Funeral in Berlin (9 page)

Mate: a word from Old French meaning to
overpower or overcome.

Saturday, October 12th

Sam drove me back to her place in a white Sunbeam Alpine. The flat was tidied and the small rug upon which the wine had spilled had been taken away for cleaning. She clattered around in the kitchen and I could hear the whirr of an electric can-opener. I wandered into Samantha’s bedroom. The dressingtable was crowded with pint-size bottles of Lanvin, Millot and Givenchy, torn pieces of cotton wool, gold hair-brushes, cleansing cream, half a cup of cold coffee, witch hazel, skin food, hand lotion, roll-on deodorant, scissors, tweezers, six different nail polishes, seven bright bottles of eye make-up from green to mauve, a capsule containing silver paint and a large bowl full of beads and bracelets. In a silver frame there was a photo of a blond man in very small knitted swimming-trunks. I picked up
the frame. The photo was a little too small and slid down to reveal the top of another man’s head. The photo underneath was a studio portrait, well lit and carefully printed; it leaned into the frame at a forty-five-degree angle, like film stars like to lean. In bold loopy writing it said: ‘To Samantha with immortal love. Johnnie Vulkan.’

Long, slim hands gripped my chest from behind and I felt the soft, fragrant shapes of Sam press herself tightly against me.

‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’ she said.

‘Looking at photos of your lovers,’ I said.

‘Poor Johnnie Vulkan,’ she said. ‘He’s still madly in love with me. Does it make you insanely jealous?’

‘Insanely,’ I said.

We stood there very close, watching our reflection in the dressing-table mirror.

On the bed there was a selection of toys. There was a huge moth-eaten teddy bear, a black velvet cat with a damaged ear and a small cross-eyed alligator.

‘Aren’t you getting a little too old for cuddly toys?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said.

I said, ‘Who needs cuddly toys?’

‘Don’t do that,’ she said then, ‘men use women as cuddly toys, women use babies as cuddly toys and babies use cuddly toys as cuddly toys.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Now now,’ said Sam and ran a finger-nail up
my spine muscle. Her voice became a whisper. ‘There are four stages of a love affair. First there is the stage of being in love and liking it.’ Her voice was muffled by my shoulder. ‘That’s this stage.’

‘How long’s is likely to last?’

‘Not long enough,’ said Sam. ‘The other stages soon follow.’

‘What stages?’ I said.

‘There’s being in love and
not
liking it,’ said Sam. ‘That’s the second one. Then there is
not
being in love and not liking
that.
And finally there is not being in love and liking that—you are over it then—cured.’

‘Sounds great,’ I said.

‘You have to be make-believe tough,’ Samantha said. ‘I’m serious and it makes me sort of sad. If people in love synchronized their movements through those stages…’ She snuggled deeper into my shoulder. ‘We’ll stay at the first stage for ever. No matter what calls us away, we’ll stay up here on the moon. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘No. I’m serious.’

‘Looks like we’re first here on the moon,’ I said.

Sam said, ‘Just think of all those poor dopes down on earth who can’t see that great sun.’

‘It’s really frying us,’ I said.

‘Stay still,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t do that. I have a can of corn on the stove; it will burn.’

‘Corn,’ I said, ‘is expendable.’

One can escape from check by removing hostile
pieces or interposing oneself.

Berlin, Saturday, October 12th

I gave the doorman at the Frühling my bags and stepped out in search of supper. It was late, the animals in the zoo had settled down but next door in the Hilton they were just becoming fully awake. Near by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church bells clanged gently and around it came a white VW bus, its hoo-haw siren moaning and its blue light flashing a priority. Cars halted as the bus bearing the words ‘Military Police US Army’ roared past, its fan whining.

