The Berlin Assignment (55 page)

Productive personal relations, productive professional deeds. The consul was riding high. Even the weather was collaborating. The winter gloom was lifting. The sun had delivered spring's delights. A million snow drops stood in his garden; ten thousand blue and yellow crocuses flooded the lawn; a band of daffodils, a bar of solid gold along one side, was arrestingly beautiful.

The light worked other wonders. Sturm arrived at the residence early each morning to inspect the garden's delights. From the breakfast nook Hanbury saw him strolling along the paths, bending over to study a flower, or lifting his head to the sound of frantic birds.
Good morning, Sturm. Guten Morgen, Herr Konsul. Everything fine with the world? As good as it was in Oxfordshire, Herr Konsul
. On the way to the office, Sturm contemplated the wonders of biology. Why do some birds have a happy song, others a plaintive one and still others squawk? Sturm's theory was socialization. The least aggressive birds sing the happiest, most beautiful songs. “You'll find it's that way with labourers in the East,” Sturm said. “I've walked up and down the streets and listened to the sound of renovation. Workers in the East are happy warblers. In the West, they're like crows. They screech.”

Beyond the resurgent vitality of spring, the consul also benefited from routine. Once a week now he had a formal evening in the residence. Guests chosen by Frau Carstens were bundled around a theme: the
visual arts, the performing arts, film, literature, science or technology, third-world economics. She lifted the themes from feature sections in the paper, searched out the personalities, sent out invitations, worked with chefs on menus and arranged for after-dinner entertainment such as opera singers, instrumental soloists, or theatre personalities who would read from Goethe. The consul's job was to smile, ask stimulating questions, charm the guests and raise his glass in a toast – to the House of Windsor, to the House that Adenauer built, and to the future of Berlin.

Visits to
Bücher Geissler
were part of Hanbury's routine. Herr Geissler would be waiting. Once the doorbell finished clanging, he advanced in his awkward shuffle.
Herzlich willkommen, Herr Konsul. Guten Tag, Herr Geissler. Guten Tag, Frau Schwartz. Guten Tag, Herr Hanbury
. Sunny smiles all around. Geissler would drag him into an aisle, pull books off the shelf to watch the consul handle them with admiration. Afterwards at lunch, Tony and Sabine conspired about the next museum.

He continued with his walking too, supplementing it with S-Bahn rides. The bewitching inner city trains, he thought, snaked through Berlin like through a permanent exhibition. On them he often played a game. Spot the political era. Start with train design. The age of the swastika built robust carriages, first used to carry passengers to the '36 Olympics on slatted wooden seats. Even today they were going strong. Wagons made during the period of the hammer and sickle were easily identified: tacky designs, plastic interiors, sticking doors. The new Berlin appeared infrequently on the tracks. These trains swooped in silently; their doors opened reliably with a convincing soft hydraulic swoosh. Only the ancient, worn-out trains plied the tracks from Alexanderplatz to Bahnhof Zoo. The consul liked this stretch from the centre of the East to the heart of the West and rode it whenever he had a chance. It was an incomparable inner-city experience, a journey in a time-machine, travellers moving from one world to another. Hanbury sometimes thought the trip should be slowed down to a snail's pace – to allow the concentrated experience
to be savoured fully.
All aboard! S5 departing Alexanderplatz for Friedrichstrasse, Lehrter Bahnhof and the fleshpots of the West
.

The train, shuddering as brakes release, creaks into motion. On board with the consul is a motley crowd: some winos, a few students, a sprinkling of pensioners out for an afternoon of Western shopping. As always, the consul sits at the end of the carriage on a bench with his back to the direction of motion. It enhances the element of surprise.

No sooner have the doors slammed shut than a beggar speaks.
My name is Jochen. Three years ago I was infected with HIV and was laid off. Without a job I lost my apartment. Without an apartment I can't get a job. My disease is coming out of dormancy. I need drugs. The Sozialamt's pfennigs don't pay for what's needed. A small contribution for my condition would be helpful and I would be thankful too
. Jochen does indeed look as if he's ravaged by an early form of AIDS. Or is it make-up? He collects his pfennigs – mostly from the students because the Eastern pensioners are shivering in their seats. It has to be said – Jochen at this point is only warming up. The lucrative S-Bahn stretches are in Charlottenburg, Grunewald, the Westend. There his voice will have tremors of drama. The consul knows Jochen by now. He knows each word in Jochen's speech. Their S-Bahn paths cross every week.

