Eureka

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘What did we miss?’ asked Gina.

  ‘I know!’ Joan nearly shouted. ‘Look, his hanky!’ And indeed there was a silk handkerchief barely peeking above the line of his breast pocket. Nat hadn’t even counted that himself, but quickly concealed his mistake. Well, who cares? he thought. I’ve won! Exhilarated, he stood, bowed to the table, and summoned the waiter. ‘Drinks on me, I think.’

  As the afternoon talked itself away the others drifted off to prepare for the evening. Nat walked Sonja and Gina across the hotel courtyard, scented with lemon trees, and up the hushed staircase. Gina was still marvelling at Nat’s finesse in what he called le déshabillage des autres.

  ‘You’re so good at it! How did you know that I wasn’t wearing undies?’

  Nat chuckled. ‘That was more to do with fantasising than anything.’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Gina.

  ‘A shot in the dark, my dear,’ he said, raising his voice. Sonja, a step behind them, had heard him the first time, and had a query of her own.

  ‘I saw your look of surprise when Joan pointed at your handkerchief as the thirteenth item. I have a feeling that was not a thing you had counted.’

  Nat turned to her. ‘I wondered if you’d spotted that. You are a very Poirot of the parlour game!’

  They had come to a halt outside his room. He produced the brass key with its shaggy tassle and unlocked his door.

  ‘So what on your person did we miss?’ pursued Sonja. ‘A surgical truss, perhaps?’

  Gina giggled, but Nat, feeling his luck really was in, only said, ‘If you’d care to step inside I’ll show you.’

  They looked at one another and, in silent accord, followed him into his room. Nat pulled the curtains, leaving just a gap for the late Mediterranean light to penetrate, and invited them to help themselves from the drinks bar. He dragged open his suitcase and produced, from beneath a pile of laundered shirts, a whalebone riding crop.

  ‘I think there must be an element of quid pro quo in this transaction.’

  Gina, he realised, didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about, but the veiled look Sonja directed at him suggested she was well up to speed. Without further ado he undid his belt buckle and shucked down his trousers, then his jockey shorts. The silver ring glinted against the dark tangle of his pubic hair. Gina goggled at it; Sonja, with characteristic coolness, took a sip of her drink and said, ‘It seems to be responding again.’

  Nat looked down; the pain, once engorged, would be exquisite. He carved the air with a triple swish of the crop – Zorro of the boudoir! – and held it out in invitation.

  ‘Ladies?’

  Freya, despite having no German, managed to construe most of what was going on in 29 Marks. It was essentially a chamber piece, four characters playing out a sort of erotic quadrille, the mood crackling with a dark undercurrent of violence. A naive young woman, barely more than a girl, arrives at a stranger’s apartment in the city. It seems she has been entrusted to him by friends, on the understanding he will find her a job. The man, suave and droll, welcomes her and they have a few drinks before another man turns up. It gradually becomes apparent that the girl is an unwitting plaything between them: the first man is going to pimp her to the second. This scheme is by degrees sabotaged when an older woman, who knows the pimp, shows up unexpectedly at his flat. A subtly vicious gamesmanship paves the way to a bloody denouement Freya could see coming a mile off.

  Veronika was in the lobby to meet her afterwards. She was anxious that her guest had been bored or baffled by the play, but Freya laughed away the suggestion: she’d enjoyed it. The menace of the situation, she said, was highly redolent of a certain British playwright, and, the language barrier aside, she could easily get the sense of what was happening. In any case, the acting was smart enough to make it work in any language. As they were talking, two young men approached: the same ones in Reiner-tribute caps and jackets Freya had seen sneaking in before the house lights went down. Veronika introduced them as Jorge and Karl, both of them film journalists from Berlin. Karl was tall, with unkempt hair and a wispy ginger beard; Jorge was shorter and darker (his mother was Argentinian) and spoke the more confident English. Both had studied in London.

  Veronika said, ‘Frau Wyley – Freya – is writing a piece about Reiner.’ It was odd how everyone referred to him by his first name, thought Freya, as though they knew him. ‘So I’m going to show her around his neighbourhood.’

