He bends down and ruffles Kwan’s hair. “And how are you feeling, young man?”
“I’m okay, thank you,” says Kwan with an earnestness that breaks your heart.
“Will you be in later?” Gert asks. “Shall I come round when I’ve finished my shift?”
You nod. “That would be nice.”
The doorbell rings just after 22.00, and you see Gert’s face in the spy glass. He hands you a bottle of red wine filched from the café cellar.
“Some medicine for the patient,” he says, squeezing your shoulder. “How are you doing?”
You shrug. “I knew it was on the cards. And it’s probably better this way. He’s been practically a vegetable for more than fifteen years. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. But it’s still sad.”
“How’s Elena?” he asks as you uncork the wine in the kitchen and fetch two glasses from the cupboard.
“She took it better than I expected. I think she was trying to be strong for Kwan. He was very upset, although he’s only ever known Jürgen the way he was. Aunt Vladka came over later in the afternoon. She’s going to stay with her tonight.”
You go through to the living room and sit down on the big tan leather sofa in front of the bookcase. This battered sofa is almost the only thing that still remains from when Marek lived here. Over time, you’ve transformed the apartment on Pflaster Street and made it your own. It’s strange now to think back to when Uncle Ivan gave you the key when he met you in Berlin after your release from prison. Back then, you never thought you’d use it. You were living in Leipzig again with Kerstin at the apartment on Shakespeare Street. You had a part-time job tending the graveyard near Torsten’s gallery. That gave you enough money to get by, and in your spare time you took photographs. Some of them are now hanging in this apartment. You didn’t want to take the key. You’d found a simple kind of happiness back in Leipzig and wanted to keep your life uncluttered. Sometimes in your kind of situation people crumbled. But you were getting stronger every day, and your photographs were getting better and better.
However, Uncle Ivan insisted. “You never know,” he said and slipped the key in your pocket.
Gert pours the wine. “When is the funeral?”
“We don’t know yet. Probably next week.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Thank you.”
“It goes without saying.”
He’s always been there for you ever since that day when he found you knocking on Marek’s door two weeks after you got out of prison – now your door. It was him who came to fetch you from the Stasi Museum on Normannen Street on that bleak afternoon in 1993 when you finally went to see your Stasi files, having always said that you didn’t want to see them, that there was no point. And afterwards, he helped you to move into the apartment here.
You sip your wine. It’s from Romania. Gert knows you still prefer products from the old brother lands. “You know,” you say, “sometimes I feel like I’m on a ghost train at a fairground. I never know when the next ghoul is going to come leaping out of the darkness at me. Back in 1989, I really thought the worst was over. I thought we’d won. We, the people. I was so stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid. Just hopeful.”
You sigh and light a cigarette. You need to stop smoking now you have Kwan. You’ve changed to a milder brand and you keep it to ten a day, but it would be better to stop. Perhaps after the funeral.
“I don’t know about that,” you say. “Even before 1989, I thought I’d worked it all out. I was so naïve. I remember when I first went back to Leipzig after I got out of prison. My father took me to the train station. I told him that I’d be fine and that he should go home. When he’d gone I decided to get a Currywurst from the stand outside the station. But when I got to the front of the queue, I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t say, ‘A Currywurst, please,’ because I didn’t really believe that the woman in the van would give me a Currywurst in exchange for a couple of coins. Why would she? I was a piece of dirt, a number, Prisoner Reinsch. That’s what had happened to me in prison. I no longer believed I was entitled to anything.”
You take a deep drag of your cigarette and laugh. “The woman got absolutely furious, the way people did back then, remember? I suppose it was an outlet for all kinds of frustrations. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she yelled. ‘Are you some kind of freak?’ I ran back into the station and found a corner to hide. I was shaking and crying. I was a complete wreck. But somehow I got myself on to the Leipzig train. And when I got out at Leipzig and saw Kerstin waiting for me, it was like it all lifted off my shoulders. And I thought to myself: it’s been awful but I’ve come through it.
