by William Boyd
‘What does this mean?’
‘It meant how – you know – the events of the past, particularly the recent past, had shaped their ideas of themselves. It really had little to do with documented facts, of forming a consensus around a narrative about the past …’
I saw I was losing Hamid but I found myself remembering that first meeting with Karl-Heinz. His dark, shadowy room was filled with towers of books, leaning against the wall – there were no bookshelves. There were cushions scattered on the floor – no seats – and there were three joss sticks burning on his low desk, a Thai bed in actuality – otherwise empty. He was a tall man with fine blond hair which fell to his shoulders. He was wearing several beaded necklaces, an embroidered pale blue silk chemise and crushed-velvet mulberry flared trousers. He had big emphatic features: a long nose, full lips, heavy brows – not so much handsome as unignorable. After three years in Oxford he came as something of a shock to me – and this was a professor. At his behest I lowered myself down on to a cushion and he dragged another over to sit opposite me. He repeated my thesis title several times as if testing it for residual humour, as if it contained some hidden joke I was playing on him.
‘What was he like?’ Hamid asked. ‘This Karl-Heinz.’
‘At first he was like nobody I had ever met. Then, as I got to know him over the next year or so, he slowly but surely became ordinary again. He became just like everybody else.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Selfish, vain, lazy, careless, dishonourable …’ I tried to think of more adjectives. ‘Complacent, sly, mendacious, weak – ’
‘But this is Jochen’s father.’
‘Yes. Maybe all fathers are like that, deep down.’
‘You’re very cynical, Ruth.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m not in the least cynical.’
Hamid clearly decided not to pursue this particular line of our conversation.
‘So what happened?’
‘What do you think?’ I said, refilling my glass. ‘I fell crazily in love with him. Totally, fanatically, abjectly, in love.’
‘But this man had a wife and three children.’
‘This was 1970, Hamid. In Germany. In a German university. His wife didn’t care. I used to see her quite a lot for a while. I liked her. She was called Irmgard.’
I thought of Irmgard Kleist – tall as Karl-Heinz – with her long, breast-sweeping, hennaed hair and her carefully cultivated air of extreme, terminal languor. Look at me, she seemed to be saying, I’m so relaxed I’m almost comatose – yet I have a famous, philandering husband, three children and I edit political books in a fashionable left-wing publishing house and still I can barely be bothered to string three words together. Irmgard’s attitude was contagious – for a while even I affected some of her mannerisms. For a while nothing could stir me from my self-regarding torpor. Nothing but Karl-Heinz.
‘She didn’t care what Karl-Heinz did,’ I said. ‘She knew, with absolute confidence, that he would never leave her – so she allowed him his little adventures. I wasn’t the first and I wasn’t the last.’
‘And then comes Jochen.’
‘I got pregnant. I don’t know – maybe I was too stoned one night and I forgot to take my pill. Karl-Heinz said immediately he could arrange an abortion through a doctor friend of his. But I thought: my dad is dead, my mother is a gardening hermit who I never see – I want this baby.’
‘You were very young.’
‘So everybody said. But I didn’t feel young – I felt very grown-up, very in control. It seemed like the right thing to do and an interesting thing to do. It was all the justification that I needed. Jochen was born. Now I know that it was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.’ I said this instantly, wanting to pre-empt him asking me if I had any regrets – which I felt he was about to do. I didn’t want him to ask me that question. I didn’t want to consider if I had any regrets.
‘So Jochen was born.’
‘Jochen was born. Karl-Heinz was very pleased – he told everybody. Told his own children they had a new baby brother. I had a small apartment where we lived. Karl-Heinz helped me with the rent. He would stay a few nights a week with me. We went on holidays together – to Vienna, to Copenhagen, to Berlin. Then he got bored and started having an affair with one of the producers of his television show. As soon as I found out, I knew it was over so I left Hamburg with Jochen and came back to Oxford to finish my thesis.’ I spread my hands. ‘And here we are.’
‘How long were you in Germany?’
‘Nearly four years. I came back in January ’75.’
‘Did you try to see this Karl-Heinz again?’
