The Berlin Connection (22 page)

... I crossed the foyer of my hotel and in the elevator pressed the button for the sixth floor. In this dream I had been living in this hotel for many years. I had taken that elevator uncountable times, with its ceiling lights, worn velvet-covered bench, its mirrors repeatedly duplicating my image.

When the elevator doors opened this time, instead of the red-covered hall, I saw a gray wall. It seemed strangely wrinkled, streaked and mottled.

Perhaps the elevator had stopped between floors. I pressed the white number six button. The elevator did not move. Suddenly a memory rose in me and I punched the gray wall. It felt rough, hard, as would the thick old hide of a large animal, an elephant...

Alarm.

Hurriedly, I pressed the red button. Through the intercom came a distorted voice I nonetheless recognized as Natasha's. She spoke calmly and friendly as always, "Yes?"

"The elevator is stuck, Dr. Petrovna."

"The elevator is working perfectly."

"No, it isn't! I'm stuck between floors! Please help me!"

"Who are you, sir?"

"Peter Jordan, Doctor. You know me!"

"I'm sorry, I don't."

"Dr. Petrovna! You examined me! Don't you remember!"

"My naihe is not Petrovna. You've made a mistake," said the calm voice.

"Then who are you?"

It was Natasha. It was her voice. She did not answer

my question. I pressed the alarm button once more. No

answer.

I sank down on the Httle bench. I saw my image in the mirrors. I could not stand it. I stared at the gray waU of elephant hide.

"Hello?"

I started, "Yes?"

"I've made some inquiries. There is no Peter Jordan living in this hotel."

"I've Hved here for the last ten years! I'm well-known

here!"

"I asked. No one knows you. Anyway, where did you

want to go?"

"To the sixth floor. I live there."

"You can't live there."

"Why not?"

"This building only has four floors."

There was a click, the intercom was silent. I was panic stricken. I began to pound against the mirrors, the wood, the elephant wall. I cursed. I begged. I screamed. There W£is the voice agauL

"Yes?"

"The elevator is stuck, Dr. Petrovna—^"

The conversation began again, was interrupted, continued, interrupted.

Hours passed; days passed, weeks, months, years passed. Hundreds of years passed.

I cowered on the little bench staring at the grating of the intercom through which Natasha had once spoken to me.

The grating of the intercom!

It took thousands of years—^thousands of years too late—for me to recognize: this latticed coverplate represented. God. I had to kneel down and pray. Then perhaps Natasha's voice would speak to me again.

I kneeled, folded my hands in prayer and bowed in reverence before the grating.

I awoke, drenched in perspiration, gasping for breath. It was eleven o'clock. A drink! Even whisky did not help. I tried to open the large window but it was stuck.

The fist.

I could feel it moving, pounding.

My one thought was to get away from here.

I dressed. In my hurry, I stumbled and fell on the bed. I was unabl® to tie my shoelaces properly.

I staggered through the living room. Joan was sleeping. Shirley was sleeping. Neither of them knew what was happening to me; what I was doing.

The fist was pounding in me. I walked down the six floors. I knew that I could never, ever again, use the elevator.

I went to the bar and ordered a double whisky. Neat.

The bar was crowded. People talked loudly to be heard above the din of the band. A voune woman near me was telling her friends, ". . . and I said now there are two uncles who want to marry your mommy, Teddy. Which one do you hke best? And very seriously he said, 'Let's take Uncle Martin, then we'll have a Mercedes.' Isn't that cute? And he is only five!"

I drank my whisky and asked for another double. After that, I left. In the cold, slight rain, I walked. And walked.

"I live just around the corner," she had said. "I always go for a walk at night."

Not tonight.

I would not have been able to say why T was looking for her. The raindrops felt VVre icv needles on mv skin. I walked along the two narrow roads on either side of my hotel. In the second street T found the plaque.

NATASHA PETROVNA, M.D. 208

All the buttons above the tenants' names were white. Only the superintendent's button was red. Below this button was the latticed cover o^ the intercom . . .

Natasha lived on the third floor. It was abstruse, absurd, mexplicable. I rang the bell. In a moment there was a click; the same sound I remembered from my dream.

