Florian's Gate

by T. Davis Bunn

  Claridge’s, like its sister hotels the Connaught and the Berkley, did not accept groups. Even visiting kings and presidents were requested to arrive without a large entourage. There was no check-in desk at Claridge’s; instead, an arriving guest was ushered into a small sitting room to one side of the main foyer. Quietly efficient staff in starched white shirts and dark formal wear filled out the various details before personally escorting guests to their rooms.

  The style throughout the hotel was Art Deco, the fittings worth a fortune. The entrance hall was tiled in marble, the chandeliers all gilt and silver, the furniture antiques that Jeffrey would have been delighted to display in his front window. Passages from one room to the next were tall and arched and flanked by marble pillars, with liveried footmen stationed at discreet intervals. One suite that Alexander had previously used held a Regency display case filled with silver-framed photographs of royalty who had stayed there, including Czar Nicholas and Queen Victoria. Another had a sitting room large enough to contain the grand piano used by Sir Arthur Sullivan to compose the Savoy Operas. All the suites enjoyed working fireplaces, which a butler would stoke at the press of a button.

  Jeffrey’s favorite room, however, was the main restaurant. Even at breakfast it was an artistry of massive floral arrangements. Cream silk wall coverings and beautiful Art-Deco mirrors lined the chamber. It was laid out on two levels, with an upper terrace where Jeffrey enjoyed sitting and watching the arriving guests and scuttling waiters. Alexander vastly preferred having breakfast in his room, but knew from experience that Jeffrey would put up a struggle to be able to sit downstairs and watch six waiters serve his table. Six. For a dawn breakfast.

  It was the morning of their departure for East Germany, and as instructed, Jeffrey had packed for a longer voyage. To where, he still did not know.

  “It is vital that you do not take more than two days in Schwerin, Jeffrey,” Alexander began, once their breakfast dishes were cleared away and coffee cups refilled. “These other matters simply will not wait.”

  He nodded. “But why send me now? I mean, it’s waited this long, if this other stuff is so urgent, why not put it off until later?”

  “An excellent question.” Alexander Kantor paused to sip from his cup, went on. “Last week I received a telegram to my Geneva address asking me to call a number in Schwerin. It took me a surprisingly short time to place the call. I suppose the West Germans are managing to improve things after all. In any case, a woman answered—someone I’ve never heard of before. A lawyer—at least that’s what she said she was. She did not speak English, and I speak no German, but I had anticipated the difficulty and had an interpreter available. Through this individual she told me that she had heard I was an honest man.”

  “Just like the dealer.”

  “The exact same words,” Alexander agreed. “But if it was meant to be a code, someone failed to tell me about it.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “In all my years I’ve never known how to reply to something like that. I asked her how the weather was.”

  “She must have loved that.”

  “It did give her pause. Eventually she came back and said she had a most urgent matter to discuss with me. Something to do with several of her clients.”

  “Plural?”

  “Yes, that disturbed me too. I asked if she referred to the dealer, and she said only indirectly. He was not the client to whom she referred. On that point she was most clear.” Alexander Kantor toyed with his coffee spoon. “She said it was absolutely crucial that we speak together immediately, before the matter was brought before the courts.”

  “What matter?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Alexander Kantor replied. “But the idea of being taken to court in East Germany is most appalling, I assure you.”

  “That stuffed shirt from Bonn, the one who made all the trouble at Christie’s over the chest of drawers, threatened us with the same thing.”

  “I want you to go and find out what has happened to this dealer,” Alexander instructed, “and what on earth this lawyer is concerned about.”

  “I won’t let you down,” Jeffrey said.

  “Of course you won’t.” Alexander reached to an inner pocket, drew out a neatly printed page, went on. “The dealer’s name is Götz. He runs the official antique store on the central market square.”

  “Can you describe how he looks?”

