The Berlin Assignment (51 page)

“Oh no! Part of the house. You're not holding your fingers quite right when you do that, Gundula. That's a fairly harsh tap, tap, tap…like a frightened kitten. Try drifting your hand; let the fingers caress.” Hanbury with one hand dazzled off a shower of delicate notes. It was the first time that evening Gundula's eyes stopped mocking. The upturned corners of her mouth dropped.
How did you do that!
her body language demanded.

“I'll show you the Chinese vases in the tea room,” he said casually, moving off.

Gundula pulled him back. “Do that again!”

“Oh no,” Hanbury said, dismissing the suggestion. “I don't play. Not anymore.”

“That was your left hand. Can you do it with your right?” She placed it on the keyboard. “Let me see.” Hanbury danced off a dozen virtuoso chords. Gundula forced him to sit down on the bench and joined him. “All right,” she said. I'll take your advice. My hands will drift and my fingers will caress. If it's that easy, I should be able to do it.” A few partial notes were plunked out. “Modern music,” she laughed. Hanbury took her hands and slid them back and forth, hitting keys with his own little fingers. He made it add up to a reduced version of the German national anthem. Gundula loved it. “Do the East German one!” she cried. “I haven't heard it for a while.” The consul didn't know it. “Pretend you're Chopin,” she urged. “Impress me.”

Hanbury eased a few more notes out of the piano, bits of melodies,
excerpts from well known concert favourites:
Pictures at an Exhibition, Swan Lake, Peter and the Wolf
. He halted and studied the keys for a while, as if making a decision. Gundula thought he was taking the measure of the instrument. With a deep breath Hanbury began the opening passages of a Rachmaninov piano concerto. The instrument was good; it had a solid sound. The opening bars of the concerto, deep, powerful Russian notes filled the room. Hanbury skipped to other parts of the concerto, making the pieces add up to a coherent extract, as if practised for weeks. His swaying torso pressed against Gundula. “I don't actually like Rachmaninov,” he said, stopping in the middle and snapping the keyboard cover shut. “He drenches things with emotion. Anyway,” he shrugged, “I'm out of practice.”

Gundula was annoyed he had cut Rachmaninov off in mid-stream. Sarcastically she said, “So, where did you pick that up? Sitting around a campfire?”

“I love it when you talk like that,” Hanbury said. He slipped an arm through hers.

“And you?” she said bitingly. “This act of yours. Sailing through life like a prince. Making genial speeches. Deploying perfect camouflage.”

Hanbury laughed with astonishment. “Gundula,” he said, “what do you mean?”

“Listen, Chopin, we've had this conversation before.” The same vague tone of accusation coloured her voice, as during the evening in Prenzlauerberg. Hanbury ceased laughing. Gundula pushed on, frustration building. “Why am I here?” she demanded. “What are we doing?” Hanbury looked down with deepening worry. “We're sitting on a piano stool,” she continued, “thigh to thigh.” For emphasis, she gave him a shove. “We may sit like this until the sun comes up.” No reaction from the consul. “What was that nice sentence you wrote on the invitation?”

“I wanted to make amends,” Hanbury said quietly.

“Well…?” she urged. When he continued to look blank, Gundula
shook her head in disbelief. Then she regained her smile, but it was shallow, resigned. “You really are the diplomat. No move unless it's been agreed to in a treaty, initialled, signed and ratified by an assembly.”

“What I meant,” the consul said with effort, “was that I hoped we could redo the scene outside your apartment.”

“Then we ought to get going. It's an hour's drive.” The sarcasm was back too.

“I mean here. We could redo it here.”

“We could redo the whole Press Ball here. There's enough room.”

Hanbury began to laugh. “The quickstep? Again?” Gundula began to say something, but he told her to wait. “Stay here tonight.”

“At last!” Gundula clapped and took her champagne glass. “
Prost!
To a great artist at work. Genius proceeding slowly.” She smiled winningly. Hanbury wanted to kiss her, but they clinked glasses instead.

