The Berlin Assignment (25 page)

Which was how he felt. The feeling had been growing. An oddly different experience from the other assignments – Kuala Lumpur, Caracas, Cairo, the places in the States. Was it Müller, who made the difference? Or von Helmholtz? Or Gundula Jahn? Or even the nearness of Sabine, and now her husband with whom he'd spoken a few times? Maybe it was all of them together.

Müller. Hanbury thought back to their last
Tankard
session. In between complaints about losing the race, the old man coughed repeatedly. He wasn't in top form: his glass of
Pils
scarcely left the table. The beer sitting there, losing its fizz – it bothered Uwe's son-in-law. He inquired why Herr Müller was resting his elbow. No reply from Müller, not even a scowl. To avoid upsetting him further, Hanbury didn't mention that Sabine's husband had called him several times.

Hanbury's first impression of Schwartz at the stadium was that he resembled a financier more than an academic. He had a formal bearing. And a sneer. But on the phone a few days later, he was friendly, almost familiar. He apologized for being curt when Sabine ran off. He had been taken by surprise, he explained.

“That's all right.”

“You see, I had difficulty understanding what was happening. Sabine tends to daydream and I thought she might have forgotten to tell me something.”

“No problem.”

“We talked about you,” Schwartz continued. “She told me the story and, of course, that's fine. It happened long ago. Still, she wishes… she would have preferred it if you hadn't come back. By the way, she doesn't know I'm calling you.”

Hanbury thought this over. Sabine's husband talking about his wife brought her strangely near. For a few seconds he relived the intensity of the moment at the stadium.

“No need to talk about all that's happened,” Schwartz suggested,
waving the Savignyplatz period aside like crumbs off a table. “I'm a historian. I try to see the past objectively.” He said he was engaged in a study of diplomacy; he believed he and the consul would have much to talk about. Could they get together?

“No problem.”

They decided when and where and Schwartz hung up. He had been so charming, so easy-going that Hanbury wondered why Müller had such a low opinion of his daughter's husband.

An hour later, still intrigued by Schwartz's call, Hanbury left for lunch with Gundula. On the way Sturm talked of bread. He had come around to the view, he informed the back seat, that bread in the East was better than in the West. The consul doubted this, but Sturm was insistent. “Think about it, Herr Konsul. It makes sense. Everything in the West is done by machines to maximize profits. So breakfast rolls come out of the oven full of air. You think you're getting bread, but mostly you're buying holes. In the East, the baking is done by hand. The bread has substance.”

“Do they skimp on yeast?” the back seat skeptically replied.

“I don't think so,” countered the chauffeur. “They just don't overdo it.” From bread, he moved to
Wurst
, which Sturm argued was also better in the East. And then to fish, freshly caught in the numerous lakes around Berlin. “Our diet has improved since the Wall came down,” he pointed out. “We're living off the land again.”

In the entrance hall of the publishing house, waiting for Gundula to come down, Hanbury viewed a display. Copies of original front pages headlining Berlin's historic moments were on show: the day the Communists began building the Wall; soldiers shooting people racing to get out and leaving them to bleed to death where they dropped; a picture of a border guard chucking his weapon and leaping through a gap in the barbed wire (and making it!); JFK's visit in '63; twenty-odd years on, Reagan making a speech before the Brandenburg Gate in '85, daring Gorbachev to open it; Gorbachev visiting Honecker in '89
saying
History punishes those who act too late
. Well, Hanbury thought, history did its job. Two months later the totalitarian regime was gone. Still more pictures showed tearful East Berliners in their Trabis surging through the opened Wall.

Hanbury, absorbed in old news and young history, didn't notice Gundula coming. “Cowboy!” she said. “Entertaining yourself?” She was dressed in jeans and boots and a sweatshirt with the paper's logo. She looked different than in the minidress at the Helmholtz dinner, but there was the same bite in her voice.

“Look,” he said. “I've discovered an age when Trabis didn't need pushing.”

Gundula began laughing. “There was no alternative then,” she said. “No cowboys. Cars had to start.”

