The New Confessions

by William Boyd

  I felt unaccountably depressed. If it hadn’t been for the khaki Chevrolets and the sprinkling of uniforms on the beach, we might have been back in the 1930s. What was I doing here prostituting this bright intriguing girl? I felt heavy with guilt. To expiate it I spent an hour telling her about myself as if sheer weight of information could transform me from a client to a person in her eyes. I told her about Karl-Heinz and my search for him, my dream of finishing The Confessions. She suggested matter-of-factly that I leave a poster outside Karl-Heinz’s former apartment saying I was looking for him. Everyone in Berlin used this method to trace missing friends and relatives. (Why hadn’t I thought of this?)

  As we drove back into the city I sensed my guilt and awkwardness receding. I went back to her room for sex. The ruined city, I can see, is the true context of our relationship. But why do I want her to be at least fond of me?

  I took the U-bahn back to FSR-4. It started to rain as I walked the few blocks to the house and I smelled the corpses. Most of the dead beneath the rubble have decomposed completely by now, but a shower of rain seems to call forth a final ghostly reek of putrefaction.

  Back at Frau H.’s, a man I knew vaguely from Reuters—just arrived—asked me if I know a Monroe Smee. I had forgotten all about Smee. I said I knew him in Hollywood before the war. Why? “I was in L.A.,” this man said, “and I met him. He was very curious to hear what had become of you.”

  Tomorrow I go to Stralauer Allee. Frau H. serves up an interesting dinner. Two small carp and a sauce made from black bread, beer, onions, carrots and gingerbread seasoning.

  Berlin in those days was one huge noticeboard. On every available surface were nailed, pinned or stuck printed notices and handbills. Most sought news of people who had at one time occupied the now-ruined houses, but there were also want ads and for-sale signs. Someone in our street, for example, wanted to buy a pair of skis. I wrote out my own notice in red ink asking for information about the whereabouts of Karl-Heinz Kornfeld, former occupant of 129B, and, armed with hammer and nails, set off.

  The block was almost completely destroyed and the nearby Spree smelled particularly purulent. I hammered the notice on the doorjamb and stood back. What could make Karl-Heinz want to return to this ruin? Sentiment? Very unlikely.… Spring was well advanced and the piles of masonry were green with weeds. I felt a sudden helplessness. Henni had told me that twenty-five thousand refugees arrived in Berlin each day at the moment. How was I going to find Karl-Heinz among all these people? I realized I should have gone at once to the missing persons agencies that Frau Hanf had told me about. I was irritated by my procrastination. My Berlin aimlessness had cost me several weeks. I looked at my notice stuck to the door. The street had several of these requests for information. Did anybody ever read these things, or was it just a typical Berliner illusion of getting something done? I went back to PSR-4 without much confidence.

  However, I resolved to make one final effort. With Frau Hanf’s help I discovered the names and addresses of two agencies and approached them with Karl-Heinz’s details. They were not sanguine. They hinted that he might not even be in Berlin anymore. Four million German refugees, they told me, had fled westwards or had been expelled from Russian-occupied countries since the war had ended. Perhaps Herr Kornfeld had gone with them? They would see what they could do.

  About a week after these visits I went to see Meine Frau die Hexe at the cinema. I’m not sure what stimulated my memory—I think one of the extras reminded me of his secretary—but I thought suddenly of Eugen P. Eugen. Was he still alive? He might be worth trying. I thought of our earlier encounters. The man was tenacious, there was no denying that, and unscrupulous. Conceivably, he might be more efficient than the harassed agencies.

  The building that had contained Eugen’s offices had been completely destroyed, along with the rest of Fehmarnstrasse. Indeed the street had not yet been cleared; only a meandering path ran through the rubble hills. I knew I was in the right place because I could see the burned and shattered blocks of the infectious-diseases hospital a few hundred yards away. Then as I walked back to Putlitzstrasse Station I had an idea. Ten minutes’ further searching uncovered the small café where Eugen used to lunch. What had he been eating that day when he told me Sonia had beaten him up? Cucumbers? Cabbage? Sausage?… Yes, it was cabbage—I remembered the smell.