First stop, Hackescher Markt. Jochen gets off to rehearse in another carriage. The expanse of socialist heaven at Alexanderplatz has transformed into narrow streets with crumbling buildings. Everything is in scaffolding; everything has to be propped up. Too few travellers know that nearby, in Rosenthaler Strasse, the central committee of the Communist party was headquartered in the twenties. More old politics in the opposite direction, the improvised SS detention centre on Rosenstrasse. In '43, 5000 Jewish men (with Aryan wives) were locked up here awaiting a decision to send them to the concentration camps. Their enraged spouses, devoted Berlin women, began demonstrating outside. What could the SS do to racially pure German women except yield?
Destination Auschwitz cancelled for the husbands.

The next stretch of track borders a park named after an eighteenth century palace, Monbijou. When it stood, it really was a jewel, but the Communists blew it up after the war. They didn't like the fact that the aristocracy used to dance there. Beyond the trees is the golden dome of the restored Synagogue, rising over its surroundings like a beacon. The S-Bahn would have to come to a stop for several hours to allow its story to be told, even if restricted only to
Kristallnacht
.

Communists. Fascists. Scenes of rampage and destruction. The S-Bahn weaves its way through history.

It crosses the river onto the island. The benefit of sitting with your back to the direction of motion now becomes apparent. The island is dotted with museums and the elevated S-Bahn pursues a narrow course between them. Were the track displaced a mere few metres to the south, the train would be creeping through the Pergamon itself, through the lovely, multi-storied temple altar from Asia Minor and the lovely friezes of gods fighting giants. Enlightenment struggling with tyranny in the centre of Berlin. As the train rumbles off Museum Island the beauty of classical antiquity recedes.

The traveller arrives in Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, a Cold War border crossing, a place for interrogations and detention and now a cold dose of contemporary Berlin. Fifty years of soot, physically and symbolically, cling to the roof. Outside, skinheads, punks and drunks in full regalia hang around as if in permanent detention, while all around the nimble North Vietnamese peddle smuggled cigarettes.

The train moves on into a landscape with all the charm and colour of the moon. Square, brown-black elevations totter on the edge of ruin like rocks on rims of lunar craters. An earthliness returns, however, as the track begins to parallel the north bank of the Spree. Squatting opposite is the Reichstag. The Wall ran into the river here and continued on the opposite
side. At first, Easterners tried to swim out through the watery opening. Good shooting practice for Communist border patrols: a decent distance, a target that moves, though not too fast. On the south bank by the Reichstag the West kept score. Dozens of white crosses sprouted up.

A barren emptiness that was once a thriving neighbourhood persists from the Reichstag to Lehrter Bahnhof. What's Lehrter Bahnhof? It's a little local station which sits there like a pauper. But it has a princely future. When the Tiergarten Tunnel is finished, the heap of bricks will be transformed into a shiny European crossroads. Maybe into the greatest railway station in the world. By then today's rheumatic trains may be extinct. The tracks curve south, past Schloss Bellevue. The flag flaps on the roof: the President is in. Quick views of Golden Ilse high up on her column with her spread wings angelically protecting Sturm's ghosts in the park below. She may be praying.
May they never again experience carpet bombing and be allowed to haunt this arboreal peace forever, amen
. Finally, brakes squealing, asbestos smelling, S5 pulls into Bahnhof Zoo. Another trans-epochal journey successfully completed. Loudspeakers scream out information on connecting trains. One announcement is prominently missing:
Keep your hands on your wallets! Con artists enjoy the freedom of the city in this place
. It's true. The police have given up on the many pickpockets and bag-snatchers in Bahnhof Zoo. Having flooded in from eastern Europe, they face no restrictions. And since Western police precincts inherited Trabis from the East's
Volkspolizei
and Western officers now drive around in tinny little cars, the thieves in BMWs outrun them easily. Cops and robbers Berlin style.

