Funeral in Berlin (15 page)

‘Official?’ I asked.

‘More or less,’ said Harvey. ‘The last time I went to see the Embassy Security Officer, he gave me a printed form called “The Foreign Service Retirement and Disability System”. What’s more they’ve got me working in the visa section with an FSO 8
³
leaning over my shoulder all day.’

‘And Jindriska?’ I said.

Harvey got to his feet and walked across to the wash basin. He selected a cake of soap from my open case. He sniffed at the soap. ‘Lemon,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. He sniffed the soap again and then began to wash his hands. ‘She wants to stay here in some ways,’ Harvey said. ‘But she will do as I ask. There’s no point in my persuading her to go Stateside when there’s no slight chance of the State Department giving her a visa.’

‘You work in the visa department,’ I said.

‘That’s just what they are waiting for,’ said Harvey. He continued to wash his hands with Freudian preciseness. ‘…Hell, they’re right. I’m not complaining. I’m in the Political section, I’ve
got no business falling in love with a Czechoslovak girl, but…’ He pulled a face at me in the mirror.

‘Maybe
I
should marry her,’ I said. ‘That would make her a British subject. Then you’ll have no trouble.’ Harvey wasn’t in a laughing mood. ‘Yeah,’ he said and continued to wash his hands until they had all but disappeared into great white boxinggloves of sudsy lather. ‘You see,’ he said quietly, ‘that’s why those two comedians tonight gave me the jitters. I don’t know what I’d do if I found that Jindriska was…working for…’

‘Harvey,’ I said sharply, ‘don’t get so maudlin. Just treat your work like a mistress: don’t tell your wife about it
wherever
she was born.’ Harvey grinned. I said, ‘Stop trying to wash your troubles away and come and have a drink.’ I was wondering where I would get another friendly contact in Prague half as good as Harvey.

He rinsed and dried his hands a little awkwardly, smiled and took his drink. Down the corridor I could hear the American tourist saying, ‘Jiminy, Jane, there are no darned curtains at the window. I wonder which room those two guys are in.’ We heard him walk down the corridor in our direction. He stopped, then he called, ‘Is there a fellow American hereabouts?’

We listened to him calling all along the corridor. Then I said to Harvey, ‘Where do I meet this second guy who was in Treblinka camp?’

‘Jan-im-Glück’s brother,’ said Harvey, ‘they hate each other.’ He went and stared through the dingy
lace into Wenceslas Square. ‘But if you want to see the death of your guy in writing he’ll be in the Pinkas synagogue at ten thirty in the morning. That’s in the Staré Mesto near the Ghetto section. There are several synagogues there but Pinkas is where he’ll be.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said. I poured Harvey another drink. ‘I wish I knew what Stok was thinking,’ said Harvey.

COLONEL ALEXEYEVITCH OLEG STOK

Monday, October 21st

‘It’s not my job to think,’ said Stok. ‘I employ youngsters to do that; their minds aren’t so cluttered up with knowledge.’ He eased his boots off and flexed his toes in front of the stove. Stok could pick things up with his toes when he was a kid. It was a long time since he had demonstrated that. They had a different set of values nowadays and not only about prehensile toes.

‘Veal I’m having,’ said the Czech officer whose name was Vaclav.

‘Anything you have,’ said Stok. He wasn’t a fussy man. Something hot to eat, something cold to drink and a bed—with sheets if possible—and he wouldn’t complain.

‘Veal and strawberries,’ said Vaclav. Stok nodded.

‘They are tinned,’ said Vaclav.

‘Good God, man. I’m not Tsar Nicholas. Just
heat it and bring it in.’ Stok wished he hadn’t said ‘God’; he’d probably given the wrong impression the other way now. Vaclav went out to the kitchen. Stok lit up. He relished the taste of Makhora. He made a point of smoking fancy things when he was talking to Westerners but the coarsest Russian tobacco was what he enjoyed most.

Vaclav came back with two plates of meat. He had prepared them himself; he hoped Stok would understand. There was no chance of getting servants, they were all working in the factories. The last one went back to the farm, could you imagine that?