On the long, curving stairway to his private chambers, Hanbury held Gundula's arm. She said, in a big mansion like this, you had to be in shape to get to bed. He replied the stairs were designed to be a warm-up. In the bedroom they embraced and kissed. She began undoing his clothes but had difficulty with the studs on the formal shirt. Bow tie, cuff links, cummerbund: more complicated than women's wear and Gundula complained about it. To prove a point, she slipped out of her clothes so fast a horde of angels must have helped. The consul inelegantly shed socks before they embraced again. “I suppose you have a condom?” Gundula whispered.

“Oh God!”

“I knew it,” Gundula murmured, biting his ear. “Cowboy habits. Don't worry. I thought of it.”

He massaged the nape of her neck. “You know what they call it?”

“What?”

“Out on the range. They have an expression.” Hanbury switched to English.
Riding bareback
. He gave a dirty chuckle. Gundula wanted to
know what it meant. “Nothing between you and the horse. Something like that.”

“No doubt the highest form of cowboy pleasure,” she said. The condoms were in her purse by the piano, so Hanbury trundled off.

A consul without clothes is a comical sight, hurrying down a flight of stairs with his penis flopping up and down. Hanbury was grateful Gundula wasn't there to see it. What would she have called the apparition?
A cowboy's flaccid weapon? A diplomatic tail?
With Gundula everything was possible and he loved her for it.

Gundula had slid between the covers. He handed her the purse; she took a package. Hanbury ran a hand along the outline of her body. She had small breasts, gentle elevations, culminating in hard nipples. “Laying claim to new territory?” she murmured.

The next hours were repetitive: bouts of intensity, quiet talk in the spaces between. The hues of love subtly woven into a tartan. Hanbury asked Gundula to tell him more about the time before she joined the paper. She described Schwerin, a place she never fitted in. She always wanted to travel, but the only place she ever got to was Ukraine. She had propped herself up on an elbow, a leg swung over him. He asked about the paper. Gundula said the atmosphere was changing. Gregor Donner Reich had been fun, but it backfired. She was now assigned to reporting on trivial stories, crime in the eastern streets. She'd been shunted aside. “Funny isn't it. I didn't fit in then. I don't think I fit in now.”

Why didn't she turn to foreign issues, he asked. Foreign issues were safe. Domestic readers never react badly to criticism of another country. She said she lacked the confidence, not having done enough travelling, not having the language skills. Gundula began to rub his body. “Chopin,” she whispered. “Ready for an encore?” It took longer to finish. They lay still for a while. Gundula moved on to another square of the night's rich tartan. She asked how he came to be so skilful on the piano.

“Prairie air,” he joked.

“Seriously.”

“I practised.”

“You practised a lot.”

“When I grew up, that's all there was.”

“Why didn't you stick with it?”

“I guess, like you, some things didn't fit.”

A long silence set in, a dark stripe in the tartan. Gundula whispered there was a final condom, but the consul's breathing was deep and regular. For a while she watched him sleep, got up, adjusted the cover, gathered her clothes and slipped away into a night as dark as the one that sank the Titanic. The next morning Hanbury found the condom package spread out on the night table. A scribbled sentence on it read,
Vielen Dank Chopin. Es war herrlich
. Thanks Chopin; it was lovely. The third condom, still immaculate, lay beside it as a gift.

The headline on the society page the next morning was big and bold.
DIPLOMATIC GLAMOUR RETURNS TO BERLIN
. The caption identified a bemused Consul Hanbury standing between an aging Heidemarie Gräfin Krauch von Hugenberg, whose great uncle had been ambassador for Bismarck, and a rotund Sigmund Prinz von Lippert, member of the board of directors of a private bank. His great grandfather had been a leading member of the German delegation at the famous conference in 1906 in Algeciras – where the German delegation (supported by Austria) took on France (with Britain on its side) in a tussle over Morocco, was quickly outmanoeuvred by Britain (who else?), and returned home in a fit.

This judgement of history was omitted in the article; it was the pedigree of
Prinz Sig
that mattered. A full paragraph was devoted to the intensity of Berlin diplomatic life pre-1914. The last sentence concluded that the consul, through the rich feast in his residence, had kicked off a new era and that the presence of the
Gräfin
and the
Prinz
proved it would
be anchored to the legendary past, before the century had delivered its regrettable disruptions.

