“Just the final breath. The KGB were the last ones to notice what was about to happen, and when they did notice, and tried to overthrow Gorbachev, it was too late.”
“Three cheers for that.”
“Yes. Three cheers for that,” she said, but with no great conviction.
A further, lingering lull in the conversation was saved by the arrival of our starters, and we talked about countries and our travels as we ate. Then the main course came, and we finished our bottle of wine and ordered another one, even though all my warning bells were ringing. She had never travelled to the east for her job, but had often been to the US and to New Zealand, which she liked a lot. It was one of the few countries I had never visited. She asked me about my work. She didn’t say so directly, but I could tell that she found it a bit sleazy. Lying in wait to capture the famous, as it were.
“I fulfil a need,” I said.
“So does a prostitute,” she said.
I couldn’t help laughing.
“OK. Then the press must be the pimp, because without them and the people who buy newspapers and magazines, I’d be out of a job.”
“You look at it as just doing a job?” she asked.
“I don’t really know. Like so much else in life, it’s more complicated than that. I’ve always enjoyed the hunt, the preparation, reconnaissance, planning, meticulous attention to detail … more than taking the photograph itself.”
“I have to confess to that tendency as well,” she said.
“Yes. The hunt can become second nature. Besides, we’ve got a sort of unwritten pact with the people we pursue. There are times when they use us. In a divorce, in a dispute over money, to get attention. Especially if they think their star is fading. But they want to call the shots.”
“And they don’t get the chance.”
“No. They don’t.”
“It’s not my place to judge you.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I think about it quite a lot myself. Lately, that is. We’re part of the global village. We supply gossip to the people sitting round the global pond. Millions buy our photographs. And pay us handsomely. It’s more the hypocrisy of it all that offends me.”
She laughed again. She had a subtle, dry, ready laugh.
“When Diana died in the car crash, there was an editor on one of the Danish celebrity magazines who promised never to publish – what is it they’re called – paparazzi photographs again. We learnt a brand-new word. It was an act of sheer penitence. As if he was personally responsible.”
“I bet he didn’t stick to it,” I said.
“Of course not.”
“Well, there you are. The world’s full of hypocrites,” I said. “There’s too much money involved.”
“The deity of our times.”
“Money always has been, hasn’t it?” I said.
“I only read those magazines at the hairdresser’s,” she said with feigned indignation.
“Don’t we all,” I said, and raised my glass and we drank to that.
I asked her about New Zealand again and, as she told me about a little rented house on the coast, she suddenly began referring to “we” and “ours”, becoming aware of it herself when she saw my expression.
“It’s not ‘we’ any more,” she said, taking a gulp of her wine.
“Well there’s no ring at any rate,” I said.
“No, but you’re still wearing yours.”
Everything disappeared for a moment and the air seemed to grow cold, and she understood, and put her hand on top of mine.
“That was a stupid thing to say, Peter. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” I said.
“I flushed mine down the loo the evening Niels came home and informed me that he was moving out, but I won’t bother you with all that.”
“I’m happy to be bothered if you want to talk about it,” I said.
“It’s a thoroughly pedestrian, commonplace story. There are thousands like it.”
“Most stories in this life are pedestrian, but it doesn’t make them any less unique or painful if you’re involved,” I said.
Showing her good manners, she placed her knife and fork together on her empty plate where the sirloin steak had been and we lit cigarettes and smoked as she told me the story in a low voice. She was matter-of-fact, but I could see it still hurt.
She and Niels had started going out when they were students. They had got married when she was 21 and was about to start at the police college. They had met at a party thrown by one of her old school friends who was on the same course as Niels. He was 25 and reading political science and economics, having changed courses after a couple of unsuccessful years reading law. And that was fine, because as a trainee police officer she was earning a salary. They had been happy, she said. Very happy. Made for one another were the words she used. Like all couples, their relationship had its ups and downs, but it had survived her period of service in Esbjerg while he stayed in Copenhagen working at the Ministry of Finance; his first job, which he had been very pleased to get. When she looked back over the years, it seemed as if a lot had happened and at the same time nothing at all. They had moved from a small flat to a bigger one and eventually, through his political connections in the Social Democratic party in Copenhagen, he had managed to get them a cheap, sought-after flat in the upmarket Østerbro area of the city. They mixed with like-minded people, they saw more of his family than hers. Clara was an only child, her mother and father had her late in life and they had died within a few years of one another when she was in her early 30s. Her father had been employed by the state railway all his life and her mother had worked in a kindergarten. Niels’s parents were grammar school teachers and, even though he never said so, she sensed that he found her parents a little boring and parochial. They had a few friends in common from the early days of their relationship, but as time passed they saw only his friends from the Ministry. She couldn’t talk about her work, and in any case she had the impression that he thought most people in the police force were mediocre. She found him patronising to the few colleagues she did invite home now and then. He loved talking shop, but when she tried to talk about her job in a general way, as was necessary because of security considerations, he quickly lost interest. Even when he was promoted to the Prime Minister’s office, and was given high security clearance, she still didn’t feel he listened to her when she wanted to discuss difficult situations at work.
