by Len Deighton
At the bottom of the lovely old marble staircase, with the polished wooden rail that I liked to slide down when a child, I found Lisl Hennig in her room. Its door was wide open, for Lisl liked to be able to see what was going on in her domain, but now her eyes were closed and she appeared to be sound asleep. A plate was on the floor beside her, its contents – a half-eaten apple, a segment of cheese and two water biscuits – scattered across the carpet. I stood there for a moment, looking into her darkened study. The way the overhead reading-light made a marble-like shine on her dress, the lock of hair falling forward on her forehead, the way her arms rested along the thronelike seat, the newspapers and abandoned lunch around her, made a scene that suggested a litter-strewn Lincoln Memorial.
This was her den, into which only the privileged were invited and where only her intimates were permitted to sit down. The big ornate clock stood at three-thirty and Wilhelm II waved his sword and scowled menacingly at me. The only incongruity came from a newly installed desktop computer on the side-table. Like some sort of contrived comparison the dark screen and keyboard stood alongside the old mechanical adding machine with which Lisl had always calculated the guests’ bills. Pinned on the wall behind the table there was a page carelessly torn from a newspaper; a six-column-wide coloured reproduction of the Van Gogh Irises that had been recently auctioned at Sotheby’s for a record bid of fifty-three million dollars. This news item had commanded worldwide interest; proving, by quantifying the priceless, that everything was possible.
Suddenly Lisl gave a snort and came awake: ‘Bernd, darling! Come and give your poor old Lisl a big kiss.’ As usual she was instantly awake, and unwilling to admit to having dozed off.
Her name was Liese-Lotte, but as a girl she’d adopted the more gemütlich Viennese form of Lisl, and that touch of kitsch suited her. I went and kissed her carefully so as not to disturb the lipstick and the carefully rouged and powdered face. She twisted her head to accept a kiss on each cheek.
‘Let me look at you, darling.’ She twisted the table light so that it floodlit me and I stood obediently, feeling an absolute fool, while she scrutinized me from head to toe. She was not admiring me. ‘You are ill. You must see a doctor.’
‘I’m just hungry,’ I said.
‘You need proper food. Berlin food. Tonight: Schlacht-platte!’
‘That sounds wonderful,’ I said and meant it. The huge plate of mixed boiled meats and sausages was something for which I had yearned for a long time.
‘I still say you should see a doctor, Bernd. I know when you are ill; I’ve known you all my life haven’t I?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘It’s only you I’m thinking of.’ She phoned the kitchen and ordered a snack for me. When she’d done that she picked up a newspaper that was folded into a small bundle to expose the crossword puzzle. ‘You have come just at the right moment. I’ve started doing the crosswords in the English newspapers every day. It is good for my English.’ She said this in German, which made me believe that her desire to master English was not a top priority. ‘A Christian kingdom ruled by a General? Seven letters ending THO.’
‘Lesotho,’ I said.
‘There is such a country?’
‘In Africa.’
‘You have saved my life, darling. You are a wonderful darling, a genius. I was driven almost insane. Lesotho. Ah! That makes sixteen down STOIC. The rest are easy. I will complete it later. Good.’ With a sigh of relief she put the newspaper aside and turned to me: ‘Now, Bernd. What have you done to poor Werner?’
‘Done to him? I haven’t seen him for ages. Is he here?’
‘You haven’t argued again with that wife of his?’
‘Zena do you mean?’ Zena was Werner’s diminutive and combative first wife, to whom he’d recently returned for no reason that I could fathom.
‘Yes, Zena,’ said Lisl. ‘You don’t like her. She is…’ List’s arthritic fingers played a remarkably nimble trill in the air as she searched for a word that was both appropriate to Zena’s nature and repeatable to Werner. ‘…touchy. Yes, touchy sometimes, I know.’
‘Werner’s private life is nothing to do with me,’ I said.
Perhaps I put a little too much feeling into this reply, for Lisl said: ‘Is this to say I am an interfering old woman?’
‘No, Lisl darling,’ I said hastily. ‘Of course you aren’t.’