  “Mind you, I only met him once, and that was two years ago. He was a smallish man, certainly no higher than your shoulder. Pale features. I don’t recall the eyes save that they were most unfriendly. Bad teeth, yes, I recall that vividly. You will no doubt see a great deal of that in your travels, but his were exceptional. My impression when he smiled was of looking at more cavities than teeth.”

  “Strange for a man who’s got eight hundred thousand pounds waiting in a London bank.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. Many a village child in Poland after the war had his or her teeth worked on without the benefit of a painkiller, simply because there was none available. I have no doubt that such a memory would keep many people from returning to the dentist chair for a lifetime.”

  Jeffrey scanned the page, mispronounced the name.

  “Götz is pronounced Gertz, because of the umlaut. Gertz.”

  “I thought you didn’t speak German.”

  “There was a time in my past when a little German was forced upon me, but we shall not go into that just now. His shop is part of the National Antique Association, and like most shops in the East, it has no further name than that.”

  Jeffrey read down the page, tried the lawyer’s name on for size. “Renate Reining.”

  “Almost there. The last name should rhyme with the river Rhine. Reining.”

  His eyes still on the page, Jeffrey asked, “May I ask where it is we’re going after this?”

  “It is almost time for your departure, so if you will permit me I will wait and give you the details upon meeting you in the Hamburg airport. Is that acceptable?”

  “I suppose I can wait,” Jeffrey replied. Barely.

  “Splendid. There is no harm, I suppose, in telling you our destination. It is Cracow, the medieval capital of the Polish Empire.”

  “Our family is from there.”

  “Indeed they are. We will be speaking of all these things in greater length, as I have said. But from the very outset I wish to impress upon you how vital it is that you do not discuss any of this with others.”

  “I understand.”

  “Whenever you make travel arrangements from London, you must always have as your destination a city in Western Europe. There is a travel agent I use in Zurich, a most confidential sort of individual. I will give you his name. Use him for booking everything in the East.”

  Jeffrey took the information as it was intended, an assurance that he would be told everything, and that this was not to be his only trip. “Thanks, Alexander.”

  “I thank you. This affair is long overdue for a conclusion, and it is good that you will be representing us. As I said, it is one trip I would avoid like the grave.”

  “I mean, thanks for trusting me.”

  “You have earned it, I assure you.” He pushed back his chair. “And here comes your lovely young lady.”

  Jeffrey felt only relief as Katya entered the restaurant. Alexander noticed his expression. “You look as though you didn’t expect her to appear.”

  Jeffrey waved her over. “With Katya I’m never sure about anything.”

  “In my youth we would have called that a woman’s prerogative,” Alexander said, rising to his feet.

  “Nowadays we call it infuriating.”

  “That, my boy, is both universal and constant. Unless you intend to make a life for yourself as a celibate, you must accept the burden of patience.”

  Katya approached their table, said breathlessly, “Good morning Mr. Kantor, Jeffrey. Are we ready?”

  “You look positively splendid this morning,
my dear.” Alexander glanced at his watch. “I suppose you had best be off. You have a plane to catch, and I a store to open.”

  He extended his hand first to Katya and then to Jeffrey. “You will take care, and you will call me.”

  “This evening, as we agreed,” Jeffrey replied.

  “Excellent. I wish you both a splendid trip, and all success.”

  Jeffrey’s nerves pushed to the surface. “What if—”

  Alexander stopped him with an upraised hand. “There is no need to anticipate trouble. I know you will do well, Jeffrey. I am sure of it. We will discuss what you find as you find it. Have the same confidence in your abilities that I do.” He patted his assistant on the shoulder and repeated, “I know you will do well.”

  * * *

  The flight from London to Hamburg took just under an hour. Continuous turbulence made it seem like five. They arrived to the darkness of a heavy thunderstorm, rented a car, and worked their way through snarled traffic to the autobahn for Berlin.

  After an hour and a half of monotonous highway driving, the shadow of a tall brick tower appeared through the pouring rain.

