The Boy Who Followed Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

  Heloise was supposed to ring a doctor at a Paris hospital at ten in regard to her mother. “Merci, chéri.”

  “I have a feeling there’s nothing wrong with your mother.” Tom meant that, because her mother looked very fit. Just then Tom saw that Henri the gardener had arrived—today being neither Tuesday nor Thursday but Friday—and was lazily filling big metal pitchers with rainwater from the tank by the greenhouse. “Henri’s here. That’s nice!”

  “I know.— Tome, there’s nothing dangerous about Hamburg, is there?”

  “No, dear.— Reeves knows that I know about a Buckmaster sale that’s a little like this one in Hamburg. A nice launching place for Billy too. I’ll show him a bit of the city. I never do anything dangerous.” Tom smiled, thinking of shoot-outs, which he considered he had never been in, but he also recalled an evening at Belle Ombre, when a Mafia corpse or two had been lying on the marble floor right here in the living room, oozing blood, which Tom had had to wipe up with Mme. Annette’s sturdy gray floor rags. Heloise hadn’t seen that. Not a shoot-out, anyway. The Mafiosi had had guns, but Tom had bashed one over the head with a piece of firewood. Tom did not like to remember that.

  Tom telephoned Roissy from his room, and learned that there were seats available on an Air France flight taking off at 3:45 p.m. that afternoon. He reserved a place for Benjamin Andrews, the ticket to be picked up at the airport. He then drove to Moret and bought his round-trip ticket in his own name. When he came back, he informed Frank. They would leave the house around one o’clock for Roissy.

  Tom was glad that Heloise did not ask for Reeve’s telephone number in Hamburg. On some other occasion, Tom had certainly given it to her, but maybe she had mislaid it. If she found it and rang Reeves, it would be awkward, so Tom thought he should telephone Reeves once he got to Berlin, but somehow Tom didn’t want to do it now. Frank was packing. And Tom was casting an eye over his house as if it were a ship he would soon abandon, although the house was in good hands with Mme. Annette. Only three or four days? That was nothing. Tom had thought of taking the Renault and leaving it at the Roissy garage, but Heloise wanted to drive them or at least accompany them in the Mercedes, which was now running well. So Tom drove the Mercedes to Roissy–Charles de Gaulle Airport, and thought how friendly and convenient Orly airport had been a year or so ago, between Villeperce and Paris, until they opened the north-of-Paris Roissy and routed everything from there, even flights to London.

  “Heloise—I thank you for putting me up so many days,” Frank said in French.

  “A pleasure, Billy! And you have been a help to us—in the garden and in the house. I wish you luck!” She extended her hand through the car’s open window, and rather to Tom’s surprise she kissed Frank on both cheeks as he bent toward her.

  Frank grinned, embarrassed.

  Heloise drove off, and Tom and Frank went into the terminus with their luggage. Heloise’s affectionate good-bye reminded Tom that she had never asked him what he was paying the boy for his work. Nothing. Tom was sure the boy would not have accepted anything. Tom had given the boy five thousand francs this morning, the maximum one was allowed to take out of France, and Tom had the same amount himself, though he had not as yet ever been searched by the French on departure. If they should run out in Berlin, which was unlikely, Tom could wire for money from a bank in Zurich. Now he told Frank to go and buy his ticket at the Air France counter.

  “Benjamin Andrews, flight seven-eight-nine,” Tom reminded him, “and on the plane we won’t sit together. Don’t look at me. See you in Düsseldorf maybe, otherwise Berlin.” He started for the luggage check-in, then found himself lingering to see if Frank was going to get his ticket without difficulty. One or two people were ahead of Frank, then the boy was at the counter, and Tom saw from the girl’s scribbling and the money exchange that all was well.

  Tom checked in his suitcase, then proceeded to one of the upward sloping escalators which eased him toward gate number six. These gates, called simply gates in England or anywhere else, were here absurdly labeled “Satellites,” as if they were somehow detached from and whirling around the airport proper. Tom lit a cigarette in the last hall where one could smoke, and looked over his fellow passengers, nearly all men, one concealed behind a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine already. Tom was among the first to board. He did not look back to see if Frank had even come into the lounge. Tom settled himself in his smoking-section seat, half closed his eyes, and glanced at the passengers bumping up the aisle with attaché cases, but he did not see Frank.

