Good People (3 page)

The whispering died down. Heavy steps were heard. He rose, but Frau Stein beat him to it and went around him, leaving thin muddy footprints as she hurried to the bathroom. She evidently still believed in the cold towel method.

‘Frau Stein, haven't we developed more sophisticated remedies by now?' he asked, but actually he wanted to say, ‘Frau Stein, haven't you heard that the Department of German Consumer Psychology at Milton is me? I'm a managing partner now. You must want to hear about my enormous progress. After all, we're not strangers.'

Frau Stein came back carrying a towel. Her dress was stretched tight over her protruding belly. As her eyes met his, he saw the indictment in them, her shock at how sick her mistress was. How dare she accuse him, even in thought. But she narrowed her eyes into two resolute slits, as though to proclaim: ‘Yes, the cold towel method is the remedy I trust.'

Frau Stein had a marvellous ability to organise events into a story that she devoutly believed. ‘Men against women' was one of her favourite narratives. When she had worked in the house, she had placed herself between the evil of the father and the son and the weak mother and wife. Erika Gelber had interesting things to say about this. In his imagination, he imprisoned Frau Stein in Erika Gelber's clinic: he laid her down on the stiff couch and forced her to answer the psychoanalyst's questions, to confess her dreams, to confront the distressing fact that there were other points of view. A woman like Frau Stein—who always laid claim to the whole truth—would never let anyone else in the world show her anything new. In her view, everything she didn't know formed a single grand despicable lie. Good people, who were few, spoke the truth and never betrayed you, and all the rest were liars. That was why his mother's betrayal had floored Frau Stein. When the subject of letting her go had come up, his mother had asked Thomas to contribute to her wages, but he had refused, claiming that Milton didn't pay him enough. ‘And anyway, Mother, Frau Stein has worked here for more than twenty years. You have to know how to leave people behind…'

At the end of 1930, Frau Stein had left their house and entrusted his mother to him, and now, eight years later, she came back to find Marlene on her deathbed. She was doubtless convinced that if she had stayed none of this would have happened. It was interesting that she
still felt the need to protect the woman who had fired her. Perhaps Frau Stein did possess a rare degree of loyalty, and maybe certain people could never free themselves from old habits.

‘Frau Stein,' he called out cheerfully, his eyes sparkling—even Frau Tschammer admitted that their clarity was captivating—‘have you heard that your faithful servant has been made managing partner at Milton, and that he is the director of the Department of German Consumer Psychology, including our offices in Paris, Warsaw and Rome? I set those branches up. Now the Frogs want to do it their way. Frau Stein, if you were in my shoes, would you let those Frenchmen have their heads? To be part of Milton, they have to fit into our systems, don't you agree? I told them, “There's no way the French office can keep thinking it's still the last century.” And that's presuming there is such a thing as the French spirit anyway. Perhaps the passion for fine but meaningless formulations
is
the French spirit, this weakness for style at any price.'

‘I don't buy products from advertisements,' Frau Stein said.

‘I could have guessed that, of course.' Thomas always enjoyed chatting to her. That was one of the strange things about the connection between them: she acted as if his prattle disgusted her but often listened. In fact, part of Frau Stein marvelled over his doings, as if she couldn't believe that a person like him truly existed.

‘All of our research has shown that the German working class is hostile to advertising, and the reasons are clear. Advertisements are aimed at people with money or at people who envy people with money or at people who believe that one day they'll have money or at people who pretend to have money.'

‘Frau Heiselberg has asked me to stay with her for a few days,' Frau Stein said.

‘She's dreaming. That's completely impossible, and you know it,' he sputtered. How he hated people who denied the simplest facts. Now he remembered that he had to avoid mood swings in front of strangers; people might lose faith in his cordial nature. But, he consoled himself, it was only Frau Stein.

‘I won't go out of the house,' she said.

‘That doesn't matter. People talk. Somebody might have seen you climb the steps. Actually, you have to leave now.'

‘Your mother asked for my help. And I intend to give it,' Frau Stein declared.

