Dreams of Innocence

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Then, while James watched nervously, she started to search the desk. She wasn’t too sure what she hoped to find. Old passports perhaps, a stack of love letters. But aside from a ream of paper, some empty notebooks and a packet of paperclips, the first drawers yielded nothing.

  ‘I told you,’ James mumbled.

  Helena let it pass, continued her search. An image of Adam Peters’ cluttered desk flashed through her mind. There would be no shortage of clues there to anything and everything. She banished the thought and opened the final drawer.

  There was a book in it. She pulled it out. Another volume of Jung’s writings, in German this time. Curious. Perhaps Max had been working on something in it just before his disappearance. A sheet of paper was folded into the volume, and next to it a letter clipped to a brochure. She glanced at the sheet of paper first. Max’s writing. She read:

  ‘The leader must be able to be alone and must have the courage to go his own way. But if he doesn’t know himself, how is he to lead others? Every movement culminates organically in a leader, who embodies in his whole being the meaning and purpose of the popular movement.’

  And then, underlined in heavy black ink, in English this time: ‘Emphasize leadership to action groups.’

  A note Max had made to himself, Helena thought, unsure whether it was a quote from somewhere or not.

  Then she read the letter and whooped aloud. ‘This is it, this is it, James,’ she felt like hugging him. ‘Look, an invitation to speak in Berlin. From the Green Party. With a choice of dates.’

  ‘He never told me,’ James murmured.

  ‘Perhaps he hadn’t made up his mind. Or he wrote to them himself. He had German. But look, the letter is dated 1st of December. One of the possible dates they’ve invited him for has passed, but the others are all still to come. Let’s ring them straight away.’ Helena was jubilant.

  James glanced at his watch. ‘It’s too late. Everyone will have gone home. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘First thing then.’ Helena examined the brochure. It was printed on coarse recycled paper. The images had a sienna-like feel. Did they correspond to anything she had seen in Bavaria? It was so hard to tell. The trees and mountains, the young people holding placards. She would have to let the images sink into her.

  The telephone call to Berlin confirmed that Max Bergmann was scheduled to speak there in April. Helena felt a great weight slip from her shoulders. Soon everything would be clear - why Max had chosen to disappear, why he had written that strange letter to her. And perhaps why she had these odd notions about him. She kissed a flushing James on the cheek, danced from the room, ‘I’ll see you in Berlin in April then, if not before.’

  ‘Guess so,’ James had a taciturn look. ‘It still doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘Perhaps I can find something out from these people on your list. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Do that. And Helena…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  It was only while she was driving with Rafael Santucci towards Boston that the euphoria wore off and she realised James was right. It didn’t make sense. And she had omitted to ask the Berlin organizer when he had heard from Max. If it had been before his disappearance, then the promise of a lecture on a particular day might mean nothing at all. Helena shrugged away the threatening cloud.

  With Rafael Santucci to entertain her, it wasn’t so difficult. He kept up a ready stream of chatter for the length of the journey, gave Helena what he dubbed a short guided tour of his life with peeks into sewers and monuments. He asked for the same from her, but she stalled him, asked instead whether he knew Bradford Summers and Charles Raymond, two of Max’s closest friends in Boston.

  ‘Oh yes, beautiful lady, that I do. In fact, to repay you for your impeccable chauffeuring, I can even introduce you to Brad tonight. He’s throwing a book party.’ Rafael lowered his voice in conspiracy. ‘He can afford to. It’s his first.’

  ‘And you’ll take me along?’

  ‘I’ll do better than that, I’ll take you along and help you leave. So that you can have dinner with me.’

  ‘That would be very nice,’ Helena smiled. ‘And by the way, since you know everyone, have you ever come across an Adam Peters?’ She didn’t know what had made her ask it.

  ‘Adam Peters? You mean the anthropologist who writes too well by half for anyone with a bunch of initials after his name?

  ‘I think that’s him.’

