A Patriot in Berlin

by Piers Paul Read

  ‘Influenza.’

  ‘Have you his home number?’

  Gertie flicked through the cards on a Roladex and jotted down the number.

  ‘And his address.’

  ‘He’s in the same block as you, Frau Doktor.’

  ‘I know. But what’s the number of his apartment?’

  Gertie could not help giving Dora a quick smirk before writing down the address. ‘There,’ she said, handing the piece of paper to Francesca. ‘And I’ve put down the post code too!’

  Francesca went back to her office. She picked up the telephone to call Andrei but then thought better of it. He might be sleeping. He might also decline an offer of a sick call, but he could hardly turn her away if she looked in on him on her way home.

  It felt odd to Francesca to go up in the lift beyond the fourth floor and find herself on the landing of the ninth floor where everything was replicated – the colour of the walls, the pattern of the carpet – yet was in some intangible sense different. Serotkin’s apartment, like hers, was in the north-west corner of the building. She straightened her clothes, brushed back her hair, pursed her lips to bring up the colour, then rang the bell at his door.

  There was silence. Her briefcase weighed heavily on her arm. She waited, doing her best to keep the casual ‘I just thought I’d look in’ look on her face. She rang again. Again there was silence. Perhaps he was asleep, drugged with a sleeping pill. Or perhaps he was not there, his illness a pretext for another of his mysterious trips out of town. She rang for a third and last time. As she did so, she imagined she heard a shuffle behind the door, and the spyhole seemed to darken.

  There was another shuffle, then the sound of muffled voices. Curious but also embarrassed, she was about to leave when suddenly the door opened. She said ‘Hi, I was just …’ but then stopped. The man who faced her was not Serotkin. He had black hair and dark skin like an Arab or perhaps a Turk. His face had no expression. He neither smiled nor frowned nor seemed surprised that she was there.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought this was Dr Serotkin’s apartment.’

  The man stepped back, no words but only the movement indicating that she was to come in. She walked into the hallway, of the same dimensions as her own, and then – following a silent gesture from the man – went into the living room. Again it was the same as her own with a kitchen at one end and a fireplace at the other. The same furniture was upholstered in a different colour and was arranged in a different way, but what immediately struck Francesca was the magnificent icon of Christ above the fireplace, its severe eyes watching her, almost rebuking her, as she stepped forward to take a closer look.

  She knew little about icons, beyond the influence they were said to have had on artists like Goncharova, Tatlin and Kandinsky. However, this one was patently old, probably sixteenth- or seventeenth-century, and was almost certainly Russian, not Balkan or Greek. To judge from the sombre expression, it was probably of Christ as the universal judge. How on earth, she wondered, did Andrei Serotkin get hold of a work like this that normally you would only find in a church or a museum?

  ‘The Saviour from Pskov.’

  She turned. Serotkin stood behind her; the other man was nowhere to be seen. Serotkin was wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. His face was pale. From its expression, she could not tell whether or not he was pleased by her visit.

  ‘What do you think?’ He nodded at the icon.

  ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘I find it a source of solace. It instils a mood of great calm, but it is also inspiring.’

  ‘A mother to emotions?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘It is on loan. A little corner of Russia while I am here in Berlin.’

  ‘You’re very lucky.’

  ‘Yes.’ As he said this, Serotkin started to cough.

  This reminded Francesca of the pretext for her visit. ‘I’m sorry to burst in on you like this. I was told that you were ill and I wondered if I could do anything to help.’

  Serotkin smiled and pointed towards a chair. ‘That is kind.’ Francesca sat down. ‘As you can see, a friend from Moscow happens to be passing through Berlin. He is able to get me a few things …’ Serotkin did not sit down but went to a cupboard. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No. Really. I just thought … I mean, have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘No. I am not so ill. I shall be better tomorrow.’

  ‘You should have called me.’

  ‘I had my friend.’

  ‘Am I not your friend?’

