The Russian Passenger

by Gunter Ohnemus

  Yes, I said. My name is Dieter Müller.

  I had to risk that. I couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain, of course, but Dieter Müller was a pretty common name. They did have a Dieter Müller. Two of them, in fact.

  Herr Müller from Sonthofen or from Nuremberg? asked the voice on the phone.

  Sonthofen, I said quickly. They had a double room vacant but were prepared to charge me for a single. Very good.

  The voice said: It’s been quite a while since your last visit.

  Saturday

  It’s been quite a while since your last visit, the receptionist said when she’d located me in the computer.

  Yes, I said, more’s the pity. I always enjoy staying here.

  Having parked in the courtyard, I took our bags upstairs. Then I went to fetch Sonia, who was waiting for me at a café. We returned to the hotel and went up in the lift together. I showed Sonia my room. The bed was a double, so it wouldn’t be too noticeable if two people slept in it.

  Herr Müller from Sonthofen is staying here on his own, I told her. Dieter Müller. Nobody knows a woman is staying here too.

  So this is our unofficial room?

  Yes, I said. We won’t move into the official one till tomorrow.

  After we’d showered and had a bit of a rest we went for a stroll. Sonia was delighted with Passau. It may be small, she said, but I could walk around here for ever. It’s pretty and romantic and Italianate, and it’s something else as well. I’m not sure, but I think it smells of you.

  Darkness had fallen by the time we sat down at one of the tables outside an Italian restaurant in Residenzplatz. It was still warm, and we were very tired and untalkative. I felt like dissolving into the warm summer air. A stranger would probably have taken us for a couple of long standing.

  Sonia said: Maybe this is where we ought to buy a hotel or a boarding house.

  No, I told her. Only people travelling under false names stay here.

  We slept extremely well in Dieter Müller’s room. The next morning we breakfasted at a café, so that we would be seen in the hotel by as few people as possible. After that we bought two largish holdalls, one of which would easily fit inside the other. Then we walked to the station, took a taxi back into town, and checked into our official hotel. Later we took one of the bags back to the first hotel.

  Sonia had called the day before and booked the room in the name of Calabrese, Patrizia Calabrese being the name on her Italian passport.

  She filled in the form for both of us.

  Oh, she said, the single room beside ours – could you reserve it? Our friend Signore Schmitz may not get here until late tonight. We can take the key with us and have a look at the room. It’ll be paid for come what may.

  The man at the reception desk gave us a friendly smile. We rode the lift up to the third floor and inspected both rooms, then deposited our empty bags in the double room. It was around eleven in the morning by now. I went into the single room and called Aliosha’s mobile number.

  A man’s voice answered, naturally. I said I wanted to speak to Aliosha.

  Who is it?

  A friend of Sonia’s, I said.

  Aliosha isn’t here, said the voice.

  Oh, I said. You mean he’s lent his mobile to someone?

  No answer.

  All right, I said, I’ll call again in half an hour.

  Half an hour later the same voice answered.

  Aliosha? I said.

  Speaking.

  I’m a friend of Sonia’s.

  So I already gathered.

  You can have all the money if you let us go, Sonia and me.

  How much money are we talking about?

  Almost exactly four million dollars.

  And how do I get hold of it? he asked.

  I suggested we meet in Passau the following night.

  Ah, a frontier town, he said. There was a note of triumph in his voice. From the sound of it, he’d just had a bright idea.

  Tomorrow evening at half past seven, I said. The rowing club beside the Inn. In the car park of the club, and come alone. We’ll both come alone.

  I explained how to get there and we hung up. I rejoined Sonia in the double room. Half past seven tomorrow evening, I told her. We’ve got masses of time.

  It was a fine, warm day. Sonia and I strolled through the town like two tourists with plenty of time to spare. We really did have plenty of time. We were also plenty scared, but we could hardly wait for something to happen. I wondered if I’d called Aliosha too soon and enabled him to be too well-prepared, but Sonia said he would never have agreed to an earlier meeting. My only fear was that he or some of his people would get to Passau early and spot us somewhere.

