He stops dead, turns, tilts his body so that Mundy has to meet his gaze. I’ve got it, Mundy thinks. You’re Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard.
“It sucks, okay, Mr. Mundy? An old crackpot with money coming out of his ass thinks he can redesign the world.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, say something. You’re making me nervous.”
Mundy finally manages to: “Where do I come in?”
“You were until recently the joint owner of a language school in Heidelberg, I believe, Mr. Mundy?”
Sven speaking. Sven who picks flyshit out of pepper. Behind Sven sits Angelo, arms folded in the shadows. Exhausted by his performance, Dimitri has collapsed onto the sofa.
“Guilty,” Mundy agrees.
“And the purpose of the school was to teach advanced English to business professionals?”
“Correct,” says Mundy, thinking that Sven speaks exactly like one of his best pupils.
“And this school is now closed, sir? Pending legal proceedings?”
“It is quiescent. It is, at present, an ex-school,” Mundy says blithely, but his wit, if such it is, finds no acknowledgment in Sven’s unyielding eyes.
“But you are still co-owner, together with your former partner, Egon?”
“Technically, maybe I am. Practically I’m sole owner by default. Along with the bank, six mortgage companies and sundry creditors.”
“Sir, how would you describe the status of the school building, please, at this moment in time?” Sven opens a folder that looks as though it knows more about Mundy’s affairs than Mundy does. Moment in time, I’m not sure about, thinks Mundy the pedant. How about just at this moment, or even plain now?
“Boarded up and padlocked, basically,” he replies. “Can’t be used, can’t be rented, can’t be sold.”
“You have seen it recently, the school, sir?”
“I tend to keep my head down. Lots of writs still flying about. I drove past it a month ago and the garden was a jungle.”
“What is the capacity of the school, please?”
“In numbers? Teachers? What do you mean?”
“How many persons may be seated at one time in the main room?”
“Sixty, probably. That would be the old library. Sixty-five at a pinch. We didn’t work that way. Well, we did for the odd lecture. It was small classes in small rooms. Three teachers—me, Egon and one other—six to a class, maximum.”
“And in income terms? Cash? What were you taking, if I may inquire, sir?”
Mundy pulls a face. Cash is not his best subject. “That was Egon’s side of the house. Top of my head, reckoned in teaching hours, twenty-five euros a pop, per hour per student, three teachers working on demand—it was made-to-measure stuff, mind you, six in the morning some of it—grab ’em on their way to work —”
“Sure,” says Sven, bringing him down to earth.
“Say three, three and a half grand a day if we’re lucky.”
Dimitri comes suddenly alive again. “Your students, they came from where, Mr. Mundy?”
“Wherever we could get them. We targeted the young managerial class. Some from the university but mostly local business. Heidelberg’s the high-tech capital of Germany. Biochem, IT, software, media, print technology, you name it. We’ve got a whole satellite town down the road that does nothing else. And the university to back it up.”
“I heard people of all nations.”
“You heard right. French, German, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, Thai, Lebanese, Saudis and black Africans, the whole caboosh, male and female. And a lot of Greeks.”
But if Mundy is fishing for Dimitri’s nationality, he’s wasting his time.
“So the money came from all over the world,” Sven suggests, as Dimitri again lapses into silence.
“Just not enough of it.”
“Did any go out, sir?”
“Too much.”
“All over the world?”
“Only with Egon. Otherwise we just paid ourselves and the bills.”
“Did you work weekends in this school, sir?”
“Saturdays all day and Sunday evenings.”
“So the students came and went all days, all hours? Foreigners of all kinds? In and out?”
“In our heyday.”
“How long was your heyday?”
“A couple of years. Till Egon got greedy.”
“You had lights in the windows all night long? Nobody was surprised?”
“Only till midnight.”
“Who says?”
“The police.”
“What the hell do the police know about anything?” Dimitri cuts in sharply from the sofa.
“They’re authorities on peace and quiet. It’s a residential area.”
“Did you have, like, school terms?” Sven resumes. “Like ‘this is vacation time, this is term time’?”
Thank you for explaining what a school term is, Mundy thinks. “In theory we were open all year. In practice we followed the established pattern. High summer was no good because pupils wanted to go on holiday, Easter and Christmas the same.”
Dimitri sits suddenly upright like a man who needs to hear no more of this. He slaps his hands on his thighs. “Okay, Mr. Mundy. Now you listen to me and listen hard, because here it is.”
Mundy is listening hard. He is listening, watching and marveling. Nobody could ask more of his powers of concentration.
“I want your school, Mr. Mundy. I want it back in business, up and running, chairs, desks, library, all appropriate equipment. If the furniture’s been sold, buy new. I want it looking and talking like it was before it went belly-up, but better. You know what is a mystery ship?”
“No.”