"Yes?" said Natasha's voice.

"Peter Jordan."

Silence.

"I'm . . . excuse me . . . it's very presumptuous of me ... I thought... I wanted ..."

"Yes, Mr. Jordan?"

"You said you took a walk every night. Fve been looking for you . . ."

No answer.

"I searched for you along the Alster promenade ..."

"Why?"

"I don't really know. I'm probably drunk. I'm sorry to have bothered you. Good night." I had taken three steps when I heard, "Mr. Jordan . . ."

I returned to the intercom. "Yes?'*

"I'll be down in two minutes."

"But..."'

"I intended to go a little later tonight. Tonight I—" She halted. "Is it still raining?"

"Yes."

"Do you have an umbrella?" Her voice sounded happy. Had she had a happy experience tonight?

"No." ^ ^

"Two minutes, Mr. Jordan."

Click.

The intercom had been switched off. I stood in the doorway; the whiskv warmed me. In a little while I noticed th^t I was stroking the cold, wet, brass grating of the intercom.

We walked an hour through the rain; we hardly spoke a hundred words. Natasha smiled and offered her hand when she came down. She wore a brown sheepskm coat, a scarf over her hair. She had brought two umbrellas.

"This is all I could find. My things are still God knows where. It's a crazy situation." One of the umbrellas was a child's umbrella. I took this one although she wanted me to take the larger one.

We walked down the Jungfemstieg and the pad, pad of her low-heeled shoes was as reassuring as the sound of the raindrops on our umbrellas. Without looking at me, Natasha asked, "You are very worried?" , "Yes."

'*I'm so sorry. You know, Fve had a wonderful experience today." But she did not talk about that, and I did not mention my troubles or my dreams. Then, we went on in silence, once in awhile looking at each other and smiling.

We walked away from the hotel. I could not have found a reasonable explanation for this stroll with a strange woman, had I been asked. Neither could I have said what made me feel calm and at peace alongside Natasha, nor could I have explained anything else I did or what took place.

We passed through one of this city's oldest parts, the Nicolaifleet, once the main estuary of the Alster. We stood on the Hohen Briicke looking down at the narrow canal where hundreds of years ago Hanseatic ships had anchored, now packed tightly with barges. On one side of the fleet are ancient timbered houses. They had been painted pink, pale yellow and light green. Now the paint

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was peeling; they looked dilapidated. Beneath the pointed gable of the nearest house to the bridge I read:

the tides are the

traders' wealth

1647

MAY GOD PROTECT US ALL

"Down here began the great fire of 1842 which destroyed a fifth of the city," said Natasha. "And a hundred years later bombs destroyed it again."

On the other side of the fleet were ruins overgrown with weeds. In the distance the pointed, black, gothic tower of the destroyed Nicolai Church was silhouetted against the even darker sky.

Natasha was thoughtful. "The tower is going to remain as a memorial to the war dead and as a reminder of the crimes of the Third Reich."

It was raining hard now and we left the bridge. Shortly after midnight we were at Natasha's house. I returned the umbrella.

"Thank you."

"Thank you for what?"

"You know for what," I said.

She did not take the hand I held out to her.

"Do you remember I told you I had had a wonderful experience today?

"Yes, I do."

"I'd like to show you something. Would you like to come to my apartment for a moment?"

"Certainly."

She unlocked the door. I followed, having forgotten Shirley, Joan, my dream, and that I had to be in the studio in a few hours. The elevator was not working. We walked up to her apartment.

We passed through one room which contained only one bed and chair. Suitcases were overflowing and coats and

dresses hung from a few wall hooks. In the second room Natasha switched on a little bedside lamp standing on the floor. A Httle red oil lamp flickered beneath a few old and beautiful icons. Next to the eternal light hung a little earthenware vase with flowers.

A small bed stood in one comer of the room. A blond child, hidden by blankets, was asleep in it. A few toys were strewn around the room and the entire wall behind the bed was covered by a child's colorful and imaginative paintings and drawings. I was strangely moved.

