by Len Deighton
‘I’m all right like this,’ I said. I was wearing a battered grey suit, my only concession to the party being one of Werner’s more colourful bow ties.
‘You’re so bloody English,’ said Werner, not unkindly.
‘Sometimes I am,’ I admitted.
‘There must be a hundred and fifty people out there,’ he told me. ‘Half of them gatecrashers. The word got around I suppose; they’re all in costume.’ It was typical of him that he should show a trace of pride that so many should want to gatecrash his party. ‘Do you want the Duchess to tell your fortune, Lisl?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Lisl.
‘They say she’s a witch,’ said Werner as if that was a recommendation.
‘I don’t want to know the future,’ said Lisl. ‘When you get to my age the future holds nothing but heartbreak and pain.’
‘Don’t be a misery, Lisl,’ said Werner, who dared to go much further with her than I would ever do. ‘I’m going to make sure you meet people.’
‘Go away!’ said Lisl. ‘I’m talking to Bernd.’
Werner looked at me and gave a tiny grin. ‘I’ll be back,’ he promised and returned to the party which was getting louder every minute. He stood in the open doorway for long enough for me to see the crowded dance floor. There was a frenzied crowd of dancers all elaborately costumed – Germans take fancy dress parties as seriously as they take every other social activity from opera-going to getting drunk – and waving their arms in the air more or less in time with the music. Sequined chorus girls, a Roman Senator, Karl May’s Old Shatterhand and two squaws danced past wriggling and smiling. Jeremy Teacher – dressed as a thin elegant curly-haired gorilla – was dancing with Tessa, who was in a long diaphanous yellow dress with long antenna bobbing above her head. Teacher was holding her tight and talking: Tessa was wide-eyed and nodding energetically. It seemed an unlikely combination. The door closed.
‘What time will they go home?’ Lisl asked me.
‘It won’t go on very late, Lisl,’ I promised, knowing full well that it would go on very late indeed.
‘I hate parties,’ said Lisl.
‘Yes,’ I said, although I could see she had already decided to go and circulate. She preferred to be pushed round in her wheelchair. It gave her an added sense of majesty. I supposed I’d have to do it but I knew she’d find a way of making me look a bloody fool while doing so.
I locked up the suitcase. ‘Come on, Lisl,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and look round.’
‘Must we?’ she said, and was already looking in the mirror to inspect her make-up. Then the door opened again. There was a short smiling man standing there.
At first I thought he was in a specially elaborate costume that included face-black. Then I recognized Johnny the Tamil. He looked different; he was wearing gold-rimmed glasses. He laughed. ‘How wonderful!’ he said. ‘How wonderful!’ I thought he must be referring to the party but he seemed almost not to notice that the party was going on at all. Perhaps he was stoned. ‘Wonderful to find you, Bernard,’ he said. ‘I’ve looked all over town.’
‘I heard the cops got you,’ I said.
He looked at me over his glasses. ‘I was lucky. There was the cruise missiles demonstration. Three hundred arrests. They needed the space in the cells. They threw me out.’ His German had not improved but I’d got used to his accent.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ I offered. Behind him, through the open door I spotted the Duke of Wellington holding tight to a rather gorgeous geisha. For a fleeting moment I thought it was Daphne Cruyer, but as she turned her head and smiled at Frank I knew it wasn’t.
‘No. I must go. I brought this for you.’ He gave me a large dog-eared envelope. I opened it. There was a plastic box that looked a bit like a small radio. ‘It’s Spengler’s…’ said Johnny. ‘He wanted you to have it. It’s his chess computer.’
‘Thanks.’
‘He always said that if anything happened to him I could have his glasses and you could have his computer. That’s all he had,’ Johnny added unnecessarily. ‘The cops took his passport.’
‘For me? Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. Spengler liked you. I put new batteries in.’
‘Thanks, Johnny. Do the glasses suit you?’ He looked quite different in the glasses.
‘No, they make everything blurred. But they are stylish, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, they are,’ I said. ‘This is Tante Lisl. Have a drink?’
‘Hello, Tante Lisl.’ He seemed baffled at the idea that Lisl might really be my aunt but he didn’t question it. ‘No. I must go, Bernard.’