‘Frau Stein, the subject is not open for discussion! I don't have time to stand here and quarrel with you. Your towels are getting warm. Please put them on my mother's forehead, and then you have to go. I'm in a hurry. In two hours, at 7 p.m., we have a meeting with Daimler-Benz.'

He heard his mother calling his name from the bedroom. He hurried to her. ‘Thomas,' she mumbled, raising her head with great effort. ‘Thomas, I want Frau Stein to stay here for a few days.'

‘Mother, that is impossible. The woman is putting us in danger.'

‘Thomas, my dear, I've been in danger for a long time now,' she said and stretched out her hand. He took it and stroked her thin fingers. Pain swelled in his body along with the memory of their old ritual: he, a young boy, standing in front of her bedroom mirror, always drawn to its wooden frame and the soft, flattering light. His mother lying on her bed, Frau Stein on the chair next to her. They would talk about him as if he weren't there. ‘All day long the boy stands in front of the mirror and imitates the hairdos of good-for-nothing movie stars. We gave him everything! Philosophers and musicians taught him, and especially for him I invited Ernst Jünger here, one of our most eminent authors, and the boy asks him if he's been to America…I offered him the best values in the world, and one day he will sell his soul to Pluto. Look at him, fussing over his hair like a girl, roaming the streets all day with Hermann Kreizinger, the son of that crook who sells fake trinkets. They do all kinds of shady deals with the delinquents on Oranienburger Strasse, who sell their bodies to diplomats and Frenchmen.'

The mirror had wings you could move to the right or left and arrange in a kind of triangle that multiplied your reflection. He loved to fold the wings. Here are the faces of the two women becoming
molten and distorted; a face like a swollen balloon; a face as small as a coin; rubber faces that stretched from one side of the mirror to the other; faces as thin as pencils or as broad as the base of a mountain; Frau Stein's eyes next to his mother's lips; the snow-white forehead next to pink cheeks, bristling eyebrows under hair like a fox's fur. He liked to place the wings of the mirror at an angle that would set as many faces dancing as possible, twenty-seven.

‘Dear Thomas, I won't ask for anything more.'

He couldn't bear the floating touch of her fingers, the memory of the caress that would never happen again. ‘I'm hurrying to a meeting, Mother. The customers have made a list of demands that we can't meet. Times have changed. People are hoarding money, afraid of war…' The urge to flee quivered in every muscle of his body.

His mother seemed to understand. She gave him a distant look that pinned him back in the position of the scorned child—once again he was gathering up motherly gazes like a beggar—and she closed her cold fingers on his hand. Now the release would be even harder.

‘At least let Frau Stein stay until you get back. I don't want to be alone.'

‘If there's no choice, Mother,' he conceded.

Happiness rose in her face. She released his hand; her eyes were already dismissing him.

‘How elusive your mother's love is,' Erika Gelber once said to him. He left her bedroom and Frau Stein passed by him again, hugging the towels to her chest. Water dripped onto the floor. He looked at it with annoyance. Nothing in Frau Stein's face showed satisfaction, but they both knew that, rather than celebrating her victory, she was elated by his defeat.

…

Thomas ordered his driver to park in front of the Milton building, so the clients would see the company's new Mercedes-Benz when they arrived, and he skipped up the steps. He extricated his thoughts from
the trap laid by Frau Stein and thrust them into the meeting. (Erika Gelber didn't believe he was capable of controlling his mind, or could summon up the focus to make a firm decision about anything. ‘You psychology people don't have enough faith in a person's willpower,' he once scolded her in response.) He removed his coat, handed it to the doorman and gave him a warning glance: this is not the time to ask for a raise, or to tell me again how your daughter is getting married and needs an apartment.

Meanwhile he went over his presentation: sales of luxury cars were expected to be flat in the coming months. Daimler-Benz needed a new project, a prestige vehicle that would appeal to those who yearn for something stylish but would speak to the masses too. In short—they had to invent the people's car for the coming decade.