  The cellar café still existed and was open. Above it teetered the facade of a house, shored up with wooden buttresses. Somehow I knew Eugen would be there.

  Of course, he wasn’t. Life is rarely that accommodating, but the proprietor said there was a good chance he would be in that evening.

  When I returned at seven, half a dozen people sat in silence staring at watery beers in front of them and trying not to look at a small man eating avidly and noisily in a corner. I knew it was Eugen, though I would scarcely have recognized him. He was gaunt and his blond hair was gone. He wore a collarless gray-flannel shirt and a green uniform jacket. On his bald pate were three large scabs. I sat down opposite him.

  “Herr Eugen?”

  He looked up.

  “My name is Todd. You did a job for me, a long time ago, 1928.…”

  He stared at me and frowned.

  “My God,” he said. “My God, yes. And then we met again in Switzerland. With Miss Bogan.”

  We shook hands.

  “How is Miss Bogan?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Good, good. I am a great admirer.”

  Neither of us seemed to want to reminisce about our last encounter. I told him what I required of him. He screwed up his face.

  “Difficult. Almost impossible.” He paused. “Have you got a cigarette? You’re sure he’s in Berlin?”

  We discussed the problems, then his fee. We settled on five hundred cigarettes. Somehow the transaction seemed to rejuvenate him. I could see the tiny dapper blond man in him again, like his soul.

  “Can I offer you some food? They say these are rabbit rissoles. It may not be rabbit, but there is certainly a minimum of sawdust.”

  I declined politely. We were awkward with each other. Two decades intervened.

  “It’s strange to meet again,” he said. “I can’t tell you how distressed I was—the last time. I felt most embarrassed.” He laughed. “Which is most unusual in my trade. Not like me at all.”

  He then embarked upon a long angry complaint about a burned-out tank that still hadn’t been removed from the end of the street where he lived. I commiserated with him.

  “What do you think of our wonderful city?” he said with sudden bitterness.

  “It’s terrible,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it, at first.”

  “Can you imagine London, Paris, so totally destroyed?”

  I thought about it. Buckingham Palace razed, Nelson’s Column toppled, Sacré-Coeur a heap of white rubble, all the bridges gone across the Thames and the Seine, the Grand Palais open to the sky …

  “It’s hard,” I admitted. I was about to remind him who had started the destruction business off, but I changed the subject. I asked him where he would start looking for Karl-Heinz.

  “Berlin is full of gangs,” he said, “deserters, displaced persons, refugees. They live in holes in the ground. I’ll make some inquiries with the police.” He smiled proudly. “I still have my contacts there.”

  April 23, 1946. Interminable press conference at Lancaster House—British HQ—announcing the failure of discussions for pooling food supplies in the four sectors. Talk to a British soldier who says the officers “are living like gods” in Berlin while the other ranks are confined to barracks. Everywhere is out of bounds to the British enlisted man. “We are an army of gentlemen and floor wipers,” he says. It is not like this in the American sector.

  To the Dandy Bar. Henni tells me she had the chance of a job in Hamburg teaching music in a school. She thinks she should get her mother out of Berlin. I encourage her. To her room for one hour, then back to PSR-4 in time for a late supper. I think F
rau Hanf has developed a soft spot for me; she remembers seeing Julie. I tell her what has become of Doon.

  April 24, 1946. Saw a film poster today—Der Ausgleicher, a Western. I almost walked past it until I translated the title and saw “ein Film von J. J. Todd.” Word soon got out in the WarCorrMess and I find I am something of a celebrity. Two of my colleagues interview me. Curious to have a film playing in Berlin again.

  A message from Eugen. We are to meet tomorrow in the Dandy Bar at midday.

