“Stop here,” I say.
Once he has pulled over and switched off the meter I hand him the fare. He turns in his seat and looks straight at me for the first time.
“How old are you?” he asks.
I tell him I’m twenty, though actually I’m still nineteen.
He looks away, then murmurs something.
“I’m sorry?” I say. “I didn’t understand.”
As he passes me my change I lean forwards but he keeps his eyes fixed on the windscreen. There’s a thin red line near his ear. He must have cut himself shaving.
I try again. “What did you say?”
He adjusts his glasses, then gets out, opens the boot, and carries my suitcase to the curb. By the time I’m standing on the pavement he’s already back behind the wheel. His indicator flashes and he drives away.
The sky is the color of an oyster and has a clamminess as well, a glossy, slightly swollen quality. I bring my eyes back down. Opposite the hotel is a squat purple building with no windows. Next to the purple building is a pair of wrought-iron gates painted gold and then a green wall with a sticking-out sign that says AUTO-GLASEREI. Beyond that is a railway bridge. The gutters are clogged with wet leaves. It’s quiet, just the murmur of traffic and the distant scream of logs or metal being cut.
I move towards the hotel entrance. The lobby is the size of a doctor’s waiting room with a prefab look to it as though, like a film set, it’s only temporary and could be dismantled at a moment’s notice. The woman on reception has a sallow unlined face, her eyebrows plucked into thin black arcs. I can’t tell where she’s from. Iran perhaps. Or Lebanon. A room with a shower will cost me fifty euros. If I share a bathroom it’s only forty. Her voice is casual, musical, and she makes no attempt to sell the place.
I ask if I can see a forty-euro room. She hands me a key attached to an oblong piece of wood by a metal ring. The room is on the ground floor at the end of a narrow passageway. Between the two beds is a night table with an ashtray and a lamp. I move to the window and part the net curtains. On the far side of the alley that runs past the back of the hotel is a streetlight and a wall of blackened bricks. The cool, faintly alcoholic air of Berlin drifts through a crack in the window frame. The smells are all unnatural — creosote, petrol, methylated spirits. I put my face close to the glass. Out there, somewhere, is Klaus Frings, with his penthouse apartment and his wounded heart …
I return to reception.
“Well?” the woman says.
“It’s perfect.”
Her eyebrows lift but she says nothing.
That night, after eating in a pizzeria on Potsdamerstrasse, I lie awake for hours. Though the curtains are closed, the room floods with yellow light from the streetlamp outside the window. When I think of Klaus Frings I see a man who is a few years older than me and only an inch or two taller. I suppose I’m being influenced by the sound of his name. Those two pert monosyllables, which seem to invite a limerick, suggest someone with a brittle distracted air. He might even shiver a little, but like a greyhound this would be a sign of good breeding, not nervousness or feeling cold. His clothes seem anachronistic, as if he belongs to another period in history. A figured waistcoat, a cane with a carved head. He doesn’t resemble anyone I know. He’s like a fictional character, a person I’ve made up. As I turn onto my side rhymes begin to pop into my head: drinks, winks, stinks, kinks, sphynx. The limerick’s writing itself.
In the middle of the night I’m woken by a tapping on the window.
“Was gibt’s?” I call out. What is it?
Nobody answers. My room is no longer yellow. The streetlight must have been switched off.
Later I hear bedsprings creaking overhead. A door opens, then closes. A toilet flushes. Someone laughs and then the creaking starts again.
In the morning, after breakfast, I approach the woman on reception and ask who occupies the room above mine. She says she can’t give out that kind of information.
I nod. “It’s important to be —” But I can’t remember the German for discreet, so I say, “It’s important not to tell everything.”
She stares at me.
“No, really,” I say. “I mean it.”
I walk round to the back of the hotel. The bulb in the streetlamp outside my room is broken, and glass fragments glitter on the cobbles. The window above mine is closed. Hot-pink blinds are lowered almost to the sill.