But she considered herself to be happy. She loved her husband. She felt loved by him. They liked travelling together, but they also had separate interests. She liked reading fiction. Niels never read anything except specialist literature to do with his work. They were both very engrossed in their jobs and worked long hours, but they tried to spend the weekends together. After he was given responsibility for EU-related legislation he travelled a lot, often staying in Brussels, but she trusted him, felt secure with him and never dreamt of questioning him. There were still aspects of her work that she couldn’t talk about, and there were political deliberations within the Prime Minister’s inner circle that he was expected to keep to himself. At the start of their marriage, which they regarded as an intimate friendship, they had agreed that they wouldn’t have children. They had neither the financial resources nor the time for children in the early years. As they got older, there wasn’t room in their lives. They lived well, had good friends, could afford to travel far away on holiday, surrounded themselves with beautiful things, were attractive and healthy and loved one another. Their friends thought of them as a golden couple. They had even received several offers to feature in articles about commitment in the 1990s, but they always declined – even though they felt they had things to say that would have been of relevance to others.
She emptied her glass and I refilled it and poured myself one as well. It had been a long story, and now it was getting dark outside. The waiter asked if we would like pudding, but she shook her head so I ordered two coffees.
“But Niels and
Clara didn’t live happily ever after,” I said.
“What a penetrating mind you have.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s OK. You’re quite right. We didn’t live happily ever after. Or till death us did part or whatever the hell it is people still promise one another. We might very well believe that when we stand at the altar, but our brains must surely tell us what a hopeless undertaking it is.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said.
“So, there’s an old romantic behind that tough façade, is there Lime?”
“I was, at least.”
“I forget about your loss sometimes. Please, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I have to move on,” I said.
“That’s probably easier said than done,” she said, and of course she was right.
The waiter brought our coffee. It was in one of those peculiar jugs where you have to press the plunger down and suddenly I missed Madrid and a café solo, but Clara seemed to like the rather bland-tasting coffee.
“So what happened?” I said.
“It’s not very interesting,” said Clara. “He came home one day, terribly nervous and defensive, and said that he would like a divorce. Those were exactly the words he used. ‘I’d like a divorce,’ he said. As if he was asking me a favour. He’d found what men call a younger version. It’s so damned trite. As if he was just changing the old car for a new one. She was a consultant in Brussels. They’d been having an affair for more than a year. Mostly in Brussels.”
“At least it wasn’t his secretary,” I said.
“That’s a pretty stupid thing to say. What difference would that have made?” she said angrily.
“You said consultant. So she’s a lawyer or some kind of economist or something like that …”
“Lawyer, French, 32 years old, beautiful, charming – very feminine,” said Clara.
“Well, there you go. It took a lot to win him over. Wouldn’t you have felt worse if she’d been 25 and your husband’s secretary?”
She looked at me.
“Peter. Sometimes you surprise me, after all. Yes, I suppose it would have made a difference, but I hadn’t thought about it like that. I didn’t think Niels could be quite so idiotic. Even though some men, when they reach a certain age, seem to cease to be accountable for their actions.”
“So you took a lover, I suppose?” I asked.
She looked at me with an expression that said she had been expecting that question, but not quite so soon.
“I haven’t got a boyfriend, Peter, if that’s what you’re really asking. I’ve had ‘boyfriends’ – as we say in Denmark like we’re teenagers – since Niels, but not a regular boyfriend, which is how even women of my age refer to their partners when announcing that they’ve fallen in love.”
“Then what?” I said.
“I threw him out, took him to the cleaners in the divorce settlement and was cool as a cucumber when a year later he said the whole thing had been a mistake. He’d got married by then. He was in a hurry to get married, and he was in just as much of a hurry to get divorced again and come back to me. If I hadn’t thought he was such a stupid shit, I would almost have felt sorry for him. He’d been so in love, he said. She made him feel vigorous and virile again, and so on. But it didn’t work out as he had expected, after the first passion had died.”
“So he got divorced again?”
“No, no,” she said with an almost gleeful laugh. “He’s still married to the French woman and she’s still unfaithful to him. As far as I hear. He’s having a dose of his own medicine.”
“And that makes you happy.”
“Maybe not exactly happy, but satisfied. I know it’s wrong of me, but it’s what I feel.”
“Why wrong? I don’t blame you. Having a thirst for revenge and getting it satisfied probably saves a lot of pills or a lot of bottles,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said with a triumphant smile, but I could still see her pain. I don’t know if it was pain from failure and loss and dashed hopes or the pain of rejection, but she hadn’t got over it with quite the coolness that her account suggested.
I settled the bill and a taxi took us to her flat. I paid the driver and followed her to the door. Clara seemed momentarily to consider asking me in, but perhaps she thought that I wouldn’t really want to – or maybe wouldn’t dare.
