He stopped at a stand-up soup kitchen on the corner of Joachimstalerstrasse, and drank a bowl of thick lentil soup in order to silence his stomach. What he failed to understand even now was why Kuzmich was so reluctant to help him. They must realize that his value to them was in being alive and above suspicion. He bought another bowl of soup and spilled half of it over his shoes. If Emmanuel Gatiss discovered his mask first, he could only be of harm to the KGB. If he was kept alive.
Through the window of the café, he could see the gaudy façade of the Zoo Palatz, illuminated like a barrage balloon. A phalanx of people were queueing up to see the film starring Brigette Bardot. She herself lay, in one dimension, boy-legs apart, snapdragon mouth open, across twenty square foot of the cinema outside, and spoke in ventriloquized yet fluent German in the cinema inside. Eberlin thought about Caroline. Was she as innocent as she professed? And Oskar Greiser. What of him? And Caroline’s obese friend Susan? And the man in the cap standing next to him. Or the soup cook? Who was he spying for? Or the four-year-old child in the Opel Caravan that just passed? Even Brigitte Bardot over there was to be watched. But not at those prices.
Eberlin suddenly caught his reflection in the window smiling stupidly back at him, and so he drained the last of the soup and hurried away into the night.
At nine fifty, he arrived at his hotel and was relieved to discover that Gatiss was still absent. He inquired at the desk whether he had returned and left again, but Gatiss’ key had remained untouched all day. Eberlin nodded thank you and went upstairs to his room, closed the door and sat on the edge of his bed. He felt suddenly very lonely and, for the first time for years, frightened.
Not bothering to put on the light, he sat in the gloom and stared at a discarded piece of paper on the floor for what seemed an eternity. His mind remained a complete blank, almost trancelike, except for a brief vision of his son which sadistically dried his mouth, then vanished. After half an hour, the paper on the floor was only a blur and then he noticed its presence for the first time. Picking it up, he realized that it was a note, dated that day and presumably pushed under the door within the last couple of hours. The reality of it brought him to his senses since no one in Berlin (except Gatiss) knew of his presence, and even Caroline believed him to have left twelve hours ago. Puzzled, he opened it up and glanced down to the bottom where the signature was scrawled. It was there, very legible in black Pentel: Caroline.
10
Melpomene AWOL
A woman should open everything to a man except
her mouth.
–ALEXANDER EBERLIN
GATISS was bored. He had sat in the Stygian darkness of the club, waiting for Melpomene, for over an hour. Before him was an untouched glass of Berliner Weisse which he’d ordered on arrival, and, as on every other table, a red telephone. Beyond the self-conscious rows of male faces was a long counter where eight girls, in various stages of pulchritude and undress, sat and waited for their number to be called. They perched like budgerigars on high barstools, skirts squeezed up to reveal suspended thighs, and gaped in cold expectancy at the ceiling. Every now and then, one would answer a phone at her elbow, murmur into the receiver, then assume an Identidikit smile and join a grinning customer at his table. It was a dreary preamble to the norm and Gatiss was bored.
From the guide list on his table, he noticed that the hostesses had been named after the nine Muses, by some rare intellect who must have stumbled into the club one night by mistake. Terpsichore, a sailor’s daughter from Hamburg with tomato-red hair and eyes that had been lent to her by a basset hound, was, as Gatiss observed, very popular. Wretched Clio however was obviously on the way down, for she hadn’t had a call all night and was becoming noticeably anxious. Her neighboring Muse was Erato, an obese harpy, whose only link with poetry was in a calendar for which she had posed naked, except for a red carnation in the navel and which was still hanging in innumerable garages five years after publication. Her only rival in body-art was Melpomene herself who, much to Gatiss’s relief had just arrived.
As soon as she had sat down, patted her blond hair and ordered a drink, Gatiss dialed her number. He saw her swear audibly and hesitate, before picking up the phone. Then, peering into the darkness, she raised the receiver to her ear and listened.
“This is Gatiss,” he said. “Come to Table Y.”