  “The weather certainly is appropriate,” Katya said.

  “It looks ghostly,” Jeffrey agreed.

  Vague skeletal shapes rose from the gloom and took on the form of high metal watchtowers, barbed-wire fences, and concrete-lined trenches. The autobahn went through a violent burst of bumps and uneven strippings, then the former East German border was upon them.

  A vast expanse of asphalt stretched out to either side of the highway, now cordoned off with makeshift fencing. Beyond the inspection area loomed multistory brick and glass buildings. Structures with mirrored glass walls rose from their roofs, reminding Jeffrey of airport control towers.

  All around this compound, and down the barbed-wire fencing as far in each direction as they could see, rose tall prison watchtowers.

  The border-control buildings were thoroughly trashed. The lower windows were all smashed in with a violence that had torn many of their frames from the walls. Huge chunks of the buildings themselves had been hewn out, leaving gaping holes and corners that looked gnawed by a raging giant.

  The entire border area was gripped in a deathlike stillness. Nothing moved. Nothing at all. There must have been a dozen buildings in all, with no sign of life anywhere.

  “Where is everybody?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Trying to convince anybody they can find that they had nothing to do with anything,” Katya said, her voice very small.

  He glanced over. “Are you all right?”

  “Drive on, Jeffrey. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”

  By the time they reached the turn-off for Schwerin, the worst of the storm had passed and the sky was clearing. It was a good thing; the road leading to the capital city of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was little more than a rutted country lane. Ancient cobblestones vied with sloppily poured asphalt, and the covering of rain hid potholes of bone-jarring depth. The road passed through tiny villages of unkempt houses, their front doors just inches away from the stumbling traffic and clouds of diesel fumes. Trucks loomed up from time to time, slowing for no one, demanding most of the road as their right; Jeffrey reduced his speed to a crawl, hugged the curb, and hoped for a safe passage.

  They passed a sign identifying the Schwerin industrial estate, a series of factories with dirt-clouded windows and filthy facades. Then they became thoroughly lost in a Schwerin housing development—scruffy multicolored high-rise buildings that dominated a hill on the edge of town. Three sets of directions finally took them through a tiny forest and down to the edge of one of the city’s lakes.

  The sun was forcing its way through the scuttling clouds as Jeffrey turned onto a narrow road that ran alongside a dirty sand beach. A number of heavyset people in shapeless sweaters and rolled-up trousers were making their way down to the lakeside, eager to soak up whatever meager good weather they were granted. Jeffrey pulled up in front of an attractive white-stucco three-story building with yellow trim, bearing a small sign announcing itself to be the Strand Hotel.

  The woman staffing the reception desk was as heavyset as the beach-goers, and gave them a dubious look when Katya confirmed that they wanted two single rooms. She led them upstairs and showed him cramped chambers barely large enough to hold the narrow bed and small corner desk. He dropped Katya’s bags off, went to his own room, opened the window, and spent a few moments looking out over the lake to the distant skyline of Schwerin.

  When he came back downstairs, Katya was on the hotel’s only phone, speaking in what he assumed was German. He walked out and sat down on the hotel veranda.

  Now that the sun was out, the weather was balmy. Every veranda table was taken, the people talking softly and gazing out at the lake. The body of sparkling water was wide enough for its farthest shore to be beyond the horizon. Its border was mostly forest, except for where Schwerin rose to his left. The people walking along the narrow beach and seated on the veranda seemed all cut from the same mold—overweight and pasty-skinned, older than their years, wearing clothes of muted colors and clunky shoes.

  “I tried to call the numbers you gave me,” Katya said as she appeared on the veranda. “There wasn’t any answer. They must be taking a late lunch.”

  Jeffrey had a fleeting sensation that at the sound of Katya’s English every face turned their way, then just as swiftly ignored them. A lifetime habit, he supposed. “Why don’t we have a bite to eat here?”