  He took out a bottle of vodka and two small glasses. ‘I hope so.’ He sat down and placed the glasses on the same low coffee table that Francesca had in her flat. ‘You must have a drink, to keep me company.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Russians believe that vodka is the best cure for all diseases.’ He laughed, then coughed, then laughed again. He handed her a glass filled with vodka, then took one into his own hand. ‘Your health … and mine!’

  They touched glasses.

  ‘Is your friend staying with you?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘No,’ He turned towards the door. ‘You should be introduced to him, except he has gone out for some aspirin. He is an interesting fellow, a native Chechen, but unfortunately he speaks little English or German.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He is a scientist, a biologist.’

  ‘And what is he doing here?’ Francesca could not help feeling a certain antipathy towards the Chechen.

  ‘A conference of some kind.’

  ‘Well, if he’s busy, I can always come up and make you some supper.’

  ‘Thank you, but I can manage.’

  She frowned. ‘It would be a favour to me, Andrei. I would like a chance to try and repay you for what you did for me.’

  ‘I did not regard that as part of a transaction.’

  Francesca blushed. ‘No. Of course not. I didn’t mean that.’

  He appeared to relent. ‘Come tomorrow, then. By then my friend will have gone.’

  Francesca awoke with a start at three in the morning with the idea in her head that Andrei Serotkin was gay. Had she dreamed it? The more she thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense of his behaviour – his narcissistic fitness, his strange absences, above all his failure to respond to her advances. Clearly, the Chechen was his boyfriend. She had sensed his antagonism when she entered his flat: he must have realized that she was a rival, and for the same reason she had taken an instant dislike to him. At the time, she had put this down to his being an Arab; not, of course, that there was anything wrong with being an Arab or, for that matter, gay; but in love and war …

  These thoughts prevented Francesca from going back to sleep. How could she have been so stupid as not to have realized it? Clearly, Russian gays were not as open as American gays: because homosexuality had been frowned on in the old Soviet Union, Russian gays had to be particularly discreet. Was it this that had broken up his marriage? It would explain why he had never bothered to get divorced. It would also explain his choice of profession. Gays were common in the art world.

  At around six, Francesca fell asleep. At seven her alarm went off. She rose feeling awful, mixed her yoghurt and muesli and boiled the kettle to make her Lapsang Souchong tea. She felt depressed. She assumed at first that this was because she had slept badly, but then remembered the idea that had woken her during the night.

  In the cold light of dawn, she was less sure. Andrei had withstood her advances, true, but she was quite certain that he found her attractive. A woman can always tell, either by the way a man looks at her or by the way he avoids looking at her, or by the way he only looks at her when he thinks she is not looking at him. Francesca also had to admit that neither Andrei nor the Chechen had any of the characteristics of a gay; nor did the clothes either had been wearing show the kind of fastidiousness that Francesca had observed in her gay friends. The Chechen had been wearing scruffy j
eans and a nylon blouson, and Andrei, although his clothes were elegant enough, had let them get rumpled, and he never bothered to brush off the ash that fell from his strong cigarettes.

  Of course, not all gays were neat and dapper, and perhaps the Chechen was a passing fancy, a bit of ‘rough trade’. The issue remained open in Francesca’s mind as she drove to work, and grumbled on in the back of her mind throughout the day.

  The proofs of the catalogue were in. Francesca wondered if she could get Serotkin to check the Russian entries while he was still ill. She made a number of calls to Milan and Paris about the dispatch of some of the paintings. At twelve she had lunch with Stefan Diederich and the cultural attaché from the US embassy in Bonn to discuss the possibility of taking Excursus to New York. She told Stefi that Serotkin was ill, and asked if he knew anything about his Chechen friend. For a moment, Stefi seemed confused: a morsel of poached salmon remained poised on the end of his fork between his plate and his mouth. Then he said: ‘A Chechen? No. What is a Chechen?’ which permitted the US attaché, who had served in Moscow, to deliver an impromptu lecture on the different nationalities found in the Caucasus and around the Caspian Sea.

