The Innocent

by Ian Mcewan

  He walked to Reichskanzlerplatz and found a line of shops in a street near the Kneipe where he had eaten his supper. The buildings that had once faced directly onto the pavement had been blasted away to expose a second rank of structures sixty feet back, whose empty upper storeys had been sliced open to view. There were three-walled rooms hanging in the air, with light switches, fireplaces, wallpaper still intact. In one there was a rusted bed frame; in another a door opened onto empty space. Further along, only one wall of a room survived, a giant postage stamp of weather-stained floral paper on raised plaster, stuck onto wet brick. Next to it was a patch of white bathroom tiles intersected by the scars of waste pipes. On an end wall was the sawtooth impression of a staircase zigzagging five storeys up. What survived best were the chimney breasts, plunging through the rooms, making a community out of fireplaces that had once pretended to be unique.

  Only the ground floors were occupied. An expertly painted board raised high on two posts and set by the edge of the pavement announced each shop. Well-traveled footpaths curved between rubble and regular stacks of bricks to entrances sheltering under the hanging rooms. The shops were well lit, almost prosperous, with as good a selection as any corner store in Tottenham. In each shop there was a small queue. Only instant coffee was unavailable. He was offered ground coffee. The lady in the Lebensmittelladen would only let him have two hundred grams. She explained why and Leonard nodded as though he had understood.

  On the way home he had bockwurst and Coca-Cola at a pavement stall. He was back at Platanenallee, waiting for the lift, when two men in white coveralls passed him and began to climb the stairs. They were carrying paintcans, ladders and brushes. He met their glances, and there were mumbled Guten Tag’s as they edged past him. He was outside his own front door, searching for his key, when he heard the men talking on the landing below. The voices were distorted by the concrete steps and the glossy walls of the stairwell. The actual words were lost, but the rhythm, the lilt, was unmistakably London English.

  Leonard left his shopping by his door and called down: “Hello …” At the sound of his own voice he recognized just how lonely he felt. One of the men had set down his ladder and was staring up. “Hello, hello?”

  “You’re English, then,” Leonard said as he came down.

  The second man had appeared from the apartment directly below Leonard’s. “We thought you was a Kraut,” he explained.

  “I thought you were too.” Now that Leonard was standing in front of the men, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. They looked at him, neither friendly nor hostile.

  The first man picked up his ladder again and carried it into the apartment. “Live here, do you?” he said over his shoulder.

  It seemed all right to follow him in. “Just arrived,” Leonard said.

  This was a far grander place than his own. The ceilings were higher, and the hallway was a wide open space, where his own was little more than a corridor.

  The second man was carrying in a pile of dustsheets. “Mostly they contract out to the Krauts. But we’ve got to do this one ourselves.”

  Leonard followed them into a large living room empty of furniture. He watched them spread their dustsheets over the polished wooden floor. They seemed happy to talk about themselves. They were in the Royal Army Service Corps, national servicemen who were in no particular hurry to go back home. They liked the beer and the sausages, and the girls. They were settling to their work, rubbing down the woodwork with sandpaper wrapped round rubber blocks.

  The first man, who was from Walthamstow, said, “These girls—as long as you’re not a Russian, you can’t go wrong.”

  His friend, from Lewisham, agreed. “They hate the Russians. When they came in here, May ’45, they behaved like animals, fucking animals. All these girls, now, see, they all got older sisters, or mums, or even their fucking grannies, raped, knifed. They all know someone, they all remember.”

  The first man was kneeling down to the baseboards. “We got mates who were here in ’53, they were on duty down by Potsdamerplatz when they started shooting into the crowds, just like that, women with their nippers.” He looked up at Leonard and said pleasantly, “They’re scum, really.” And then, “You’re not military, then.”

  Leonard said he was a Post Office engineer come to work on the improvement of the Army’s internal lines. This was the story agreed with Dollis Hill, and this was his first chance to use it. He felt mean-spirited in the face of the men’s openness. He would have liked to tell them how he was doing his bit against the Russians. There was more desultory chat, and then the men were presenting their backs to him and bending to their work.