  Eugen wasn’t actually allowed in the bar because he was too badly dressed. I arrived to find him arguing with the doorman. I led him away and calmed him down. He was close to tears.

  “My God! In the old days I wouldn’t have looked into a stinking dive like that!” he said. “I belonged to five clubs. Five. Very select. The most exclusive places.”

  “Have you found him?”

  “What? Yes. Yes, I think so.”

  He calmed down when I gave him his cigarettes.

  He took me off somewhere in the French sector. There were Tricolors everywhere. I think the French were enjoying occupying Berlin just as much as the Russians. We abandoned the car and walked through a partially cleared street. Tremendous fires had raged here and the buildings were quite black with soot. It was a cool cloudy day with occasional drizzle. From time to time the fresh wind unpeeled a patch of encrusted soot from the walls and sent it dancing through the air like a stiff black handkerchief. We turned a corner and came to an open space, once a small square perhaps. Beyond it, the houses had been completely flattened and we found we were in a brick wasteland, big as a soccer field, pretty with copious weeds and wildflowers. Here and there people seemed to be camping in hollows burrowed in the rubble. A crowd of about thirty gathered round a blazing bonfire.

  With some difficulty Eugen and I made our way across the uneven ground towards a half-demolished church. I felt most peculiar. I could hardly believe I was going to meet Karl-Heinz. I felt childishly tearful and full of trepidation. I stumbled badly and my leg began to ache.

  The roof of the church had gone and so had all the pews and furniture—for firewood, I assumed. Many people seemed to be living there, sitting docilely against the wall guarding bundles of possessions, or crouched over tiny fires cooking food in steaming pots. We went down into the crypt. It was lit by electric light, to my surprise, and was very smoky. Eugen spoke to a young woman with one arm. I looked around: the place was full of young people—boys and girls. She pointed her stump towards the back of the room.

  We walked towards the rear past a row of makeshift rickety tables. Half a dozen people sat at them; they seemed to be rolling cigarettes but I couldn’t be sure, I only glanced at them.

  Then I saw Karl-Heinz.

  He was cooking something over a large woodburning stove that was responsible for all the smoke. He wore a thick, crudely cut greatcoat that came down to his ankles. His hair had recently been shaved off and was now a patchy prickly furze. It was mostly gray. He was very thin and his grizzled neck and jaw looked like those of an old man, slack flesh and stretched sinew, no firmness. He looked up and turned. His eyebrows were the same dark circumflexes. He smiled. A few teeth had gone.

  “Hello, Johnny,” he said, simply. We embraced. He stank. But it reminded me of that day in 1924, at 129B Stralauer Allee.

  I don’t mind telling you that I wept. I blubbed. I was happy to see him and at the same time unbearably sad. He was only a couple of years older than me but he looked like my father. We sat down around the stove and he insisted on serving up a miserable lunch. A soup of breadcrumbs and salt in hot water and potatoes fried in old coffee grounds scavenged from U.S. Army messes.

  “At least it gives them a taste,” he said.

  While we ate Karl-Heinz told me briefly about his war. He had been declared unfit for military service because of his ulcer, which, owing to wartime deprivations and the crudity of the liquor he consumed, had flared up in 1942. He carried on working in the theaters while they were open. He was in Hamburg for a while and then Munich. However, as the war neared its end he was drafted into a special battalion of men all suffering from stomach disorders. They were sent east of Berlin to face the Russians as they advanced.

  “It was a very strange unit, Johnny. We talked about nothing except our health, our doctors. Ninety-five percent of us had ulcers.” I tried without success to imagine this unit.

  By the time they had retreated from the Ringbahn to Potsdamer Platz, Karl-Heinz decided that this was the moment to desert and go to ground. For three months he pretended to be insane.

  “Best performance of my life,” he said with a thin smile.

  “What did you do?”

  “Not while we’re eating, Johnny, please.”

  I looked around at the disabled youngsters. “What’s going on here?”