  After lunch, Francesca drove out to the Omni Zartfracht warehouse in Tegel with Günter Westarp, Julius Breitenbach and Frau Dr Koch to supervise the unpacking of the first paintings. Such was the security, they were refused entry. They had to wait for an official to arrive from the ministry to get them in. Even after they had been admitted, and stood admiring El Lissitzky’s celebrated Proun from the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, they were watched by the special security guards – young men in beige uniforms, black belts and leather gloves.

  Leaving Julius Breitenbach in charge of the unpacking, Francesca returned to the Excursus office with Günter Westarp and Frau Dr Koch. A number of calls and faxes had already arrived from the east coast of the United States, and at six o’clock the traffic started with the west coast and the southern hemisphere. It was seven before Francesca got back to her flat, and eight before she went up to Serotkin’s, carrying two plastic bags containing the ingredients of a light supper.

  Serotkin opened the door. He was still in his dressing gown but looked much better. At her insistence, he retreated to his bedroom while Francesca went into the kitchen. She put the bags down on the counter that divided it from the living room. From the wall above the fireplace, the eyes of Christ the Saviour looked severely at what she was doing, as if discerning the ulterior motives for her mission of mercy.

  Francesca unpacked the bags, taking out a carton of milk, a tin of pheasant broth, a packet of chicken breasts, some string beans. She frowned as she realized that the director of the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art might try to call her at home, and wondered whether or not she should telephone his office and leave Serotkin’s number. But it could wait. Of more interest to her at that moment were the contents of Andrei’s kitchen cupboards: a few tins, a few jars, packets of tea, coffee and rice.

  When supper was ready, Francesca went to the door of Serotkin’s bedroom. It was ajar. She knocked gently. He asked her in. He lay on the bed – the same kind of bed as there was in her flat below – propped up against some pillows. A book, in Russian, lay open on the bedclothes.

  ‘Shall I bring you a tray?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘No. I shall come to the table.’

  Francesca went back to the kitchen. Serotkin followed in his dressing gown and slippers. He sat down where she had laid a place on the dining table in the living room. Francesca served up the pheasant broth. ‘What would you like to drink?’ she asked. ‘Some vodka?’

  ‘Why not? Yesterday’s dose did me some good.’

  ‘You don’t think some milk would do better?’

  ‘Milk? Yes. The national drink of the Americans, after Coca Cola.’

  She filled a glass from the carton and placed it on the table. ‘We went out to the warehouse this afternoon,’ she said, ‘and unpacked the first painting.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘Their security’s tight as hell. At first, they wouldn’t let us in.’

  ‘Better too strict than too lax.’

  ‘I guess so.’ She started her soup. ‘And the proofs of the catalogue are in.’

  ‘At last.’

  ‘We’ve got to turn them around in three weeks.’

  ‘Have you brought them? I can do them in bed.’

  ‘It might tire you.’

  ‘I feel much better. I shall return to work tomorrow.’

  Francesca wanted to ask Andrei about his friend the Chechen but she held back. It might seem nosy. Instead, she asked: ‘What have you been reading?’

  ‘Dostoyevsky.’

  ‘The Brothers Karamazov?’

  ‘Crime and Punishment.’

  ‘I haven’t read that one.’

  ‘The hero, Raskolnikov, is a murderer.’

  ‘You mean the anti-hero.’

  ‘No. He is the hero. That is what makes it an interesting novel. At the beginning of the book, Raskolnikov murders an old woman for her money yet retains the reader’s sympathy throughout.’

  Francesca frowned. ‘How can you sympathize with a murderer?’

  ‘He acts from the highest motives. He feels that he is destined to do great things for humanity, like Napoleon. But he lacks the means – the development money, as we would call it today. The only way he can see to raise it is by killing the dreadful old crone – a pawnbroker. He dares himself to do it, not just to get the money, but to prove to himself that he is a man of destiny by overcoming the inhibitions of conventional morality.’

  ‘But that’s not right, is it? That all great men are above morality?’

  ‘I would say so, yes.’

  ‘We would have impeached President Nixon.’

  ‘Perhaps Nixon was not a great man.’

  She laughed. ‘There’s no perhaps about it.’