/
My first full day disappoints me with sunlight and clear skies, but at least I know it can’t go on. Berlin is one of the coldest cities in Europe. Last winter was severe, with heavy snowfalls as late as March. The papers talked of “Arctic air systems” and temperatures that were “Siberian.” Out on the street there’s something brisk and combative in people’s gestures and expressions, even in the language they use. How lazy Rome seems by comparison! A city of lotus-eaters.
It takes forty minutes to reach Walter-Benjamin-Platz. Open at both ends, with tall utilitarian arcades running along its northern and southern sides and a paved area in between, the square feels like a civic monument, built to commemorate a loss or a catastrophe. Since I don’t have Klaus Frings’s exact address I start at the southeast corner of the square and move slowly westwards, checking the nameplates on every door. When I reach Leibnitzstrasse without having found him I cross to the northwest corner and work my way east. Halfway along I begin to panic. What if he has moved? Approaching the penultimate door, I scan the names on the upright rectangle of tarnished metal: Nowaczyk, Lutz König, Dr. Popp, Hauff-Buschmann, Wimpary, Frau C Alvarez, Frings —
Frings!
Once again I admire the clipped, almost porcelain ring of that single, simple monosyllable. I touch the buzzer next to his name. Round and satisfyingly concave, it seems to have been constructed with my fingertip in mind. I step back. Now what? Should I make contact with him? If so, how? I feel ahead of myself, out of sync, like a detective trying to solve a crime that has yet to be committed. The name Klaus Frings is all I have, but what is it exactly that I want? I need to think.
I turn away.
Built into an arch in the corner of nearby Savignyplatz is a café with dark wood tables and red chairs. As I walk in, the radio is playing a Dinah Washington song. My father has always had a thing about Dinah Washington. He used to sing along sometimes when we were in the car. “What a Difference a Day Makes” or “September in the Rain.” His voice wasn’t bad, but my mother would grin at me and shake her head despairingly, blond hair covering one eye. An S-Bahn train thunders overhead, blotting out the music. The whole café shudders, but the man behind the bar doesn’t react. His thinning hair is the color of mahogany. I order a hot chocolate, then sit by the window.
When he brings my drink I say, “Mille grazie.”
“You’re Italian?”
“Sorry. I forgot where I was.”
I’m English, I tell him, though I’ve lived in Rome since I was nine. He’s from the north, he says. A small town near Brescia. But he has been in Berlin for fifteen years. The door opens and a woman enters. He excuses himself.
I look around. Standing at the counter is a man in his fifties, dressed in a black suit and a black polo-neck. Another, younger man is sitting at a table, silver headphones over his ears. A third man is reading a magazine, a bag of cat litter at his feet. Is one of them Klaus Frings? It’s possible. Anything’s possible. Another train rumbles past, the reflected carriages flowing right to left across the upstairs windows of the building opposite and crumpling as they cross the glass. I sit there for an hour. When I finally go up to the bar to pay, the owner says he hopes to see me again before I fly back to Italy. I nod and smile and say I hope so too.
For the rest of the day I pretend to be the tourist he took me for, spending the afternoon at a gallery. Later, in the shop, I buy a notebook with unlined pages and several Gerhard Richter postcards. His blurred portraits seem a comment on my own existence, all the unimportant details stripped away.
By five-thi
rty I’m back in Walter-Benjamin-Platz. This time I notice the hexagonal green kiosk at the east end of the square. As I approach Klaus Frings’s building a man of about seventy steps out, his white hair gathered in a ponytail. I slip past him, into the lobby. Behind a desk of blond wood is a man in a gray uniform, his newspaper open at the sports pages.
“Good evening,” I say. “Is Herr Frings at home?”
The porter looks up. “He’s not back yet.”
I glance at my watch.
“He should be here in half an hour or so.” The porter’s gaze drops to my breasts. “Would you like to wait?”