Maison de France is on the corner of Uhlandstrasse not far away. I was hungry. It was a good night for walking but the pressure was rising and rain was in the air. The neon signs gloated brightly across the beleaguered city. On the Ku-damm the pavement cafés had closed their
glass sides tight and turned on the infrared heating. In the glass cases diners moved like carnivorous insects. Here the well-dressed
Insulaner
¹
ate, argued, bartered and sat over one coffee for hours until the waiters made their annoyance too evident. Outside, the glittering kiosks sold magazines and hot meat snacks to the strollers, while doubledecker cream buses clattered up and down, and nippy VWs roared and whined around the corners past the open-topped Mercedes that drove lazily past, their drivers hailing and shouting to people they recognized and to quite a few that they didn’t.

Knots of pedestrians paraded at the traffic crossings and at the given signal marched obediently forward. Young men in dark woollen shirts parked and played jazz on their car radios and waited patiently while their white-haired girl friends adjusted their make-up and decided which club they would like to go to next.

Two men were eating
Shashlik
at a corner kiosk and listening to a football match over a transistor radio. I crossed half of the wide street; down the centre of it, brightly coloured cars were parked in a vast row that reached as far as the Grunewald. High above I could see the lights of the Maison de France restaurant.

I heard footsteps behind. It was one of the men from the kiosk. I was between two parked cars. I
turned and let the weight of my back fall upon the nearest car, flattening the palms of my hands against the cold metal. He was a bald-headed man in a short overcoat. He was so close behind me that he almost collided with me when I stopped. I leaned well back and kicked at him as hard as I could. He screamed. I smelled the rich meaty
Shashlik
as he stumbled forward out of balance. I groped towards the scream and felt the wooden
Shashlik
skewer drive into the side of my left hand. The man’s bald head smashed against the window of the other car. The safety glass shattered into milky opacity and I read the words ‘Protected by Pinkertons—Chicago Motor Club’ on a bright paper transfer.

He held his head in his hand and began lowering it to the ground like a slow-motion film of a touchdown. He whimpered softly.

From the kiosk the second man came running, shouting a torrent of German in the ever-comical accent of Saxony. As he began to cross the roadway towards me there was another ‘hoo-haw’ of police sirens and a VW saloon with blue flasher and spotlight full on came roaring down the wide street. The Saxon stepped back on to the pavement, but when the police car had flashed past he ran towards me. I drew out the 9-mm FN automatic pistol
²
that the War Office Armoury had made such a
fuss about and used my left hand to slam the slide back and put a cartridge into the breech. An edge of pain travelled along my palm and I felt the sticky wetness of blood. I was crouched very low by the time the Saxon got to the rear of the car. Just inches to the left of my elbow, the whimpering man said, ‘But we have a message for you.’ He rocked gently with the pain and blood ran down the bald head like earphones.

‘Bist du verrückt, Engländer?’

I wasn’t mad I told him as long as he kept his distance. The Saxon called again from the rear of the Buick. They had a message for me ‘from the Colonel’. In that town I knew several colonels but it was easy to guess who they meant.

The man sitting on the ground whimpered and, as a car’s headlights rolled past, I saw his face was very white. The blood moved down the side of his head. It glued his fingers together and moved slowly to form new patterns like a kaleidoscope. Little puddles of it formed in the wrinkles of his shiny ears and splashed on his knitted tie like tomato soup.

I took the written address from the Saxon with apologies. These were no B-picture heavies, just two elderly messengers. I left them there in the middle of the Ku-damm, the Saxon and his halfconscious friend. They would never find a taxi on a Saturday night, especially now that rain had begun.

Enemy territory is that area of the board within
one-move range of opposing forces.

Saturday, October 12th

I washed the gash that the wooden skewer had made in my hand and bound it with Elastoplast but it began to bleed again before I reached the check post at Friedrichstrasse. Inside there was a good-natured argument going on. A red-faced man waving an Irish passport said, ‘…neutral and we have always stayed neutral.’

The Grepo said, ‘Not only does your Government not recognize the Deutsche Demokratische Republik but the USSR has been waiting forty-five years for your Government to recognize
them.
’

They returned my passport after only a perfunctory glance. I could have taken an M-60 tank through, let alone my 9-mm FN pistol.

As I stepped out into the rain I heard the
Irishman say, ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure—that’s what we always say.’