Dapper police Trabis with hectic little engines bravely racing around Bahnhof Zoo always made Hanbury think of Gundula pushing hers to the
limit. She had a new bumper sticker:
My other car is a Rolls Royce
. Sturm once told the consul a Trabi joke based on the text of the German constitution:
The dignity of a Trabi is inviolable
. He tried it out on her. They were bouncing along a cobblestoned East Berlin street after an evening of cabaret. Gundula loved it. She shot right back:
And all Trabis are created equal
. Gundula knew about constitutions. She was also up on the latest Trabi jokes.
Every Trabi has the right to exist in top condition
, Sturm had quoted and Hanbury repeated it to Gundula.
To respect, protect and maintain Trabis is the highest duty of the state
, she glibly replied. Never mind a Charter of Rights for Trabis. These days Gundula's Trabi had one sole purpose: putting in long hours late at night going back and forth between Dahlem and Marzahn. “He sounds happy,” the consul often said. “I hope he'll hang in.” “I don't see an alternative,” she remarked.

If Gundula didn't see one, Hanbury didn't want one. Sabine by day; Gundula by night. Part of the weekly routine. Gundula would wait a discreet distance from the diplomatic functions. When the consul came out whistling with freedom it was off to her part of town, her pubs and off-beat galleries and halls of cabaret. Fifty years of prohibition on freedom was over and the East was jumping with the kinetic energy of a spring. She, child of the latest German revolution, owned this scene. She was the celebrity here and the consul the after-thought, the tag-along.

Very late, another long haul for Trabi, back to the Greco-Roman villa in Dahlem. Inside, music might emerge from the grand piano. Then the chandeliers dim, the action moving up a floor. Somewhere near day break more commotion as Gundula departs, rousing Trabi, humming happily to herself the whole way back to Marzahn.

A closer look at the congenial hours in the mansion.

Arriving from their midnight dinner, Gundula and the consul proceed to the cosy confines of the music room. Teasingly she gets him to sit at the
huge piano. Reluctantly he puts a finger to the keyboard. Pieces of music follow, an étude, a polonaise, a slavonic dance or two. Once he gets going, he keeps going, closing his eyes, swaying with the music. Concentration is written on the furrows of his brow. Sometimes his upper body rises – or collapses – depending on the passage he's playing. Gundula in an armchair is concentrating too. He's giving; she's receiving. They are physically apart, but the music is a bond.

One evening Tony was playing a longer piece. Gundula rose from the chair and walked to the window where she stood in a thoughtful pose, one arm across her body under her breasts, the palm supporting the elbow of the other. With the free hand she sensually stroked her neck. Her body rocked a little. Hanbury opened his eyes as he ascended with the music and looked at Gundula. At the moment of eye contact his face transformed. She saw it fill with horror. Abruptly he ceased playing, jumped to his feet – so fast the piano stool went flying – and slammed the keyboard lid down. Two giant strides and he had left the room. “What's happening?” she called after him.

Gundula righted the stool and caught up with him in the kitchen where he was undoing a whiskey bottle. He poured himself a shot and emptied it. Perspiration trickled down his temples. She asked if he was all right.

“Oh yes.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I shouldn't play. Really, I shouldn't.”

“Why? You played last week and the week before. Why a heart attack today?”

Hanbury wiped his forehead with a dishtowel. “No heart attack.”

“You're dripping with sweat.”

“I'm fine,” said Tony. “Never been in better shape. I'll prove it. Race you to the bedroom. Last one to have an orgasm is a rotten egg.” He
broke into a crooked grin.

Gundula insisted on an explanation. When Hanbury shrugged as if there was nothing more to say, her eyes flashed with anger. “We've been sleeping together for two months. Don't I have the right to know what's bothering you?”

“Nothing's bothering me. Everything's fine. Let's go upstairs.”

Gundula took a glass, snapped it onto the counter, poured herself some rye and drank it in one go. “Your turn,” she said thrusting the bottle back. Hanbury didn't move. “We'll take turns,” she said, still white hot, “until one of us pours his heart out. I predict it won't be me.” She tipped the bottle over his glass until it held three fingers of undiluted liquor. “You're next.” A hollow look developed around Hanbury's eyes. He emptied it with two hard gulps. Gundula poured once more for herself.