best he could manage.

He thought about what they would do. Tomorrow maybe they would go to the public library together and get some bedtime storybooks. Church on Sunday, of course.

He arrived at the ranch-style house that used to be his home. Verena's car was not in the driveway: she was not home yet. George parked and went to the front door. From politeness he rang the bell, then let himself in with his key.

The house was quiet. “It's only me,” he called out. There was no one in the kitchen. He found Jack sitting in front of the TV, alone. “Hi, buddy,” he said. He sat down and put his arm around Jack's shoulders. “Where's Nanny Tiffany?”

“She had to go home,” Jack said. “Mommy's late.”

George controlled his anger. “So you're on your own here?”

“Tiffany said it's a mergency.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I don't know.” Jack still could not reckon time.

George was furious. His son had been left alone in the house at the age of four. What was Verena thinking of?

He got up and looked around. Jack's weekend case stood in the hall. George checked inside and saw everything necessary: pajamas, clean clothes, teddy bear. Nanny Tiffany had done that before she left to deal with what Jack called her mergency.

He went into the kitchen and wrote a note: “I found Jack alone in the house. Call me.”

Then he got Jack and went out to the car.

Jacky's house was less than a mile away. When they arrived, Jacky gave Jack a glass of milk and a homemade cookie. He told her all about the cat next door, which came to visit and got a saucer of milk. Then Jacky looked at George and said: “All right, what's eating you?”

“Step into the living room and I'll tell you.” They moved to the next room, and George said: “Jack was on his own in the house.”

“Oh, that should not happen.”

“Damn right.”

She overlooked the bad language for once. “Any idea why?”

“Verena didn't come home at the appointed time, and the nanny had to leave.”

At that moment they heard a squeal of tires outside. They both looked out of the window and saw Verena getting out of her red Jaguar and running up the path to the door.

George said: “I'm going to kill her.”

Jacky let her in. She ran to the kitchen and kissed Jack. “Oh, baby, are you okay?” she said tearfully.

“Yeah,” said Jack nonchalantly. “I had a cookie.”

“Grandma's cookies are great, aren't they?”

“You bet.”

George said: “Verena, you'd better come in here and explain yourself.”

She was panting and perspiring. For once she did not appear arrogantly in control. “I was only a few minutes late!” she cried. “I don't know why that goddamn nanny ran out on me!”

“You can't be late when you're looking after Jack,” George said severely.

She resented that. “Oh, like you never were?”

“I never left him alone.”

“It's very difficult on my own!”

“It's your damn fault you're on your own.”

Jacky said: “George, you're in the wrong here.”

“Stay out of this, Mom.”

“No. It's my house and my grandson, and I won't stay out of anything.”

“I can't overlook this, Mom! She did wrong.”

“If I'd never done anything wrong, I wouldn't have you.”

“That's nothing to do with it.”

“I'm just saying we all make mistakes, and sometimes things turn out all right anyway. So stop beating Verena up. It won't do any good.”

Reluctantly, George saw that she was right. “But what are we going to do?”

Verena said: “I'm sorry, George, but I just can't cope.” She started to cry.

Jacky said: “Well, now that we've stopped yelling, maybe we can start thinking. This nanny of yours is no good.”

Verena said: “You don't know how difficult it is to get a nanny! And it's worse for us than for most people. Everyone else hires illegal immigrants and pays them cash, but politicians have to have someone with a green card who pays taxes, so no one wants the job!”

“All right, calm down, I'm not blaming you,” Jacky said to Verena. “Maybe I can help.”

George and Verena stared at Jacky.

Jacky said: “I'm sixty-four, I'm about to retire, and I need something to do. I'll be your backup. If your nanny lets you down, just bring Jack here. Leave him here overnight when you need to.”

“Boy,” said George, “that sounds like a solution to me.”

Verena said: “Jacky, that would be wonderful!”

“Don't thank me, honey, I'm being selfish. I'll get to see my grandson more.”