‘No. I’ll probably never see him again. I don’t want to see him. I don’t need to see him. It’s over. Finished.’
‘Maybe Jochen will want to see him.’
‘That’s fine with me.’
Hamid was frowning, thinking hard, I could see, trying to fit the Ruth he knew into this other Ruth that had just been revealed to him. I actually felt quite pleased that I had told him my story in this way: I saw its shapeliness. I saw that it had ended.
He paid the bill and we left the restaurant and ambled back up the Woodstock Road in the warm muggy night. Hamid finally removed his jacket and tie.
‘And Ludger?’
‘Ludger was there, around and about. He spent a lot of time in Berlin. He was crazy – taking drugs, stealing motor bikes. He was always in trouble. Karl-Heinz would kick him out and he’d go back to Berlin.’
‘It’s a sad story,’ Hamid said. ‘He was a bad man that you fell in love with.’
‘Well, it wasn’t all bad. He taught me a lot. I changed. You wouldn’t have believed what I was like when I went to Hamburg. Timid, nervous, unsure of myself.’ He laughed. ‘No – this I don’t believe.’
‘It’s true. When I left I was a different person. Karl-Heinz taught me one important thing: he taught me to be fearless, to be unafraid. I’m not fucking frightened of anyone, thanks to him – policemen, judges, skinheads, Oxford dons, poets, parking wardens, intellectuals, yobbos, bores, bitches, headmasters, lawyers, journalists, drunks, politicians, preachers …’ I ran out of people I wasn’t fucking afraid of. ‘It was a valuable lesson.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘He used to say that everything you did should contribute in some way to the destruction of the great myth – the myth of the all-powerful system.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That your life, in every small way, should be a kind of propaganda action to expose this myth as a lie and an illusion.’
‘So you become a criminal.’
‘No – you don’t have to. Some people did – a very few. But it makes sense – think about it. Nobody needs to be afraid of anyone or anything. The myth of the all-powerful system is a sham, empty.’
‘Maybe you should go to Iran. Tell this to the Shah.’
I laughed. We had reached our driveway in Moreton Road.
‘Fair point,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s easy to be fearless in cosy old Oxford.’ I turned to him, and I thought: I’m pissed, I drank too much, I’m talking too much. ‘Thanks, Hamid. That was great,’ I said. ‘I really enjoyed myself. I hope it wasn’t boring for you.’
‘No, it was wonderful, fascinating.’
He leant forward quickly and kissed me on the lips. I felt his soft beard on my face before I pushed him off.
‘Hey. Hamid, no –’
‘I ask you all these questions because I have something to tell you.’
‘No, Hamid, no – please. We’re friends: you said so yourself.’
‘I’m in love with you, Ruth.’
‘No you’re not. Go to bed. I’ll see you on Monday.’
‘I am, Ruth, I am. I’m sorry.’
I said nothing more, turning away and leaving him standing on the gravel as I strode down the side of the house towards our back stairs. The wine had gone so far to my head that I felt myself swaying
and had to pause to touch the brickwork on my left to keep myself steady, and at the same time I was trying to ignore the mounting confusion in my head caused by Hamid’s declaration. A little unbalanced, and miscalculating the position of the bottom step, I banged my shin heavily on a supporting bar of the handrail and felt tears of pain sting my eyes. I limped up the iron stairs, cursing to myself, and once in the kitchen pulled up my jeans to see that the blow had broken the skin – there were little bubbles of blood pushing through the smashed skin – and that a dark bruise was already forming – I was bleeding under my skin. My shin throbbed like some kind of malignant tuning fork – the a bone must be bruised. I swore vilely to myself – funny how a torrent of fucks and bastards and cunts acts as a kind of instant analgesic. At least the pain had driven Hamid from my mind.
‘Oh, hi, Ruth. It’s you.’
I looked groggily round to see Ludger standing there, in jeans, but with no shirt on. Behind him stood a grubby-looking girl wearing a T-shirt and panties. Her hair was greasy and she had a wide, slack mouth, pretty in a sulky kind of way.
‘This is Ilse. She had nowhere to stay. What could I do?’