  She invited them to tag along, and the four of them set out from the emptying theatre. Since the evening was warm they stopped first at an alehouse with its own biergarten, and sat on long wooden benches with their steins. Veronika herself had tottered from the bar with the tray, a duty Freya thought one of the men might have taken up, instead of tacitly conferring responsibility on the notional host of the evening. Jorge offered a satirical ‘cheers’ as they raised their tankards. Freya couldn’t think of the German equivalent – was it Gesundheit? They swapped some quick-fire, desultory thoughts on 29 Marks. The men dismissed it as juvenilia; Freya countered by arguing that juvenilia had its own charm, and in this instance seemed more accomplished than many a playwright’s ‘mature’ work. But Karl, whose shrugs and winces suggested he was hard to please, squashed the argument comprehensively: ‘The theatre is boring. It just took Reiner a little time to realise it.’ Freya looked at him for a moment, and swallowed her retort with a mouthful of Bavarian ale.

  From there they walked on to Reichenbachstrasse, the heart of Reiner’s youthful stamping ground. With night descending the yellow glare of the street lamps lent it an air at once forlorn and promisingly sleazy. Women stood in doorways, arms folded, smoking. Men strolled and paused, like shoppers. ‘That place,’ said Veronika, pointing to a cheap hotel, ‘is where Reiner went a lot. It has a bathhouse at the back.’

  Freya nodded. ‘I was told this might be a good street to buy drugs.’

  A disbelieving silence followed. ‘You mean heroin?’ said Veronika under her breath.

  Freya, amused by their horrified looks, said, ‘Bit strong for my blood. I meant cannabis – you know, pot.’

  Karl, with a laugh, said, ‘No problem. We have some already.’

  The moment of confusion seemed to break the ice. Veronika, visibly relieved, led them round the corner to a bustling little restaurant with checkerboard tablecloths, chalked menus and a mixed clientele: students, workers, night owls, even a few non-white faces. ‘Turks,’ she supplied, noticing Freya’s interested survey of the room. ‘Reiner has always loved this place. He comes back whenever he’s in town.’

  ‘Is this where he used to pick up men?’ asked Jorge, also looking around.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Veronika shrugged, plainly not caring for the question. ‘He usually came in late to eat, after he’d been working.’

  They studied the menu. Freya, seeking a recommendation, was pointed to Schweinebraten mit Knoll. ‘That sounds … chewy,’ she said, hoping it might be something other than sausages.

  ‘Roast pork with dumplings,’ Veronika explained.

  ‘Great. I’ll have that.’

  They ordered more beers, and talked about the festival programme. Jorge and Karl, keen students of Reiner Werther Kloss, had decided opinions on all aspects of the director’s output. Both spoke in a proprietorial manner about him, and seemed not to require any contribution from the women. In their critical way they compared notes, offered theories, tested one another on film arcana. Whenever Freya or Veronika ventured an opinion they would silently consider it for a moment, then continue with their own proud line of pedantry.

  ‘That was his first collaboration with Arno Drexler,’ said Jorge while they were discussing Blut und Feuer.

  ‘Ah, the editor? I was introduced to him,’ said Freya, overhearing the name. That stopped them in their tracks. Had she been on the set of Eureka? ‘Oh no, just on a trip down the Thames last weekend. They were all there.’

  Karl, frowning at the implication, said, ‘So … you have met R
einer?’

  Freya nodded. ‘Briefly. I can’t claim any deep acquaintance – not like Veronika here.’ This news seemed to irk them somewhat. It was one thing for Veronika to know Reiner – they were friends from way back – but for an outsider, and a mere hack at that, it amounted to professional one-upmanship.

  The roast pork and dumplings were fine, in a stodgy sort of way. Freya had had her fill of beer and switched to vodka. Afterwards they dropped in on a wood-panelled bar up the street, and while Jorge and Karl played the pinball machine she prompted Veronika to talk about Reiner’s early years. His parents – did she know? – had died during an Allied air raid on Munich; an entire shelter of civilians incinerated. He had surprised Veronika one evening when he stopped and pointed out the spot where it had happened. ‘So he was raised by his grandmother in Bad Wörishofen. A lonely boy, it seems, though he sang in his school choir and played football.’

  ‘My friend Nat told me he’s football-mad.’

