‘Stay with me.’
‘I cannot.’
‘It would mean a lot.’ Even as he said it a feeling of self-disgust swept over him.
She smiled, a rather sad and pensive smile, and touched him briefly on the cheek with her hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said, then she picked up her coat and left.
‘Schmidt City Tours’ said the legend on the bus that stood at the top of the Kurfurstendamm. It was a single-decker blue bus with a perspex roof tinted amber. Spencer stood on the pavement near it, waiting until almost the last minute, searching the lunchtime crowds for Lilo. A grey-haired man sat in the front of the bus with a sheaf of papers on his lap and a book of tickets. As each group of tourists climbed aboard he flashed them a smile, all teeth, and took their money in exchange for a ticket. They were due to depart at one-thirty. At twenty-nine minutes past, Spencer stepped aboard.
‘Last but not least,’ the guide said, smiling. He checked Spencer’s ticket and visa which the hotel had arranged for him that morning, then closed the door and stood up.
‘My name is Harry,’ he said, in an American-German accent. ‘I would like to be your guide on this afternoon’s tour, but it is impossible. You will be given a guide at the border. So I must just say one or two things. Please have your passports ready. Please do not try to leave the bus. Please do not try to change money in the East Zone. I tell you these things for your own sake. Now this is your driver,’ he indicated the man already at the wheel, ‘and I leave you to enjoy your tour.’ He got off, the bus started and within five minutes they had left the modern, glittering buildings behind and had reached a collection of dreary streets with old grey apartment blocks. Spencer saw for the first time what the division of the city meant. Along one street, every building had its windows blocked with concrete. Down the middle, zigzagging away into the distance, was the Wall itself. On the West German side it was painted a light grey, but on the East side, as though to ameliorate its function, it was decorated in bright patterns.
The bus stopped at Checkpoint Charlie, which looked like a small city car park surrounded by wire and which contained two wooden huts from which the East German border guards operated. The driver switched off the engine and they sat and waited. Occasionally one of the guards came out of the hut, locked the door behind him and entered one of the other three tour buses waiting in the car park. Everything was done in slow motion. Passports were collected, papers checked. At last one of the buses moved off through the checkpoint and then the police turned their attention to the next. Spencer’s bus was less than half full, mainly, it seemed, of American families from the Rhine Army bases.
Up to the last moment, he had expected a message. He had felt sure Lilo would meet him at the bus, but she had not. What was it she had said? ‘If anything can be done I will let you know; if not, then at least you will see East Berlin.’ Was that all he was achieving, a tour of the city? He watched the police dealing with the other buses. It took fifteen or twenty minutes to clear each of them and it was apparent that this was part of the East German policy, to make things as unpleasant as possible. Another bus left; now there was only one to go before it was their turn.
He had always thought that Checkpoint Charlie must be a romantic place. There was nothing romantic about these dingy surroundings. The door of the bus opened and a woman police officer entered. She was young and plain and wore a severe expression. She came down the middle aisle collecting passports. She took his, opened it, checked it against the information on her list and then said something to him. This time he reached up and took his own dark glasses off. She nodded and gave him back his passport. She checked everyone. But then, instead of releasing the bus as she had the previous three she spent some seconds looking at the typed list in her hand, and collected all the passports. She went back to the hut, closed the door, and they were waiting again. Some of the Americans began to complain about the delay. A blonde woman asked the driver if he could switch on the engine and start the heating, for it was cold in the bus. He shrugged and said no, that the East German police would not like it.
‘Where the hell do they get off, keeping us waiting like this?’ the blonde woman said. She was middle-aged and had two teenage children with her. She spoke in Spencer’s general direction but he looked away, staring at the grey streets.
In spite of the cold he felt himself begin to sweat. What was wrong, why were they being held up? Checkpoint Charlie was an urban no-man’s-land and his passport had been taken away. He felt naked and somewhat afraid. Why hadn’t they held up the other buses?
His thoughts came back to Lilo. There were things about her behaviour that left question marks. The telephone in the restaurant, for instance. And why had she never given him a telephone number or an address where he could contact her? It was always she who was going to ring him. And anyone could pretend to be a journalist, especially a free-lance.
He thought of the camera. An East German Praktica. Why wasn’t she using one of a dozen West German or Japanese cameras that were as good or better? He remembered her on the train. She had started to interview him without even taking a note-book out. He had had to remind her. And then she had stopped taking notes. He remembered vividly something she had said: ‘I’ve checked my notes and there’s a gap.’ The gap, of course, was after he had left Bremerhaven. But she hadn’t taken notes about that part of his story. She had become so interested her pen had stopped. If she wasn’t who she said she was, then who was she? He rubbed at the inside of the perspex roof that was now becoming covered by condensation and saw his own face, drawn and grey like the streets outside; his eyes wide and staring. Why hadn’t she sent him a message? There were questions everywhere. Unless she was on their side. What if they had been watching Spencer for weeks? What if they wanted him to come to East Berlin — oh, Jesus, he thought, what if Bruno was in East Berlin? What if she had lied about Lange?