“I saw the movie. A crappy cargo ship like a tanker is rusted to hell. It’s a sitting duck on the horizon for the German submarine. All of a sudden the crappy cargo ship hoists the British ensign, drops its side and has like a sixty-pounder stashed in its guts. It shoots the shit out of the submarine and the Nazis all drown. That’s what your little language school is going to do on the day the Counter-University hoists its flag and tells the corporations they are no longer running the fucking world their way. “Give me a date, Mr. Mundy. If St. Nicholas came through with a bag of gold tomorrow, how soon would you be able to open for business?”
“It would have to be a pretty big bag.”
“I heard three hundred thousand dollars.”
“It depends how much interest they calculate. Over how far back.”
“You’re a Muslim. You shouldn’t talk interest. It’s against your religion.”
“I’m not a Muslim. I’m just learning the ropes.” Why do I bother to say this?
“Three-fifty?”
“I wasn’t able to pay the staff for the last three months. If I’m ever going to show my face in Heidelberg again I’d have to pay them first.”
“You’re a hard bargainer. So it’s half a million. When d’you open?”
“You said for business.”
“I said when.”
“Technically, as soon as we’ve cleaned the place up. We might be lucky and get a few walk-ins, we might not. To be functioning in any way that makes sense—September. Mid.”
“So we open early and we open small, why not? If we open big, they’ll get us thrown off the campus. Open small and look busy, two cities only, and they’ll think we’re not worth the hassle. We open in Heidelberg and the Sorbonne and fan out from there. Do you have signs on the door?”
“Brass plates. Did have.”
“If they’re there, clean them up. If they’ve gone, make new. It’s business as usual, the same old crap. September, when we bring in the big lecturers, we’ll drop our side and start shooting. Sven, see he takes an ad somewhere. ‘Mr. Edward Mundy will resume his former post as principal of his school with effect from whenever.’” The baby-blue eyes hold Mundy in some kind of painful, almost pitying stare. “You don’t look right to me, Mr. Mundy. Why are
n’t you waving your bowler hat in the air? Are you depressed or something that a guy you don’t even have to fuck is getting you out of hock for half a million bucks?”
Being told to change your expression is never easy, but Mundy does his best. The sense of dislocation he experienced moments earlier has returned. His thoughts are the same as Dimitri’s: Why am I not rejoicing?
“Where does Sasha come in?” he says, which is all he can think of to ask.
“The Counter-University will have a fine lecture circuit. My people in Paris are in the process of assembling a stable of incorruptible academics, men and women who regard orthodoxy as the curse of free thought. I intend that Sasha assist in this process, and be one of the lecturers. He’s a fine mind, a fine man, I heard him and I believe in him. He will have the title of director of studies. In Heidelberg, he will supervise the creation of your library, advise you on your future academic schedule and assist you in the recruitment of human resources.”
Dimitri stands up with a speed and decisiveness that brings both Sven and Angelo leaping to their feet. Mundy unwinds himself from the sofa and stands too. It’s like my first time in the mosque, he thinks. When they stand, I stand. When they kneel down and put their heads on the rush matting, I kneel down too and hope someone’s listening.
“Mr. Mundy, we have done our business. Sven will discuss your administrative concerns with you. Angelo will take care of your remuneration. Richard upstairs has a short contract for you to sign. You will receive no copy of your contract, you will receive no confirmation in writing of anything we have agreed here tonight.”
Grappling with Dimitri’s iron grasp, Mundy again fancies he is reading a hidden signal in the moist, unblinking gaze. You came here, you wanted it and now you’ve got it, it seems to be saying. You have nobody to blame but yourself. A side door opens, Dimitri is gone. Mundy hears no departing footstep, no thunderous applause as the final curtain falls. One of the blazers is standing at Mundy’s elbow, waiting to give him back his toys.
The blond woman in the business suit once more leads the way. The same anoraks watch from the shadows. Richard upstairs is sitting at his desk as before. Is he made of wax? No, he smiles. Has he been waiting up here all evening in his nice new blazer and tie, hands prespread either side of the leather folder that opens from the center like a double window?
The blond woman departs. They are alone again, two fellows across a desk. Secrets may be traded, except that Mundy is keeping his secrets to himself:
I believe none of it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
I am in a madhouse, but half the world is run by madmen and nobody complains.
If mad kings, mad presidents and mad prime ministers can wear the mask of sanity and still function, why not a mad billionaire?
In the battle between hope and skepticism that is being fought inside me, it is increasingly clear I stand to gain everything and lose nothing.
If the Counter-University turns out to be somebody’s sick dream, I remain what I was before I walked through the door: poor but happy.
If against all odds the dream comes true, I’ll be able to look my creditors in the eye, reopen the school, move us all up to Heidelberg, put Zara through nursing college and Mustafa into a good school and sing The Mikado every morning in my bath.
So how often does that little possibility present itself? we ask ourselves. Did it ever? No. Will it ever again? No.
And if I need another reason for saying yes, which I don’t, there’s Sasha, my one-man chaos theory.