“I was so happy when we were sitting on the tram together and I saw the University Tower and the New Town Hall. It was a dump, the New Town Hall. Black with soot. But I was glad to see it because I thought I’d come home. I thought the dark days were over. And I promised myself that I would never have another moment like the one I’d had at the Currywurst stand. That I would not let them defeat me. That I would be strong. And later that night when Kerstin told me that Marek was in the West, I kept my promise to myself. I didn’t crack up. I found a way to deal with it. I was half expecting it, of course, by then.”
“It’s not naïve to try to come to terms with things. You had to. There was no support.”
“I know. I just didn’t realise how much more there was to come. My release was only the beginning.”
“Did you ever find out how Marek got out?”
“No. I still don’t know.”
Gert laughs. “Maybe he really did find a tunnel in the Harz Mountains. Remember your British friend’s face? But won’t it be mined? And Marek: Na!”
You smile. “Maybe.” You told the westerner so many lies. You think about that sometimes and wonder how he is. “But it’s more likely that he’d just applied to leave without telling me.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Gert says. “The important thing is that you kept your promise to yourself. You found a way to deal with it.”
You shake your head. “I was so proud of myself at the time. They’ve thrown everything at me, I thought, and I’ve survived. But that was arrogant.”
“It wasn’t arrogant, Magda. We’ve all had shocks. That’s what it’s like to live in a country that’s had a change of system. You’ve had more than most and you’ve coped with them.”
You smile. “I wonder what’s next. I’ll need to phone Jürgen’s old training partner, Olaf, and tell him that Jürgen is dead. I expect he’ll want to come to the funeral. Maybe my father will finally express some regret. What do you think?”
Gert takes your hand in his and squeezes it. “Maybe. And then maybe the last ghoul will be put to rest and you’ll be able to get off the ghost train.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Times were not as good as they had been at Liebermann Brothers. There was downwards pressure on fees. Margins were tight. Our campaign to penetrate Europe was costing more and taking longer than head office had bargained for, the Europeans having mysteriously failed to grasp how much better our Anglo-Saxon style of asset management was than their own. Therefore, the Liebermann Brothers Thanksgiving press lunch was to be a more sober affair than in previous years. Where was the value-added in a bunch of journalists in cheap suits getting pissed at our expense?
The lunch was chaired by Julian Collins, Vice President, Global Head of Sales, Europe Middle East and Asia, a standard-issue, moderately handsome, public schoolboy in his late thirties. He straightened his Bulgari cuff links, and a brittle smile danced across his lips as he broke the bad news to the journos.
“Welcome to the Liebermann Brothers’ Thanksgiving Lunch,” he began, bathing the journalists in his gaze. “I know I speak for every single one of my colleagues when I say how very pleased I am to see so many of you here today. Some of you will have joined us last year for our Thanksgiving press lunch. Now, on that occasion we had a very general kind of chat. Which w
as absolutely fantastic. However, on reflection, we did feel that last year’s discussion was perhaps a little unfocussed in nature. So, this year, we thought we’d conduct a guided discussion round the table during lunch. The topic we’ve chosen is European distribution in a cross-border context. As you know, this is a key theme in our industry at this point in time.”
He fixed the journalists with a steely gaze – he didn’t have a very high opinion of their intelligence – as if defying them to disagree with him or yawn openly. “I’d now like to invite my colleague, Tony Bardolucci, who, as you know, is our Head of Third-party Distribution, to outline some of the initiatives we’ve been involved in this year on the institutional side. We’ll then open the floor up to a general discussion and at a later point, probably after the main course, I’ll bring in Mark Bradshaw, who’ll outline our recently revamped cross-border distribution strategy targeting retail investors.”