  The waitress watched with half-hidden curiosity as Katya explained the German menu to him, took their orders, gave Jeffrey another of those fleeting glances, and left. He turned back and found Katya watching the other tables.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “This is a holdover from another era,” she replied.

  He reached over and took her hand. “Tell me what you see.”

  She looked down at his fingers covering hers. “This is supposed to be a business trip, remember?”

  He left his hand where it was. “Tell me, Katya.”

  She looked back out at the veranda. “Those ladies over there have been coming here for forty years. They come to breathe the good sea air—that’s what they would call a lake this big, an inland sea. Their doctor once told them it was good for the lungs, and they still believe it. Their husbands all died during the war. And the one real pleasure left in life is to get in a bus and come to the Strand Hotel once every summer.”

  “And the rest of the year?”

  “Life in a little gray village, somewhere unmarked on any map.”

  The waitress returned with their food. Jeffrey waited awkwardly while Katya bowed her head for a moment. No matter how often she did that in public, it did not become easier for him to endure. When she lifted her eyes he pointed toward a distant table and said, “My grandmother used to have a hat like that one. A straw boater lacquered with white enamel and a couple of fake flowers on one side.”

  “Don’t point.”

  “Why not? Nobody’s looked our way since they heard us talking English.”

  “Yes, they have. They’ve seen we’re foreigners and that’s all they need to know. They have a lifetime’s practice of not appearing to look where they’re not supposed to.”

  “But that’s all gone.”

  “The reasons for it might be,” Katya agreed. “But it’s one thing to say it and another to relearn habits so ingrained they are instinctive.”

  Jeffrey looked around, said, “There’s more gray hair here than I’ve ever seen in one place.”

  “Clairol’s campaign for youth in a bottle didn’t reach to the East,” Katya said. “People look a lot older here than Westerners of the same age. They don’t think about looking chic. They can’t. They struggle too hard just to arrive at being comfortable—or at least as close to comfortable as they can ever come.”

  She tasted her food, then went on. “They wear orthopedic shoes and use canes when they’re in their fift
ies, twenty years earlier than in the West. They’ll never think it strange or embarrassing, though. Look at the people on the street when we go out today. You’ll find eyes that slide over to one side of their head and bad scars and worse teeth. All products of a system that lifts the welfare of the state above all else.”

  “I thought the state was for the people.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. Many of these older people believed that with all their hearts. It has been extremely difficult for them to accept that the basis for a Communist society was nothing more than a lie.”

  When they had finished eating, Katya went to try the two numbers again. A few minutes later she returned and reported, “There isn’t any answer at the antique shop. But I did reach the lawyer, Frau Reining. She will meet us at the Café Prague in one hour. Do you want to leave now and go by the shop first?”

  * * *

  The city of Schwerin was a jarring mixture of old and new. Jeffrey’s progress was slowed to a crawl by the surrounding traffic; plastic-looking cars bearing names like Trabant and Moskovite and Lada puttered by in clouds of blue smoke, smelling and sounding like poorly tuned outboard motors.

  Their way took them back by the new section—the apartments were nicknamed Arbeitersschliessfächer, Katya said, or filing cabinets for workers. From a distance they loomed in irregular patterns of multicolored brick and pastel concrete. Up close Jeffrey saw that the yellows and blues and pinks were gutted and peeling and shabby. The roads were scarred and potholed, the sidewalks pitted. Weeds grew everywhere in unruly clumps, giving the entire area an atmosphere of abandonment.

  Forty thousand families lived in the housing project, Katya said, reading from a pamphlet she had picked up at the hotel. The buildings stood like tired bastions to a forgotten dream. They were crammed one against the other, balconies strung with laundry and old flowerpots and frayed curtains.

  “This looks like the punishment block to an inner-city housing project,” Jeffrey decided, looking around as he drove.

  “In East Germany,” Katya told him, “the average waiting time for an apartment in these developments is five years.”