A Patriot in Berlin

by Piers Paul Read

  In December it had become too dark for a single woman to venture safely out into the park. Francesca had given up her jogging. However, she missed the exercise and when she could went to a gym to work out. At the beginning of February, when the mornings grew lighter, Francesca resumed her jogging and on one or two occasions passed Serotkin either in the lobby or in the Englischergarten. Both exchanged a curt ‘good morning’, Serotkin sweating, Francesca bleary-eyed. Francesca preferred to avoid these early-morning encounters. She was hardly looking her best.

  One morning in March, Francesca was doing her round of the Englischergarten wearing her charcoal-grey tracksuit when she was joined by three men wearing trainers, jeans and grubby sweatshirts. From their appearance, she judged them to be Turks. This in itself did not alarm her: she had been told that, after Istanbul and Ankara, Berlin had a larger Turkish population than any other city in the world. The three men had as much right as she did to jog in the Englischergarten and it was only paranoia induced by comparison with New York’s Central Park that aroused alarm at the sight of their dark skin.

  After a few minutes, however, the three men crowded around her, one on each side, one behind and as they ran, they tried to engage her in conversation. ‘Guten morgen, Fräulein. Schönes Wetter, was?’ As she ran along the path, puffing somewhat (she was still out of condition after the winter break), Francesca asked them to leave her alone. ‘Bitte, lass mich in Ruhe.’ She also looked around to see if there was anyone to whom she could look for help. There was not. Finally, she stopped, gasping for breath, and told them with as much authority as she could muster to fuck off.

  The tallest and oldest of the three – a man of about thirty – now looked around, and he too saw that there was no one else in sight. He moved even closer to Francesca. ‘Aber, warum so unfreundlich?’ he asked with a leer.

  Francesca was now alarmed and tried to dodge past him, but the Turk grabbed her by the sleeve of her track suit. The two others leaped forward, gripped Francesca by her arms and, while the first covered her mouth, dragged her off the path and behind some shrubs and trees. She was pulled back onto the ground. The first man took his hand off her mouth but, before she could shout, he covered it with his own mouth, climbing onto her while unzipping his jeans.

  Francesca struggled, and for a moment managed to kick him off, but the two other men still held her arms and the first, picking himself up, his jeans around his knees, hissed in Turkish to the other two, one of whom then took hold of both her wrists while the other grabbed a leg. Francesca was able to shout, but she was unable to get up off the ground. And while the second Turk held onto her left leg, the first tugged at her tracksuit bottom and pants and eventually removed them. Then he came upon her, the wobbling pink point of his penis protruding from a black fuzz at his groin. Francesca, stifled by the smell, still struggled beneath his heavy body. She felt his hand move like a wedge between her legs, and begin to prise them open … And then a hand pulled him off her by the roots of his hair and she saw, towering above her, Serotkin.

  Hobbled by his jeans, the first Turk could do little to prevent Serotkin throwing him aside but, while the third still held Francesca, the second let go of her leg, took a knife out of his pocket, flicked open the blade and went for Serotkin. Serotkin, only now turning back from the first Turk, dodged the lunge of the second, then caught him with a kick in the stomach that sent him gasping to the ground.

  Now the third let go of Francesca and, while she scrambled to get her right leg back into her pants and tracksuit bottom, threw himself at Serotkin; but once again, Serotkin, with a certain ease, stepped aside and struck the Turk on the back of the neck with a blow of such force that it left him lying motionless on the gravel path.

  The first Turk, who had by now fastened his jeans and buckled his belt, saw what had happened to his companions and turned to run away, but before he could escape, Serotkin first kicked him in the groin, then landed a blow on his chest that made him stagger, choke, and finally fall beside his companion on the ground.

  Despite her shock and humiliation, Francesca had the composure to feel astonished that this Russian art historian should dispatch her three assailants with such ease. Indeed, from the expression on his face, it even seemed as if he took a certain pleasure in the escapade; and though he now came to help her to her feet, asking if she was all right, there was nonetheless the same hint of irony as if even this atrocity had its amusing side.

  ‘Shall I go for the police?’ he asked.

  ‘No, don’t leave me.’ Involuntarily, she clutched his arm.

  ‘Very well.’

  She started to walk towards the path and only after a few steps realized that her feet were bare. ‘I’ve lost my trainers,’ she said.

  They turned back. One of the Turks looked up but, seeing Serotkin, closed his eyes and lay still. Serotkin found Francesca’s trainers and held her steady while she put them back on her feet.

  ‘Like the first time,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? No shoes.’

  She laughed and then she wept, sobbing without constraint as they walked back to their block of flats, an arm of Serotkin’s around her shoulder, one of hers around his waist. And even as she cried, Francesca thought that tears were funny things because, mingled with the shock of what she had just endured, was a certain joy that he had remembered that she had been barefoot when they first met.

