She nodded, smiled, and went out.
In the foyer of the opera house we met Tassilo Huber, who was wearing anthracite-coloured jeans, a dark-green velvet jacket and a black velvet ribbon instead of a tie. He was accompanied by a small woman in an ankle-length grey dress. “How’s your son doing?” he asked. I said he was fine, he was spending the holiday at a chess tournament.
“Really? Well, that’s good to hear.” Tassilo cast a glance at Erika and combed his beard with his fingers. Then he said, “If you can spare the time, I’d be glad if you could look in on me again some day. I have a lot of new material that would interest you.”
I said I’d come as soon as I had time, and offered him my hand. He asked, “And what’s all this business at your school? I happened to hear about it by chance.”
I told him we had everything under control, it wasn’t worth mentioning.
When we had gone to our seats, Erika asked who that character was. I said, “A spy. But undercover, you understand, a secret agent. On the surface he seems to be a local politician.” Erika looked at me, her jaw dropping, and then she said, “Oh, come on, you’re trying to pull my leg!” I laughed and patted her plump hand.
When Kashchei the enchanter leaped out of the wings to the sound of a sudden clash of cymbals, performing demonic contortions, her left hand suddenly reached for mine. She placed her right hand on her bare throat, smiled, and whispered, “Oh, I was so frightened!” She held my hand tight. I thought of the enchanter Klingsor and King Ibert castrating him with his sharp knife.
After a while, when Erika pressed my hand slightly now and then, I withdrew it and acted as if I needed it to mop my forehead with my handkerchief. But once it was back on the arm of my seat, Erika used the next clash of cymbals to close her plump fingers around it once more.
I got used to it. Contact with her warm skin was not unpleasant. I even liked it when Erika, eyes closed as she listened to the lullaby, moved two fingers in a caress.
When we were home she said she could do with a nightcap. I opened the bottle of champagne that Julia had brought back from her latest shopping trip with Ninoshvili and put in the fridge in case it was needed. Erika raised her glass to me. “Thank you, Christian! That was a fantastic evening.”
After the first glass of champagne I went into the living room and turned the answering machine on. Ralf’s voice, sounding aggrieved, came over the loudspeaker. “For Heaven’s sake, where are you all? This is the second time I’ve tried, and the chit-chat machine was on then too. Listen, I want Julia to send me two pairs of socks. I forgot to pack any. Bye. Oh, and if you call back this evening there’s no point. I’m going out into town now with a couple of guys, there’s a disco, not up to much, but better than sitting around here. And I won in the second round, but I lost in the third to a player in the regional league. Bye again, then.”
Meanwhile Erika had appeared in the living-room doorway, carrying her glass. She laughed. I smiled at her, shaking my head. “That’s Ralf all over.”
The answering machine beeped, and on came Julia’s voice. “Hello, Christian, it’s me. It’s a bit late now because we drove on to Darmstadt this evening. Everywhere was fully booked in Frankfurt, a fair of some kind. We’re staying in the Hotel Hessia.” She gave me the phone number and her room number. Then she said, “I think we’ll be home early in the afternoon. David’s appointment is at ten, and we hope it won’t take too long. My love to Erika.” And then, after a brief pause, she added, “I’ll be glad to see you. Goodnight, Christian.”
I turned off the answering machine. Erika said, “That was a nice phone call.” I went up to her, and she stepped to one side, leaving the way to the door clear. I stayed where I was, smiling. “Yes, I think so too. And at least it’ll be just us here until tomorrow afternoon.”
She sipped from her glass and looked at me in silence. I took her in my arms and kissed her. Holding her hand with the glass out to one side, she responded to the kiss as if she were parched. Then she put her head back and laughed. “Just a moment! If that’s how it is, I want some too!” She put her glass down on the table, came back and flung both arms around me, holding me close.
We took the rest of the bottle and the glasses up with us. We had some difficulty getting up the stairs, closely entwined and kissing. I missed her mouth and got her nose between my lips. We almost fell downstairs backwards. I slept with her in Ralf’s bed.