The door of the bus opened and the policewoman was back, this time with an assistant, a man whose uniform looked too big for him and who had a pinched, unpleasant bureaucrat’s face.
‘Please, everybody come out,’ the policewoman said.
Again there were mutterings from the Americans, but they all clambered out into the car park in the bitter wind. The man went into the bus and looked under the seats and then made the driver open the spare wheel compartment under the body of the bus.
The blonde woman said, ‘My God, they can’t be serious, can they?’
‘They’re serious, all right,’ Spencer said.
‘But who would want to be smuggled into East Berlin?’
The policewoman made them line up in single file and as she called each person’s name he had to step forward to be checked against her list before receiving back his passport. One after another they went up to be inspected, then they climbed back into the bus. When the last one came aboard the policewoman made a series of ticks on her documents and then held her hand up to the bus-driver to indicate that they were free to go. No one told them why this had happened, and after passing through the checkpoint they picked up their tour guide. She was a fairhaired woman in her fifties wearing a black plastic jacket. Her sallow face had an exhausted look, but she did her best to promote an atmosphere of cheerfulness in the bus.
They went along Friedrichstrasse and came almost immediately to Unter den Linden. She pointed out the Brandenburg Gate on their left and then they swung right on the huge boulevard. The differences Spencer had noted in the countryside between West and East Germany were sharpened and heightened here. West Berlin’s polychromatic streets with their hoardings and flashing neon gave way to empty vistas, long, long streets with no one in them, only the occasional People’s Car, a Wart-burg or a Skoda. He could see places on old buildings where once there had been advertisements or shop names. The lettering had been ripped off but had left shadowy impressions on the concrete. Their guide talked without ceasing. She pointed out the Soviet Embassy, itself the size of a city block, the opera house, Humboldt Univer
sity and, dominating every view, the TV tower. They passed a large open space and she said, ‘This is Marx-Engelsplatz. Here once stood the old Imperial Palace which was damaged during the war. We have no need for palaces in the Democratic Republic so we pulled it down. Now we come to our first halt.’
They drove through a series of smaller streets until they stopped outside a building where all the shrapnel marks had been cut out and the squares filled with matching concrete. ‘This is the most famous museum in all Germany,’ she said ‘The Pergamon Museum. We go in now for fifteen minutes.’ They trooped off the bus. The interior of the museum was cold and poorly lit; the grey afternoon light seeped through the long windows.
Spencer tried to keep in the middle of the group. It would make things more difficult for anyone to approach him. He had given up by now the thought that a message would reach him, instead he was afraid that something, he didn’t know what — kidnap, assassination, something — might happen to him.
‘This was once the main street of Pergamum,’ the guide said as they came into a hall lined with friezes. ‘They are the largest classical architectural structures in any museum of the world.’ They saw the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate and rooms full of Islamic and Middle Eastern Art, then the guide said, ‘The fifteen minutes have finished. We must come to the bus now.’
Their next stop was the Russian Memorial in Treptow. ‘Here we can get out...’ she looked at her watch, ‘...for ten minutes. We must be back in the bus in ten minutes.’ The memorial was built on a vast scale, with an avenue about a hundred metres long leading up to the huge figure of a Russian soldier. Bas-reliefs showed episodes from World War II. ‘These have been made from the marble from the Reichs Chancellery,’ the guide said.
A contingent of Russian soldiers in long grey overcoats carrying a red wreath and swinging their free arms from side to side came marching past.
‘It is forbidden to take photographs of military personnel,’ she said sharply, as an American raised a camera. ‘For those who do not have cameras I have postcards in the bus which you may buy with Westmarks.’
‘Would you like me to take a photograph of you and your children?’ Spencer said to the blonde. He photographed them and walked back to the bus with them, deliberately attaching himself to the family group.
Several people bought postcards of the Russian war memorial in the bus. Spencer had no interest and started towards his seat.
‘You do not wish a postcard?’ the guide said.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Please...’
‘No. I...’
He was embarrassed that she seemed to be touting for business. Her face was tight with tension. To avoid a scene he said, ‘All right. Thank you.’ He paid and took a postcard back to his seat.
‘We now go to a cafe,’ she was saying. ‘In this cafe you may buy tea or coffee or some drinks and you may pay in Westmarks. We will be there for thirty-five minutes.’
Spencer had been holding the postcard in his lap. Now, as the bus pulled away, he looked down at it and frowned. It was not a picture of the Russian War Memorial. It appeared to be a view of a city park with a lake and a Tyrolean-style building in the foreground. He had never seen the place before. He turned it over but there was no writing on the other side. He looked more closely at the photograph and saw the faintest indentation in the paper. It was a small cross made in ballpoint just at the edge of the water. He glanced up at the tour guide, but she was sitting down with her back to him.
Why had she insisted on selling him a postcard unless this was some sort of message? Was this the place, where the cross was marked, where he was to meet Lange? And then he thought: Or was this the place where they wanted him to believe he was going to meet Lange? In any event, he had not the faintest idea where it was. The bus turned into Puschkinallee. There were trees and grass on one side; on the other were houses that had survived the war. Some were substantial and he thought they must have once have housed the burgesses of Berlin; now, he assumed, they would be split into apartments, the largest of which would go to Party officials.
