Good People (2 page)

Thomas imagined how she had crossed all of Berlin to see her mistress in her decline. Slightly breathlessly, she told his mother, ‘This morning by chance I met Herr Stuckert. He turned away as if he hadn't seen me. I said to myself, very well, I'm already used to old acquaintances behaving like this. In my heart I always wish them well. But there was something strange about Herr Stuckert's behaviour. I stopped and asked, “Sir, is there something you want to tell me?” I didn't say his name. He could always pretend that he didn't know me. He lowered his eyes and said under his breath, “Frau Heiselberg is very ill.”'

His mother said something to her that didn't reach Thomas's ears and Frau Stein nodded. He was overcome with disgust: it was all too familiar. The countless mornings the two of them had sat, clinging to each other in the bedroom, sharing secrets. Anyone in the vicinity felt as though he were invading a country where he would never be welcome.

Frau Stein settled the pillows under his mother's head and stroked her hair, then buried her face in his mother's breast. ‘Marlene, how did it happen?' she said. ‘How did it happen?'

With a kind of lightness the two women made the gap that had yawned between them for the past eight years disappear. It was as if a curtain was opened, revealing an older landscape: here they were again, a dreamy mistress who, on the rare occasions she ventured into the world, remembered its harshness and withdrew, and a housekeeper who had become her good friend and, in taking over her duties, had
built the wall that kept her mistress isolated. They were rebelling now against the scraps of time that remained, mourning the years that had passed, and the hours that were slipping away.

Do you still want to protect her, Frau Stein? Thomas thought in anger and turned away. Do you want to protect her from the years she sacrificed, the injustices that stained her wedding dress, the errors of her life? Then you'll have to sketch the figure of a hangman. Here he is: a horrible illness that devastates your mistress's body and shoves her towards death. And you still believe you can do something for her?

Thomas stood in the roomy parlour. Following his mother's orders, the thick velvet curtains were always drawn. He turned on a lamp beside the sofa with its down cushions, and looked at the statuettes—an Auguste Rodin, a porcelain
Arc de Triomphe
, and a little gilded Buddha, a gift she received from a scholar she met when she was young, and under whose influence she had become interested in the religions of the Far East. Above the Buddha, on a shelf, stood a picture of Ernst Jünger, with a dedication: ‘To Marlene, whose curiosity is so marvellous.' Artificial plants surrounded the arched fireplace, decorated with Delft tiles that featured silly pictures of lakes and windmills. He always felt dizzy at the sight of this parlour, confronted by the clutter that was intended to reveal the breadth of his mother's thought.

Thomas decided to ignore what was happening in the bedroom, sat at the desk, and made a few last corrections to the presentation he was to give that evening to convince the directors of Daimler-Benz that the Milton Company was the answer to their needs. What a shame little Frau Stein hadn't come across certain articles in the newspapers, where his name was mentioned. What a shame she didn't know about his triumphs.

In his early twenties, while his father and his unemployed friends were trudging the streets of Berlin dressed as tyres, sandwiches or chocolate bars, he had already dreamed up an original plan. About two years after he finished his degree, he read that the Milton market research company was planning to open a branch in Germany. Milton, an American company, with its offices all over the world but only one
in Europe—in England of all places—had kindled his imagination even while he was a student. An American friend who was enrolled in economics told him about Milton and its advanced market research, which was at least ten years ahead of Europe. That had been one of the only points of light at the University of Berlin. In the early 1920s he was of course interested in the social sciences, and even considered studying linguistics, but in the end, influenced by his mother, who believed that ‘a change would take place in his spirit' if he enrolled at a university that took pride in its intellectuals, he had studied philosophy, which he mainly thought a waste of time. The moment he received his degree of ‘Magister' he left.