Instead, she said in a very businesslike voice, “Will you come and sign tomorrow, and get your photographs back?”
“If you’ll have lunch with me.”
“I’m a working woman.”
“Call it a meeting with an agent?”
“That’s a deal, Peter Lime. But I’m paying,” she said and kissed me on the mouth, light and fleeting, but erotic anyway, with a brush of her tongue, and I went back to my hotel feeling more buoyant than I had for ages.
My good mood held for the next few days. Signing the report was postponed, and when I rang we talked comfortably, but she was too busy to meet up with me. She said it in such a way that I believed her and it didn’t spoil my mood.
I played tourist, going on a guided canal boat tour and lunching in a restaurant in Tivoli where press people used to hang out. I bumped into an old colleague there and we chatted just as though it was the old days. I wouldn’t describe my state of mind as happy, but on hold. I didn’t know what I wanted from Clara, and I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I kept far enough away from the booze to be able to remember my dreams and they began getting erotic. But they were exciting in an uneasy way. I was in bed with lots of different women, but they never had faces, and now and then I would dream that Amelia was watching as I lay with a naked woman in a sterile room like a hospital ward. Then I would wake up feeling clammy, with a huge erection.
A few days later I signed my statement at the Security Service headquarters on Borups Allé and got my photographs back. Clara was there with two colleagues, both men. They were polite and pleasant, thanked me for my kind assistance and left quickly once I had signed. My statement corresponded with what I had said, so I had no qualms in signing it. Clara stayed behind and gave me a letter addressed to the Gauck Authority in Berlin. That whole issue suddenly seemed rather remote. A few days in summery Denmark had turned out to be like a holiday. She had drawn up the letter, but without my address in Madrid. I wrote down the office address and she took the paper away and then came back with the address printed on it. All I had to do was sign. The letter requested access to documents on the basis of my assumption that, due to my work as a photographer and journalist, I had a file in the Stasi archives. Clara would enclose a recommendation from the NSS for speedy processing and send it, as she said, via the usual channels. We parted with a handshake.
Clara invited me to lunch three days later, at a restaurant called KGB, on the same street where the Danish Communist Party’s headquarters had been in the days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Back when the party could afford to pay the rent. The restaurant had a cool feel, the only decoration on the white walls was a square-faced clock. It matched the fresh, pleasant Danish summer weather which was very agreeable if you still felt the heat of Madrid in your body. Or knew that the unfortunates left behind in the Spanish capital were groaning under a humid heat.
The restaurant looked as though it had just been given a quick once-over with a spot of paint, and then a handful of tables had been scattered around casually. Some wiring had been left uncovered in the corners, a reminder of socialism’s hopeless workmanship. In the toilets a looped tape played Russian language lessons. So while you were having a pee, you could entertain yourself with questions like – “Where can I buy a stamp? How much will it cost to send this letter to Denmark?” – first in Danish and then in Russian. The menu included borshch, various kinds of vodka, blinis and caviar costing several hundred kroner. The young waitress was wearing army trousers and an old Eastern bloc cap with a KGB badge on it. The borshch and the steak w
ere first-rate. Clara drank a beer. I drank a beer and a vodka. We had espresso afterwards.
“An unusual place you’ve brought me to,” I said, taking in the room and the waitress’s outfit. “So this is how one of the most brutal and lethal organisations ended up – as kitsch.”
“I still think it’s strange,” said Clara.
“The Berlin Wall?”
“That you have to search for the Wall in Berlin. That it’s vanished. That it’s as if it was never there, never cost lives, never sealed people in. That the Soviet Union doesn’t exist. That the world has changed completely and it’s as if no one realises it.”
“Many dreams hit the rocks, maybe it ended up as nightmare, but I think originally those dreams were beautiful,” I said.
“It was an evil system. I don’t think that should be forgotten or turned into kitsch. Would you open a restaurant called SS or Gestapo?”
“That would be in bad taste, but you chose this place,” I said.
“I thought you should see it.”
“And, yes, it’s amusing that even the KGB can end up as a joke.”
Her voice took on a serious tone.
“But that’s just it, Peter. The KGB’s OK. It’s not considered bad taste. The whole of the old communist system is a joke today, even though it has got millions of lost lives on its conscience. I think that’s really peculiar. It’s as if the Gulags never existed and there weren’t any Danes who supported the system. It’s as if that world just didn’t happen, and yet it was an inescapable part of our world too for almost half a century. Isn’t that strange?” said Clara.
“Maybe it isn’t so ludicrous that there are young people today who think that GDR is a deodorant. Maybe it’s a good thing that an evil regime didn’t fall in blood, but with a little whimper, while the whole world watched with a broad, amazed grin.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I just don’t think the past disappears so easily.”
I took her hand.
“Can’t you take the afternoon off? We could play tourists. I’d love to take you to Tivoli. Or the Deer Park or a walk through the city. Or to Paris. Or to Malmö. Or whatever tourists do in Copenhagen.”
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