The blond Melpomene, taking her time, finished the drink, then stood up and pushed her way past the groping hands and sniggered innuendos toward Gatiss’s table in the far corner. He moved aside as she sat down, plonked her small cheap bag before her and gave a breast-shuddering sigh.
“You’re late,” Gatiss said, signaling to a deaf waiter.
The blonde pulled a face and shrugged her bare shoulders.
“I’m thorry, thugar,” she replied quietly. “I had to wait for Othkar.”
* * *
Dear George,
Extraordinary thing, George. Fat Susan who is a horror and smells said she saw you this afternoon. Course I said you had gone but she says she saw you lying in the street!
What a horrid liar she is. Anyway I came around just in case cos you know I think you’re super and fab (ugh!) but you were out. Have you gone? Or are you still here? You needn’t bother to tell me if you are, if you don’t want to see me. But please, George, would love to see you if you are and reading this. How do you spell ‘passionately’?
lots of kisses,
Caroline
PS. Am at Bristol. Room 141. And alone!!
PPS. Bought super hat. xxxxx
PPPS. If you are here and you do come, you don’t have to say anything. I won’t ask. Miss you awfully. I wish, darling, I wasn’t such a child. C.
Eberlin read the note twice, then tore it up. He had not the slightest desire to see Caroline, and yet wishing to avoid Gatiss till the morning, found her invitation not unwelcome.
One hour later, he put his passport, checkbook and gun in his pocket and left the hotel. No one saw him leave. Walking west along dark side streets, Eberlin reached Uhlandstrasse and saw the back of the Bristol Hotel one hundred yards away. He stood and stared at it for a moment, then turned and walked away.
At ten fifty he returned to the very same spot, crossed toward the side of the building and then entered quickly into the sumptuous foyer. Avoiding the eyes of the reception staff, Eberlin crossed to the stairs and walked, almost stumbling on the third step, to the first floor. 141 was mercifully at the end of a quiet corridor.
There was no answer when he knocked. Instead the door, unlocked, swung open under the pressure of his knuckles. Eberlin hesitated and involuntarily touched the butt of the Browning under his coat, before slowly entering the apartment. Shutting the door, he switched on the light and glanced around. It was a typical expensive hotel room–small, cluttered and in extreme bad taste. On the floor was a discarded copy of The Sunday Times and an ashtray full of cigarette ends. A cardboard box lay on the table next to a ridiculously ugly hat about the size of a cartwheel. Eberlin sighed and crossed the carpeted floor, past a large Chesterfield upholstered in purple velvet, and toward a door leading to the next room. Pausing, he listened for any sound but there was none. Slowly he opened the door and saw, the light still being on, that Caroline was in bed and asleep, one arm around a crippled teddy bear and the other curled up, under her, inside the sheets. On the floor near her lay a discarded copy of The Last Tycoon, page-marked by a Kleenex tissue.
Eberlin stared at her for a moment, then closed the door and returned to the sitting room and lay down on the couch. He remained there for an hour, smoking cigarettes and staring into space, until, exhausted by the long day, he fell asleep, to be awakened ten minutes later by Caroline.
“I thought you were a burglar,” she said, standing over him in a long, opaque nightgown covered in bows and Victorian lace. “Fancy sleeping out here, George.”
Eberlin attempted to answer, but changed his mind and submitted reluctantly to Caroline’s invitation to sleep in her bed, w
hich he did, but without making love to her despite her relentless encouragement. Pleading a dire and truthful necessity to sleep he turned his back on her and slid gratefully once more into unconsciousness. Realizing finally that he was irretrievable, Caroline put on her nightgown again and fell asleep herself, her head against Eberlin’s shoulders, her knees against his back and her left arm curled comfortingly around the teddy bear.
In the morning, Eberlin awoke puffy-faced and dry-mouthed and saw a cup of coffee hovering, out of focus, three inches before his face. He took it without comment, spilling some of it on the bed as he sat up, and saw Caroline, still in her nightgown and wearing the absurd hat, standing smiling at him.
“What’s the time?” he asked anxiously. “Ten past nine.”