‘Easily,’ said Stok. ‘The only place anyone gets a square meal in this country.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Vaclav but he relaxed into a smile.

‘You can say anything you want when I have my boots off,’ said Stok. ‘That’s what I tell all my people. Anything I hear while my boots are off is off the record, privileged you might say.’

Vaclav slipped his shoes off. He wasn’t sure if Comrade Colonel Stok expected him to do that but they were damp anyway. He turned them soles upwards near the stove. He didn’t want them to lose shape, for even in Czechoslovakia where shoes were a major industry—the Gottwaldov factory that used to be Bata turning out thousands of pairs—even here there was no excuse for waste. He stuffed the inside of the shoe with strips torn from
Lidova Demokracie.

‘Don’t use that,’ Stok bellowed.

Vaclav looked down at the torn paper. He had torn Walther Ulbricht into two irregular halves.

‘
Pravda
is what I use,’ Stok boomed. ‘It’s best for boots, seems to draw the moisture out somehow.’ Vaclav smiled; he knew he was being teased.

Stok ate his veal and drank the whole of his lager in one go.

‘You don’t waste time,’ said Vaclav.

‘I had one knocked over once,’ Stok said, and roared with laughter.

Vaclav arranged the complicated system of dampers on the large white porcelain stove and the fire began to whine and crackle.

‘You should come up to Berlin,’ said Stok. ‘It’s damned comfortable up there, I can tell you. They know how to look after themselves, Vaclav, these Germans. Sometimes I wonder how we managed to beat them.’

‘The Nazis?’ said Vaclav.

‘Oh we still haven’t beaten
them,
’ said Stok. ‘The Germans I meant.’

Germans. What went wrong with Lenin’s dream of a marriage between the Russian and German proletariat? The same thing that went wrong with lesser marriages—the image of illusion is shattered by the hammer of reality. It was all very well extending the hand of friendship to the German proletariat until you found them in Wehrmacht uniform burning down your village. It went wrong then. Stok nodded to himself.

‘I hate Germans,’ said Vaclav, ‘I was in the RG
¹
at one time.’

Stok raised his eyebrows as though he hadn’t known. ‘We knew what to do with Germans,’ Vaclav went on. ‘The lucky ones took just their hand-luggage and went across the border in cattle trucks. Three million of them. They were glad to go. That’s what to do with Germans.’

‘That’s what we did,’ said Stok. That’s what we did wrong, he thought to himself. Lenin would never have agreed to the forced shift of factories and populations. Stok looked at Vaclav’s pale eyes. He’s a Stalinist, Stok decided. They all are, the Czechs. Pushing the Germans across the border was a piece of pure Stalinism.

‘The Germans are the wild animals of Europe, whatever sort of flag they carry.’

‘Germans are more complex than that. I could give you a dozen examples.’ Stok pulled his fleshy chin. ‘I am faced with a problem at this moment, which is a matter of understanding the German character, and quite honestly, Vaclav, I don’t know whether I’m a fit man to do it.’

‘A man that stormed the Winter Palace?’ said Vaclav.

‘Ah,’ said Stok smiling, ‘the number of times I have stormed that Winter Palace. But it’s no good, my boy. We can’t go on storming our Winter Palaces for ever. We must storm new Palaces every day, for that’s how we are judged, upon last week’s desk work, not upon the night I had a little too much to drink and couldn’t see the danger involved in charging riflemen with a rake. We don’t want any more Winter Palaces, Vaclav, as I told that young fool tonight; ideas will infiltrate the most heavily fortified citadel.’ Stok nodded to himself and fingered the flesh under his chin as though trying to tear it free.

‘Ideas travel,’ Stok said. Both ways, he added to himself. He thought of the young tough that poor Major Bykovsky had for a son. He wore leather jackets and pointed shoes and sat in his room getting ancient American jazz records wordperfect. Some say he wrote to film stars in Hollywood. There should be a dossier on him, Stok thought, but he’d known Bykovsky since 1926; it would break his heart. When he got back to Berlin he would inquire into the whole business again. These sort of sloppy sentimental inefficiencies were a betrayal of all he believed in. But still…

‘All societies contain within themselves the germ of their own destruction,’ Vaclav said.