She looked at me under lowered eyelids while deciding to accept my cowardly assurance. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t find some nice German girl, I’ve often thought that.’ She had often said it too. Werner’s marriage and mine were topics she could discuss at length, and about which she could become very emotional. Lisl had been an aunt to me, but for Werner – after his Jewish parents died – she had been a mother. And yet Werner’s marriage to the pugnacious Zena had not troubled Lisl as much as my marriage to Fiona. Of course Lisl never criticized Fiona. Her old-fashioned respect for the institution of marriage ruled out destructive criticism. But I knew Lisl very well indeed, and I knew she secretly saw Fiona as a cold and remote foreign woman who had intruded into our cosy family circle.
Lisl was as different to Fiona as anyone could possibly be. Born into a wealthy Berlin family, her girlhood spent in a formal and exclusive world, Lisl had nevertheless inherited the fearless vulgarity and tenacious sense of humour that is the hallmark of the Berliner. Her innate toughness had made her unhesitatingly offer shelter to Werner’s parents at a time when hiding Jews usually brought a one-way ticket to a concentration camp. Lisl was generous to a fault, but she was also narrow-minded, chauvinistic and selfish. ‘A nice German girl,’ she mused. ‘And you could have lived here in the city, and got a proper job.’ Lisl was fishing for news of my domestic life. I could tell by the look on her face.
‘I have a job,’ I reminded her. ‘And now I’m living in the city too.’
‘You always have an answer, don’t you, Bernd? A still tongue makes a wise head. Have you heard that saying, Bernd?’
I didn’t answer; I just smiled.
But you couldn’t win with Lisl. ‘It struck home did it, my little remark? A nice German girl. Someone who kept your shirts nice, looked after the children and cooked you proper meals.’
‘I was working all night,’ I said. ‘I haven’t shaved yet. I put on this old sweater and came down because I was hungry.’
‘Don’t complain, Bernd. The girl in the kitchen is working as fast as she can.’
‘I know, Tante Lisl.’ I looked around. ‘The hotel is very quiet.’
‘We’ll be full for the Festival,’ she said. ‘The best suite is already booked. We’ll be turning people away, you just see. Will you be here for Christmas?’
‘It seems likely.’
She looked at me, sniffed loudly and reverted to the subject of wives: ‘A warm-blooded German girl would have been better for you. A German girl knows how to keep her man.’
‘I’m happily married,’ I protested.
‘Uggh!’ She challenged my claim with a rude sound. ‘I know all about that,’ she said, pressing a forefinger against the side of her nose in a promise of confidentiality. ‘I know all about your ungarische Hure… Do you think I have not heard about your adventures living with the Gloria woman?’
It was of course a shot in the dark; an artful ploy calculated to make me protest, and in protesting provide her with more information about both Fiona and Gloria, and my relations with them. I suppose she was puzzled that I’d come to Berlin without my wife. I didn’t reply, except to yawn and rub my face wearily.
She didn’t leave it at that: ‘Your Gloria is staying here in town with her new friend Mr Rensselaer. Together. Did you know that?’
‘I don’t think so, Lisl,’ I said patiently.
‘And I say yes. At that flashy new American hotel in Wilmersdorfer Strasse. Red shutters and flower boxes,’ she said disparagingly, as if such trappings were self-evident signs that it would encourage the illicit sharing of bedrooms.
; I smiled.
‘This hotel isn’t good enough for them, I suppose.’
So that was the affront. It wasn’t Gloria or Bret, or the rumour of them sharing a bed, that had annoyed Lisl; it was the idea that they might have preferred another hotel to hers. I didn’t dwell upon it; Lisl loved rumours and she always got them wrong. Soon a tray arrived with broth and Bratwurst and warm potato salad, with a slice of the sort of Roggenbrot that I remembered from my childhood snacks – when I came home from school and helped myself to such good dark bread from the hotel kitchen.
‘What have you done to Werner?’ she said again.
‘Nothing. Where is he?’ I said between mouthfuls of soup.