  “Well, I had to live. I became a Kippensammler. I collected cigarette butts. Then I decided to become an entrepreneur. There were all these young people living in the ruins. I got them to collect cigarette ends for me. It takes about seven butts to make a new cigarette. We sell them for two marks each. I pay them some money and we buy food on the black market. For a while we did well, but then everybody started doing it. Life had got hard again. But then you arrive …” He smiled. “My God, Johnny, you remember the day we met in Weilburg, 1918?” He stopped suddenly. The thought of all that time in between seemed to unsettle him. His smile faded. It unsettled me too. It is one of the least happy consequences of aging. All that “past” seems to mass behind the present, rendering it insignificant and nugatory. I thought of our two lives. All that effort, all those years, to end up eating coffee-flavored potatoes in the crypt of a bombed-out church. Around us the ruins of the third-largest city in the world. And there was still the future to come.

  “I want you to come away with me,” I said to him. “We must get you to America.”

  “Very nice idea,” he said. “What for?”

  “We’re going to finish The Confessions.”

  I think for the first time in the twenty-eight years we had known each other, Karl-Heinz looked at me with unalloyed admiration.

  I found Karl-Heinz a place to stay not far from Henni’s building. I read a notice in the street that there was a room to let in a basement apartment. The young family who owned it were delighted to welcome him. The wife had seen him onstage many times. I bought him some clothes, gave him money for food, had him deloused and medically examined and secured him some false teeth and a new set of papers. All that was comparatively easy. Getting him out of the country seemed impossible.

  Finally, I learned of a special Home Office scheme that had been created to allow German nationals the opportunity to rejoin members of their families in Britain. I applied on Karl-Heinz’s behalf, saying that he was a half brother of Mungo Dale and that there was accommodation and a job for him at Drumlarish. This claim was met with some skepticism. Proof was called for. I had conspired with Mungo and he obligingly wrote to the authorities saying that Karl-Heinz was the offspring of his mother’s second marriage and that he had spent many summers with the family before the Great War. They had rather lost contact with him since Mrs. Dale had died, but would be delighted to welcome him back to the Dale household once more.

  In Berlin a search was instigated for documents to verify the story. It would take time, I was told, and in the end might be futile—so much had been destroyed. By this stage we were almost into June.

  In the end I solved my problem by blackmailing a wing commander in the RAF (later Air Marshal Lord D——) who was suitably placed in the hierarchy of the military government to give the authorization. He was making a fortune by flying stolen antiques back to London dealers in RAF planes (an open secret in WarCorrMess). He was not alone. I could give the names of half a dozen high-ranking British officers who secured a comfortable postwar income for themselves based on German loot. This particular man was completely unperturbed when I put the deal to him. He said no editor of a Br
itish newspaper would dare print the story. I pointed out that I worked for an American newspaper and was not similarly constrained. He signed and had Karl-Heinz’s papers drawn up and authorized while I waited. As I left, he said, “It’s little shits like you who voted Winston out of office.”

  Karl-Heinz left Berlin before me, but his journey took longer. As a low-priority passenger he was held up, reprocessed, delayed and misdirected. His papers were in order, that was the main thing. In the end that fact alone made it inevitable that he would reach his destination.

  I said good-bye to Henni with much regret and real sadness. Her job in Hamburg had fallen through. But she had heard from Karl-Heinz’s landlady that I had secured him passage out of Berlin and asked if I could do the same for her and her mother. I had to say no. I told her to be patient. Life in Berlin couldn’t be like this forever. On our last night together we lay in her thin bed, smoking and drinking as usual—both of us, I think, trying to pretend that we would be doing this again the next evening.

  “Are you married?” Henni asked.

  “No.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “What?”

  “Marry me.”

  “Good God.”

  “Don’t you like me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, then.… We can get divorced as soon as we’re in England.”

  “I’m not going to England, I’m going to America.”

  “Even better.”