  ‘Don’t think I can help you there. Though a friend of a friend of a friend might just…’

  ‘It’s not that important. Tell me about Bradford Summers first.’

  He prepared her, told her how Brad Summers had recently been dubbed a ‘green dream’ and ‘a king of bio-diversity’ by Vanity Fair; how he had put millions into an experimental mega-greenhouse in the desert; told her about his first venture into print, Wild and Pure; about his business interests, his three marriages, his mistresses. He prepared her so well that when she met Bradford Summers, she felt that twinge of discomfort which always shadows a meeting with someone one has heard too much gossip about.

  With his tanned face, curly head and open-necked shirt, he looked, Helena thought, like a slightly aging paratrooper who had forgotten to shave off his beard. He was half-sitting at the edge of a table stacked with copies of his book.

  Rafael propelled her through the crowd which milled round him.

  ‘Good to see you Raf,’ Summers rested his large hand on Rafael’s shoulder. ‘What do you think? Quite a place my wife’s rented while the house is being done up,’ he gestured round him and then winked comically.

  Rafael introduced Helena, mentioned that she wanted to talk to him about Bergmann, if he could spare a few minutes.

  ‘I’ll try,’ Summers chuckled. His gaze focussed on Helena with an intent blankness which made her think he was doing a data base check on her. ‘Helena Latimer, wait a minute, didn’t I meet you once with old Max. Yes, yes, it was in the winter of 82. I was passing through and I remember asking him whether you were his granddaughter or whether I was allowed to flirt with you. He gave me short shrift on both counts, needless to say. You don’t recognize me, of course. I didn’t have the beard then. I’ve gone natural.’

  ‘Had you known Max long?’

  ‘Forever. Well, since sixty-three, in any event. My first wife’s family lived down there. Near Orion Farm. He had just bought it then, convinced some people it was a good thing to do. Max has always had a way of convincing people - even when his ideas weren’t as fashionable as they are now. I’ve set up an endowment for the place myself. Though the credit all goes to him. He worked like a demon in those early days.’ He looked at her astutely. ‘You’re trying to find out where he’s got himself too, aren’t you?’

  Helena nodded. ‘And before the Farm?’

  ‘Worked for the forestry department, as far as I know.’ He deflected her. ‘You know what my hunch is? I’ve told that James of his. Once back in Scandinavia, Max just took himself off into the forests of his childhood. He always had a way of looking at a tree as if it were a woman. Often wished I were more like that myself.’

  Rafael laughed, ‘Keep working at it.’

  ‘I am. And he’s probably still there. Simply forgot to count the days and let us know. He’ll turn up.’

  Helena swallowed hard, ‘Did he ever have a wife?’

  ‘Max! No, not since I’ve known him. Handsome devil though he was. My first wife used to speculate about it. She had this notion that he’d been through one of those devastatingly romantic affairs in his youth which had turned him off women forever. Not that we ever talked about it though. Max isn’t the kind of man you can ask about these things. Too lofty.’

  Yes, Helena thought. And that was precisely the problem.

  *********

  The next day Helena forced her attention away from Max Bergmann to the Union Carbide Corporation. She told herself that he would have wanted her t
o do that.

  Shares in UCC had plummeted after the Bhopal disaster and the executives were squirming, changing their PR with each passing week as the threat of claims grew imminent. The corporation’s initial line had been one of humane compassion. They wanted to be seen as caring. They had insisted that safety standards at their plant in India were the same as at their plant in West Virginia. They had even made the ludicrous gesture of flying Mother Theresa in to bless the orphans and the wounded. Helena had seen her, had noticed that few knew who she was, that the miraculous medals she presented meant nothing to the Hindu and Muslim recipients. But it made good footage for the cameras.

  Then the line had shifted subtly. UCC now claimed they were not the parent of the Bhopal factory, but that it was a mere affiliate, that safety equipment was different, in short that the disaster was the Indian company’s own responsibility.