  They said their goodbyes, and Leonard returned upstairs and took his shopping into the apartment. The task of finding places on the shelves for his purchases cheered him. He made tea for himself and was content to sit and do nothing in the deep armchair. If there had been a magazine, he might have read it. He had never been much interested in reading books. He fell asleep where he sat, and woke with only half an hour to prepare himself for his evening out.

  Four

  There was another man sitting in the front passenger seat of the Beetle when Leonard went down onto the street with Bob Glass. His name was Russell, and he must have been watching their approach in the rear-view mirror, for he sprang out of the car as they approached it from behind and gave Leonard’s hand a ferocious shake. He worked as an announcer for AFN, he said, and wrote bulletins for RIAS, the West Berlin radio service. He wore a gold-buttoned blazer of a shameless Post Office red, and cream-colored trousers with sharp creases, and shoes with tassels and no laces. After the introductions, Russell pulled a lever to fold down his seat and gestured Leonard into the back. Like Glass, Russell wore his shirt open to reveal a high-necked white T-shirt underneath. As they pulled away, Leonard fingered his tie knot in the darkness. He decided against removing the tie in case the two Americans had already noticed him wearing it.

  Russell seemed to think it was his responsibility to impart as much information as possible to Leonard. His voice was professionally relaxed, and he spoke without fumbling a syllable or repeating himself or pausing between sentences. He was on the job, naming the streets as they passed down them, pointing out the extent of the bomb damage or a new office building going up. “We’re crossing the Tiergarten now. You’ll need to come by here in daylight. There’s hardly a tree to be seen. What the bombs didn’t destroy, the Berliners burned to keep warm in the Airlift. Hitler used to call this the east-west axis. Now it’s street of June 17, named for the uprising the year before last. Up ahead is the memorial to the Russian soldiers who took the city, and I’m sure you know the name of this famous edifice …”

  The car slowed down as they passed West Berlin police and customs. Beyond them were half a dozen Vopos. One of them shone a torch at the license plate and waved the car into the Russian sector. Glass drove beneath the Brandenburg Gate. Now it was much darker. There was no other traffic. It was difficult to feel excitement, however, because Russell’s travelogue continued without modulation, even when the car crashed through a pothole.

  “This deserted stretch was once the nerve center of the city, one of the most famous thoroughfares in Europe. Unter den Linden … over there, the real headquarters of the German Democratic Republic, the Soviet embassy. It stands on the site of the old Hotel Bristol, once one of the most fashionable—”

  Glass had been silent all this while. Now he interrupted politely. “Excuse me, Russell. Leonard, we’re starting you in the East so you can enjoy the contrasts later. We’re going to the Neva Hotel …”

  Russell was reactivated. “It used to be the Hotel Nordland, a second-class establishment. Now it has declined further, but it is still the best hotel in East Berlin.”

  “Russell,” Glass said, “you badly need a drink.”

  It was so dark they could see light from the Neva lobby slanting across the pavement from the far end of the street. When they got out of the car, they saw there was in
fact another light, the blue neon sign of a cooperative restaurant opposite the hotel, the H.O. Gastronom. The condensation on the windows was its only outward sign of life.

  At the Neva reception a man in a brown uniform silently directed them toward an elevator just big enough for three. It was a slow descent, and their faces were too close together under a single dim bulb for conversation.

  There were thirty or forty people in the bar, silent over their drinks. On a dais in one corner a clarinetist and an accordion player were sorting through sheets of music. The bar was hung with studded, tasseled quilting of well-fingered pink which was also built into the counter. There were grand chandeliers, all unlit, and chipped gilt-framed mirrors. Leonard was heading for the bar thinking to buy the first round, but Glass guided him toward a table on the edge of a tiny parquet dance floor.

  His whisper sounded loud. “Don’t let them see your money in here. East marks only.”