A little foot protruded from the blanket and Natasha gently pushed it under the bedclothes.

I could not see the face of the child. I took one step forward and inadvertently tipped over the bedside lamp. The crash echoed in the almost empty room; Natasha looked up and smiled at my dismay.

"He didn't hear anything."

"I hope not."

"He couldn't have heard it, Mr. Jordan. He is deaf."

"Deaf?" I said, horrified.

"And dumb, Mr. Jordan. Deaf and dumb."

12

"What is his name?"

"Misha."

"How old is he?"

"He is four years old, Mr. Jordan," answered Natasha. "And deaf and dumb since birth."

We had left the child's room and entered her office. An old-fashioned oil painting of a troika hanging behind the desk was a strange contrast to the instruments which glittered in glass-fronted cupboards. On a white table stood a tape recorder.

"A colleague was supposed to rent the office. That's

why everything is in order here. Now the poor fellow might have to wait a year or two. Who knows? Who knows anything anyway?" She took off her scarf, busied herself with the tape recorder, and out of context said, "I told you once that you reminded me very much of a man in my life."

I nodded.

"He was Misha's father. I mentioned it once before: he was a hopeless drunkard. He died in an institution. We had lived together ma\iy years."

"How long were you married?"

"We were never married."

"You were—"

Almost gayly she answered, "No, never. His wife had left him but she would not agree to a divorce. When she found out about me, there was a big scandal. You can imagine the consequences in a town as proper as Hamburg."

"You lost your patients?"

"Many. I was investigated by the Doctors Association. I was ignored by many influential people. Many peculiar things happened . . ." There was a strange smile in her eyes. She was the first Russian woman I had met and at that time I knew nothing of the world in the East. Today I do. Through Natasha.

There is a universal belief that Russian women are sentimental. The woman of the East is not sentimental; she is melancholy. To sacrifice herself seems almost a pathological joy to a Russian woman in love. She would give endlessly. I was to have that experience with Natasha.

"When the child was born its father had akeady died," said Natasha. She pushed back her glasses.

"Misha paints beautifully, doesn't he?" she said. "At the moment he is sad. His paints and crayons are all packed in one of the trunks which have been shipped. He inherited his father's talent—and something else too."

I stared at her. I could not speak.

"You understand what I mean, Mr. Jordan?"

I nodded. I wet my dry lips. Finally I managed to ask, "You ... you mean alcohol is the cause of this?"

Natasha did not answer.

"But why—" I began and fell silent

"What were you going to say?"

I shook my head.

"You were going to say. *You are a doctor. Why didn't you prevent such a man from fathering a child?' That's what you were going to say, weren't you?"

I nodded.

She answered, '^Because I was selfish. I knew the man would die. I wanted to keep something of him when he left me forever. I ignored the facts. I counted on the law of averages. Even with the heaviest drinkers, congenital defects rarely are as tragic as this. I hoped to be lucky. But people have httle luck."

My father had said that. Now Natasha said it. We were silent in the large office. I heard a clock strike once.

"How do you make yourself understood?"

**We use sign language. Isn't it lucky he is not blind too?"

"Isn't there some treatment— ^

"There is nothing I have not tried. The best hospitals; the most accomplished specialists. There is a new theory

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that a constantly high temperature and a certain air pressure are beneficial. That is why I accepted the offer to go to Africa."

"I see."

"Still, I had very little real hope. I had come to terms with the fact that my little boy would never be a healthy human being—until tonight, Mr. Jordan," she said and her eyes were shining behind the glasses; her face flushed with joy. "Until tonight."

"What happened tonight?" I asked, thinking that possibly all this, the empty apartment, the child were a figment of my imagination, of madness.

"We were having dinner tonight and he was telling me a story." She switched on the tape recorder. "He was so excited, more than usual and then suddenly .. ." Natasha pushed back her glasses; the tap© recorder hummed. "For the first time in his life he produced sounds! He was very excited and I switched on the tape recorder and he tried again—" From the tape recorder came a hoarse sound, "Orrr . . . orr . . ." Natasha was ecstatic. "Did you hear it?" I nodded. "Wait.. . again ... there!"