‘That’s about it,’ said Stok. Not very bright, Vaclav, Stok thought. Even his quotes from Marx were wrong. There was a radio playing near by.
‘The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows.’ Stok softly sang a few bars.

‘Have you been often to the West?’ Vaclav asked.

‘Often,’ said Stok.

‘I too have visited the West,’ said Vaclav. Stok sipped his lemon tea and nodded. ‘You lived in Bayswater—a district of London—during the war,’ said Stok. Then he laughed a deep-throated laugh. ‘Don’t blush, my son.’

Vaclav was angry at himself for being even slightly embarrassed. ‘I went to join the Free Slovak forces on the orders of Moscow.’

‘That’s right,’ said Stok, still grinning. He knew all about Vaclav.

‘I enjoy a trip to the West,’ said Vaclav. He was like a defiant child, thought Stok. ‘Why not, lad?’

‘But the fundamental inequality is what spoiled any pleasure there might be in material things. How can there ever be justice there?’

‘We are policemen, Vaclav; and policemen can’t get mixed up with justice. It’s bad enough being mixed up with the law.’ Vaclav nodded but did not smile.

Vaclav said, ‘But as citizens we must consider such things. Inequality in the eyes of the state is the overwhelming sin of capitalism and will be responsible for its downfall.’

‘Sin?’ asked Stok. Vaclav had the pale features of a young priest, thought Stok. Although he wriggled with embarrassment, Vaclav continued, ‘It’s what makes our Socialist Republic strong: the
guarantee of humanity, fraternity, justice and prosperity for all. In the West the one-sided invidious processes of commerce which dominate the system inevitably end in militarism, in which truth and justice are suppressed by corruption.’

He’s like my own young men, thought Stok, well provided with answers. Stok pushed his feet against the hot porcelain of the stove and watched the steam rise from his damp socks.

‘Not to believe in justice because of corruption is like not believing in marriage because of infidelity,’ said Stok. ‘A system works according to the kind of people running it. Even fascism would be acceptable if it was run by angels. Marxism assumes that countries are run by men—corruptible men.’

‘Are you directed to ask me questions?’ said Vaclav. ‘To test me?’

‘May my right hand lose its cunning,’ roared Stok, ‘if I abused my job and your hospitality.’

Vaclav nodded. Then, putting on his formal voice, he said, ‘Comrade Colonel, what was the purpose of the meeting tonight?’

‘There was no purpose,’ said Stok without a pause. ‘It’s just a matter of letting them know we have our eyes upon them.’

‘You never intended to arrest them.’

He was a mass round-up man, this Czech. He’d use an armoured division to shadow a suspect and wonder why he vanished. ‘He’s not a black marketeer,’ Stok said. ‘He is an employee
of the British Government. This is all a matter of probing gently. Like a brain operation, Vaclav. A hammer and chisel is all right for getting through the skull, but after that you have to be delicate.’ Stok pronounced it as though the word itself was fragile.

‘Yes,’ said Vaclav. Yes, thought Stok. He’d never understand in a million years. He wondered how the Englishman would ever manage, had he an assistant of this calibre.

There was a long silence. Stok helped himself to some slivovice.

‘He seemed not very…’ Vaclav groped for a word, ‘…professional.’

‘In our business,’ said Stok with a chuckle, ‘that’s the very height of professionalism. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if the Englishman came just to show us that they are probing.’

‘Probing what?’

‘Why must you be so unfeeling, my boy? Just probing: the situation, the way we work, the way we think. Some of us,’ he corrected himself.

‘I understand,’ said Vaclav.

‘Get a drink,’ said Stok. ‘You’re like an unemployed undertaker.’

Vaclav said, ‘I have some Western gramophone records that we can play.’