  At last a waiter came and Glass ordered a bottle of Russian champagne. As they raised their glasses, the musicians began to play “Red Sails in the Sunset.” No one was tempted onto the parquet. Russell was scanning the darker corners, and then he was on his feet and making his way between the tables. He returned with a thin woman in a white dress made for someone larger. They watched him move her through an efficient foxtrot.

  Glass was shaking his head. “He mistook her in the bad light. She won’t do,” he predicted, and correctly, for at the end Russell made a courtly bow and, offering the woman his arm, saw her back to her table.

  When he joined them he shrugged. “It’s the diet here,” and relapsing for a moment into his wireless propaganda voice, he gave them details of average calorie consumption in East and West Berlin. Then he broke off, saying “What the hell,” and ordered another bottle.

  The champagne was as sweet as lemonade and too gassy. It hardly seemed a serious drink at all. Glass and Russell were talking about the German question. How long would the refugees flock through Berlin to the West before the Democratic Republic suffered total economic collapse because of a shortage of manpower?

  Russell was ready with the figures, the hundreds of thousands each year. “And these are their best people; three quarters of them are under forty-five. I’ll give it another three years. After that the East German state won’t be able to function.”

  Glass said, “There’ll be a state as long as there’s a government, and there’ll be a government as long as the Soviets want it. It’ll be pretty damn miserable here, but the Party will get by. You’ll see.”

  Leonard nodded and hmmed his agreement, but he did not attempt an opinion. When he raised his hand, he was rather surprised that the waiter came over for him just as he had for the others. He ordered another bottle. He had never felt happier. They were deep in the Communist camp, they were drinking Communist champagne, they were men with responsibilities talking over affairs of state. The conversation had moved on to West Germany, the Federal Republic, which was about to be accepted as a full member of NATO.

  Russell thought it was all a mistake. “That’s one crappy phoenix rising out of the ashes.”

  Glass said, “You want a free Germany, then you got to have a strong one.”

  “The French aren’t going to buy it,” Russell said, and turned to Leonard for support. At that moment the champagne arrived.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Glass said, and when the waiter had gone he said to Leonard, “You owe me seven West marks.”

  Leonard filled the glasses and the thin woman and her girlfriend walked past their table, and the conversation took another turn. Russell said that Berlin girls were the liveliest and most strong-minded in all the world.

  Leonard said that as long as you weren’t Russian, you couldn’t go wrong. “They all remember when the Russians came in ’45,” he said with quiet authority. “They’ve all got older sisters, or mothers, even grannies, who were raped and kicked around.”

  The two Americans did not agree, but they took him seriously. They even laughed at “grannies.” Leonard took a long drink as he listened to Russell.

  “The Russians are with their units, out in the country. The ones in town—the officers, the commissars—they do well enough with the girls.”

  Glass agreed. “There’s always some dumb chick who’ll fuck a Russian.”

  The band was playing “How Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm?” The sweetness of the champagne was cloying. It was a relief when the waiter set down three fresh glasses and a refrigerated bottle of vodka.

  They were talking about the Russians again. Russell’s wireless announcer’s voice had gone. His face was sweaty and bright, reflecting the glow of his blazer. Ten years ago, Russell said, he had been a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant accompanying Colonel Frank Howley’s advance party, which had set off for Berlin in May 1945 to begin the occupation of the American sector.

  “We thought the Russians were regular guys. They’d suffered losses in the millions. They were heroic, they were big, cheerful, vodka-swilling guys. And we’d been sending them mountains of equipment all through the war. So they just had to be our allies. That was before we met up with them. They came out and blocked our road sixty miles west of Berlin. We got out of the trucks fo greet them with open arms. We had gifts ready, we were high on the idea of the meeting.” Russell gripped Leonard’s arm. “But they were cold! Cold, Leonard! We had champagne ready, French champagne, but they wouldn’t touch it. It was all we could do to make them shake us by the hand. They wouldn’t let our party through unless we reduced it to fifty vehicles. They made us bivouac ten miles out of town. The next morning they let us in under close escort. They didn’t trust us, they didn’t like us. From day one they had us fingered for the enemy. They tried to stop us setting up our sector.