The journalists’ faces fell. Mark Bradshaw, a nerd in his early forties who’d once been an independent financial adviser in Wantage, smiled grimly, as Tony Bardolucci, a meaty-faced New Yorker who always looked as if he was being strangled by his own necktie, cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Julian. Hello everybody and great to see you all here today. Now, as an organisation, we have seen very significant expansion of our investment management operations in mainland Europe over the past five years. As you know, Europe is a highly competitive and highly fragmented marketplace – ”
The journalists reached for their drinks, and so did I. It was going to be a long afternoon. I’d arrived at the office late and in a bad mood because of an argument with Annabel. She wanted me to ‘see someone’ about my drinking. “Like who?” I yelled. “Why don’t you see someone about your nagging?”
I’d finished my first glass of Pouilly Fumé and was on to my second before Tony had even finished his preamble, which had washed over me like a wave on the seashore, leaving behind only the odd pebble: best of breed … strategic partnerships … client-focussed solutions … portable alpha. There was a time when I’d been very careful about drinking at work. But shortly after John Bull-Halifax’s parcel arrived, I’d stopped being quite so careful and once I’d stopped I found I couldn’t start again. I nudged the wee girl journalist on my right and whispered to her to pass me another bottle of Pouilly Fumé. Julian Collins flicked me a glance, and his lips tightened. I pretended not to notice and filled the journalist’s glass and my own.
“Golly,” she said. “That’s quite a … generous measure.”
“This is Liebermann Brothers,” I whispered. “No expense spared.”
I was on my fifth glass by the time Tony Bardolucci and Mark Bradshaw had wrapped up their contributions to the cross-border distribution discussion. Dessert had been served – pumpkin pie with Chantilly cream – and the girl journalist had gone to the toilet, I suspected to puke. My neighbour on the other side, Bill Smythson, Jnr, a visiting luminary from our San Francisco office, chose this moment to engage me in conversation.
“So, it’s, uh, Bob, isn’t it? How’s business, Bob?”
Bill Smythson was a tall, slender man in his mid-fifties with a full head of silvering hair and a slight stoop. I’d met him once before at an internal ‘Strategic Influencer’ seminar in our Chicago office. He fulfilled a lofty function in our alternative investments division, the exact nature of which was not entirely clear to me. He was not noted for his sense of humour. He liked money and not much else. His role at Liebermann Brothers seemed primarily to involve being driven up and down the Pacific Highway in an expensive automobile seeking out other guys who liked money and not much else – or hedge fund managers as they call them in the business.
I struggled gamely to bring Bill into focus. He was wearing an expensive-looking dark blue Italian suit, a white shirt and a yellow Hermès tie clipped with a gold tie pin. In his breast pocket was a Mont Blanc Meisterstück fountain pen – the regulation accessory of the successful fund manager. Mineral water sparkled in his wine glass. I eyed him malevolently and spat out the word “Crap” along with a mangled piece of pumpkin pie.
Bill froze, a forkful of cream-laden pie suspended halfway between his plate and his mouth. “Crap? That’s not what I expect to hear from a senior member of our executive marketing team.”
All of sudden, I felt very drunk. “I’m hardly fucking senior, Bill,” I slurred.
He winced at the expletive. “You’re senior enough, Bob, senior enough.” He put a hand on my arm. “Let me tell you a story.”
Perhaps he wanted to help me. He wasn’t to know I was beyond help. Or perhaps he just wanted to shut me up. Either way, he began his story. He talked in the booming tones of over-confident white American males everywhere. He’d gone to Harvard, and it showed. His delivery was that of a prosecuting attorney summing up for the jury in an open-and-shut homicide case. Soon everyone round the table was listening in. The gist of the story was this: a highly successful hedge fund manager of Bill’s acquaintance (“I don’t mind telling you I have quite a bit of my own money with this fella”) lived in a luxury villa in an exclusive suburb of San Francisco. This man was a millionaire many times over. He had everything he could possibly want. He’d just turned fifty-five and was planning to retire. Then he discovered his neighbour, also a successful hedge fund manager, had $30 million worth of assets more than him.