Schwartz read the article while drinking morning coffee in his university office. He called Hanbury immediately. “Herr Konsul,” he mocked. “You surprise me. I had no idea you've become friends with Heidi and Sig.” Hanbury replied he felt he had been adopted by the scions of Prussia. Schwartz reverted to a first-name basis. They talked easily, like two long-time drinking pals who know a thing or two about life's stormy seas. They had been doing this for weeks. Since the success at Geissler's, the professor often called to suggest a drink. Whenever they talked politics over a beer, Schwartz would observe the consul's carefully crafted presence: an agreeableness mixed with restraint, plus an undercurrent of managed innocence. Acquired behaviour, he assumed, learned in diplomatic school. But the consul's reserve also provoked. Why hadn't he said something about his new residence, or the party, or the swarm of invited elites listed in the paper? Schwartz was piqued when he saw the picture, and now, on the phone, he made a pointed remark about being left out.

“It was an official event,” Hanbury hastily explained. “I didn't want to mix in the personal side. I want you and Sabine to come over another time, for Sunday coffee and cake. Bring Nicholas. And a soccer ball. There's acres of room in the garden.” He added, “I didn't know you're on close terms with the Duchess and the Prince.”

“Friends of my mother's family. Well, never mind all that. Sabine and I want to invite you too, for dinner. Has she said anything? And there's something else I want to ask.” Hanbury said he would drop everything at any time to have dinner with them. What else did Schwartz want to know? Not on the phone, the professor said conspiratorially. A beer? This
evening? The consul said that would be fine.

Schwartz wasn't the only one who called. All morning the office phone ran hot. Frau Carstens took most of the calls. One thank-you after another for the fabulous party. She was radiant, as if she'd won an Oscar for best supporting actress. Actually, with the newspaper publicity, the whole staff basked in a scintillating aura. Sturm strutted about with new authority.
Two hundred eleven cars!
He repeated the words again and again. He got them in and he got them out. Lord Halcourt, now resting for eternity in a granite sarcophagus in the abbey near his manor, would have been pleased, had he been informed of his chauffeur's Berlin feat. Sturm was sure of it.

The phone in Gundula's office rang too. The night had been too short. She felt a pressure behind her eyes. Mauve bags clung to the lower lids. But the dullness was worth it. Such nights are always worth it. Unfortunately she now faced a deadline for an article – a crime wave by North Vietnamese migrants in East Berlin – and the story wasn't clicking. She was attacking it with an axe rather than her customary chisel.

“Jahn,” she said into the phone closing her eyes and massaging her forehead.

“Trabi got you home all right?”

“Chopin!” She had been waiting for this call.

“Thanks for the note. And the present.”

“No cowboy should leave home without one.”

“I enjoyed last night, Gundula.”

“I thought that. You fell asleep so peacefully.”

“Sorry.”

“Thank
you
too. The party wasn't my cup of tea, but the concert afterwards was lovely. Sometime you'll have to show me what else is in your repertoire.” A dirty, little chuckle arrived through the phone. “I'm talking about the piano,” she said.

“If you come, will you bring Trabi?”

Gundula paused. “To where? Your music room?”

“I looked for Trabi last night after everyone was gone. I wanted to see how he would look, parked in the driveway.”

“I parked a block over.” He asked why. “That was one of the things wrong with your party. It looked as if you have something against Trabi owners.”

“That's not true. There were several former Trabi owners there. I like Trabis. You can park yours at the foot of my front steps anytime.”

“A fetish?” Gundula asked. “Like bare shoulders?” She still saw the sleeping consul. More than just bare shoulders. The memory helped lift the heaviness around her eyes. “Or are you looking for a marker?” she teased. “As when the flag flies on the President's palace to show he's in.”

The phone line brought a sigh – the sound of someone making no headway. The same sigh was stamped on the night before, in the music room, before she forced things. He struggled when she teased him. She knew it. But he was charming when he struggled. Manoeuvring him into apparent inner anguish wasn't something she planned. It happened by itself, spontaneously, the result of psychic waves. She got him into a corner and there he stood, defenceless, eyes pleading.
Why are you doing this?
But tiny wrinkles on his face signalled he was loving it. Something about all that was alluring.