  “And that’s how it went on. They never smiled. They never wanted to make things work. They lied, they obstructed, they were cruel. Their language was always too strong, even when they were insisting on a technicality in some agreement. All the time we were saying, ‘What the hell, they’ve had a crappy war, and they do things differently anyhow.’ We gave way, we were the innocents. We were talking about the United Nations and a new world order while they were kidnapping and beating up non-Communist politicians all over town. It took us almost a year to get wise to them. And you know what? Every time we met them, these Russian officers, they looked so fucking unhappy. It was like they expected to be shot in the back at any moment. They didn’t even enjoy behaving like assholes. That’s why I could never really hate them. This was policy. This crap was coming from the top.”

  Glass poured more vodka. He said, “I hate them. It’s not a passion with me, I don’t go crazy with it like some guys. You could say it’s their system you gotta hate. But there’s no system without people to run it.” When he set his glass down he spilled a little drink. He pushed his forefinger into the puddle. “What the Commies are selling is miserable, miserable and inefficient. Now they’re exporting it by force. I was in Budapest and Warsaw last year. Boy, have they found a way of minimizing happiness! They know it, but they don’t stop. I mean, look at this place! Leonard, we brought you to the classiest joint in their sector. Look at it. Look at the people here. Look at them!” Glass was close to shouting.

  Russell put out his hand. “Take it easy, Bob.”

  Glass was smiling. “It’s okay. I’m not going to misbehave.”

  Leonard looked around. Through the gloom he could see the heads of the customers bowed over their drinks. The barman and the waiter, who were standing together at the bar, had turned to face the other way. The two musicians were playing a chirpy marching song. This was his last clear impression. The following day he was to have no memory of leaving the Neva.

  They must have made their way between the tables, ascended in the cramped elevator, walked past the man in the brown uniform. By the car was the dark window of a shopping cooperative, and inside a tower of tinned sardines, and above it a portrait of Stalin framed in red
crepe paper with a caption in big white letters which Glass and Russell translated in messy unison: The unshakable friendship of the Soviet and German peoples is a guarantee of peace and freedom.

  Then they were at the sector crossing. Glass had switched the engine off, torches were shone into the car while their papers were being examined, there were sounds of steel-tipped boots coming and going in the darkness. Then they were driving past a sign that said in four languages YOU ARE LEAVING THE DEMOCRATIC SECTOR OF BERLIN, toward another that announced in the same languages YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE BRITISH SECTOR.

  “Now we’re in Wittenbergplatz,” Russell called from the front seat.

  They drifted by a Red Cross nurse seated at the foot of a gigantic model of a candle with a real flame on top.

  Russell was attempting to revive his travelogue. “Collecting for the Spätheimkehrer, the late homecomers, the hundreds of thousands of German soldiers still held by the Russians …”

  Glass said, “Ten years! Forget it. They ain’t coming back now.”

  And the next thing was a table set among scores of others in a vast and clamorous space, and a band up on the stage almost drowning the voices with a jazzed-up version of “Over There,” and a pamphlet attached to the menu, this time in only German and English, with clumsy print that swayed and danced. Welcome to the Ballhouse of technical wonders, the place of all places of entertainments. One hundred thousand contacts are guaranteeing …” The word was an echo Leonard could not place. “… are guaranteeing you the proper functioning of the Modern Table-Phone-System consisting of two hundred and fifty Tablephone sets. The Pneumatic-Table-Mail-Service is posting every night thousands of letters or little presents from one visitor to the other—it is unique and amusing for everyone. The famous RESI-Water-Shows are magnificent in their beauty. It is amazing to think, that in a minute eight thousand liters of water are pressed through about nine thousand jets. For the play of these changing light effects there are necessary one hundred thousand colored lamps.”