  At Düsseldorf, the passengers were told they could leave their hand luggage on board, but everyone had to get off. Here they were herded like sheep toward an unseen destination, but Tom had been here once before, and knew they were destined for nothing worse than a passport checking and stamping.

  Then came a small waiting area to which they were also herded, and Tom saw Frank negotiating for a stamp for his letter to Teresa. Tom had forgotten to give the boy some of the German paper money and coins which Tom had in his pocket, left over from earlier trips, but the German woman was smiling now, apparently accepting Frank’s French money, and the letter changed hands. Tom boarded the plane for Berlin.

  Tom had said to Frank, “You’ll love the Berlin-Tegel airport.” Tom liked it, because it looked like an airport of human size: no frills, no escalators, triple levels, or eye-dazzling chromium, just a mostly yellowish-painted reception hall with a round bar-café counter in the center, and a single WC in evidence without a kilometer’s walk to it. Near the circular refreshment counter Tom lingered with his suitcase, and gave Frank a nod when he saw him approaching, but Frank was evidently so dutifully obeying orders that he did not look at Tom, and Tom had to intercept him.

  “Fancy seeing you here!” said Tom.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said Frank, smiling.

  The forty or so passengers who had debarked at Berlin seemed to have dwindled to less than a dozen now, which was another treat to the eye.

  “I’ll see about a hotel room,” Tom said. “Wait here with the luggage.” Tom went to a telephone booth a few yards away, looked up the number of the Hotel Franke in his business address book, and dialed it. Tom had once visited an acquaintance at this middle-category hotel, and had noted its address for possible future use. Yes, they had two rooms to offer, said the Hotel Franke, and Tom booked them under his name, and said he would be arriving in about half an hour. The few persons left in the homey-looking terminus appeared so innocuous to Tom that he risked a taxi together with the boy.

  Their destination was the Albrecht-Achillesstrasse off the Kurfürstendamm. They rode at first through what seemed kilometers of flat plains, past warehouses, fields and barns, then the city began to show itself in a few very new-looking buildings, beige and cream near-skyscrapers, a bit of chrome on aerial-like spires. They were approaching from the north. Tom slowly and rather uncomfortably became aware of the pocketlike, islandlike entity called West Berlin, surrounded by Soviet-controlled territory. Well, they were within the Wall, and protected at least for the nonce by French, American, and British soldiers. The one jagged, not new edifice made Tom’s heart leap, rather to his own surprise.

  “That’s the Gedächtniskirche!” Tom said to Frank with almost proprietary pride. “Very important landmark. Bombed, as you see, but they let it stand the way it was.”

  Frank was looking out the open window, rapt, almost as if it were Venice, Tom thought, and in its way Berlin was just as unique.

  The broken, reddish-brown tower of the Gedächtniskirche passed by them on their left, then Tom said, “All this was flattened around here—what you’re looking at. That’s why everything looks so new now.”

  “Ja, and kaputt it was!” said the middle-aged driver in German. “You are tourists? Just here for pleasure?”

  “Yes,” said Tom, pleased that the driver wanted to chat. “How’s the weather?”

  “Yesterday rain—today like this.”

  It was overc
ast, but not raining. They sped along the Kurfürstendamm, and halted for a red light at Lehninplatz.

  “Look how new all these shops are,” Tom said to Frank. “I’m really not mad about the Ku’damm.” He remembered his first trip to Berlin, alone, when he had walked up and down the long straight Kurfürstendamm, vainly trying to sense an atmosphere which one couldn’t get from pretty shopwindows, chrome and glass pavement booths that displayed porcelain and wristwatches and handbags. Kreuzberg, the slummy old section of Berlin, now so full of Turkish workers, had more personality.

  The driver made a left turn into Albrecht-Achillesstrasse, past a corner pizzeria which Tom remembered, then past a supermarket, now closed, on the right. The Hotel Franke stood on the left around a little curve in the street. Tom paid the driver with some of his leftover marks, of which he had nearly six hundred.