Karlshorst is the Russian part of East Berlin; the Kommandatura is here and most of the Russians reside here. The address the Saxon had given me was a narrow street to the south of the district. The rain beat down in earnest and there were no pedestrians anywhere. The lightning lit up the whole sky in flashes and it was by the light of one of them that I saw the street name. It was a cobbled alley, on each side of which were tiny narrow-fronted shops. The wooden shutters were shiny in the rain and number twelve was even more deserted-looking than the others.

I put my pistol in my jacket and pulled the Elastoplast tighter. The blood was seeping under the adhesive part and making smudge marks on my cuff. I knocked at the door. Everywhere the windows were dark and the only light came from the gas lamps in the street. As I knocked again the door creaked slowly open. I pulled a flashlight from my pocket and shone it around the cracked plaster walls. I found the switch but it gave no light.

To my left a well-oiled door opened on to a large room. In the centre of the room the two huge gleaming discs of a bandsaw reflected back the light of my torch. In the corner was a tall chain mortiser. Around the base of each machine the floor was reinforced with concrete, and rusty bolts held the carefully oiled machines in true. Across
one wall, planks were stacked and the aroma of cut wood clung to the water vapour on the damp night air. There was no one there. I opened a cupboard and pointed the gun at a broom and a tin of polish. Ahead of me the main corridor ended in a narrow twisting staircase. I held the torch well to one side of my movements and eased the first pressure on the automatic. The torch was slimy with blood and a droplet flicked in the lamp beam before soaking softly into the sawdust. The stairs creaked. I tested each step with part of my weight as I moved down. The wooden steps were thick with sawdust and the cellar floor crackled under foot with a deep autumnal carpet of shavings.

I moved the light slowly across the wall. I could smell the sweet, sappy scent of freshly cut wood. In Prussian orderliness the framesaws, London hammers, try squares, pad saws, chisels, rasps and shining bottles of stains and polishes were arranged geometrically in their rightful place above the veneering press. Five long joiners’ benches were arranged in the centre of the cellar. Upon them were rusty pots of fish-glue and thin slivers of veneer.

The end of the cellar was kept clear. There was a tiny ring with an enormous kettle used for bending the veneer. Six cracked cups were draining upside down on a tea-cloth; on one of them it said ‘A present from Dresden’.

A handful of countersunk screws and a heavy screwdriver on the heavy table at the end marked
where the metal fittings joined the woodwork. Directly overhead was a trapdoor and a hoist, as they were altogether too big for the staircase; there were six of them leaning against the wall, shining and polished lovingly and ready for use.

These coffins were very elaborate. Their lids were as deep as the base and around them was the embossed scrollwork of leaves and flowers that culminated in six vast metal handles. I tapped each of the great cases; one two three four five six. The last one wasn’t hollow, and before the sound of my rapping had ceased to echo around the walls the lid fell away from it and hit the floor with an echoing crash. I flashed the torch into the silken cavity and levelled my gun. The torch beam fell upon the shape of a uniformed man crammed tightly into the straight-sided casket. Before I had studied the face the medals and gold wire insignia told me it was Stok.

He giggled. ‘I frightened you, English, admit it, I frightened you.’

‘You frightened me so much that I nearly gave you six extra navels,’ I said. I put the pistol into my pocket and helped extricate the broad shoulders of Stok from the coffin.

‘You’d better come to England to die,’ I said. ‘Our coffins widen out at the shoulders.’

‘Yes?’ Stok dusted the sawdust from his summer uniform and found a peaked cap under the nearest joiner’s bench. He switched four neon lights into action.

‘What’s the joke, Stok?’ I said.

Stok slapped the coffin with the flat of his hand. ‘It’s for Semitsa,’ he said. ‘Look.’ He pointed to the inside of the coffin. Holes had been bored through the intricate embossed patterns of the lid.