“Well,” said Bill, “Sam – that’s my friend – he turned right round and cancelled his retirement when he heard that. He launched a whole new hedge fund strategy and made a whole new pile of money. Then he had more than the other guy. Then he retired. How d’ya like that? Now, do you think Sam said, ‘Crap’ when I said, ‘How’s business?’ Let me tell you: he did not. Sam always said, ‘Business is just great, Bill’. Because if business wasn’t great, he made it great. That’s the kind of guy he was. Isn’t that something? Huh? Isn’t that remarkable?”
A smile played across Bill’s handsome face. The story was meant to amuse. The polite thing, the sensible thing, would have been to laugh and turn back to the girl journalist who had now returned from the toilets looking ready for round two.
But I was in a sour mood. I hadn’t yet come to terms with the shocking contents of John Bull-Halifax’s package, and the argument with Annabel had rattled me. There was something new in her attitude towards me, something that smelt suspiciously like contempt.
“That really is something, Bill, yes,” I said. “I think your friend sounds truly remarkable. He sounds like a very remarkable wanker indeed.” Bill blinked. “Wanker is British for asshole,” I supplied helpfully. “You know, dickhead. Twat.”
The table fell silent. Then Brian McNeil, an old drinking buddy of mine from Investment Digest, gave a loud, forced laughed. “Ha, ha!” he bellowed, catching my eye and mouthing, Shut the fuck up!
Julian Collins flashed the journalists a 24-carat smile. “Well, now that we’ve consumed our, eh, pumpkin pie, maybe it’s time to get back to the topic of cross-border distribution. Kurt?” He turned to the second-in-command at our Frankfurt office, a tedious young German in a charcoal suit who’d recently joined from Deutsche Bank. “I don’t think you’ve yet shared your thoughts on the distribution landscape in Germany. I’m sure we’d all be fascinated to hear your insights.”
And I think they might all have been willing to leave it there. But I was on a roll. “Pass me the wine, would you, love?” I said to the girl journalist.
She looked at me with frightened eyes. “Go on,” I said, nudging her playfully.
She reached across the table for the one remaining full bottle of red. Julian coughed and gave me a warning look. I ignored him. Reasonably decorously, I poured some wine for the girl journalist and me.
“In Germany, the distribution of units in retail investment funds is heavily dominated by the branch networks of the leading universal and savings banks,” Kurt began. “Approximately 84.6% of sales of units in retail investment – ”
“Approximately
84.6%,” I said, leaning into the girl journalist. “I wouldn’t like to hear the exact figure.”
She giggled nervously. Julian glared.
“German investors, both retail and institutional, exhibit a strong preference for bond-based products,” Kurt continued. “At the end of the second quarter, assets under management in bond investment funds –”
“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Julian’s eyes widened. He coughed and ran a finger across his lips to indicate that I should shut up.
I nudged Bill. “Here, have a drink.”
“No, thank you,” he replied stiffly. “I never drink at lunchtime.”
“Oh, go on. Live a little.” I sloshed some wine in the direction of his glass but missed and got his trousers.
He pushed his chair back. “You – ” he snarled. “Sorry,” I slurred.
Kurt stopped mid-sentence. Everyone looked at Bill and me. The girl journalist scrambled for a napkin. I jumped up and started dabbing at Bill’s trousers.
“Would you just – ?” He pushed me away.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. And in that moment I truly was.
He rounded on me, his face puce. “Do you know how much these pants cost?”
“I don’t,” I said, “but I tell you what: I bet your friend Sam could afford to buy you a new pair.” I picked up my glass. “Let’s drink to him, eh? Let’s drink to Sam. He moves money around better than the other guys. What a hero!” I drained my glass and thumped it down on the table.
“Will you excuse me?” Bill said to Julian Collins.
“Of course.” Julian jumped up. “I’m, eh …” He smiled uncertainly.
Bill waved his hand, signalling both acceptance of Julian’s unspoken apology and an undimmed desire to leave the room. With a last contemptuous look in my direction, he strode towards the door.
“I’ll, eh …” Julian said to Kurt.
Kurt nodded. Julian followed Bill out, and Kurt cleared his throat.
The Leipzig Affair Page 16