The bus came to a stop. He found himself looking at the scene on his postcard, of a Tyrolean-style building standing by itself near the edge of a lake. The tour guide said, ‘We are now at the cafe. We have thirty-five minutes exacdy, then we must all be back in the bus.’ They walked in little groups towards the building. Spencer stayed with the blonde and her children. The restaurant was on the first floor and they went up an outside staircase. Half way up he glanced towards the water.
He saw a group of chairs and tables. In summer they would be used by families out for a day in the sunshine. Now, on a grey winter’s afternoon, there was only the bent figure of a man sitting at one of the tables.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to the blonde. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
He went down the staircase and walked towards the table. The man was wrapped in a rug against the cold and wore a fur hat on his head. Slowly one old wattled hand rose and he spoke.
‘Is that you, Spencer?’
Spencer paused. The tourists had gone in the cafe, the bus-driver was reading a paper and smoking. There was only this old man in the middle of the winter afternoon etched against the steel of the lake.
‘Herr Lange?’
‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have recognized me?’ There was something in the half-mocking tone of the voice that was familiar, but that was all.
The face was pinched and thin, the nose prominent, and there were weals down each cheek as though someone had taken a razor and slashed him and then the wounds had healed, leaving the scar tissue white and glaring.
‘Herr Lange?’ Spencer said again.
‘Yes!’ he said, irritated. ‘Come, sit down. Be honest, you wouldn’t have known me, would you?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose it’s these.’ He tapped the scars. ‘Skin cancer. They have to burn it out. You got my message?’
‘Message?’
‘You make me repeat everything. I’m a very old man and I get tired easily. I sent you a postcard.’
‘The postcard. Yes.’
There was a wheezing noise from the middle of the blanket and Spencer realized that Lange was laughing. ‘Did you get a fright?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘It had to be that way. The guide is a friend but I did not want to give her the responsibility of a verbal message. Our authorities are strict about some things and hers is a good job. So I thought of the postcard.’ He uncovered his hands and looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got thirty-five minutes, haven’t you?’
Spencer looked at his watch. ‘Slightly less now. How do you know?’
‘I live over there,’ Lange said, pointing to one of the substantial houses. ‘I watch these coaches every day. I watch the tourists spend their Westmarks on coffee and drinks and then they go away again. Oh, don’t think I want to go with them. It’s not that sort of encounter at all. But I sometimes come over on fine afternoons just to hear them talk, to see how they sound. Are they cheerful? Are they sad? We don’t get too much news on this side of the Wall.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Since the end of the war. I did rather well. You remember I was with the Rundfunk? Well, they were glad to have me here and I managed to find a raison d’etre with the Russians. I ended my career as head of the news services. Ja, they treated me well enough. Not bad for a boy from the bush in South-West Africa. We got along well enough. They’re all right if you know how to treat them. Now, I received a message that you were coming this side of the Wall and would like to see me. I don’t believe you’ve come all this way just to see an old sack of bones. I must say I thought twice about meeting you. What does Spencer want, I thought? Do I want to get mixed up with someone like that now? And then it seemed to me it could be easily done and I haven’t so much to fill the time now that I can afford to pass up things of interest. So... please...’
Spencer began to talk, slowl
y at first and then more rapidly. He described exactly what had happened in London and for the first time he was grateful to be talking to someone who actually knew; to someone for whom the story did not need editing, who knew practically as much about the Berlin period as he did himself. When he had finished Lange said, ‘It’s a dreadful story. Dreadful. But let me set your mind at rest in one direction. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘I didn’t think you had.’
‘Nor was it Frau... Gutmann. That’s how you remember her. She became Frau Lange, you know.’
‘You married her?’
‘Yes. We married at the end of the war and came to live here. After the villa in Graf Speestrasse was bombed.’
‘Did you have contacts here?’
‘Not at all. But it seemed to me that with everyone fleeing West, there might be places to stay if one went in the opposite direction if one was in sympathy with the new master, which I was.’
‘How is Frau Gut... Frau Lange?’
‘She died a year ago. So, who did you think it was?’
‘Bruno.’ Spencer said it without emphasis, unwilling to show all his hand.
‘You may be right.’
Lange stared out towards the grey surface of the lake. It was formed by a bend of the River Spree and away to their left were the tower blocks and the buildings of the city, to their right an islet covered in large bare trees. There was a strange sadness about the place. Eventually he said, ‘I ask myself the same questions you have put to yourself. Why your house? And then, of course, the insignia, the leopards, from the uniform that Bruno wore so often. He was like a child with it, dressing up, primping. I must say, if I were you, I would certainly have thought of Bruno.’
Just then a man in a check overcoat and cap strolled along the pathway and threw some pieces of bread to the swans. It was a picture that stabbed at Spencer. He could remember a day on the Thames at Teddington when he and Sue had thrown pieces of bread to the swans. There was something oddly familiar about the man but he walked on and Spencer turned once more to Lange.
Berlin Blind Page 14