Stok slapped the coffin again. ‘One of the few real quality places left this is; quality.’ He rapped the side. ‘Elm wood,’ he said, ‘soundly constructed of twenty-millimetre seasoned timber. Waterproofed, waxed and upholstered with satin-covered calico. Side sheets, robe and shroud. Robust electro-brassed handles, inscribed or written nameplate, brass closing-screws, lid ornament, end-rings, silk cords and tassels.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Stok walloped me on the back playfully and laughed.

‘Two hundred marks,’ he said, ‘but don’t worry. It will come out of my forty thousand pounds.’ Stok smiled again. His face was carved of pink sandstone, his features worn smooth by a millennium of pilgrims’ hands. He opened a blouse pocket and produced a buff-coloured form.

‘This is a form by means of which relatives claim the body of a deceased person. Sign here.’ Stok jabbed the form with a finger like a Lyons sausage—slightly overdone.

I brought out my fountain pen but hesitated to use it.

‘Give your hotel as your address and sign it “Dorf”. Why are you so cautious, you English? You will only be Dorf for a few more days.’

‘It’s those days I’m worrying about,’ I said. Stok laughed and I signed the paper for him.

‘You’ve cut your hand, English,’ Stok said.

‘Opening oysters,’ I said.

‘So,’ said Stok.

‘It’s a real decadent life we live over there,’ I told him. Stok nodded.

He said, ‘We will pass Semitsa, in this, through Checkpoint Charlie in three weeks’ time; 5
P.M.,
Monday, November the fourth. Now what about the arrangements for the money?’ Stok produced a packet of Dukat cigarettes. I took one and lit up.

‘When your Government has positively agreed the payment of the money you will signal so by having Victor Sylvester play “There’s a small Hotel” on his Overseas Service programme of the BBC. If the deal’s not on, he doesn’t play it. OK?’

‘You’re too damned wholesale, Stok. It would do you good to face some of my difficulties for a week. I’m not sure that I can do that.’

‘Not sure if you can make this man Sylvester play “There’s a small Hotel”?’ said Stok incredulously.

‘Not sure if I can stop him,’ I said.

‘Your capitalism,’ said Stok. He nodded sagely. ‘How can it ever work?’ He removed a woodshaving from his sleeve. ‘There is a village in Africa where the tribesmen stand in the deep crocodileinfested water, fishing. They send the fish they catch for barter to the next village where the main industry is manufacturing wooden legs.’

Stok laughed loudly until I had to join in.

‘That’s capitalism,’ said Stok. He tapped my arm.

‘I heard a very good joke the other day.’ He was speaking very softly now as though there was a chance of us being overheard. ‘Ulbricht is going about incognito testing his own popularity by asking people if they like Ulbricht. One man he asks says, “Come with me.” He takes Ulbricht on a train and a bus until they are deep in the Saxon hills near the Czechoslovak border. They walk in the country until they are many kilometres from the nearest house and then they finally stop. This man looks all around and whispers to Ulbricht, “I personally,” the man says, “don’t mind him at all.”’ Stok roared with laughter again. ‘I don’t mind him at all,’ said Stok again, pointing at his own chest and laughing hysterically.

‘Look, Stok,’ I said.

‘Alexeyevitch,’ said Stok.

‘Look, Alexeyevitch,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to come over here to find out the truth about capitalism.’

‘Do you not?’ said Stok. ‘Perhaps you’ll find you do.’

‘Why, what’s the next revelation?’ I said. ‘More pranks in coffins?’ I finished the cigarette in silence.

Stok’s eyes went suddenly narrow. He prodded my chest viciously.

‘We know how mature you are, and how sophisticated you are. Otherwise you wouldn’t choose
to work with bandits like Vulkan and criminals like Gehlen. You make me sick, English.’

I took out my cigarettes. Hallam hadn’t left me with many but I offered Stok one. The yellow match flame reflected in his eyes as he lit them. He began to speak quietly again.

‘They are making a fool of you, English,’ Stok said. ‘They all have their roles to play except you. You are expendable.’

‘There goes that word again,’ I said. ‘Someone was saying the same thing about you only the other day.’

‘I
am
expendable, English, but not until the game is over. You are expendable the moment Gehlen gets the documents for Semitsa.’ He looked at me closely. ‘What do you think the Gehlen organization is, English? You think it’s something to do fetch-and-carry jobs for your Government?’