  ‘But Abraham Lincoln …’

  ‘He was great.’

  ‘Only because history went his way. Imagine how you would judge him now if the South had won the Civil War.’

  ‘Isn’t that kind of cynical?’

  ‘To the victor goes the spoils, including the luxury of deciding what is right and what is wrong.’

  ‘You mean, there’s no objective morality?’

  Serbtkin hesitated. ‘Dostoyevsky believed that there could only be an objective morality if there was a God to define it.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I don’t believe in God.’

  ‘I wish you’d finish your soup,’ said Francesca.

  Serotkin smiled. ‘Women are fortunate. Instinct serves as conscience, and all reasoning is made superfluous by intuition.’

  Francesca frowned. ‘Is this Dostoyevsky speaking or Andrei Serotkin?’

  ‘Perhaps just Mother Russia.’

  ‘Dostoyevsky at least had the excuse that he lived in the nineteenth century …’

  ‘Whereas I should know better because I live in a more enlightened age?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The age of Auschwitz and Hiroshima …’

  ‘You can hardly blame them on feminism.’

  ‘They are part of the same phenomenon.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘The rejection of Christian order that followed the rejection of Christian faith.’

  ‘Serotkin or Dostoyevsky?’

  ‘Dostoyevsky.’

  ‘Does Serotkin agree with Dostoyevsky?’

  ‘Up to a point.’

  ‘What point, if he doesn’t believe in God?’ She was speaking from the kitchen where she was taking the chicken breasts out of the oven.

  ‘“Man does not live by bread alone”.’

  ‘So let him eat chicken.’ Francesca put a loaded plate in front of Serotkin.

  He did as she told him, but Francesca sensed that thoughts continued to ricochet around his brain. He seemed agitated, even feverish, and showed little interest as she prattled on ab
out what had happened in the office during the day. When she told him that they had unpacked El Lissitzky’s Proun from Yale, he frowned and said: ‘In the end, I think, we will have most of the modern Russian paintings in American collections.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He thought for a moment, then said: ‘There is an interesting character in Crime and Punishment called Svidrigailov. At the end, he has to choose between shooting himself and going to America. To Dostoyevsky, I think, they amounted to the same thing.’

  ‘And what does he do?’

  ‘He shoots himself.’

  Serotkin ate only half of his chicken, and turned down Francesca’s offer of fruit or yoghurt. He said he would like some coffee, and she said that she would bring it through to him in his bedroom once she had cleared away the dishes. He went back to his room. Francesca cleared the table, put the dishes in the dishwasher and put on the kettle to make coffee. While waiting for it to boil, she went to the bathroom. It was the same as her own. There were spots of dried soapsuds on the mirrored door of the cabinet above the basin. She wondered whether anyone came in to clean for Serotkin or whether he cleaned his flat for himself. She wiped off the dried soapsuds with a damp tissue, then opened the cabinet in which in her bathroom she kept shampoo, foundation cream, cleansing lotion and her contraceptive pills. Serotkin had only a bottle of Odol mouthwash, shaving cream in a pressurized can, a phial of aspirins and a square bottle labelled Polyman Color. Tönungs Shampoo. Natur Schwartz. It was black hairdye. So the philosophizing Andrei was not so high-minded after all!

  It was a sign of how much Francesca was in love with Andrei Serotkin that she found this touch of vanity endearing. Little by little, the veil was being lifted from the inscrutable Russian to reveal him to be a man as vulnerable and fallible as any other who caught flu and worried about looking old.

  She went back to the kitchen, made the coffee from the packet of decaf she had brought up from her flat, and took the pot with two cups on a tray into his room. He lay on his bed, propped up against pillows, reading. She put the tray on the dressing table, filled the cups, handed one to Serotkin, drew up a chair and sat down next to the bed.

  Now that she knew, his hair did seem a little too good to be true. The beard, too. Of course, he was silly. He would be just as attactive, perhaps even more attractive, if a few of his hairs were grey. It would add gravitas. She could just imagine an amphitheatre of enthralled students at BU.