  They filled out little white cards that the receptionist gave them, and both consulted their passports for the correct numbers. Their rooms were on the same floor, but not adjacent. Tom had not wanted to go to the more elegant Hotel Palace near the Gedächtniskirche, because he had stayed there once before, and thought that for some reason they might remember him, and notice that he was with a teenaged boy not related to him. Just what anybody would make of that, even also at the Hotel Franke, Tom didn’t care, but he thought a modest hotel like the Franke less apt to recognize Frank Pierson.

  Tom hung up a pair of trousers, pulled the bedcover back, and tossed his pajamas onto the white, button-sheeted, feather-filled top item, which served both as blanket and sheet, a German institution that Tom knew of yore. From his window he had a thoroughly dull view of a grayish court, of another six-story cement building set at an angle, and a couple of distant treetops. Tom felt inexplicably happy suddenly, felt a sense of freedom, maybe illusory. He stuck his passport case with his French francs in it at the bottom of his suitcase, closed the suitcase lid, and went out and locked his door. He had told Frank he would pick him up in five minutes. Tom knocked on Frank’s door.

  “Tom?— Come in.”

  “Ben!” said Tom, smiling. “How are things?”

  “Look at this crazy bed!”

  They both suddenly laughed out loud. Frank had also pulled the bedcover back and laid his pajamas on the buttoned feather blanket.

  “Let’s go out and take a walk. Where’re those two passports?” Tom made sure that the boy’s new passport was out of sight, found Johnny’s passport in the suitcase, and put it in an envelope from the writing table drawer. This he stuck at the bottom of the boy’s suitcase. “You don’t want to whip out the wrong one.” Tom wished they had burned Johnny’s passport at Belle Ombre, since Johnny must have had to acquire a new one anyway.

  They went out and could have taken the stairs, but Frank wanted to see the elevator again. He looked as happy as Tom felt. Why, Tom wondered.

  “Press E. That’s the Erdgeschoss.”

  They left their keys, went out, and turned right toward the Kurfürstendamm. Frank stared at everything, even at a dachshund being aired. Tom proposed a beer at the corner pizzeria. Here they bought chits and queued up at a counter for beer only, then carried their big mugs to the only partly free table, where two girls were eating pizzas. With a nod, they gave permission for Tom and the boy to sit down.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go to Charlottenburg,” Tom said. “Museums there and a beautiful park too. Then there’s the Tiergarten.” And there was tonight. Lots of places to go to in Berlin at night. Tom looked at the boy’s cheek and saw that the mole was covered. “Keep up the good work,” Tom said, pointing to his own cheek.

  By midnight or a little after, they were at Romy Haag’s, and Frank was a bit drunk on three or four more beers. Frank had won a toy bear at a throwing-game stall outside a beerhall, and Tom was now carrying the little brown bear, the symbol of Berlin. Tom had been to Romy Haag’s on his last visit to Berlin. It was a bar-disco, slightly touristy, and with a late show of transvestites.

  “Why don’t you dance?” Tom said to Frank. “Ask one of these to dance.” Tom meant the two girls seated on stools at the bar with their drinks in front of them, but with their eyes on the dance floor over which a gray sphere kept turning. Spotted lights, shadows and white, played slowly over the walls. The rotating gray object, no bigger than a beachball and quite ugly per se, looked like a relic of the Thirties, evocative of pre-Hitler Berlin, and strangely fascinating to the eye.

  Frank squirmed as if he hadn’t the courage to approach the girls. He and Tom were standing at the bar.

  “Not prostitutes,” Tom added over the noise of the music.

  Frank went off to the toilet near the door. When the boy came back, he walked past Tom and went on to the dance floor where Tom for a few minutes lost sight of him, and then saw him dancing with a blonde girl under the revolving sphere, along with a dozen other couples and maybe a few singles. Tom smiled. Frank was jumping up and down, having fun. The music was nonstop, but Frank came back after a couple of minutes, triumphant.

  “I thought you’d think I was a coward if I didn’t ask a girl to dance!” Frank said.

  “Nice girls?”

  “Oh, very! Pretty! Except that she was chewing gum. I said ‘Guten Abend’ and I even said ‘Ich liebe dich’ but I only know that from songs. I think she thought I was pissed. She laughed, anyway!”