  In that case, said Sonia, we’ll simply drive out into the countryside tomorrow. Till the balloon goes up.

  She was pretty sure Aliosha wouldn’t come alone. He would bring a driver at the very least, in case they had to make a quick getaway, and he would probably have the exit roads watched. Mainly the roads into Austria and, of course, the B12, which leads to the Czech Republic. Still, said Sonia, what does it matter? They won’t assign more than one car to each route. The traffic here is heavy, and they don’t know what sort of car we’re driving. In my mind’s eye I saw a long convoy of green BMWs making for southern Germany.

  We went into the cathedral and spent a long time sitting side by side in a pew. I saw that Sonia was praying. Strange, I thought. A mafiosa praying before the showdown. Her expression was very grave, but she smiled when she noticed I was watching her. We’re the good guys, she said, and later, when we were outside: It must be nice to grow up in a town like this. Romantic and adventurous.

  It was more adventurous in the old days, I said.

  And romantic? she said. I bet you knew a lot of girls. Not as many as all that, I told her. For romance I went to America. They sent me to the States for that. I made a perfect knight errant.

  Sonia laughed, but what I’d said was true. Fate had ordained that I should go to America at the age of sixteen – that I should meet Susannah Timmerman and then, a few years later, Ellen. I didn’t realize that until later on, when I was already living with Ellen, because one probably only ever sees these things after the event. I was surrounded by an invisible cordon that only other people saw or sensed. I myself was unaware of it. When we were between twelve and fifteen my friends took care not to tell any dirty jokes in my hearing (I heard them just the same), and they never willingly lent me the smutty books that passed from hand to hand. It was as if I were some kind of Parzival who had to be protected from certain things. I still managed to get hold of the smutty books, of course, and I found them quite arousing.

  The books and dirty jokes penetrated this invisible cordon, but the cordon persisted. I could do things no one else could, and I never stopped to think whether I could afford to do them or not. When we were twelve or thirteen we went off to Scout camp during the summer holidays. By train. Standing there on the platform with all the other boys, I felt incredibly happy because I was going away on my own for the very first time, and because I would be spending four whole weeks with my best friend, an ocean of time so boundless that the end was out of sight, and all at once I turned round – in front of all those boys on the platform – and gave my friend a kiss. He was pretty embarrassed, no doubt, and may even have blushed. I don’t remember, but I do know that no one said a word. None of the boys on the platform looked shocked or tittered. Those youngsters, who could detect some gay connotation in a pencil point, found it quite natural that I should kiss my best friend in public. It probably never even occurred to them that there was anything exceptional about it. All they sensed was that cordon I myself was never aware of and never sensed, whose existence is apparent to me only now.

  Later on, when we were doing play-reading at school, I always had to take the female parts because there were no girls in our class. I had a pretty good speaking voice. I played Juliet and Maria Stuart and Elektra and Emilia Galotti, an
d when the teacher was dishing out parts a few boys would always say my name when a female role came up. I kept mum and never put my hand up. I knew I would get the parts anyway, and I wanted to get them because I thought the women far more interesting than the men. It wasn’t that I found the women’s roles so exceptionally interesting, I simply found it exciting to be a woman for an hour or two. Or half a woman. Only female roles penetrated my cordon. When we were fifteen my friends and I did boxing for a while, maybe nine months or so. It surprised us all that you could punch a friend in the face, even if you were wearing boxing gloves – that you could be hell bent on knocking him out but afterwards you’d drape an arm round his shoulders and everything was the way it had been before. That applied to everyone except my best friend. I didn’t want him to lose, least of all to me, but I didn’t want to be thrashed by him either, so I often gave up and lost by a technical KO. He soon caught on, so after that we lost in turn, always by a technical KO, and we managed it so cleverly that the others didn’t notice. We never talked about it. We simply lost in accordance with some indeterminate arrangement, each time by a technical KO.