The newspaper's club was on an upper floor. In the elevator Hanbury inquired how her car was doing. Gundula said she had taken his advice: Trabi had been serviced. He still made noise, but it was a healthy sound, like the purr of an animal mating. “Seen the latest Trabi bumper sticker?” she asked. Hanbury shook his head. “
When God created other cars, he was just practising.
” He laughed and was about to quip that Trabis mating Trabis should be a good thing, since the species seemed destined for extinction, but the elevator stopped.

The club was imitation-British: leather sofa ensembles for private conversations; wood-panelled walls covered with prints of pre imperial Berlin; a photo collection of famous international visitors. The building had been constructed next to the Wall as a beacon to press freedom and the club had provided good views of the mined no-man's-land in the city streets just below. The inevitable effect of this reality on visitors, this direct confrontation with Communism, was a fuller appreciation for the need of policies that matched the other side – tank for tank, missile for missile. The same view now led to a different amazement. Land mines (and thoughts of missiles) had been replaced by a giant aerial web of entrepreneurially
minded building cranes.

The paper's old hands, sipping lunchtime drinks, broke off their gossip when Gundula walked by. She flashed them her smile. They studied her guest. Not someone they knew. Gundula didn't often bring outsiders to the club. Usually she sat with the pros, the cynics, the instant analysts who entertained her with tales of journalistic prowess during the golden age – when the enemy lurked across the street. She led the consul to a table away from the others. A steward took their orders. When he left Hanbury said, “I've been reading your columns.”

“That sounds serious.”

“I enjoy them.”

“If that's true, they're a failure,” Gundula said.

“I mean the style. The issues you write about are something else again. I don't know enough about them.”

“That I accept,” she said.

“I take it people in the East aren't happy. They see that freedom has a downside.”

“They've got no problem with freedom,” Gundula snapped. “That's what they wanted for forty years. The problem is the West's dog-eat-dog version. Making the transition takes time. The society is in shock.” She looked out the window.

“Your piece on skinheads in Schwedt was riveting,” he said. “Are they really terrorizing the place? It sounds like Dodge City.”

“You know Schwedt?” a surprised Gundula asked. Hanbury shook his head – what he knew came from her column. “A typical post-socialist town,” she said. “People living mono-cultured lives in repetitious blocks of flats. The jobs are gone. Families are breaking down. The kids see nothing functions, not even the police. So they vandalize and terrorize. They shave their heads. They look for scapegoats. What's to stop them?”

“Last week I was this close to a bunch of skinheads,” the consul said nonchalantly, showing Gundula a narrow gap between his thumb and
forefinger. “I went into a pub. There they were.” He chuckled. “I don't know how I survived.”

“I guess you're talented.”

“It's something I learned in Indian Head…I mean, ducking out of beer hall brawls.”

“I can see you doing that,” she said. “I can see you using table legs as camouflage.”

The steward brought the food. Hanbury delved deeper into the problems of East German towns like Schwedt. Gundula, low-key, as in her columns, described the causes of neo-Nazi attitudes. She mentioned the demonstration against hatred towards foreigners. The paper was supporting it. “A hundred thousand people are expected,” she said. “You should go. Diplomats should see it.”

Hanbury said he hadn't decided yet. “Protocol is making arrangements. Maybe there'll be a diplomatic bus.”

Gundula looked at him with disbelief. For her, the rally was something that should be felt, something that provided impulse. Dainty diplomatic dances – one hesitant step forward, two firm ones back – were new for her. “Join the marchers,” she urged. “You don't want to be part of a flock of penguins stepping off a bus. You'd look ridiculous.”

Hanbury hadn't come to spar with Gundula over diplomatic niceties. He wanted to hear her laugh again, as she had in the middle of the night in front of his house. He wanted to listen to her impertinence. He wanted to see the sarcasm in her eyes that said she didn't believe a thing he said. Intriguing him most was her Stasi file. As they ate, he waited for an opening to ask about it. But it was Gundula who questioned him, as if she was after material for the next day's column. She wanted to know all about hooligans in the drinking halls of Indian Head.