George said: “Are you sure it won't be too much work, Mom?”

Jacky made a contemptuous noise. “When was the last time something was too much work for me?”

George smiled. “Never, I guess.”

And that settled it.

R
ebecca's tears were cold on her cheeks.

It was October, and a biting wind from the North Sea was blowing across Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. This graveyard was one of the largest in the world, a thousand acres of sadness and mourning. It had a monument to victims of Nazi persecution, a walled grove for resistance fighters, and a mass grave for the thirty-eight thousand Hamburg men, women, and children killed in ten days by Operation Gomorrah, the Allied bombing campaign of summer 1943.

There was no special area for victims of the Wall.

Rebecca knelt down and picked up the dead leaves scattered over her husband's grave. Then she placed a single red rose on the earth.

She stood still, looking at the tombstone, remembering him.

Bernd had been dead a year. He had lived to sixty-two, which was good for a man with a spinal cord injury. In the end his kidneys had failed, a common cause of death in such cases.

Rebecca thought about his life. It had been blighted by the Wall, and by the injury he had received escaping from East Germany, but despite that he had lived well. He had been a good schoolteacher, perhaps a great one. He had defied the tyranny of East German Communism and escaped to freedom. His first marriage had ended in divorce, but he and Rebecca had loved each other passionately for twenty years.

She did not need to come here to remember him. She thought about him every day. His death was an amputation: she was constantly surprised to find he was not there. Alone in the flat they had shared for so long, she often talked to him, telling him about her day, commenting on the news, saying how she felt, hungry or tired or restless. She had not
altered the place, and it still had the ropes and handles that had enabled him to move himself around. His wheelchair stood at the side of the bed as if ready for him to sit upright and haul himself into it. When she masturbated, she imagined him lying beside her, one arm around her, the warmth of his body, his lips on hers.

Fortunately her work was constantly absorbing and challenging. She was now a junior minister in the foreign affairs department of the West German government. Because she spoke Russian and had lived in East Germany she specialized in Eastern Europe. She had little free time.

Tragically, the reunification of Germany seemed ever farther away. Die-hard East German leader Erich Honecker appeared unassailable. People were still being killed trying to escape across the Wall. And in the Soviet Union the death of Andropov had only brought in yet another ailing septuagenarian leader, Konstantin Chernenko. From Berlin to Vladivostok, the Soviet empire was a bog in which its citizens struggled and often sank but never made progress.

Rebecca realized her mind had wandered from Bernd. It was time to go. “Good-bye, my love,” she said softly, and she walked slowly away from the grave.

She pulled her heavy coat around her and folded her arms as she crossed the cold cemetery. She gratefully got into her vehicle and turned on the engine. She was still driving the van with the wheelchair hoist. It was time she traded it in for a normal car.

She drove to her apartment. Outside her building was a shiny black Mercedes S500, with a chauffeur in a cap standing beside it. Her spirits lifted. As she expected, she found that Walli had let himself into the apartment with his own key. He was sitting at the kitchen table with the radio on, tapping his foot to a pop song. On the table was a copy of Plum Nellie's latest album,
The Interpretation of Dreams.
“I'm glad I caught you,” he said. “I'm on my way to the airport. I'm flying to San Francisco.” He stood up to kiss her.

He would be forty in a couple of years, and he looked great. He still smoked, but he never took drugs or alcohol. He was wearing a tan leather jacket over a blue denim shirt. Some girl ought to snap him up, Rebecca thought; but although he had girlfriends he seemed in no hurry to settle down.

When she kissed him she touched his arm and noticed that the leather of his jacket was as soft as silk. It had probably cost a fortune. She said: “But you've only just finished your album.”

“We're doing a tour of the States. I'm going to Daisy Farm for three weeks of rehearsal. We open in Philadelphia in a month.”

“Give the boys my love.”

“Sure will.”

“It's a while since you toured.”