In the winter of 1926, when he was twenty-three, he travelled to London, where he met an American named Jack Fiske, the director of the European department of Milton. He spent months—with the help of an American teacher he had hired—polishing up his English in preparation for his presentation to Fiske. He sat in a leather upholstered chair in the spacious office of the director, whose wrinkled face and thick moustache impressed him, and pored over a huge blue, red and white map of the world that had numerous flags marking Milton branches pinned to it. Seeing that map, he knew he had made the right decision. He decided to adopt a forthright manner that would put off most German executives.

The director eyed him suspiciously, as if he couldn't understand where this young Berliner had sprung from, with his flashy suit, blue cravat and carnation in his lapel. Thomas crossed his long legs, offered his host some fine Dutch tobacco, lit his pipe and amiably asked what had inspired the choice of a desk in the shape of a pirate ship. Then he plunged in. ‘My dear Mr Fiske,' he said, ‘I have read about your plan to open a new branch of Milton on the continent, in Berlin in fact, my hometown. First, sir, allow me to congratulate you on behalf of my fellow Berliners. As an experienced market researcher, you will have already studied the opportunities that Europe offers, and learned from your limited success in England. Let's face it: Milton has stumbled in Europe. Sadly, one might say that you haven't even reached the
continent. A small prediction: it will be even harder in Berlin. Sir, how do I know? It's simple. Every community has its own system of assumptions, and the parameters of market research that have been applied to the Americans won't do for us Germans. From my sources I've learned that in your meetings with German companies you boast about Milton's scientific methods. But remember: the aura of science is in fact a fiction. You might persuade a few gullible Germans who love to “scientificate” everything, but we both know that in two years even the most naive will realise that your methods aren't effective, and they'll boot you out of the German market.

‘My dear sir, the only science that works here is the science of the German national spirit. You don't understand the German essence. You aren't the first and won't be the last. The German essence is hard to understand. Some believe that our tradition, our scholarship, our art and our philosophy have produced a fascinating mosaic of personality types. I am, however, sorry to inform you that the German spirit is much simpler. Sir, you will be surprised to discover how easily this spirit can be deciphered and manipulated. It is not the kind of simplicity that you Americans are familiar with. The educated German bourgeoisie are, for example, nothing like your assertive east-coast Americans. To understand them you have to study them in depth. The last move in a chess game may seem obvious, but it is preceded by intense preparation.'

Fiske stretched out his legs and wrinkled his brow. ‘Actually, Mr Heiselberg, Milton has recently made a thorough study of the German market,' he said.

Thomas sensed that their meeting was giving him pleasure, and that Fiske was testing him. ‘With all due respect, sir, my mother will hunt down lions in the Colosseum before Americans understand the German mind. Have you read Ernst Jünger? Certainly not. He's a close friend. Do you know Wolfgang Pauli? The yearning for a great light is planted deep in our soul. If you haven't seen the crowd in the Winterfeldtplatz in the late evening, staring at the shining torches of Nivea, you haven't seen Germany. Do you know what
völkish
means?
It's actually a definition of the German essence. And are you familiar with Naumann's theory about the state as a Great Business for the people's benefit? Indeed, sir, you must agree with me that you are hardly an expert on the German mind…

‘Now the Reichsmark has stabilised, and the economy has improved, but if you wandered around Berlin a few years ago you would have learned about the true essence of Germany! You would have seen apparently rational people simply printing money and eroding the currency until it wasn't worth a seashell. That's German logic: to gallop, in denial, towards catastrophe.

‘The German person is composed of a mass of varying elements. You could say that everyone is like that, and you would be right, but the German essence, the dollop of sentimentality it contains, for example, is unique. I have been striving to discover the formula that will conquer the German market. You may wonder whether I have it already? I believe I do. I have devoted most of my life to the study of the German. Therefore, sir, if you want to do business in Germany, I suggest that we cooperate.'

Jack Fiske was impressed. ‘Young man, you don't completely understand the field yet, but you have ability, and your gift of the gab is scary.'