‘Did they find out who killed Spengler?’ I asked.
‘They haven’t even found out his real name or where he came from. No one cares about him, except us.’
He waved and was gone. Lisl had made no attempt to follow the conversation. ‘You should be careful who you mix with in this town,’ she said. ‘It’s not like London.’
Lisl, who, as far as I knew, had never been to London, had been saying that to me since I was six years old, and brought Axel Mauser back to see my Nazi medal collection.
Johnny’s visit was over so quickly that I forgot to give him some cash. With people like Johnny a few marks go a long way. Goodness knows what time and trouble he’d spent in tracking me down. He’d even stolen new batteries for me: long-life batteries, the very best. I suppose he got them from Wertheim. He liked stealing from Wertheim: he said it was a quality shop.
In the event it was Werner who trundled Lisl around the party as she bowed graciously, offered her hand to be kissed or gave a regal wave, according to the degree of approval she extended to these merry-making guests.
I took my father’s suitcase down to the cellar but when I got there I sat down for a few minutes. I was aware of the absurdity of hiding away from Werner’s party, aware too of the derision I’d face from Werner if he found me down here.
But I didn’t want to be upstairs with a hundred and fifty exhilarated people most of whom I didn’t know, in disguises I couldn’t penetrate, celebrating the end of something I didn’t want to say goodbye to.
I went and sat in the little hideaway next to the boiler room, a place I used to come to do my homework when I was a child. There was always a bright light and a tall pile of old newspapers and magazines in here. Reading them, instead of doing my homework, was one of the reasons I’d become so good at German that I could often beat all the German kids in vocabulary tests and essay writing.
I did the same thing now. I took a newspaper from the top of the big pile and sat down on the bench to read it. There was a story about the discovery of buried nerve gas at Spandau. It had been there since the Second World War.
‘Bernard, darling! What are you doing here? Are you ill?’
‘No, Tessa. I just wanted to get away from it all.’
‘You really are the limit, Bernard. The limit. The limit.’ She repeated the words as if she found some pleasure in saying them. Her eyes were wide and moist. I realized that she was stoned. Not drunk on alcohol. She was on something more powerful than that. ‘Really the limit,’ she said again. She extended her arms. The almost transparent yellow cloth was attached to her wrists so that she became a butterfly. The bright light made her a whirling shadow on the whitewashed wall.
‘What is it, Tessa?’
‘Your friend Jeremy is looking for you.’ She twirled around to enjoy again the fleeting shadows she made.
‘Who is Jeremy?’
‘You mean, Jeremy who, darling.’ She laughed shrilly at her joke. ‘Jeremy thing!’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Jeremy the cultivated ape. Know you not the couplet: He doth like the ape, that the higher he climbs the more he shows his ars. Francis Bacon. You think I’m an untutored wanton, but I went to school and I can quote Francis Bacon with the best of you.’
‘Of course you can, Tessa. But you seem a little high yourself.’
‘And the more I show my arse? Is that what you mean, Bernard, you ru
de sod?’
‘No, Tessa, of course not. But I think it might be a good idea to get you back to your hotel. Where’s Dicky?’
‘Are you listening to me, Bernard? Jeremy the ape is desperate to find you. He is going mad. He is in fact going ape!’ More laughter; soft but shriller, and a suggestion that hysteria was not far away. ‘The signal has come and you must go.’
‘Is that what Jeremy the ape said?’
‘The signal has come and you must away.’
‘Tessa!’ I shook her. ‘Listen to me, Tessa. Get a hold of yourself. Where is the ape now?’
‘He was trying to get into one of Werner’s three-piece lounge suits – blue with a pin stripe – but Werner got angry and wouldn’t let him borrow any clothes. They were both shouting. Werner doesn’t like him.’ She smiled. ‘And Werner’s suits are too big.’
I said it slowly. ‘Where is Jeremy the ape now?’
‘You’re not going without me. The car’s here. Van. Ford van, a lovely shade of blue. Diplomatic plates. Outside in the rain. Jeremy the ape is driving. They make good drivers, apes. My father employed one for years. Then he started wanting extra bananas all the time. They can be awfully tiresome, apes. Did I tell you that?’