  Serotkin accompanied Francesca back to her flat. She called the police. When two uniformed officers arrived, both made a statement, Serotkin’s more than modest about his heroic role. He then went up to his own flat to take a shower and change. When he returned, half an hour later, Francesca too had bathed and changed. She insisted on going to work, and accepted Serotkin’s offer to drive her to the Excursus office in his Opel. At times she trembled: she had no appetite for breakfast, undoubtedly because of the shock, and when she got to her desk she found it difficult to concentrate on her work.

  In the middle of the morning, two plainclothes detectives from the Berlin police came to make some further enquiries, and to ask Francesca and Serotkin to sign the statements they had made that morning. ‘You’re a lucky woman,’ the detective sergeant said to Francesca, ‘to have had this particular guy come along.’

  Francesca agreed. The detective looked up at Serotkin. ‘You must be trained in unarmed combat?’

  Serotkin shrugged. ‘In the army, you know … We all did our national service.’

  The detective looked down at the statement. ‘Sure. But even so …’

  The policemen left. Serotkin went back to his office. Francesca telephoned Sophie to tell her what had happened. Sophie immediately insisted on driving over from the Wedekindstrasse and taking Francesca out to lunch. They went to the restaurant on the top of the Ka De We department store, and Sophie’s sympathy was overwhelming and sincere; but as Francesca listened to her chatter about how dangerous Berlin had become, especially for women, and how the police were often quite lackadaisical when investigating cases of rape because they were men and could not imagine what it felt like to be a woman, and in fact often seemed to regard all single women as fair game … even as she listened to this burbling stream of ideas that she could not but recognize as her own, Francesca found that she was thinking of Andrei Serotkin and wishing that he, not Sophie, was sitting opposite, eating his pork and red cabbage, and exhaling the smoke of his dark, untipped cigarettes.

  Sophie departed, after eliciting a promise from Francesca that, if she would not come and stay with her in the flat on the Wedekindstrasse, she would at least let Stefi pick her up and bring her to supper. As the afternoon wore on, however, Francesca felt less and less like an evening with the Diederichs. At half past four, she called Sophie and cried off. She said she was tired and wanted to go back to her flat to sleep. She then left her office and went down the corridor to Serotkin’s. It was empty. Tears came into her eyes. She crossed the corridor and looked in on Frau Dr Koch. ‘
Has Dr Serotkin left?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.’

  Francesca turned and, as she did so, saw Serotkin go into his office. She went to the door. ‘Andrei …’

  He looked up.

  ‘I was wondering if, by any chance, you were free this evening?’

  He smiled. ‘Have you work for me to do?’

  She blushed. ‘Not work, no. I thought that perhaps, well, you might like to have dinner?’

  ‘Ah.’ He hesitated and a troubled look came onto his face. Then he appeared to come to a decision and said: ‘Yes. I would like that very much.’

  Francesca told herself that hers was only a friendly gesture towards a man who had saved her from a fate worse than death. She told herself that it only made sense to take the opportunity presented by the day’s events to pursue her grumbling curiosity about Serotkin. She told herself that since she could not face work or solitude or Stefi Diederich, it only made sense to seek the company of a colleague who knew what had happened and so would make allowances for her fragile state: she told herself everything except that she was already more than half in love with Andrei Serotkin.

  Francesca persisted in this self-delusion back in her flat, as she got ready to go out. Serotkin, who had brought her to the office, also drove her home. They had agreed to meet in the lobby at eight. Francesca therefore had a couple of hours to soak in a bath, then, swathed in her towel, to lie on her bed. She considered calling Duncan in New York but decided against it because he would still be in his office and it would be awkward for him to express sympathy in front of others. She could call him later, when she got back from dinner with Serotkin; and as her inward focus moved from the gentle American in New York to the violent Russian in Berlin, she felt an involuntary spasm of crude desire.

  She jumped off the bed as if she had been touched by something more tangible than a message from her brain, went back to the bathroom, unwrapped the towel, and for a moment looked at her naked body in the full-length mirror on the wall. Serotkin had seen part of that naked body but this knowledge, rather than inspiring shame or embarrassment, induced a sense of vulnerability that only increased the feeling of bodily longing.

  She went back into her bedroom, straightened the bed cover, put away her discarded clothes, then sat down at the dressing table and, with meticulous care and precision, put mascara on her eyelashes and shadow around her eyes. She dressed, choosing an outfit that was both sober and alluring – her best underclothes, bottle-green tights, a black skirt and a green cashmere sweater that matched the tights. Around her neck she put a string of black pearls, given to her by a former boyfriend, a banker in New York. She brushed her thick blonde hair, nodding it back from time to time, and picked off a stray strand that dropped onto the sweater. Finally, she put on a pair of simple black leather shoes, and sprayed some Amarige on the inside of her wrists and around her neck.

  Serotkin was waiting in the lobby. He too had changed his clothes – grey trousers, a navy-blue blazer, a light blue shirt and striped tie. He smiled when he saw Francesca, a smile that seemed somehow melancholy, and led her out to his car.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought you would benefit from a change of scenery,’ he said.