When Fiske moved to Berlin, Thomas became his assistant. A year later he became the director of the new one-man Department of German Consumer Psychology. If truth be told, he believed he was born for the job. Even as a boy he understood that his talent was to pluck the right strings in the buyer's soul. Now he played things well, combining persuasion, research and charm. Fiske asked him to work as a consultant with the American discount chain Woolworth, one of Milton Berlin's first clients. Milton staff were inclined to think that the Germans would not trust a popular chain from a country that remained mysterious to them.

‘Surveys that Milton has performed in the major cities show that the Germans don't believe that this merchandise is any good,' announced Frau Tschammer, who gloried in her title of Assistant Director of the
Research Department, though her real job was to hunt for clients. She was a short blonde woman who had lost her husband in the Great War and was bringing up two children on her own, and she always overestimated the discernment of the German consumer. Thomas saw her as the faint, self-righteous voice of the old world. Frau Tschammer annoyed him, and he intended to chop off her head—professionally, of course—by the end of the year; the stratagems of a grand master were hardly necessary here. Meanwhile, she shocked him by recommending that prices be raised in order to increase sales.

Thomas stood up. ‘First, I must disagree with Frau Tschammer,' he said. ‘Germans are very curious about America. Second, I suggest that Woolworth should burst into the market from above. I remember how excited everyone got when a plane sprayed Persil in the sky, and that was only laundry detergent. A giant company like Woolworth should buy the skies of Berlin for a month. We'll wipe out every other company. You won't be able to look up and see anything that isn't a banner, a beacon or Woolworth skywriting. And if we have to, birds, too. We'll rent all the Zeppelins, the planes, anything that can take wing. And if our competitors get hold of an aircraft, we can intercept it for all I care.'

The Americans loved it. From the books he had read and the movies he had seen, he concluded that Americans liked daring statements that expressed an adventurous idea and promised a decisive blow against the enemy. ‘Let's do A, and we'll show them! Let's do B, and we'll wipe them out. Let's do C, and they'll lose so much they'll be selling trinkets in the street.' The more uninhibited his ideas, the more they were convinced that he was ‘a man after our own heart'. They had to believe he was prepared to burn down Dresden to sell a teapot.

‘Our lights will shine from every truck,' he went on, ‘from every building, shop window and windshield. Product and price. Product and price will constantly change.'

‘Sounds mighty good,' enthused one of the directors of Woolworth Europe.

‘I happen to know the people who work for Paul Wenzel,' said Thomas.

‘The ones who registered the patent for a plane that changes advertisements?' asked Frau Tschammer.

‘Exactly,' he confirmed. ‘Really incredible guys. They have a lot of other patents up their sleeve. I suggest that Woolworth buy that patent.'

‘Do we really need a plane that will change advertisements twenty times on every flight? We're just one chain,' another Woolworth director objected.

‘I already explained,' said Thomas, fatherly affability glowing in his green eyes. ‘We're not going to go crazy or lose our heads, which is what people do in this city. First we'll advertise a product and its price, and in the second phase we'll advertise the chain.'

‘Interesting. Can you set up a meeting with Wenzel's people?'

‘Of course,' Thomas said merrily. ‘They're close friends.'

His rise in Milton was vertiginous. Very few of its employees ever became partners, certainly not in such a short time. The meeting tonight with Daimler-Benz, which he'd been working on for the past month, could cap off a very good year; ever since the merger of Daimler and Benz, he had been dreaming of how he could snare their new brand, Mercedes-Benz. But the finale of his presentation didn't please him. Too artificial. The muffled whispering from his mother's bedroom was keeping him from concentrating.

As a child he used to sit with a notebook on the floor outside the closed door and write down the things that his mother and Frau Stein said, but he never managed to distinguish between their hushed voices. So his notebook was filled with phrases stitched together into one long monologue. At night, in his room, he would study each remark, deciding whether to attribute it to his mother or Frau Stein, until he had his own version of their conversation. He would celebrate a small victory every time he heard one of them say something that reminded him of a phrase he had decided was hers.