The Story of Eva Delectorskaya
New York, 1941
ROMER WAS A ROBUST and uncomplicated lover – except in one particular. At some juncture, while he and Eva were making love, he would withdraw and rock back on his haunches, taking whatever blankets and sheets and bed covers there were with him, and look at Eva lying naked, spread-eagled before him on the bed and then consider his own glossy tumescence and then, after a second or two, taking hold of himself, he would position his erect penis and carefully, slowly re-enter her. Eva began to wonder if it were the act of penetration that excited him more than the eventual orgasm. Once, when he had done this a second time to her, she had said: ‘Be careful, I won’t wait around for ever’. So he confined himself, by and large, to one of these contemplative withdrawals a session. Eva had to admit that the manoeuvre itself was, all things considered, rather pleasurable also, on her side of the sexual fence.
They had made love that morning, fairly swiftly, satisfyingly and with no interruptions. They were in Meadowville, a town outside Albany, New York State, staying at the Windermere Hotel and Coffee Shop on Market Street. Eva was dressing and Romer lay grandly in bed, naked, a knee up, the sheets bunched at his groin, his fingers laced behind his head. Eva clipped on her stockings and stepped into her skirt, hauling it up.
‘How long will you be?’ Romer asked.
‘Half an hour.’
‘You don’t speak?’
‘Not since the first meeting. He thinks I’m from Boston and work for NBC.’
She buttoned her jacket and checked her hair.
‘Can’t lie here all day,’ Romer said, slipping out of bed and padded towards the bathroom.
‘I’ll see you at the station,’ she said, picking up her handbag and her Herald Tribune and blowing him a kiss. But when he shut the door behind him she set her bag and newspaper down and quickly checked the pockets of his jacket hanging behind the door. His wallet was plump with dollars but there was nothing else of any significance. She checked his briefcase: five different newspapers (three American, one Spanish, one Canadian), an apple, a copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and a rolled-up tie. She wasn’t sure why she did this – she was convinced Romer would never leave anything interesting or confidential to be found and he never seemed to take notes – but she felt he would almost expect it of her, think she was remiss not to take advantage of the opportunity (she was sure he did it to her) and so, whenever she had a minute or two, she looked, checked and poked around.
She went downstairs to the coffee shop. It was panelled in dark brown wood and there were small booths along two walls, with red leather banquettes. She looked at the display of muffins, cakes, bagels and cookies and marvelled yet again at the profligacy and generosity of America when it came to the business of eating and drinking. She thought of the breakfast that awaited her here in the Windermere Hotel Coffee Shop and compared it with the last breakfast she had had in England, in Liverpool, before she sailed for Canada: a cup of tea, two slices of thin toast and margarine spread with watered-down raspberry jam.
She was hungry – all this sex, she thought – and ordered eggs over-easy, bacon and potatoes as the proprietor’s wife filled her mug with steaming coffee.
‘All the coffee you can drink, miss,’ she reminded her needlessly – signs everywhere proclaimed the same largess.
‘Thank you,’ Eva said, more humbly and more gratefully than she meant.
She ate her breakfast hungrily, quickly and sat on in the booth, drinking another two mugs offree coffee before Wilbur Johnson appeared at the door. He was the owner-manager of Meadowville’s radio station, WNLR, one of two stations that she ‘ran’. She spotted him step in, hat in hand, saw his gaze sweep round to take her in, sitting in her booth, saw his gaze judder a moment, and then he wandered into the coffee shop, just another customer, all innocence, looking for somewhere to sit. Eva stood up and quit her booth, leaving her Tribune on the banquette, and went to the cash desk to pay her bill. Johnson took her seat in the booth a moment later. Eva paid, stepped outside into the October sunshine and sauntered down Market Street towards the railway station.