  Monday

  You must tell me about it sometime, said Sonia. I’m sure it makes an interesting story, your adventures as a knight errant in America.

  We went into a small church belonging to a school. A girls’ school. It now takes boys as well, I think, but it used to be for girls only. My grandmother went to it, and so did Tess. My grandmother always travelled there by horse-drawn carriage when the holidays were over, and when term was over and the next holidays began she was collected the same way. Whenever I pass the school (and I pass it whenever I’m in the town), I see my grandmother getting out of the carriage. She’s all light and airy, almost invisible, and the carriage and horses are also light and airy, but I always see them, clear as can be, and my grandmother getting out of the carriage. She was at the school nearly a hundred years ago, but she still turns up there. I stand on the corner, and the carriage drives up, and everything is the way it was a hundred years ago.

  Yes, I always pass that school and I always go into that little church. It’s almost oriental, Sonia whispered when we were standing inside. Syrian, perhaps. Or like a church in Jerusalem. We stood there and became all slender and white and light and cool, like the church. Suddenly Sonia said: Hey, there’s a Russian story here.

  Affixed to the grille that separated the choir from the nave was a sheet of cardboard bearing photographs of a group of children taking their first Communion. One of the girls was black. Beneath the photographs was this Russian story. Sonia read it to me in a low voice. It was about hell and heaven, and it went something like this: A rabbi once asked God to show him hell, and God ushered him into a room full of tables laden with delicious food, and the people in the room were trying to eat it with very long spoons. But the spoons were too long, so they couldn’t eat all this wonderful fare. They couldn’t get the spoons into their mouths. That was hell. Then God escorted the rabbi to heaven. It looked exactly like hell. The same food and the same long, useless spoons. The only difference was, the people in heaven were feeding each other.

  Socialist realism, I said to Sonia as we emerged from the church.

  Later we sat under a sun umbrella outside an ice-cream parlour and consumed ices with long-handled spoons. Suddenly Sonia held out her spoon and I licked it clean. Then I fed her some ice cream with my own spoon. Then it was her turn again, and so it went on until each of us had finished off the other’s ice. The people who saw us must have thought we were a courting couple.

  Socialist realism, Sonia said.

  Quite right, I said. There’s no ice in hell.

  Late that afternoon we went to the cemetery. I’d really wanted to go alone, but Sonia insisted on coming too. We belong together, Harry, she said. Whether you like it or not, we’re in this business together. Your business is my business, and vice versa.

  We stood beside my family plot for a long time. Three people lay buried there. My grandfather. My grandmother. My mother. Three of the people who had made me – people without whom I would have been quite a different person. The same went for another three. Susannah. Ellen. Jessie. Three women and only one man. You were made for women, my dear boy, my mother had told me. You were made for love, and now I was standing there beside Sonia, for whom I hadn’t been made. We weren’t in love, nor did we think we were, but we were in this business together.

  In a low voice, Sonia read out my mother’s name and what was written beneath it: Tessa Willemer. Born 4 July 1922. Died 2 December 1968.

  It was cold then, she said. Hard digging, right?

  Yes, I said.

  She wasn’t old. Forty-six, said Sonia. Was she ill?

  Yes, I said, and a voice inside my head said: What do you think of me now, Tess? I’ve killed two men and I may well kill another, or he me. What do you think of me now?

  Tess wasn’t the kind of mother who blackmails her children with the imminence of her death and demands constant consideration and affection. She had only once said she wouldn’t make fifty. That had been many years ago, when she told me that at fifty a good Buddhist leaves all his belongings behind and goes roaming. And now I was fifty-two, two, six years older than Tess had been, and I had gone roaming, though not in the way we’d envisioned.

  I only had one really big row with Tess, and that was when I was due to do my national service. Tess intervened with the draft board because she wanted to stop me going into the air force. My ambition was to be a pilot, a Starfighter pilot, but Tess sent the board some medical certificates which stated that I might have an epileptic fit at any moment.