“Three years. Hence the long rehearsal. But stadium gigs are where it's at now. It's not like the All-Star Touring Beat Revue, with twelve bands playing two or three songs each to a couple of thousand people in a theater or gymnasium. It's just fifty thousand people and us.”

“Will you do some European dates?”

“Yes, but they haven't been fixed yet.”

“Any in Germany?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Let me know.”

“Of course. I may be able to get you a free ticket.”

Rebecca laughed. As Walli's sister she was treated like royalty whenever she went backstage at a Plum Nellie gig. The band had often talked in interviews about the old days in Hamburg, and how Walli's big sister used to give them their only good meal of the week. For that she was famous in the world of rock and roll.

“Have a great tour,” she said.

“You're about to fly to Budapest, aren't you?”

“For a trade conference, yes.”

“Will there be some East Germans there?”

“Yes, why?”

“Do you think one of them might be able to get an album to Alice?”

Rebecca grimaced. “I don't know. My relations with East German politicians are not warm. They think I'm a lackey of the capitalist-imperialists, and I think they are unelected thugs who rule by terror and keep their people imprisoned.”

Walli smiled. “So, not much common ground, then.”

“No. But I'll try.”

“Thanks.” He handed her the disc.

Rebecca looked at the photograph on the sleeve, of four middle-aged men with long hair and blue jeans. Buzz, the randy bass player, was overweight. The gay drummer, Lew, was losing his hair. Dave, the leader of the band, had a touch of gray in his hair. They were established, successful, and rich. She remembered the hungry kids who had come here to this apartment: thin, scruffy, witty, charming, and full of hopes and dreams. “You've done well,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Walli. “We have.”

•   •   •

On the last evening of the Budapest conference, Rebecca and the other delegates were given a tasting of Tokaj wines. They were taken to a cellar owned by the Hungarian government bottling organization. It was in the Pest district, east of the Danube River. They were offered several different kinds of white wine: dry; strong; the lightly alcoholic nectar called
eszencia;
and the famous slow-fermented
aszú.

All over the world, government officials were bad at throwing parties, and Rebecca feared this would be a dull occasion. However, the old cellar with its arched ceilings and stacked cases of booze had a cozy feel, and there were spicy Hungarian snacks of dumplings, stuffed mushrooms, and sausages.

Rebecca picked out one of the East German delegates and gave him her most engaging smile. “Our German wines are superior, don't you think?” she said.

She chatted flirtatiously with him for a few minutes, then asked him the question. “I have a niece in East Berlin, and I want to send her a pop record, but I'm afraid it might get damaged in the mail. Would you take it for me?”

“Yes, I suppose I could,” he said dubiously.

“I'll give it to you tomorrow at breakfast, if I may. You're very kind.”

“Okay.” He looked troubled, and Rebecca thought there was a chance he might hand over the disc to the Stasi. But all she could do was try.

When the wine had relaxed everyone, Rebecca was approached by Frederik Bíró, a Hungarian politician of her own age whom she liked. He specialized in foreign policy, as she did. “What's the truth about this country?” she asked him. “How is it doing, really?”

He looked at his watch. “We're about a mile from your hotel,” he said. He spoke good German, like most educated Hungarians. “Would you like to walk back with me?”

They got their coats and left. Their route followed the broad, dark river. On the far bank, the lights of the medieval town of Buda rose romantically to a hilltop palace.

“The Communists promised prosperity, and the people are disappointed,” Bíró said as they walked. “Even Communist Party members complain about the Kádár government.” Rebecca guessed that he felt freer to talk out in the open air where they could not be bugged.

She said: “And the solution?”

“The strange thing is that everyone knows the answer. We need to decentralize decisions, introduce limited markets, and legitimize the semi-illegal gray economy so that it can grow.”

“Who stands in the way of this?” She realized she was firing questions at him like a courtroom lawyer. “Forgive me,” she said. “I don't mean to interrogate you.”

“Not at all,” he said with a smile. “I like people who speak in a direct way. It saves time.”