  What Helena wanted to see at first hand was just what safety and storage equipment there was at the plant at Institute, and to unearth how many of the Indian team had in fact been trained there. She spent three days at Institute, knew that she was being given the run around and being fed a line. Whatever the greater degrees of safety here, she had a dire sense that a leak could as easily take place here as in Bhopal: there were so many variables and so many holes in the system. Then too, it was clear that routine emissions of toxic chemicals were taking place. The entire Kanawha Valley was plagued with them.

  What was needed was government regulation on these vast corporations who inevitably put profits first; a set of tight standards for controlling hazardous air pollutants, treacherous gases. There were lobbies at work, she knew. Why then did Institute fill her with an apocalyptic sense of gloom, rather than an anger that fuelled energy and work which would have been hers just a few months back? She seemed once again to be walking the stricken streets of Bhopal. To be immersed again in the despair which had paralysed her when she had first read the notice of Max Bergmann’s death.

  Her editor, was right. If she couldn’t have Max straight away, she needed that holiday which would make time speed past until she saw him again in Berlin. And her worry about that had now itself become more than a niggle.

  The frothy blue of the Pacific danced and soared before the house in an endless expanse. On the pale sands to the side, gulls paraded their plump bellies and leapt into flight. A lone lean swimmer tested the water.

  Sitting on a sofa of infinite white in a living room whose golden floor seemed to stretch and stretch only to abut into thin air, Helena reflected that she had suddenly landed herself into the midst of someone else’s dream of Los Angeles. She liked this house with its stark furnishings and clean, geometric proportions, as much as she liked the warm Californian light which burnt away her gloom.

  An article in Mother Jones had propelled her here. She had picked up the magazine in Boston, but had only had time to open it on her flight from West Virginia.

  The lead piece was about a trial in Northern California. Some environmentalists had placed an injunction on hunting grounds. In interview with the writer, they quoted Max Bergmann on the overriding need to preserve natural habitats. Their lawyer, a man who had come out of retirement specially for the case, was called Max Peters. The article gave a brief bio of him. Helena was certain the man was Adam’s father.

  With the logic of chance, and as if to provide the incontrovertible proof, there was an article in the same issue by Adam Peters. Helena had stared at it, not wanting to see. She had a sinking sense that the man she most wanted to forget was pursuing her. ‘Yet another version of the apocalypse’, the title beckoned, and she read, despite herself. The experience was oddly like talking to him, a conversation, but more finely honed in prose.

  As the plane winged her across the continent, she pondered the chance concatenation of names. With that intuition which had always served her so well in her journalism, she felt certain that there was a link between them, which she somehow couldn’t see. Max’s letter had led her to Adam and now his name occurred in a piece about Adam’s father. If Adam had lied to her about his wife, had omitted to tell her, she corrected herself, why then he could just as easily have lied about everything else. He did know something about Max, or even if Adam didn’t, then perhaps it was Adam’s father that Max’s letter had intended to lead her to. How she wished she hadn’t slept with Adam so that she could pick up the phone and simply ask him whether his father had recently been to Seehafen. But she couldn’t. Swift, sharp cuts were best in such matters, not that she had any direct experience of quite a comparable matter.

  So she had come to see his father instead, on the pretext of an interview. There were the makings of a story in a novel use of the law for environmental ends. This consoled her.

  Helena smoothed the creamy linen skirt and jacket she had treated herself to in that sumptuous arcade yesterday, just round the corner from the newspaper library where she had looked out clippings on Max Peters. The warm weather had caught her unawares, as had the humour of the head of the anti-pollution squad she had seen later in the day.

  ‘Ms Latimer?’ the plump kind-featured housekeeper who had seen her in was calling her from the door, ‘Mr. Peters will see you now.’

  ‘Thank-you.’ Helena sped after her, through an archway, up a few stairs.

  The woman knocked, opened the door for her.

  She was in another spacious room, this time with walls lined with what looked like legal texts, but again with that vista which wouldn’t release the eye. In front of the vast expanse of glass, there was a long glazed desk, silver paper trays neatly ranged on it.