“Ten past nine,” he echoed and realized he was early.
A bath was run for him which he refused and showered instead, while he watched Caroline take the bath herself, her small suntanned body, with its white negatives on the breasts and thighs, ridiculously out of proportion in the giant tub. Then, after two further cigarettes and the remains of the cold coffee, Eberlin left the apartment with a muttered “Good-bye” to Caroline, who, still in the bath, gaped with surprise and began:
“When will I–”
She didn’t finish it, for the door closed and she was alone, staring at the taps and her distorted reflection in the chromium. Oh hell, she thought, moist-eyed, and lay back in the water, her small stomach floating to the surface. She squinted down the front of her body toward her toes and thought about Eberlin and knew, finally, that she would never see him again. She would leave now, for there was no more reason for her to stay, and anyway, she realized, the water was cold.
11
Breysach
V. relinquish, give up, abandon, desert, defect, forsake,
leave in the lurch; depart –, secede–withdrawfrom;
back out of, back down from; leave, go back on
one’s word, quit, take leave of vacate &c. 757.
–ROGET’S THESAURUS
(The Voluntary Powers)
No comment.
–ALEXANDER EBERLIN
AT the bank in Hardenbergstrasse, Eberlin drew six thousand dollars from the emergency fund he had been granted by Frazer, and walked out into the street. It was a fine day and rather pleasant if one wanted to take a stroll or visit the nearby Zoo to listen to Wagnerian tenors tremoloing all over the beer tables. Berlin indeed could, like the hausfrau it was, startle one suddenly by assuming forgotten makeup and jewelry in order to rekindle one’s initial attraction. Today was such a day. Girls were dressed in bright fashionable cottons, and tourists in open cars cruised lazily along its immense highways listening to rock and roll from transistor radios. And yet, to Eberlin, as he crossed the street toward Steinplatz, it was still an electric chair. Ornately covered in the finest silks, padded with goose feathers and designed by a Chippendale, but an electric chair nevertheless. And the switch was set.
He stood on the corner attempting to be casual about the whole affair, and was relieved to find that the taxi approached him almost immediately. He double-checked the number, then hailed it with a slight gesture of his arm. The Mercedes drew up at his feet and he noticed the driver was the man in the photo, teeth jutting out like an eave to his chin.
“I’m Dancer,” Eberlin said quickly, reaching for the back door.
The man didn’t speak until Eberlin was settled in the car and the taxi was heading west toward Grunewald.
“Drop your passport on the front seat.”
“I’ll drop it nowhere,” snapped Eberlin. “If you want to check my references, stop the car and turn around.”
The man frowned, hesitated, then parked the car, engine running, at the curb. Attempting a vain assumption of authority, he turned around slowly and peered into the back of the car. Eberlin held up the passport and showed the photograph.
“All right?”
“Let me–”
“Is it all right? If I have to endure an endless parade of petty inquisitors from now on, I’ll get out of the car now.”
He snapped the passport shut and reached for the door. The driver nodded reluctantly and apologized.
“We have to be careful.”
“Give me a light,” Eberlin replied and reached over for some matches. Lighting a cigarette he said, “What’s your name?”
“Schmidt,” the man said.
“Let me keep the matches, Schmidt. I need them more than you.”
The driver grunted and put the car forward. They drove in dead silence till they reached Grunewald twenty minutes later.
Eberlin was surprised when the taxi parked outside a large, spacious mansion. The neatly cut lawn, the privet hedge and the diligently cultivated garden seemed an odd setting for such an illicit organization. But on reflection, he realized that it was, on the contrary, perfectly apt. Ugliness is often disguised by extravagant ostentation, if funds are high. Rather like the parade of elderly dowagers he had witnessed once at Ascot, who had worn enormous flower and lace hats in a vain attempt to distract the onlooker from the sagging wrinkles and the collapsing body. And so he refrained from comment, and stepped slowly out of the car, burning his hand momentarily on the hot steel of the roof, and was led by Schmidt into the house.