Chapter 43
I got up at seven thirty, picked up my clothes from the floor and went quietly out. As I was closing the door Erika made a slight sound. I looked back. She half-opened her eyes and smiled at me.
When I had showered and made breakfast I called the Hotel Hessia. A man answered. “I’ll put you through.” After a while he came back on the line and said there was no answer from Dr Kestner’s room, and he would get someone to look for her in the breakfast room. It was a long time before he spoke again, saying he was afraid Dr Kestner was not in the breakfast room either. I asked if she might already have left. The man replied, “No, no, she hasn’t checked out yet.” He asked if I had a message for Dr Kestner. I said no thank you, that wouldn’t be necessary, and hung up.
I went up to the top floor. I could hear water splashing in the shower on the other side of the door, and knocked. Erika called, “Just coming!” She opened the door, naked and steaming, a shower cap on her hair, glittering rivulets of water running down over her breasts, stomach and legs. She smiled at me. I said, “Sorry, I just wanted to say I’m going into your room for a moment. I mean Ralf’s room. I want to find his socks. I’ll have to take them to the post straight after breakfast or they’ll be no use to him.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” She pursed her lips, craned her head forwards and gave me a wet kiss.
When I had packed up the little parcel, she came down to breakfast in her pink dressing gown. “You don’t mind if I enjoy just being alone with you a little longer?” She ate her egg with obvious enjoyment. “I ought not to, but it’s so nice to have you spoiling me. I’m not used to this kind of thing.” Then she stopped short, put her egg spoon down and looked at me. “Do you have a guilty conscience?”
“Do you?”
She looked at her plate. “Well, you see… I’ve always had a soft spot for you. Maybe you never noticed. I always managed to control myself.”
“So why not this time?”
She finished her egg and drank some tea. Then she said, “Maybe it’s no excuse, but I don’t approve of what Julia has done. It looked to me like something rigged up in advance. As if she wanted to throw you and me together.”
“How do you mean?”
She looked at me. “Yesterday morning she’s still saying she’ll be out for only a few hours. Then she comes back and fetches that man, sees you’re not at home, and what does she do? Takes him into her study and talks to him with the door closed. And then she comes to me and says they’ll both be staying out overnight. Leaving me on my own to tell you, saying she knows I’d do it well, I’m good at that sort of thing.”
“Is that how she put it?”
She nodded. “Roughly speaking. I thought, well, who’d have thought it! And before I could say anything she and that man had gone off.”
I said, “But she didn’t know, first thing yesterday, that Ninoshvili had to go to Darmstadt. The publisher didn’t ring until later in the morning, you said. Or do I have that wrong?”
“No. At least, that’s what he told me.” She put her head slightly on one side, raised her eyebrows and looked meaningfully at me. “But do you think it was true?”
She reached for a slice of bread, examined the cold meats I’d put out. “Heaven knows who called. Why does he tell me about it anyway? I answered the phone and called him to the phone, but I didn’t ask him who the caller was. I didn’t catch the name, but it was none of my business. And I wasn’t interested anyway.”
She drank some tea, put the cup down sharply and shook her head. “No, no, I don’t trust the man.
I didn’t trust him from the start.”
“Why not?”
She carefully covered her bread with ham. “You know… we had experience of that sort of thing in the good old German Democratic Republic.” And she began telling me about visitors from the friendly Soviet Union, painting them in dark colours. Friendly, she said, what a joke, none of those visitors, not a single one, had been straight, they’d all had some ulterior motive. “Otherwise do you think they’d have had permits to travel at all?” They had all been informers. And people had deliberately kept clear of the German comrades who were their drinking companions too. “They were all in league, the Stasi and the KGB, they fixed their crooked deals together, everyone knew that.”