In the Tribune was a cyclostyled news release from a news agency called Transoceanic Press, the news agency that Eva worked for. It carried reports from German, French and Spanish newspapers of the return to La Rochelle after a successful mission of the submarine U-549, the very submarine that had, the week before, torpedoed the destroyer USS Kearny, killing eleven American sailors. The Kearny, badly damaged, had limped into Reykjavik in Iceland. Visible on the conning tower of the U-549, Eva’s news flash reported, as it moored in La Rochelle, were eleven freshly painted Stars and Stripes. The listeners of WNLR would be the first to know. Wilbur Johnson, a staunch New Dealer and supporter of Roosevelt and admirer of Churchill, just happened to be married to an Englishwoman.
On the train back to New York Eva and Romer sat opposite each other. Romer was staring at her, dreamily, his head propped on a fist.
‘A penny for your disgusting thoughts,’ Eva said.
‘When’s your next trip?’
She considered: her other radio station was far upstate, in a town called Franklin Forks near Burlington, not far from the border with Canada. The manager was a taciturn Pole called Paul Witoldski who had lost several members of his family in Warsaw in 1939, hence his keen anti-Fascism – she was due another visit: she hadn’t seen him for a month.
‘A week or so, I suppose.’
‘Make it two nights and book a double room.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They rarely spent a night together in New York, there were too many people who might see or hear of it, therefore Romer preferred to accompany her on these trips out of town, to benefit from their provincial anonymity.
‘What’re you doing today?’ she asked.
‘Big meeting at head office. Interesting developments in South America, it seems …What about you?’
‘I’m lunching with Angus Woolf.’
‘Good old Angus. Say hello from me.’
In Manhattan the taxi dropped Romer at the Rockefeller Center – where the British Security Coordination, as it was blandly called, now occupied two full floors. Eva had been there once and had been amazed to see the number of personnel: rows of offices off corridors, secretaries, staff running around, typewriters, telephones, teleprinters – hundreds and hundreds of people, like a real business, she thought, a true espionage corporation with its headquarters in New York. She often wondered how the British government would feel if there were hundreds of American intelligence staff occupying several floors of a building in Oxford Street, say – somehow she thought the level of tolerance might be different, but the Americans had not seemed to mind, had raised no objection, and the British Security Coordination accordingly grew and grew and grew. However, Romer, ever the irre
gular, tried to keep his team dispersed or at arm’s length from the Center. Sylvia worked there but Blytheswood was at the radio station WLUR, Angus Woolf (ex-Reuters) was now at the Overseas News Agency, and Eva and Morris Devereux ran the team of translators at Transoceanic Press, the small American news agency – a near replica of the Agence Nadal – that specialised in Hispanic and South American news releases, an agency that BSC (through American intermediaries) had quietly acquired for Romer at the end of 1940. Romer had travelled to New York in August of that year to set everything up, Eva and the team following a month later – first to Toronto in Canada before establishing themselves in New York.
Unable to pull out because of a passing bus, her taxi stalled. As the driver restarted his engine Eva turned to look through the rear window, watching Romer stride along the concourse into the main entrance of the Center. She felt a warmth for him flood her suddenly, watching his brisk progress as he dodged the shoppers and the sightseers. This is what Romer is like to the rest of the world, she thought, a little absurdly – a busy, urgent man, suited, carrying a briefcase, going into a skyscraper. She sensed her privileged intimacy, her private knowledge of her strange lover and she briefly revelled in it. Lucas Romer, who would have thought?
Angus Woolf had arranged to meet her in a restaurant on Lexington Avenue and 63 rd Street. She was early and ordered a dry Martini. There was the usual small commotion at the door as Angus arrived: chairs were moved, waiters hovered, as Angus negotiated the doorway with his twisted body and splayed sticks and made determinedly for the table where Eva was waiting. He swung himself into his seat with much grunting and puffing – refusing all offers of help from the staff – and carefully hung his sticks on the back of an adjacent chair.
‘Eve, my dear, you look radiant.’
Eva coloured, ridiculously, as if she were giving something away and muttered excuses about a cold coming on.
‘Nonsense,’ Angus said. ‘You look positively splendid.’
Angus had a big handsome face on his tiny warped torso and specialised in a line of extravagant polished compliments, all uttered with a slight breathy lisp as if the effort it took to inflate and deflate his lungs were another consequence of his disability. He lit a cigarette and ordered a drink.