I shake my head. “Thanks all the same.”
Out in the square again I lean against the kiosk. The sky has clouded over and a damp wind is blowing. It’s beginning to get dark. During the next thirty minutes only two people enter the building. The first is a middle-aged woman cradling a pug in the crook of her arm. The second is the man with the ponytail.
At ten past six a tall figure turns out of Wielandstrasse and into the square, passing within an arm’s length of me. He wears a fawn overcoat and is carrying a leather briefcase. Instinctively I know it’s Frings, even though he looks nothing like the person I imagined. I wait until he’s about to open the door to his building, then I call his name. He jerks to a halt, then turns slowly. Standing between two of the pillars that form the arcade, he peers out into the dark.
“Hallo?” he says.
My heart somersaults. He responded to the name!
“Valentina?”
Valentina. She must be the girl who left him. But would she really wait in the dark for him to come home from work? Surely not — especially if she was the one who ended the relationship. It’s more likely that he is upset at having been rejected and can’t stop thinking about her.
“Valentina? Is that you?”
I flatten myself against the kiosk and keep quiet. Since he only heard his name called once, I’m hoping he will think he imagined it. A sound carried on the wind, a voice inside his head … He looks right and left, then swings round and vanishes into the building. I pray the porter doesn’t mention me. The last thing I want is for Klaus to learn that a foreign-sounding girl has been asking for him. I need to come from nowhere, like an apparition. Like a gift.
Like a reward.
/
The next morning I’m in Walter-Benjamin-Platz at half past six. I have no idea when Klaus leaves for work and I don’t want to miss him. It’s still dark and the air has a bitter, coppery smell that is faintly sulfurous, like burnt matches. The layout of the square proves useful. I take up a position on the south side, behind a pillar. Once in a while I walk out onto Wielandstrasse, but never so far that I lose sight of the glass front door and its upright rectangle of yellow light.
I have been waiting for about an hour when Klaus appears, his head lowered, his face illuminated by the small screen of his phone. He turns right, towards Leibnitzstrasse. He’s dressed in the same fawn coat and carrying the same leather briefcase. I can’t help smiling. It’s as if he understands what is required of him — that he needs to be immediately recognizable — and is cooperating.
He has long legs and he walks fast. Every now and then I have to break into a run, otherwise I might be left behind. He stops at a kiosk to buy a paper. I hang back, feigning interest in a shop window. The air is fuzzy, pixelated, like a kind of interference. A row of cars trembles at the lights.
On Giesebrechtstrasse he hurries across the road and disappears into a café-konditorei. From the pavement I watch him talking to the waitress. They seem to know each other. Her dark hair is piled messily on top of her head, and the top three buttons of her black cardigan are undone, showing off her cleavage. She has a sloppy, sensual look about her, as if she just got out of bed. Does Klaus find her attractive? I push the door open. The waitress looks round. Her instant, natural smile surprises me. I took her for one of those women who reserve all their seductive energy for men.
I sit by the wall and order a coffee and a croissant, then I take out my notebook and my pen. Klaus has chosen a table in the middle of the café, and is partially obscured by a woman eating a slice of cake with a fork. Klaus shakes his paper open. This is the closest we have ever been, and once again I wonder what I want from him. Absorbed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Klaus remains quite unaware of me.
I make a quick sketch of his head. His eyes are too small for his face, and his lips have a plumpness that could seem either generous or sulky, depending on his mood. His hair, which is wavy and light brown, starts high up on his forehead. Afterwards, I jot down a few simple observations. His hands are large and workmanlike, not elegant at all, though he takes good care of his nails, which are filed straight across and show no sign of being bitten. His glasses, which he removes whenever the waitress speaks to him, have turquoise frames. They look expensive. He wears a watch, but no rings. I estimate his height at one meter ninety, his weight in the region of eighty-five kilos. If I had to guess his age I would say mid- to late thirties.