Outside, the rain was falling in great steel sheets, hammering the road and pounding upon the roof of the Ford van. Jeremy Teacher, still in gorilla costume, was in the driver’s seat. He was soaking wet. I asked him what was happening and had to shout to make myself heard above the sound of the rain and thunder. ‘Get in,’ he said.
‘What’s happening?’ I said for maybe the fourth time.
‘What the hell do you think is happening?’ he said furiously. ‘The bloody signal came through three and a half hours ago!’
‘You said a VW van.’ He shot me a poisonous look. ‘I haven’t got my passport,’ I said, my mind racing as I thought of all the other things I didn’t have.
‘Get in! I’ve got the passports here.’ The prospect of going through the checkpoints dressed as a gorilla had obviously put him in a foul temper.
It was then that I noticed that Tessa was dancing about in the rain. She was drenched but she seemed oblivious of the arresting sight she offered as the thin material clung tightly to her body.
It was Tessa dancing round the Ford Transit – added to the sight of a gorilla gunning it while arguing volubly with a civilian who might have been his keeper – that brought other revellers out into the street. They made an astonishing sight in their costumes, and although some of them had umbrellas, many were as indifferent to the downpour as Tessa was.
Werner came too, struggling under the weight of my father’s suitcase. He opened the rear door to put it inside and as he was doing so Tessa pushed him aside and climbed into the van, slamming the door with a crash that made the metal body-work sing.
‘Let’s go!’ shouted Teacher.
‘Tessa’s in the back,’ I said.
He looked round and shouted, ‘Get out of there, Tessa.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ she cooed.
‘Don’t be silly. You haven’t got a passport,’ said Teacher with a calm politeness that was commendable under the circumstances.
‘Oh yes I have,’ she said triumphantly. She had produced it from somewhere and was holding it up in front of her to show him. ‘Dicky said I was to carry it everywhere while I was here.’
‘Get out, you stupid bitch!’ He revved the engine as if hoping that would persuade her but it didn’t. It simply confirmed that the engine was not firing properly. I had doubts that it would ever complete the journey.
‘I won’t. I won’t.’
‘For Christ’s sake get her out of there,’ shouted Teacher to me.
‘Who the hell do you think you are,’ I said. ‘You get her out.’ I recognized one of Tessa’s bloody-minded moods and decided to let the intrepid Mr Teacher earn his pay.
He looked at his watch. ‘We must go.’ With a string of curses he opened his door and got out, but as the rain hit him and soaked his hairy gorilla outfit he changed his mind and climbed back into the driver’s seat again.
‘Come on, Tessa. We’re leaving.’
‘I’m coming too,’ she said.
‘No, you’re bloody not!’ said Teacher. He switched the heater on to full. His damp costume was obviously chilly.
Then Dicky arrived on the scene. He was dressed as Harlequin, the carefully decorated face, chequered costume and imposing hat a favourite for Germany’s Fasching celebrations. He spotted Tessa and dutifully told us that she was in the back of the van. Teacher gave a loud and angry sigh. ‘Then get her out of it,’ he said, abandoning his usual respectful attitude to those set in authority over him.
By now there seemed to be dozens of people in bizarre costumes milling around the van, although in the darkness and the relentless rain it was difficult to be sure who they really were. But they formed such a crush that getting through them, getting the door open and getting Tessa out would be physically difficult even if no one objected to Tessa being manhandled. And if I knew anything about the effects of alcohol on the male psyche, any sort of struggle with Tessa would be enough to start a riot.
There was a flash of lightning. Hordes – in ever more amazing garb – spilled into the street. The commotion round the van had become the party’s new attraction. A rain-soaked Frederick the Great was waving both hands in glee, while Barbarossa, his false beard bedraggled, offered his hat to a Roman maiden to protect her coiffure.
I saw the Duchess. She was dressed as a witch, in a pointed hat and a long black gown with occult symbols on the skirt of it. That damned cat was with her despite the heavy rain, its eyes glowing angrily in the darkness. The Duchess was standing in front of the van and began making solemn gestures with her wand. A roll of thunder came in on cue.