  ‘Yes, he was star player for the local team, and was hoping for a trial with Bayern. But the manager took against him and didn’t let him on the pitch.’

  Veronika paused and flicked a glance at Freya, who sensed there was something more to come. ‘There was a rumour,’ she began cautiously, ‘that he took revenge on the manager for this – what do you say? – snub.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A few weeks after Reiner left the club there was a fire in the manager’s office. It spread to the clubhouse. The whole place burned down.’

  Freya looked at her. ‘You don’t mean he …?’

  Veronika shrugged. ‘It was already a fire hazard, they said. But the investigation found that it had been started deliberately.’

  ‘Did you ever ask him?’

  ‘Years later. I thought he’d deny it, but he didn’t. The police interviewed him at the time, but nothing came of it.’

  A rowdy chorus of drinkers at the next table temporarily silenced them. Schenkt ein, trinkt aus, schenkt ein, trinkt aus! A couple of them were wearing Tyrolean felt hats with a feather in the band. Veronika offered a little dumbshow of apology. Jorge and Karl ambled back to the table, finished with their game; there followed some debate as to whether they should stay or go. Trinkt aus! Trinkt aus! Trinkt aus! Freya suggested they repair to her room at the Marienbad, where they wouldn’t have to make themselves heard above the racket of drinking songs.

  On the way back to Maximilianstrasse they passed a group of street musicians playing ragged, oompah-inflected jazz; a little crowd stood to watch. Freya stopped for a moment, reminded of something.

  ‘You like this music?’ said Karl, with an ironic twitch of his brow.

  ‘Better than trinkt aus back there. I like this fairground thing – makes me think of the new Beatles album, do you know it?’

  ‘The Beatles? Oh no. This is no way like the Beatles!’

  ‘Well, there’s a song on Sgt. Pepper –’

  ‘No. Lennon and McCartney: genius. These people here: not genius.’

  Freya laughed, despite her irritation at his dogmatic tone. ‘I wasn’t suggesting they were! But the oompah sound, and the waltz time –’

  But Karl wasn’t having it: her analogy was mistaken, these street players had nothing at all in common with the ‘fab four’. Time was, Freya thought, when she would have given this cocky little twerp an argument. She wanted to say he should stop taking himself and his opinions so seriously and listen for a change: discussion didn’t always have a right or a wrong, you could throw around a topic from one to another in a playful spirit, like an intellectual game of catch. But having to point out his pernickety dogmatism felt like too much trouble, and might look rather pernickety and dogmatic of her in return. Let it go.

  Up in the suite she opened the long windows onto the street. Veronika looked bemused by the bottle of Krug, untouched in its bucket.

  ‘The hotel provided this?’

  ‘Apparently,’ said Freya, ‘it was sent by someone you may know. Sonja Zertz?’

  Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘A little, of course. You are friends, then?’

  Freya shook her head as she picked off the bottle’s foil cap. ‘Not really. I’ve met her twice, that’s all.’

  The cork came off with a bam, and she poured them each a glass. Karl, settling on a sofa, tipped out his bag of pot onto the coffee table. Freya presumed he was going to roll a joint, but instead he took a large wine glass from the drinks trolley and crumbled pot and tobacco into it. He asked Jorge for a match, which he used to ignite the mixture. Then he stretched a piece of tinfoil across the rim of the glass and prodded some holes in the foil.

  ‘Not a trick I’ve seen before,’ said Freya. Karl demonstrated by inhaling the fumes through the perforated foil, and handed it on to her. She gave it a try and sucked one of the smoking holes: the hit scorched down her lungs and ricocheted madly into her brain, almost taking off the top of her scalp. ‘Christ,’ she croaked, and sank back onto the brocaded cushions. She had to steady herself a moment to stop the room swinging. Soon the air was curtained with the sweetish rubbery fumes of pot. Jorge, disdaining the wine glass, smoked his in a pompous meerschaum pipe that made Freya giggle; he suddenly looked about twenty years older. Veronika declined a smoke, and after finishing her drink rose to leave. She had to get up early to greet a bunch of journalists arriving for the festival.

  ‘But if we have any spare time,’ she said to Freya, ‘I can show you around the streets where Reiner filmed Hanna K.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said Freya, showing her out. ‘It was nice to meet you. I enjoyed that play, and the pork dumplings.’