She cut up her bread and ham. I picked up my napkin and wiped my hands on it. “You don’t seriously believe Ninoshvili is something to do with the KGB, do you? He comes from Georgia. The Georgians never had much time for the Russians.”
She laughed. “You think not? My dear, Georgia belonged to the Soviet Union, you know it did. And you can bet the KGB made itself at home there just as it did in my own lousy country.” She leaned over the table. “Who else would have paid for Herr Ninoshvili’s trip? They have even less money in Georgia than in Russia!” She shook her head vigorously. “No, no, I probably have a better nose for these things than you. You want to be careful with that man, Christian.”
I needed some time before I asked, “What do you mean?”
There was a long pause. Then she said, without looking at me, “Back at the time when Julia disappeared and went over to the West I was rather surprised. She was really doing very well in Halle. Never got into trouble, was allowed to study too. I mean, she had no real reason to clear out of the Republic. Not like many who didn’t want to play along and were always being harassed for it. Including some people in our class.”
I was feeling hot under the collar. “Never mind the hints. Can’t you say what you mean straight out?”
She picked a couple of crumbs off her plate and then looked at me. “Do you remember that character we went out with in Halle, the tall, bony man?”
“Of course I do. Your boyfriend.”
She shook her head. “I just said so to do Julia a favour. I didn’t know him at all. Julia asked me whether I could bring him along that evening. She said she knew him from the old days and would like to see him again, but you were rather jealous. She gave me the phone number, so I called the man and then he picked me up, and we met you two.”
She picked at some more crumbs. “He’d come to Halle from Leipzig specially. He was staying at a hotel in Halle.”
I was sitting in my chair as if numbed. She stood up, came round the table and bent over me. “I’m not saying that Julia had anything to do with the Stasi. I’d never claim a thing like that. I’m just saying you want to keep an eye on her. And in particular on this Ninoshvili.”
She drew my head towards her and pressed it to the warm curves at the neck of her dressing gown. I freed myself and stood up. “I have to go to the post, or Ralf will never get his package.” She nodded and kissed me on the cheek.
“Don’t be cross, Christian. But I had to say it, I think. It hurt me to think you were groping about in the dark. You’ve deserved better, you really have.”
I went to the post office and sent Ralf his socks by express mail. I had put a note in with them. “Check, or whatever they say. Good luck, anyway.” After I had left the post office I drove into the Katharinenforst. I walked in the woods for three hours, climbed the Mäuseberg, looked out over the city. The veil that had blurred the horizon last Sunday had disappeared. The distant roofs and towers were bathed in radiant sunlight.
Erika’s taciturn boyfriend. The two of them had walked back to our hotel with us after we went to the wine bar. Julia had gone ahead with the boyfriend for a while, I followed with Erika. I found Erika heavy going, but Julia and the man were conducting a lively conversation, so far as I could tell from their gestures.
I came home from the Katharinenforst about one thirty. Julia and Ninoshvili had just arrived. Julia seemed a little breathless, she was about to go out again, wanted to go to her office, but Ninoshvili was in an excellent mood. He said the trip to Darmstadt had been really worthwhile. The conversation had gone very well, the publishing house would be sending him a contract soon, the managing director of the firm was already planning to publish one of the stories, ‘The Woman with the Pomegranate’, in an anthology. The book will be on the market in spring. He was deeply grateful to Julia, and of course to me as well, me above all, he knew Julia wouldn’t take that the wrong way.
Chapter 44
Four weeks ago a member of the City Council, a Social Democrat and by profession a business manager, was unmasked as a former agent of the GDR’s Ministry of State Security. I looked at all the reports of the case in the old papers I store in the garage until it’s worth driving to the recycling centre.
The man comes from Magdeburg. He left East Germany furtively twenty-six years ago, that is to say, he committed the crime of “fight from the Republic”, as it was called. To the West German authorities, he made out that he was a victim of political persecution. In fact he told a credible-sounding story to the effect that fight was the only way he could escape arrest and condemnation for the criminal offence of running a seditious smear campaign.