  I was furious when she told me. I yelled at her, but she said, very quietly: I don’t want my child shooting other people. Anyway, so many Starfighters are crashing, they won’t risk having one of their expensive planes downed by an epileptic fit. The damned disease must be good for something.

  I didn’t speak to her for a week. And now I was standing over her grave and I’d shot two men.

  That was the only time Tess interfered in my life. She wasn’t one of those mothers for whom the Oedipus complex was invented, not one of those mother-animals who forge so close a bond with their children, especially their sons and more especially their first-born and only sons, that the poor things don’t stand a chance. They inevitably grow up into machos who hate and despise women – all women except, of course, for protective mother-animals. Those mothers strive, through their sons, to gain that control over the world which the fathers deny them. The unfortunate sons not only have to keep their fathers in check but may not grant any other woman a place in their life – apart, perhaps, with certain limitations, from the next mother. Your own mother and the mother of your children, no one else.

  Tess knew all this. She had studied the people round her – studied them closely throughout her short, diseased life. One night at a party she indicated a very good-looking blonde with a sardonic little jerk of her chin. She said: That woman over there told me recently that her son was the kind of man she’d always dreamed of having for a lover. He’s only just turned twelve. What a shame.

  Tuesday

  Your father? Sonia asked me at the cemetery.

  Dead, I said.

  You said that as if he’d never been alive.

  It’s true, more or less.

  Your father, Tess told me once, was one of those men who think their wife’s problems, their wife’s life, can be dealt with in five minutes flat. He married the wrong woman, that’s all. He was made for someone more stupid. There are as many stupid women as men. It’s just that they don’t always get together, which is a pity. It was practical, of course, marrying a wealthy heiress. I paid him off when you were a year old. He got a good deal, in my opinion.

  That was almost all my mother ever told me about my father.

  Harry, Sonia said at the cemetery, why did you come to this town? Because you want to die here?

  Because I’d like to be buried he
re, I said. It’s more practical. Not so far to go on Judgement Day.

  She laughed.

  Besides, I said, we’re going to beat Aliosha.

  How will that help us? she said, and her eyes said: We all have to die in the end, don’t be frightened.

  That night we again had dinner in Residenzplatz. Water splashed in the fountain and the sky resembled a vast, dark blue tent sheltering the entire world. We sat there for a long time after the meal, drinking wine.

  I like you, Sonia Kovalevskaya, I said at some stage. I mean, I like you quite a lot because we aren’t in love and don’t think we are.

  That’s a very pleasant thought, she said, and her eyes said: What will have happened by this time tomorrow?

  On the way back Sonia paused outside a building in the old quarter of the town. Not a particularly beautiful building or a particularly beautiful façade. The door was its only striking feature. I think Sonia lingered outside because of the door, not the building itself. It was an old, round-arched iron door. The metal was pitted, possibly centuries old, and looked rusty, although one couldn’t see for sure in the gloom. We stood there for a minute, perhaps, and were about to walk on when I grasped the handle and turned it. The door swung open.

  We found ourselves in a dark passage. I pressed a switch. The dim light was really just another form of darkness. We walked along the passage and across a big, oblong trapdoor to some stairs. Looking up, we saw a stairwell enclosed by arches and, on one side, the huge round-arched window that must have illuminated it in the daytime.

  Sonia said: These iron banisters look as if they were gilded at one time. They must have been very wealthy people. Very powerful people.

  We climbed the stairs until we came to a white grille. That was as far as we ventured. Back downstairs again we walked further along the passage, deeper and deeper into the building. We passed some large latticework gates beyond which lay storerooms of some kind. At one point we came across a refuse bin with spiral fly-papers suspended above it. We looked down into a dark courtyard, then pressed another switch and climbed another flight of stairs. There were doors and passages everywhere, all leading to other doors. The entire building was a town in its own right. It was silent as the grave, too – not a sound to be heard. Sonia took my hand and whispered what she’d been whispering all the time: This is wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a whole town you could get lost in!