‘They will do most things; for money,’ I said.

‘For real money, yes,’ said Stok. He eased his bottom on to the bench and became very confidential. ‘You know how much twenty-one billion dollars is, English? It’s what the US Government spent on armaments in one year. Do you know who gets it, English? The General Dynamics Corporation got one and a quarter billion; and just four other corporations got about a billion each. That’s real money, isn’t it?’

I said nothing.

Stok said, ‘Over eighty per cent of the twentyone billion dollars is spent without the big busi
nesses doing any competitive bidding. Are you following me?’

‘I’m way ahead,’ I said. ‘But what’s it to do with you?’

‘Tension here in Berlin is a lot to do with me—it’s my job. Your military men are pushing that tension as hard as they can go. I’m trying to reduce the tension in every way I can.’

‘You don’t reduce it,’ I said. ‘You play a tune on it like a gipsy minstrel.’

Stok sighed histrionically.

‘Look, my friend. Next year, lots of your military friends will be retiring into big capitalist businesses that make armaments. Most of them have signed the contracts already…’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said.

‘I won’t wait a minute,’ said Stok. ‘We know what’s happening. We spend a lot of trouble and money finding out. The type of job your generals retire into depends upon how many big orders for armaments they place. A state of tension makes it easy to order guns. Gehlen provides the tension—it increases the demand—just like an advertising agency. That’s the kind of people who are twisting you around their fingers.’

‘Vulkan said…’

‘Don’t tell me anything Vulkan said.’ Stok spat the words out like bloody teeth. ‘He’s a filthy little Fascist.’ Stok moved near to me and began to speak quietly as though he was sorry he had got excited.

‘I know Vulkan is a brilliant man and I know
he’s clever at political debate but believe me, English, he is at heart a Fascist.’

I began to see what a clever con-man Johnnie Vulkan was. It was no part of my job to tell Stok that Vulkan had a brain like a whale’s throat—huge but straining out only shrimp-size thoughts. I said, ‘Then why do you deal with him?’

‘Because he’s helping me make a fool of the Gehlen organization.’

‘And of me?’

‘Yes and of you, English. Try and find your friend Vulkan this night. Ask your friends at the US State Department. Ask your friends at Gehlen’s office. Ask everyone you know, English, and when you come to a dead end come to the Fried-richstrasse Kontrollpunkt or anywhere on the East Berlin phone system and phone me in my office. I’ll tell you where he is and I’ll be the only one to tell you the truth.’

‘We have a deodorant ad that uses the same pitch,’ I said.

‘Try it then,’ said Stok.

‘I might,’ I said. I walked across the room without looking back and went upstairs to my car. I saw Stok’s big shiny Volga parked a little way farther down the street and beyond it two T-54 tanks and an infantry carrier. On my way to Friedrichstrasse I passed a banner that read ‘Learning from the Soviet Union means learning to triumph.’ I was beginning to see what they meant.

I phoned everyone I knew that night to check on Vulkan. I phoned everyone from the Berlin Documents Centre to Onkel Toms Hütte U-bahn Station. Everywhere the reply was the same. Vulkan wasn’t there, they didn’t know where he was and no one knew when he was expected. Some of the sources
really
didn’t know, who can say which.

I looked through the glass panel of the telephone booth at the grey hardboard and potted plants of the East German control hut.

‘It’s the African fisherman speaking,’ I said into the phone.

‘Who are you calling?’ said the girl, to whom strange names came as no surprise.

‘It’s either an artificial-limb manufacturer or a crocodile,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember which.’

I heard the girl repeat that, then I heard Stok’s booming laugh as he came to the phone.

‘Hendaye-plage,’ said Stok, ‘near the Spanish border.’

‘Stay tuned to Victor Sylvester,’ I said and rang off. The Grepo who had given me the East German coin for the phone waved me good night as I turned around and travelled the ten yards back into the Western Sector where the signs were more likely to say ‘komm gut heim’.