“Men often resent being spoken to that way by a woman.”

“Not me. You could say that I have a weakness for assertive women.”

“Are you married to one?”

“I was. I'm divorced now.”

Rebecca realized this was none of her business. “You were about to tell me who stands in the way of reform.”

“About fifteen thousand bureaucrats who would lose their power and their jobs; fifty thousand top Communist Party officials who make almost all the decisions; and János Kádár, who has been our leader since 1956.”

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. Bíró was being remarkably frank. The thought crossed her mind that Bíró's candid remarks may not have been totally spontaneous. Had this conversation perhaps been planned? She said: “Does Kádár have an alternative solution?”

“Yes,” said Bíró. “To maintain the standard of living of Hungarian workers, he is borrowing more and more money from Western banks, including German ones.”

“And how will you pay the interest on those loans?”

“What a good question,” said Bíró.

They drew level with Rebecca's hotel, across the street from the river. She stopped and leaned on the embankment wall. “Is Kádár a permanent fixture?”

“Not necessarily. I'm close to a promising young man called Miklós Németh.”

Ah, Rebecca thought, so this is the point of the conversation: to tell the German government, quietly and informally, that Németh is the reformist rival to Kádár.

“He's in his thirties, and very bright,” Bíró continued. “But we fear a Hungarian repeat of the Soviet situation: Brezhnev replaced by Andropov and then Chernenko. It's like the queue for the toilet in a home for old men.”

Rebecca laughed. She liked Bíró.

He bent his head and kissed her.

She was only half surprised. She had sensed that he was attracted to her. What surprised her was how excited she felt to be kissed. She kissed him back eagerly.

Then she drew back. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away a little. She studied him in the lamplight. No man of fifty looked like Adonis, but Frederik had a face that suggested intelligence and compassion and the ability to smile wryly at life's ironies. He had gray hair cut short and blue eyes. He was wearing a dark-blue coat and a bright red scarf, conservatism with a touch of gaiety.

She said: “Why did you get divorced?”

“I had an affair, and my wife left me. Feel free to condemn me.”

“No,” she said. “I've made mistakes.”

“I regretted it, when it was too late.”

“Children?”

“Two, grown up. They have forgiven me. Marta has remarried, but I'm still single. What's your story?”

“I divorced my first husband when I discovered he worked for the Stasi. My second husband was injured escaping over the Berlin Wall. He was in a wheelchair, but we were happy together for twenty years. He died a year ago.”

“My word, you're about due for some good luck.”

“Perhaps I am. Would you walk me to the hotel entrance, please?”

They crossed the road. On the corner of the block, where the streetlights were less glaring, she kissed him again. She enjoyed it even more this time, and pressed her body against his.

“Spend the night with me,” he said.

She was sorely tempted. “No,” she said. “It's too soon. I hardly know you.”

“But you're going home tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“We may never meet again.”

“I'm sure we will.”

“We could go to my apartment. Or I'll come to your room.”

“No, though I'm flattered by your persistence. Good night.”

“Good night, then.”

She turned away.

He said: “I travel often to Bonn. I'll be there in ten days' time.”

She turned back, smiling.

He said: “Will you have dinner with me?”

“I'd love to,” she said. “Call me.”

“Okay.”

She walked into the hotel lobby, smiling.

•   •   •

Lili was at home in Berlin-Mitte one afternoon when her niece, Alice, came, in a rainstorm, to borrow books. Alice had been refused admission to university, despite her outstanding grades, because of her mother's underground career as a protest singer. However, Alice was determined to educate herself, so she was studying English in the evenings after she finished her shift at the factory. Carla had a small collection of English-language novels inherited from Grandmother Maud. Lili happened to be at home when Alice called, and they went upstairs to the drawing room and looked through the books together while the rain drummed on the windows. They were old editions, prewar, Lili guessed. Alice picked out a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. She would be the fourth generation to read them, Lili calculated.