“Not really hooligans,” Hanbury said, back-pedalling. “I shouldn't have labelled them that. Just strong boys. After a dozen beer they like doing some light sparring. It's best then to keep your head down
because they might try an experiment: what breaks faster, their knuckles or your jaw.”

“I see,” Gundula said. “Civilization's veneer disappears that fast?”

“Sure. But it comes back. When a woman gets hold of them they turn into hard-working farmers and join curling clubs in the winter.”

“And what happened to you? Did you have cracked knuckles or a broken jaw?”

“Neither. I told you. I watched. From underneath the table.”

“And the women there aren't interested in men that hide?”

“That's it,” Hanbury said with twisted triumph. “And what about you? The other night you started telling me about your Stasi file.” Gundula shrugged as if there wasn't much to say. “I'll make you a deal,” he said conspiratorially. “I'll lift the curtain on secret prairie drinking rites if you tell me where you come from.”

“But I don't mind talking about that. I lived near the Baltic. Ever been there?”

“No, but I guess the Stasi were.”

“They were everywhere. They even worried people would swim to freedom across the Baltic Sea. A swim to Sweden – it would only take five days. They were so stupid.”

“How did you end up in Berlin? How did you get to know Gerhard? I have to admit something. At his house…I thought there was something between you two.”

Gundula pealed with laughter. The veteran journalists lunching two tables over stopped spooning their soup. “Thank you for thinking that!” she said. “My turn. I'll try one on you. Have you slept with Viktoria?”

Hanbury dropped his fork. “What makes you ask that?”

“You looked down into her bust all evening.”

He remembered Viktoria next to him, her skin in touching distance, the thin halter holding up her dress. “I was looking at her shoulder,” Hanbury said meekly.

Another burst of merriment from Gundula. “Wonderful. A cowboy who saves Trabis, has never bruised a fist and admits to a fetish for bare shoulders. Is every cowboy in Indian Head like that?”

Hanbury became still and Gundula realized she might have gone too far. Dropping the irony from her voice, she described how she went from doing nothing special in East Germany's north to being a widely-read columnist in Berlin. After the Wall was down travel agencies sprung up everywhere. She first worked for one in Schwerin, then in Berlin. One day she read about a competition run by the paper. Participants were required to write a 300-word portrait of a prominent Berlin personality. The best one would make it into print. Gundula decided to enter, but write about whom? She went for the best known man in the city. Von Helmholtz agreed to an interview. The Chief of Protocol, the multi-layered man with a centre somewhere inside all that perfect breeding, opened up to Gundula, his past, the pitfalls of his work, his views on political and social issues. The material was original and Gundula wrote a piece that was both humorous and serious. She caught von Helmholtz's character perfectly. The chief editor told her it demolished the competition. “They offered me a job doing stories on East Berlin. One day they gave me my own column. Maybe Gerhard is behind it. The editor is one of his protégés. He helps people along, although I don't know why he'd do that for me.”

I do, Hanbury thought, keeping his insight to himself. Instead he joked, “Maybe von Helmholtz has a fetish too. Maybe he likes journalists with class.”

“I see. Well, I understand your fetish better.”

Dessert came and Hanbury changed the subject. “Can I ask you something. Would you help me find Günther Rauch? You said you know him.”

“I know of him. I've never met him. Why don't you try the phone book?”

“He's not in it.”

“And why do you want to see him?”

“He's an old acquaintance.” Hanbury described his student visits to East Berlin. “I want to see how he is. I should have tried to contact him after I saw him the last time, but I didn't. I want to apologize for that. Everybody seems to know him, but nobody knows where to find him. I don't even know why he's so well-known.”

“He was briefly famous because of what he did after the regime fell. He organized a group to stop the Stasi destroying their files. For a few weeks he was a hero, then he faded from the scene. I suppose his politics weren't right.”

“He'll never have the right politics. Could you locate him? If questions come from me, you know, being a diplomat, people wonder.” Gundula said she'd think about it.