  He certainly was pissed, and Tom steadied him by one arm so he could slide a leg over a stool. “Don’t drink the rest of that beer, if you don’t want it.”

  A roll of drums heralded the floorshow. Three sturdy men pranced out in floor-length, ruffled dresses of pink, yellow, and white, in broad-brimmed flowered hats, and with huge plastic breasts entirely exposed and sporting red nipples. Enthusiastic applause! They sang something from Madame Butterfly, and then came several skits of which Tom understood barely half, but which the spectators seemed to appreciate.

  “They are funny to look at!” Frank roared into Tom’s ear.

  The muscular trio wound up with “Das ist die Berliner Luft,” flouncing their skirts and kicking high, as posies from the audience showered upon them.

  Frank clapped and shouted “Bravo!— Bravi!” and nearly fell off his stool.

  A few minutes later, Tom was walking arm in arm with the boy—mainly to keep Frank upright—along a darkish pavement, which however at half past two in the morning still had several pedestrians.

  “What’s that?” Frank asked, seeing a pair in strange costume approaching.

  They seemed to be a man and woman, the man in harlequin tights and a hat with pointed brim fore and aft, while the woman resembled a walking playing card, and on closer inspection Tom saw that she was the ace of clubs. “Probably just come from a party,” Tom said, “or going to one.” Tom had noticed before in Berlin that people liked to change their clothing from one extreme to another, even disguise themselves. “It’s a who-am-I game,” Tom said. “The whole city’s like this.” Tom could have gone on. The city of Berlin was bizarre enough, artificial enough—at least in its political status—and so maybe its citizens attempted to outdo it sometimes in their dress and behavior. It was also a way for Berliners to say, “We exist!” But Tom was in no mood to get his thoughts together. He said only, “To think it’s surrounded by these boring Russians with no sense of humor at all!”

  “Hey, Tom, can we take a look at East Berlin? I’d love to see that!”

  Tom clutched the little Berlin bear, and tried to think of any peril there for Frank, and couldn’t. “Sure. They’re more interested in taking a few DM off their visitors than in knowing who the visitors are.— There’s a taxi! Let’s get it!”

  10

  Tom telephoned Frank from his room the next morning at nine. How was Ben feeling?

  “All right, thank you. I woke up just two minutes ago.”

  “I’ll order breakfast for us in my room, so come over. Four fourteen. And lock your door when you go out.”

  Tom had checked around 3 a.m., when they had ret
urned to the hotel, to see if his passports were still in his suitcase, and they had been.

  Over breakfast, Tom suggested Charlottenburg, followed by East Berlin, and then the West Berlin zoo, if they had energy left. He gave the boy an item from the London Sunday Times by Frank Giles, which Tom had cut out and carefully kept, because it told a lot about Berlin in few words. “Is Berlin Split Forever?” was its title. Frank read it as he ate toast and marmalade, and Tom said it didn’t matter if he got butter on the cutting, because he had had it so long.

  “Only fifty miles from the Polish border!” said Frank in a tone of wonder. “And—ninety-three thousand Soviet troops within twenty miles of—the suburbs of Berlin.” Then Frank looked at Tom and said, “Why’re they so worried about Berlin? All this Wall stuff.”

  Tom was enjoying his coffee and did not want to embark upon a lecture. Maybe the reality would sink into Frank today. “The Wall goes all the way up and down Germany, not just Berlin. The Berlin Wall is talked about the most because it surrounds West Berlin, but the Wall goes down to Poland and Romania too. You’ll see it—today. And maybe tomorrow we’ll take a taxi out to the Glienicker-Brücke, where they exchange prisoners sometimes, West and East. I mean spies, really. They even divide the river there, you can see a wire above the surface dividing the river down the middle.” At least some of it was sinking in. Tom thought, because the boy perused the article thoroughly. It explained the triple military occupation or control of Berlin by English, French, and American troops, which helped to explain (but not really to Tom, who always felt that something was just out of his grasp in regard to Berlin) why the German airline Lufthansa could not land at Berlin-Tegel airport. Berlin was artificial, something special, not even a part of West Germany, and perhaps it didn’t even wish to be, since Berliners had always taken a pride in being Berliners.