At first, no one rushed to meet him and shake his hand, and he began to notice his nervousness. Then finally, after he had exhausted his perusal of the tapestries and vulgar furniture in the hall, a butler appeared from nowhere.
“Would you come this way?” he said, and then abandoned him.
The cordiality reminded him of Selvers.
At the back of the house, carefully hidden by a high wall and a semicircle of poplars, was a kidney-shaped swimming pool, where a dozen male guests swam or lazed idly on the blush-red tiles drinking whisky sours. Eberlin stood at the edge of the pool, deserted both by the butler and Schmidt, and looked curiously around for Greff. He was nowhere to be seen. Then suddenly, with a bellowing laugh, he emerged like Poseidon from the depths of the pool and swam toward a yellow raft, floating nearby, which contained a dry towel, a pair of sunglasses, and a young black-haired boy, with enormous eyes, wearing nothing but a pair of denim briefs. Clambering onto the raft, Greff whispered something to the boy, then noticed Eberlin a few yards away, standing staring at him. He raised his hand in a gesture of recognition but Eberlin had turned and was walking back to the house, flicking his cigarette into the clear blue water.
“Ich sehe Sie später,” Greff said quietly to the boy and then was swimming strongly toward the side of the pool. In a few strides he had reached Eberlin and caught his arm.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Sit down and have a drink.” Eberlin pulled his arm away.
“Is this a farce, Greff?”
“A farce? My dear George, I don’t understand–”
“You know exactly what I mean. As far as I am concerned, the deal is off.”
He began to stride angrily toward the rear door of the house. Greff glanced back at the guests who were attempting to ignore the situation, then he ran after Eberlin again.
“Please, George,” he gasped breathlessly, “don’t get annoyed. Everything is arranged as planned. Just because you don’t like the décor, don’t run off in a temper. I’m sorry I can’t supply some secret passwords or mysterious dungeons, but you really have a romantic impression of Breysach. And indeed of Berlin.”
Eberlin hesitated slightly and Greff, seeing an opening, plunged on.
“This is just a business, George,” he said, putting his arm on his shoulder, “and happens every day. These men you see around you are businessmen working for Breysach. You will see this scene around a million pools in a million business hotels. You know something–I sometimes think we employ more people than Krupp.”
He laughed and turned to a silver-haired man nearby who giggled and repeated, “More than Krupp.”
Eberlin turned and looked coldly at the guests around t
he pool. “What happens now?” he said.
* * *
They were below him now, the people at the pool. He could see the men clustered in small groups at the edge of the azure water, talking intimately to each other and now and again throwing up manicured hands at visual jokes. The young boy was still on the raft, lying quite still as if he had died suddenly, unknown to the others, and was merely waiting to be discovered. He sat up suddenly as if to disprove Eberlin’s thoughts, glanced around, then turned over and settled himself back on the raft, one hand trailing in the water.
“Pretty, isn’t he?”
Eberlin turned from the bedroom window and glanced at Greff. The German was standing behind a giant screen soaking his body in Arpège after showering. Eberlin ignored the question and sat down in a bentwood rocking chair and studied the room. It was large, grotesque and decorated solely in blue. The bed, carpet, walls, even ceiling, were in a deep shade of ultramarine, and when Greff dressed, his clothes too were of the same color. Anticipating the question, Greff said with a smile:
“Actually my favorite color is red–magenta–but like all precious things, one must preserve them not exploit them. Blue means nothing to me.”
“How long have we got?” Eberlin said suddenly.
“Plenty of time, George,” Greff replied, selecting a tie from a wardrobe. He made his choice because of the material rather than the color, since all his ties, like Eberlin’s, were black. “Would you like to listen to some music? Calm your nerves.”
He crossed to a transparent-topped Braun record player and switched it on. Eberlin didn’t recognize the voice nor did he care. With the slightest prompting he would have got up, strode to the door, left the room, and washed his hands of the whole affair. He would gladly write it off as a failure but it was too late. The decision had to be followed through for his own sake. He returned to the window and stared out at the garden. The landscaping was below par.
A Dandy in Aspic Page 15