I sip my coffee. Something about his appearance disturbs me. It’s true that he in no way resembles the Klaus Frings of my imagination, but that’s not it. No, what I find unsettling is that, even though I have now set eyes on him, he still feels like a made-up character. When I first heard his name — in another city, fifteen hundred kilometers away! — I saw him not as a real person but as an opportunity, a trigger. That feeling persists. To be in the same room as him, to have narrowed the distance so dramatically — to have discovered that he actually exists: it’s hard to believe I’ve managed it. But somehow there’s a gap between the idea of Klaus Frings and the man himself.
/
The clock ticks heavily, sumptuously. Though Klaus Frings has left the café I can’t seem to move. I see my father lying on his back in an air-conditioned hotel room, hands linked behind his head. His eyes are open. His flak jacket, his dusty desert boots …
I whisper in his ear. I’ve gone.
If people love you enough, can they hear you?
He has been up all night, traveling with an aid convoy. Endless checkpoints, everyone on edge. Young boys with semiautomatics. His room is tinted with the first lurid flush of dawn. Through the sealed window comes the metallic wail of the muezzin. He’s so tired that he can’t sleep.
I’m not here anymore. I’ve gone.
In front of the window is a round table and two chairs with low backs. On the table is a half-empty bottle of brandy and two water glasses. One of the glasses has a smudge of lipstick near the rim. Once, a few hours after my father returned from covering a story in Eritrea, I heard him arguing with my mother. She was accusing him of having an affair. He was denying it.
He sits up, puts his feet on the floor and rubs his face with both hands, then he reaches for the phone and dials my number. The screen on my phone lights up. Rocks and sludge. A few tin cans, a bicycle wheel. A woman’s shoe. What happens when you call a phone that is lying at the bottom of a river? Does it sound as if it has been switched off? Does it sound dead?
My father calls, and I don’t answer. He thinks nothing of it. I’m busy or else I’m talking to a friend. Or maybe I lost my charger. But what if he tries again tomorrow, and I’m still not answering? And then again, the day after? What will he think when he keeps failing to get hold of me? How long before it occurs to him that something might have happened?
/
Walking east along the Ku’damm, I come across the Kaufhaus des Westens, one of the most famous department stores in Europe. Unthinkingly, I step inside. I wander aimlessly among the perfume counters and champagne promotions until, all of a sudden, I remember the umbrella I left on the train. I take an escalator to the third floor where I choose a dark-green model that is small enough to fit into my case. As I turn to leave, the woman serving me asks if I have visited the food hall. I shake my head. Oh, but you must, she says. Es ist fabelhaft. It’s wonderful. She’s so insistent that I promise I will have a look.
“What’s your name?” he says in German.
I tell him.
He frowns. “You’re a student?”
“I’m a tourist.”
“OK.” His eyes are a dull greenish brown, like olives. “Can I trust you?”
I stare at him, and he repeats the question.
“That depends,” I say. But the suggestion of a mission sends the blood tumbling through my veins.
“Take this.” He passes a KaDeWe plastic bag over the counter. His face has become sober, professional. “When you leave the store, go to Zoologischer Garten and put the bag in one of the lockers.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
But then I remind myself that in these strange circumstances, in this new life, it’s hard to predict what might be relevant or beneficial. There’s really only one rule. Keep an open mind. Nothing that is offered should be rejected out of hand.
“Please.” The young man’s olive-colored eyes shine briefly, as if they’ve just been dipped in oil.
I take the bag, which is heavier than I expected. Inside is a package wrapped in the thick white paper butchers use.
“Zoo,” he says. “The station. You can find it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not far from here.” Once again he sends rapid glances right and left. “Meet me in Witternbergplatz at five o’clock.” He talks out of the side of his mouth, like a gangster, his eyes slanting back along the counter. “There’s an Imbiss there. You know what an Imbiss is?”
Katherine Carlyle Page 3