‘Eat! Eat! Don’t talk to Werner until he’s finished decorating my tree. He’s gone to buy more coloured lights.’
‘What did he say I’d done to him?’
‘Good sausage? I have a new butcher. You should see the Eisbein he sends me. And the Bockwurst: real Berlin style.’ She watched me while I ate some more. ‘Whatever you did to Werner, you’ve upset him.’ Despite her love for me she loved to jolt me with disturbing news. ‘Two wasted lives – you and Werner. What prospects do either of you have?’
‘Werner is making a fortune,’ I said.
‘What’s wrong with your broth? Why haven’t you finished it? I have a new cook; just to do the lunches. He’s a Schwab, a nice boy. Can you taste the goose gravy in it? That’s how he gives it that lovely colour.’ She sniffed. ‘Yes, Werner is always telling me he is doing well. But if he was really doing well would he still be working for you British?’
‘He’s not working for us,’ I said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m Frank’s Deputy.’
‘Eat your bread. Is there too much garlic in the potato salad? Eat it then. Frank’s Deputy? Ummm. That’s not so bad then. Will you get allowances, car and driver, and all the trimmings?’
‘I suppose so.’ I finished the last morsel of potato salad. ‘But the government in London is cutting back.’
‘It’s a family matter.’ I looked up and she met my eyes. ‘Whatever you’ve done to Werner… it’s about your family; he said that it was. It’s none of my business of course, so I don’t expect him to confide in me about it. I told him that. I said, if it’s something concerning only you and Bernd, it’s private. It’s better I don’t know about it.’
‘I can’t imagine what it might be.’
‘I’ve never interfered with you, Bernd. I’ve always let you live your own life in your own way. Even when I could see you were making that terrible mistake…’ She fixed me with a stare and nodded to be sure I understood that this referred to my marriage to Fiona. ‘I never interfered. I never commented. I never criticized. When your father died – God bless his soul – I told him that you would always have a home to come to here. But your life is your own, Bernd. Whatever you and Werner have to discuss, I don’t want to know about it.’
‘I respect that wish, Tante Lisl,’ I said, not without a shade of Schadenfreude. ‘And I’ll see Werner keeps to it.’
Her eyes narrowed. She felt her parental role in my life entitled her to full and frank disclosure, the way all parents feel. ‘He’s back upstairs now, doing the tree. I heard the upstairs door bang. Keep where you are, I’ll send for coffee. It’s better Werner finishes doing the tree first. I’m determined to have the tree decorated and lit up early this Christmas. Trees are so expensive this year, and a Christmassy look brings in casual customers to drink at the bar.’ As I kissed her goodbye she was still complaining that I wouldn’t go and see a doctor. ‘Dr Litzmann is a wonderful doctor; I wouldn’t be here today without him.’
When finally permitted to depart and go upstairs I found extensive decorating under way. Bunches of holly and mistletoe, and golden foil decorations, were arranged on the floor upon sheets of brown wrapping paper. A ten-feet-tall Christmas tree had been erected near the bar at the far end of the saloon, the step-ladder alongside it repeating its shape in shiny alloy, like some futuristic tree by a trendy designer. Heightening this effect, there was a set of coloured fairy-lights, draped over the ladder and winking on and off.
This large fin-de-siècle room was the best-preserved part of Lisl’s lovely old family home. The same panelling and the ceiling could be recognized in many of the old photos that she treasured. One photo in particular stayed in my memory, a photo so full of action that I could almost hear the orchestra. This sepia-tinted grand salon was depicted sometime during the 1920s, with mothers in voluminous gowns and girls in scanty Twenties dresses; elderly men in elegant evening dress and young veterans in carefully tailored uniforms, military and political. The ancient camera’s roller-blind shutter that had made the flowing ball gowns blur had frozen the splayed coat-tails of the whirling men. Fittingly so, for this was the time, and Berlin the place, where old and new Europe began to split apart, and where the Second World War was born.