Why I should feel responsible for him is a question to be answered in another life. But I do. A happy Sasha is a joy to me, and a wretched Sasha is a rock on my conscience.
The contract is six pages long and by the time Mundy reaches the end of it he has forgotten the beginning. However, a few stray points have lodged in his head, and in case they haven’t, Richard is sitting across the desk to count them off on his athletic fingers:
“The house will be legally yours, Ted, unencumbered from the day you complete your first full year of tuition. Your basic outgoings, Ted, that’s heat, light, local taxes, house maintenance, will be carried by one of Mr. Dimitri’s many foundations. For this purpose we will create a cash float, payable in advance, accounted for retrospectively every quarter. Here are your bank details as we presently have them. Kindly check and confirm they are correct. Vacations we leave to your discretion, but Mr. Dimitri is adamant that all of his employees enjoy their full allocation of leisure. Do you have further questions? Now’s your chance, Ted. Any later is too late.”
Mundy signs. The pen is the same model as Sven’s. He initials each page bottom right. Richard folds the signed contract and feeds it into the pocket where he kept the thousand dollars cash. Mundy stands. Richard stands. They do some more handshaking.
“Allow five working days for the money to come through, Ted,” Richard advises, just like the advertisements.
“The whole sum?” Mundy asks.
“Why not, Ted?” says Richard with a smile of spiritual mystification. “It’s only money. What’s money beside a great ideal?”
12
NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life by any means, Ted Mundy has lost touch with who he is. A credulous fool, caught yet again in Sasha’s slipstream? Or the luckiest man on earth?
Making breakfast, making love, taking Mustafa to school and himself to the Linderhof, playing the loyal servant of the late King Ludwig, hurrying home again for Zara’s night off, adoring her, protecting her in her enormous and intelligent vulnerability, bringing her library books on nursing and enjoying a kick-about with Mustafa and the gang, he relives without pause his night visit to the mountaintop, says nothing to anybody, and waits.
If now and then he tries to persuade himself that the entire adventure is the wish-child of his hyperactive imagination, then how does he explain, please, the one thousand dollars he secreted under the driver’s floor mat of his Beetle for the return journey to Munich, and which he next day transferred to the safety of the plant room, where it now keeps company, appropriately, with Sasha’s letters?
The long night’s unreality began with Sasha’s ghostly reappearance, and ended with his departure. After a further promenade with Sven, Angelo and Richard through the technicalities of his resurrection, Mundy is returned to Sasha, who greets him with such effusive joy as puts to shame whatever reservations he may be harboring. The news of Mundy’s recruitment to the cause has reached him in advance. Seeing Mundy enter, Sasha seizes his hand in both his own and, to Mundy’s confusion, presses it to his damp forehead in a gesture of Oriental obeisance. In awed silence they board the Jeep and, with the same scraggy woman at the wheel, make an unexpectedly stately descent of the forest track.
Reaching the barn, she parks and waits while they transfer themselves to the Audi, where Sasha once more takes the wheel. But they have not driven two hundred yards before the Audi skids to a halt and Sasha staggers onto the grass verge, hands pressed to his temples. Mundy waits, then goes after him. Sasha is retching his heart out in rhythmic heaves. Mundy touches his shoulder but he shakes his head. The retching subsides. They return to the car.
“Want me to drive?” Mundy asks.
They change seats.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course. A matter of digestion.”
“What’s your next move?”
“I am required immediately in Paris.”
“What for?”
“Did Dimitri not tell you I am personally charged with the composition of our college libraries?” He has put on his Party voice. “In Paris, a committee of illustrious French and German academics under my supervision will compose a list of works that will be common to all libraries of the project. Once the core volumes are in place, each library will be invited to augment its collection. Librarians will of course be guided by the popular will.”
“Is Dimitri on this illustrious committee?”
“He has expressed certain wishes
, and these have been placed before us for our consideration. He asks no preferential treatment.”
“Who picks the academics?”
“Dimitri made certain recommendations. I was graciously invited to add my own.”
“Are they all liberals?”
“They belong to no category. The Counter-University will be celebrated for its pragmatism. I am told that in American neoconservative circles, the beautiful word liberal is already a term of abuse.”
But when they reach the lay-by where Mundy’s Beetle is parked, the Party voice gives way to another outburst of emotion. In the predawn light, Sasha’s eager face is glistening with sweat.
“Teddy. My friend. We are partners in a historic enterprise. We shall do nothing to harm, nothing to destroy. Everything we dreamed of in Berlin has been delivered to us by providence. We shall stem the advance of ignorance and perform a service of enlightenment for all humanity. On the balcony, after you had signified your acceptance, Dimitri invited me to name the stars in the firmament. ‘That is the Big Dipper,’ I said. ‘And over there you can just make out the Milky Way. And here is Orion.’ Dimitri laughed. ‘Tonight, Sasha, you are right. But tomorrow we shall draw new lines between the stars.’”
Absolute Friends Page 29