Thomas stood in his office—he preferred to spend most of his working hours on his feet, a position that filled him with a sense of vitality and strength—and called for his two secretaries. A week earlier he had announced to all the staff that today they would be required to stay in the office until evening. A clear message had to be conveyed to the Daimler-Benz people: Milton will be at your service day or night. He started dictating letters to the company's various European directors, inviting them to the traditional New Year party in Berlin. Each letter was seasoned with a more or less personal tone, depending on the branch's achievements. Then he called in an underling, who was preparing their presentation to a smallish client, gave him ten minutes to run through the outline, made his comments and asked for a finished document by the end of the week. While the employee was gathering up his papers, Thomas spoke on the telephone with his friend Schumacher from the Ministry of Economics, listing several ideas and the names of companies to which Milton might offer its excellent service. After taking care of a few other bits and pieces, he stood in front of the mirror, straightened his hair, smoothed some creases in his jacket and headed for the boardroom.

Frau Tschammer was in the hall in front of the directors' offices, between framed letters of appreciation from Piaggio and the Wedel
chocolate factory in Warsaw, hiding behind a newspaper. The letters had of course come from clients of the branch offices Thomas had established. Her face, pink and heavily made up, emerged. She approached him, fiddling with the front of her light blue dress.

‘Frau Tschammer, you're prettier than ever tonight,' he called and kept on towards the boardroom. ‘It's time to finish with all the petty details of work and celebrate with one of your many admirers.'

‘But you asked us to stay late today,' she complained.

‘Of course, but it's clear that we didn't mean you, Frau Tschammer. You're in a class of your own.'

‘Did you hear?' She blocked his way.

‘Of course I heard,' he hissed. Frau Tschammer was an expert at wasting other people's time with trivial matters.

‘Vom Rath is dead.'

‘So tell Elisabeth to order a wreath and draft a letter. I'm rushing to the meeting.'

‘What kind of letter?' Frau Tschammer asked in surprise.

‘Frau Tschammer, what kind of question is that? We don't turn our back on our clients even when they die. We'll be working with the Richard Lenz Company for many years.'

‘Thomas, that's not funny. Vom Rath didn't work with us. He was the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.'

‘I'm quite familiar with the matter, Frau Tschammer,' he interrupted. ‘For two days now, people have been talking about nothing else. Maybe you don't remember, even though it's your job to remember, but Richard Lenz has a manager named von Kraft, a not dissimilar name.'

Her astonishment amused him. Once again she had failed to understand how he dared to undermine her with some ridiculous remark dressed up as an unassailable truth. Frau Tschammer, like his ex-wife Elsa, insisted on speaking to him like a schoolmarm, despite his own flippant approach to things:
The world is a game; it's pointless to search for truth or lies, so don't complain, play!
He had already heard that she secretly scorned this teasing behaviour as ‘Heiselbergian Ethics'.

‘By the way, I have a lot of respect for companies and people who have finite dreams, like Richard Lenz,' he added. ‘Not everyone is destined to conquer the world, Frau Tschammer, as you well know.'

He hoped that the Vom Rath affair wouldn't ruin the meeting. The streets were teeming, feverish, as if yet another rowdy march was about to invade the city and keep people from working. Earlier, when he had driven by Kurfürstendamm, he had seen some hopeless types from Hermann Kreizinger's old gang. Hermann himself, who now wore a shiny SS uniform, had stopped running around with them a long time ago.

‘Thomas, people say hard times are in store,' Frau Tschammer nagged him, worried.

‘I have to get to the meeting.' For a moment he was distracted. Fifteen years earlier, in the summer of 1923, a week after his father was fired by the Junkers aircraft company, he sat with him in the back of a café in Unter den Linden. His father complained about the madness that had gripped Germany. Those had truly been strange times: their whole world was being stuffed into a straitjacket and people were muttering about the end of days, while the hungry masses were staring at the advertisements that glowed in the skies of the city. Banknotes were printed with the paintbrush of imagination. People carted off salaries in the millions in wheelbarrows, but by evening those piles of paper weren't enough for a beer and a sausage.