‘Werner, old pal. Where have you been?’ Only after the golden star was fixed atop the Christmas tree, and it was garlanded in twinkling lights, did Werner stop work, put aside the ladder and go through the formalities. His jet-black hair was long and wavy and he had the discreet tan that the rich folk wear in winter. He was slim and elegant in black pants, patent loafers and a mustard-coloured roll-neck. And when I grabbed his arm I knew I was holding several hundred D-marks’ worth of silky cashmere. Such signs usually proclaimed that Zena was back on the flight-deck, and sitting in the left-hand seat.
‘Bernie. I was trying to reach you in London. It was only when I got Fiona on the line that I found out you were right here in Berlin.’ Werner sat down beside me on the sofa near the bar, plucking at the knees of his trousers to preserve the creases.
‘Where did the tan come from?’
‘Punta,’ he said self-consciously.
‘Oh, Punta,’ I said, as if I was an habitué of Punta del Este in Uruguay, the secret southern hideaway where the jet-set went to get tanned, while hoi polloi pulled on their woollen underwear to face the northern winter.
‘Zena loves it there.’
‘Your tree looks good, Werner.’
He smiled nervously, not sure if I was joshing him. ‘Lisl told you that I was looking for you?’
‘She didn’t say why,’ I said.
‘You didn’t track down George Kosinski in Warsaw?’
‘Not in Warsaw. Not in Switzerland. Not anywhere.’
‘He’s alive.’
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘No, I mean I know he’s alive. Someone I know saw him and recognized him. Very recently.’
I looked at Werner for a moment. It wasn’t a joke; there were some things that Werner never joked about and my work was one of them. ‘And did this someone know what George Kosinski looks like?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Where?’
‘His brother’s house.’
‘I went there.’
‘So I heard,’ said Werner.
‘The bastards. So they were hiding him. I thought they were.’
‘But you didn’t keep trying?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I figured that everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and man-hunting a fugitive brother-in-law might be the right spot for me to blow the whistle.’
‘The Kosinskis outsmarted you, and you’re sore?’
‘Finding George is the easy part,’ I told him. ‘I’m still trying to figure out what he’s doing there.’
‘He’s Polish,’ said Werner.
‘He’s been Polish for a long time. But why should he suddenly up-sticks and rush off to rural Poland in time for winter?’
‘He’s been pestering the DDR people about his wife’s remains, hasn’t he?’
‘If all they wanted to do is return Tessa’s body to him, they could just push it across Potsdamerplatz on a mortuary trolley.’
‘What’s Dicky Cruyer’s theory?’
‘Dicky doesn’t have theories; he just gives ord
ers.’
‘Yes, he’s the Europe supremo in London nowadays isn’t he?’
‘There is a rumour to that effect,’ I said.
‘Will you go back?’
‘To Poland? Not if I can avoid it. Not at this time of year.’
Werner smiled as if I’d amused him. ‘They’ll ask you, Bernie. You can bet a million dollars to an old shirt-button that they’ll send you back there.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘George Kosinski’s behaviour worries them. You worry them. Sending you there with a direct order to bring George back will put you both on the line.’
‘Is that the way you see it?’
‘It’s the way London will see it.’
‘For London read Dicky?’
‘No, not Dicky. You have nothing to fear from Dicky; he’s too lazy, too concerned with his ambitions to spend much time planning your downfall. It’s the back-room boys and the D-G. It’s Uncle Silas talking to Frank Harrington. It’s Bret and… the others.’
‘Were you going to say Fiona?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Werner, rather too emphatically to be convincing. ‘She’s one hundred per cent on your side. She loves you, Bernie.’
‘You said that with wholehearted conviction, Werner.’
He rubbed his face reflectively. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, Bernie, but I was Fiona’s case officer while she was working for the Stasi.’
‘You were?’ I took a grip on the chair so as not to fall to the floor with surprise. ‘I was told that Bret Rensselaer was Fiona’s case officer.’
‘It depends what you call being a case officer,’ said Werner. ‘Can you imagine Bret going across to the other side? Bret couldn’t find his way to Femsehturm without a guide dog.’ Since East Berlin’s TV tower was 365 metres tall this verdict was quite a slur on Bret’s sense of direction.