Now it has emerged from the Gauck files, named after the head of the agency investigating the Stasi records after reunification, that his fight was all a hoax. The man had been recruited by the Stasi as a twenty-year-old student of the Socialist Business Management department at Rostock University, had taken a special training, and at a given moment in time was infiltrated through the Berlin Wall. He was what they call a sleeper agent: he was to work his way up to an influential position in the Federal Republic and be activated as a spy as soon as it was worthwhile.
Apparently that time never came. The man went on with his studies of business management at Göttingen University, and switching to the capitalist system gave him no problems; he took a good degree. Even as a student he joined the Social Democrats and rose in the party to deputy chairman of a sub-district, but that, apart from his election to the backbenches of the local parliament, was the peak of his career. Professionally, he rose no higher than the job of business manager of a retail and wholesale ironmongery supplier.
Whether he couldn’t or didn’t want to do better for himself does not emerge clearly from the newspaper reports. In any case, what he gave away, at least according to his own account of it, was unable to harm anyone, which doesn’t surprise me, since the Stasi could hardly gain any very crucial insights from information about the activities of a sub-district in local government or the garden rollers sold in the Federal Republic. Nor was the man urged to produce results; his supervising officer got in touch with him now and then, but even these contacts gradually ceased. Maybe someone in the Ministry of State Security had fled his details in the wrong place.
When all this came out, the man had been peacefully settled in the West for many years, living in a terraced house with his wife and three children. He had, as he is said to have confirmed during his interrogation by the Deputy Public Prosecutor, rejected the socialist system long before the reunification of Germany, and was convinced that the democratic system of our Federal Republic served mankind much better.
Among his colleagues in the wholesale ironmongery business, including the head of the firm, his brief arrest aroused incredulous astonishment. He was popular with everyone, down to the staff of the company’s three retail shops, a hard-working but always open-minded manager who would lend an ear even to the troubles of trainees. His Social Democrat friends confirmed that he was not only industrious but also showed the kind of human solidarity seldom found in political life. Even his political opponents, as represented by Christian Democrat City Councillor Grünberg, respected him. As Grünberg explained on regional TV, this man had not transgressed the bounds of decent conduct even in an el
ection, in which, said Grünberg, he was a shining exception among Social Democrats.
I saw the man on television myself; the camera team of a commercial broadcaster had been hunting him down, and trapped him when he left the Federal Prosecution Office building through a side entrance. His legal adviser put his hand in front of the camera lens, and was going to get the unfortunate sleeper agent out of the way, but the latter objected, saying, “No, no… I’d like to… I don’t want to…” He straightened his shoulders and looked into the camera.
His face was flushed, his eyes lay deep in their sockets, his forehead was gleaming with sweat. He clutched the knot of his tie as the reporter, a woman in her mid-twenties with her hair cut extremely short, put her first question. The reporter, obviously unable to believe her luck, had to start it twice. She said, “Herr Reinhardt, have you…. How come you’re free, Herr Reinhardt?” She waved her canary-yellow microphone in front of her victim’s lips.
The victim said, “The Federal Prosecutor has decided that in my case there is no danger that I’ll run for it or suppress evidence.”
“Does that mean you’re innocent?”
“No.” The victim cleared his throat and clutched the knot of his tie again. “As a young man I made a bad mistake, and I admit it freely. But I would also like to say that I have never harmed anyone. That was always my priority in all my actions. I have always taken care that everything I did was…”
The short-haired woman interrupted him. “But if someone is accused of such serious crimes as you are, isn’t there a danger that he will evade the consequences by running for it after all?”
“No. Definitely not.” The victim opened his mouth to say more on the subject, but the short-haired woman wasn’t about to depart from the questions she had prepared in advance. She moved the microphone back to herself and babbled into it. “What did your wife say when you were unmasked? What do your children think?” and then pointed her weapon at her victim’s lips again.
David's Revenge Page 16