‘My oath,’ thought Stok. He was going to be another jazz fan like Bykovsky’s brat. ‘The Aitchison, Topeka and the Santa Fé’ and ‘The Dark Town Poker Club’ were two songs that
Bykovsky’s boy sang in word-perfect American. What an awful idea.

‘Ideas travel,’ said Stok, ‘and there is nothing any of us can do about that except listen.’

‘Yes,’ said Vaclav. He didn’t fetch the records, to Stok’s relief.

Stok curled his toes around the warm metal of the poker. Vaclav watched him without seeing.

‘This girl the American wants to marry.
Is
she working for you?’

‘No,’ said Vaclav.

‘Now don’t lie to me, you young blackguard,’ Stok said loudly.

‘No,’ said Vaclav quietly. They smiled at each other.

‘You can like people,’ said Stok, ‘without going into detail.’ Stok’s mind roamed off to the old General Borg. A desiccated old Prussian general, who would have thought that one could have made a friend of him? At first he’d only visited Borg because he was going to make a play for the elder daughter. Stok tugged at his chin again. And now here he was, the younger girl’s
Pate.
A fine old fuss there would be if that leaked out.
Pate
—an old-fashioned godfather instead of having her attend the
Jugendweihe
ceremony that the Communist regime held instead.

Stok thought of all those books and papers, room after room of documents that the poor girl collated and dusted. He knew that flat as well as any place in the world; it was perhaps the only
place he could really call home. The greater part of his time he spent in his office, devoid of anything that could be construed as even the simplest bourgeois comfort. As for the great ocean liner of a place in Köpenick that one of his staff had furnished to impress visiting officials, well! It gave him the shudders just to go inside the door. No, Borg’s place was the nearest thing to a home.

It had been difficult to keep up with the old man or his daughter at first. This division, that army corps ‘wheeling southward on the Don’, ‘counter-offensive pinching out by concentric attack’. He had only been a captain during the war, and that only for the final seven weeks. Old Borg always spoke to him like he had the ear of Stalin. Stok remembered an American tourist that he had questioned a couple of months back. When Stok asked him where he had travelled on holiday, the tourist said, ‘I don’t know until I develop the film.’

Stok had laughed at the time. He knew how true that could be. He had never known what he had done in the war until old Borg had explained it to him. The old man wouldn’t last long, Stok thought. He didn’t know what Heidi would do when he died. Heidi, thought Stok,
I
don’t know what
I
will do when the old man dies. Stok wondered what the old man would say to the idea of him marrying Heidi. It was a stupid idea and Stok rejected it from his mind. His toes gripped the
warm metal of the poker but it slipped from the grasp of his damp sock.

‘German man,’ said Vaclav.

‘What did you say?’ said Stok.

‘You started to tell me about a problem you have with a German man,’ Vaclav said.

‘Did I?’ said Stok. He must try and cure himself of this tendency to daydream.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Stok. ‘Well, the problem is this. If you have a German Jew, what is he?’

‘I do not understand,’ said Vaclav.

‘It’s quite simple,’ said Stok loudly. ‘Is he primarily a Jew, or is he primarily a German? Upon that depends what he will do in a certain situation. That’s why we keep dossiers, my dear Vaclav, to provide matter for anticipatory calculations. My guess is that if a man behaves in a certain flashy, unscrupulous way for long enough he will develop behaviour patterns of that sort, no matter what fantasy life he may lead about retiring to a monastery or university or wherever errant capitalist intellectuals end up.’

‘So you have decided what to do?’ said Vaclav.

‘In these tricky cases I always do the same thing,’ said Stok. ‘I make my plans upon the basis of everyone being untrustworthy.’

Vaclav admired that solution. It had a certain historic ring to it. ‘What about the Englishman tonight?’ said Vaclav. ‘Is he another problem?’

‘English?’ said Stok. ‘No, no, no.’ He poured himself another drink. He’d had too many, he
knew, but one more wouldn’t make all that difference. ‘“English” is a professional just like you and me. Professionals never make problems.’ Stok curled his toe round the warm poker and lifted it.