  At the door Veronika threw a glance over Freya’s shoulder: the two men sat slumped in their hallucinating haze. ‘Are they …’ she began, as if about to apologise for landing her with them. But Freya shook her head and said it wasn’t a problem.

  Later, getting ready for bed, she began laughing to herself. She had seen Jorge and Karl out around half past one, both red-eyed from the smoke. Her voice had gone hoarse as she said goodnight. The strength of the pot had taken them all by surprise, and indeed had almost caused a catastrophe. Having gone off to the loo, she returned to the room to find a scene of surreal comedy. Flames were dancing on the coffee table where the wine glass had fallen, tipping its embers onto a newspaper. Jorge and Karl, recumbent on the sofa, were serenely unconscious. ‘Fuck!’ she cried, and picking up a cushion beat down the flames as they licked around the wood. The commotion woke them, and they watched bleary-eyed as she extinguished the last of the fire. Thanks for the help! she thought sarcastically. Jorge had in fact stood up and hurried over to the champagne bucket, the ice now turned to water. But in his haste to return he stumbled and went flying, the bucket emptying over the carpet.

  This pratfall for some reason struck Freya as the funniest thing she had ever seen. ‘God, it’s the Keystone Kops,’ she said, and a giddiness that began in her shoulders rippled through her lungs: once she started laughing she couldn’t stop. Karl dozily joined in, then Jorge too, though neither of them quite grasped the dizzying hilarity of the moment as she did. Maybe the hotel would also struggle to see the funny side of a coffee table scorched and blackened.

  ‘I’m afraid I must turn you boys out,’ she said after they had cleared up the mess a little. (The battered cushion had split, disgorging feathers over the stricken table.) She packed them off with assurances that they would meet at the festival screening of Rosa Luxemburg the next day.

  Towards dawn she woke of a sudden, stirred by phantoms in her sleep. She could hear from down below the rattle and hiss of the first trams. Immediately she sat up and scribbled a few words down on a hotel notepad. Clarity had emerged from the muddle of a dream. She would not, after all, be staying in Munich. She would write a note of apology to Veronika, check out of the Marienbad and catch the earliest flight she could back to London. She had had her eureka moment.

  INT. VILLA – DAY.

  CHAS, back to camera, at his bedr
oom window, opened on a view of verdant Italian countryside, the sea glittering on the horizon. But CHAS is not looking at the scenery; he is hawkishly watching the distant figures of JANE and GEORGE as they walk off towards town. He turns away from the window.

  INT. VILLA – DAY.

  CHAS is sneaking along a corridor. He stops outside a room. He senses activity below, nurses, maids, the hum of the household. With a furtive glance behind him he opens the door and slips into the room.

  INT. BEDROOM – DAY.

  From the suit hanging on the door and the books at his bedside we can tell this is GEORGE’s room. CHAS looks around, considering, then goes to the little desk piled with papers. He quickly looks through them – but what he seeks isn’t there.

  INT. BEDROOM – DAY.

  Another angle as CHAS scouts the room, peeking in the wardrobe, checking under the bed. In a drawer he finds a carved Moroccan box. He opens it, finds eight tiny tablets and, after a moment’s hesitation, pockets them. He looks around the room, doing a slow 360-degree turn. He guesses that GEORGE will have brought notes on his book about VEREKER – but after their argument he may have taken the precaution of hiding them. CHAS stares at himself in the cheval mirror, pondering; behind his own reflection he looks at the wardrobe again. It’s tall, with a fancy cornice running across its top.

  INT. BEDROOM – DAY.

  CHAS stands up and in a reverse angle we see him approach the wardrobe. He takes a chair and steps onto it, enabling him to sweep his hand along the top of the wardrobe. He stops, feeling something. He lifts up a leather document wallet, the size of a briefcase.

  CHAS

  (triumphantly)

  Ha!

  He steps off the chair, holding the document wallet. He tries the catch: it’s locked. He looks around again, in search of a key, but he intuits that GEORGE must have it. He picks up a paper clip from the desk and folds it out. With the wire he tries to unpick the lock, to no avail. He mutters an expletive under his breath. The secret, he is convinced, lies within that wallet.