  ‘Ms. Latimer,’ a lean bronzed man with the lined face of an ancient Roman senator appeared from the side of the room. He stretched his hand out to her, waved her impatiently towards a chair, then studied her for a moment.

  Helena murmured something about the view.

  ‘Yes, the view is wonderful, Ms Latimer, but I’m a busy man and unfortunately an old one. I have little time left, let alone for the ardours of publicity. I am only seeing you because you argued your case so persuasively on the telephone. And you have come a long way, though if I may say so a preliminary letter would have been more in order.’

  The rebuke was tempered by the sudden smile which lightened his face. It was a smile of great charm and without the evidence of any other resemblance, Helena instantly thought of Adam.

  ‘I won’t take too much of your time, Mr Peters,’ Helena began, then explained hurriedly that she wanted to do a profile of him as part of a series of articles on law and the environment. His recent defence of a band of eco-warriors, his use of an injunction to prevent hunters entering a stretch of land where the native species could be said to be in danger of extinction, would stand as an example to British lawyers.

  ‘Ms Latimer, I am neither an environmental campaigner, nor am I a hero,’ he turned his steady gaze on her. ‘It is those young people I defended who behaved, if I may say so, with somewhat foolish heroism. And you should know,’ he smiled that melting smile again, ‘that I only undertook the case as a favour to my son who is the young man’s friend. They have no money, you see, and I came at a premium rate.’

  He stopped her possible intervention, ‘Nor is that heroism or particularly charitable. I have earned more than I deserve in my time.’

  Helena took a deep breath. ‘And your son - Adam Peters, isn’t it - is an environmentalist?’

  He didn’t question the name, simply chuckled, ‘My son is not easily susceptible to labelling, though he makes a fine friend. And he has been known to take up the cause of the Yanomamo and their land rights in a receding rain forest. But it is neither my family nor my personality which is in question here, Ms Latimer,’ he looked at her severely again, ‘you want the issues, the case.’

  Helena forced herself to concentrate. She looked down at the questions she had prepared and started in on them.

  At one point in the course of the interview, he chuckled at her again and said, ‘You would
have made a fine lawyer, Ms Latimer.’

  She smiled at that, returned the compliment ‘And you have, from what I’ve read, been a great one.’

  He bowed slightly in old-fashioned acknowledgement. They went on and then, as if he had just looked at an invisible watch, he stood up. ‘One of the secondary reasons I undertook this case, Ms Latimer, is that I am interested in a curtailment of this country’s far too generous gun laws. I mention it because you come from a more sensible country, so it may not be instantly apparent to you. Please make that clear in your article.’ He smiled formally, ‘I believe you have enough to work with now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Helena bundled her notebook into her bag, chatted in a lighter tone, while she did so. ‘You do visit Britain occasionally?’

  ‘I have only been there twice and that many years ago. Before you were born.’

  ‘But you are European? German.’

  He laughed, ‘No longer. Europe is a very distant place,’ he gestured expansively at the Pacific Ocean. ‘And I have had quite enough of that history. Though my son seems to have developed a fascination with it,’ he grimaced slightly.

  ‘You don’t approve?’ Helena dared to ask.

  ‘No, no, Ms Latimer, no insult to Europe intended. It is simply a personal matter.’

  ‘And you have grandchildren?’ she slipped it in and he seemed relieved to change the subject.

  ‘Two fine grandchildren,’ he gestured towards the desk where she saw there were two framed photos.

  She went round to look at them. A little girl with flaming hair stared out at her from one of them. The same little girl, Helena’s mouth grew dry. There was the tangible proof. Was that too something she had come for?

  ‘Lovely children,’ she murmured.

  He smiled, ‘Always even lovelier to their grandparents.’

  Helena looked down at the desk, away from those perceptive eyes. On top of one of the silver paper trays, she spied a handwritten letter. How strange, she thought to herself, only half registering the notion, the writing had the thick, heavy curves of Max Bergmann’s. It was his.