‘What’s that old cow doing?’ Teacher asked.
‘I think she’s casting a spell,’ I replied.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Teacher, aggravated beyond control. ‘Has everyone gone insane?’
Before the Duchess had finished her incantation Harlequin stuck his painted face through the window of the van and said, ‘Teacher is in charge. Remember that, Bernard.’ I ignored him. He grabbed my shoulder and in the voice of an exasperated parent talking to a naughty child, he said, ‘Look here, Bernard! Do you hear what I said?’
I looked at Dicky’s elaborately made up face and his cold little eyes. Years and years of repressed resentment welled up in me. The way in which he’d been promoted over my head, the pompous things he said, his pretentious lifestyle, his readiness to cuckold poor old George and make jokes about it. Now emotion took precedence over common sense. Whatever the consequences, now was the time to react. I pulled my fist back and gave him a solid punch on the rouged nose. Not hard, but it was enough to send him reeling back into the roadway just as another car came past. With incredibly quick response the driver swerved with a sharp squeal of brakes and avoided him. I turned to see him through the window. Dicky still staggered back, hat askew, feet splayed wide apart. His arms were flailing to keep balance, but he fell backwards into the road and his big cocked hat came off.
‘Go! Go! We’ll sort it out at the checkpoint,’ I yelled.
Teacher let in the clutch and there was a squeak of rubber and a sickening bump followed by a woman’s scream. I knew immediately what had happened. That bloody cat ‘Jackdaw’ had gone under the van to shelter from the downpour. Now it was flattened under the rear wheels. We might have hit the Duchess too, but Teacher spun the wheel and narrowly missed her and we sped out into the traffic of the Ku-Damm.
The wet streets shone with the coloured light of the neon signs that summoned tourists to meet the junkies, winos and dropouts who had made the Europa Centre their home. ‘Is she still in the back?’ said Teacher as we passed the Gedächtniskirche, preserved to remind the nostalgia-prone that old Berlin had its fair share of ugly buildings. Even at this time of night there was plenty of traffic. Teacher gunned t
he motor a couple of times and after that the engine began firing more efficiently. I suppose the rain must have been afflicting it.
‘I’m here, darling,’ said a voice from the back. ‘I can guess who you are going to meet. If you dare to try throwing me out at the checkpoint I’ll scream it aloud to the whole world. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’
‘No we wouldn’t like that,’ I said.
‘This bloody heater’s not working,’ said Teacher and slapped it with his hairy hand.
‘That’s a damned convincing costume, Jeremy,’ I said admiringly. Tessa giggled softly but Teacher didn’t answer.
19
Traffic leaving West Berlin for the Autobahn to West Germany goes through the Border Control point at Drewitz in the south-west corner of the city.
The procedures are efficient and, for a car with Diplomatic plates, minimal. On the DDR side of the controls it is customary for the drivers and passengers of vehicles so marked to flatten their identity papers against the glass of the window, where they are examined by the flashlights of the communist officials who work with that studied slowness that in the West is usually the modus operandi of trade unionists in dispute.
Eventually the guards grudgingly waved us through. They gave no sign of noticing that one of us was a gorilla. Teacher tossed the diplomatic passports into the glove compartment and we began the long and monotonous journey to the West. In keeping with the DDR’s siege mentality, there are no cafés or restaurants on this road. There’s nowhere to savour those sixty-eight different flavours of ice-cream that punctuate long wide American freeways, none of the bifteck aux pommes frites avec Château Vinaigre that mark the expensive kilometres of France’s autoroutes, not even the toxic waste and strong tea so readily available on Britain’s motorways.
At first there was a great deal of traffic on the road. Lovers and husbands returning from blissful weekends passed each other on the way home. Trucks starting out at the stroke of midnight after the weekend embargo on heavy vehicles slowly and laboriously overtook other heavyweights. In the fast lane Germans roared past us at top speed, flashing their lights lest they be inconvenienced in their public demonstration of German mechanical superiority. ‘Deutschland über alles,’ said Teacher as one such Mercedes driver, who’d come tailgating close behind us, pointed his finger to his head as he overtook, and sprayed us with dirty water.