  Francesca was quite happy to let Serotkin make the decisions. They drove in silence, around Ernst Reuter Platz, past the Charlottenburg Palace, onto the Stadtring and then the Avus, leaving at the exit leading onto the Potsdammer Chaussee. Serotkin then doubled back into the Grünewald, turned up a track and stopped the car outside a restaurant in the middle of the woods.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s nice in summer, of course, when you can sit out on the terrace.’

  They went up the steps into the restaurant. The head waiter led them to a table by a window from which they could see the sun setting over the water of the Wannsee.

  ‘This is lovely,’ said Francesca.

  ‘It may help you to feel that you are out of the city, at least for a while.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She wanted to bask in his solicitude but could not decide whether he was being considerate because he cared for her or merely because he felt obliged by the circumstances to do the right thing.

  ‘You must try and forget about this morning,’ he said.

  ‘There would be more to try and forget if it wasn’t for you.’

  ‘It was nothing.’ He picked up the menu. They chose what they wanted to eat and drink.

  ‘You have the proverb, I think,’ said Serotkin. ‘“Every cloud has a silver lining.”’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think the silver lining to this morning’s cloud might be to oblige you to work less hard. It is not good for you.’

  ‘The work has to be done.’

  ‘You can delegate some of it to others.’

  ‘I’m not good at that.’

  ‘It is part of the art of leadership.’

  ‘I guess I’m not much of a leader.’

  ‘Oh, but you are.’

  ‘Unattractive in a woman?’

  ‘In an attractive woman, everything becomes attractive. That is the danger.’

  ‘The danger?’

  He hesitated, then turned with apparent relief to the waiter who had come to their table with a glass of Schnapps and a bottle of wine. The food followed, and all the while Francesca was considering how she could return to that danger Andrei had mentioned without appearing to fish for a compliment. ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that there are big differences in the nationalities? I mean, in the way we feel and the way we think?’

  ‘Yes. There are big differences.’

  ‘Do you think they matter?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, in art or love or international negotiations?’

  ‘In international negotiations, clearly, each country employs experts who are specialists in the way the other party feels and thinks. That suggests they think that it matters.’

  ‘In art, then.’

  ‘There are specialists, too.’

  ‘But the eye is universal. You can appreciate a painting by an American and I can appreciate a painting by a Russian.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Your thesis, I think, was to explain Russian experimental art. Therefore, you too are a specialist, and must have been drawn to the subject by some curiosity, and curiosity implies something unknown.’

  ‘I don’t think that it was the national differences that interested me. After all, a painter like Malevich, whose father worked in a sugar factory in Kiev, is about as deep-rooted in his ethnic culture as you can get, but his artistic influences were blatantly international.’

  ‘May I take notes, Frau Doktor?’

  Francesca blushed. ‘I’m sorry. You know all that already.’

  ‘If it was not because the painters were Russians, then what led you to choose that theme?’

  ‘Well …’ She hesitated, then shot a furtive smile across the table. ‘You will be horrified to hear that I was led into it from a course I took in Women’s Studies. I had meant to write a thesis on women painters which was hardly original – in fact, in American faculties it’s well-trodden ground. But in doing the preliminary research, I came across Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rosanova and Alexandra Exter. They gave me the idea.’

  ‘They were talented.’

  ‘Thank you!’ The gentle tone of Francesca’s ironic rejoinder was a measure of how far her attitude towards Andrei Serotkin had changed.

  ‘But they were not innovators. They merely imitated what was in fashion.’

  ‘So did the men.’

  ‘Precisely.’ There was a flash in his eyes. ‘They followed the fashions set in Paris. They had lost touch with their own people.’

  Francesca was puzzled. ‘They thought they were in touch with the people. After the Revolution, the
y took agit-prop trains around Russia, carrying books and films and painting to the peasants and workers.’

  ‘They were taking their idea of art to the people, not letting the people’s idea of art come to them.’

  ‘And didn’t the people benefit?’

  Serotkin was about to answer, but then seemed to think better of what he had intended to say. ‘We are talking shop,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I would like to know more about Francesca McDermott the woman, and less about Dr McDermott the art historian.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Where you were born. What family you have.’

  She gave him a brief curriculum vitae, describing her childhood and the different members of her family, now scattered around the United States.

  ‘None of you still lives in Wisconsin?’

  ‘I think Susan might go back there. I guess it depends on who she marries.’

  ‘And you? Does it depend on who you marry?’

  She looked away. ‘I like the east coast.’

  ‘So you should marry someone from New York.’

  ‘Perhaps. Or Boston.’

  ‘A publisher, perhaps?’

  She looked at him across the table. ‘Hey, have you been doing some background research?’

  Serotkin laughed. ‘Diederich mentioned that there was someone … But I don’t want to pry into your private life. Tell me about your career.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. I went to high school in Madison and then Ann Arbor, and then to Harvard.’

  ‘That can’t have been easy.’

  ‘It’s easier if your father is a college professor.’

  ‘Influence?’

  ‘No. Home tuition.’

  ‘What did you major in?’