Gifford rocked back and forth behind his desk. In the shadowy light of the desk lamp he lowered his eyelids. McEwen wanted reports, and for that he needed Sturm. “It’s true,” Gifford said slowly to Sturm. “He changes appearances. Sometimes he looks harmless, then he’s distant, then he manages to seem like…well…a simpleton. It doesn’t mean he’s spooky. Look upon it as a kind of charm.”
“Charm?” protested Sturm. “He’s got all the charm of a worn-out running shoe.”
“It might look like that, but there’s more to him than meets the eye. Let’s not forget, you don’t get to be consul without climbing over the backs of decent people. Do you get the impression he’s done that? No. That proves he isn’t what he seems.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. All I’m saying is, I’ll do the driving.”
“You have to keep an eye on him, Sturm. We’re small. It’s family. We’re responsible for each other. We have to work together.”
Sturm was obstinate. “He’s not in danger. I am. I’m getting close to the edge. Also, I don’t like walking. If I did, I’d be a postman.”
The administrator stopped rocking. “Very well,” he said harshly. “It can’t be forced. Shouldn’t be. But I’ll need a log of the places you drive him.”
Sturm stiffened with indignation. Not in thirty years of chauffeuring Lord Halcourt had he been confronted with anything so humiliating. “I’ve got the feeling someone’s walking on my tie,” he said. “I already keep a log. I submit it at the end of every month. What do you want, twice a month?”
“Give it to me weekly for a while.”
Sturm stood up, walked out and slammed a door at the far end of the corridor.
Gifford was irritated. Mostly with himself. He shouldn’t have made the remark about the car log. It was the pressure. It was coming from all sides. He was having to move fast. The opportunity he had was narrow, but the land beyond vast. He had to give it all his time. Damn unwanted problems on the flanks. Damn Sturm for falling out, just as he was having to focus on the main game. Each day he was out, inspecting villas, making offers, seeking offers on the very properties he just made offers on.
The go-ahead from headquarters got things started. The message, more or less as he had proposed to McEwen, actually made the circuit and wound its way back to Berlin. Handlers somewhere had done a good job of making it sound routine. The order was to the point and the acronym of authorization from someone senior more than convincing. Acquisition of residence approved. Gifford to explore market and iron out details with headquarters directly. With this, Gifford plunged in. It took a few weeks to develop momentum, but good villas were in demand. With the Wall down everyone was buying for the future. Soon he was riding the rising market. He bought and sold as fast as he could, with the diplomatic seal providing lubrication. Fifty thousand in profits here, a hundred there. The kitty grew. His share – he deemed a straight one-third was fair – he set aside. As the consul was propelled towards having an official residence, the administrator was amassing modest wealth.
But Sturm wasn’t the only problem. There were complaints at home about the time he spent at the office. Frieda needed delicate handling, so Gifford told her it would soon be diamond time. “Oh, Giffy,” Frieda sighed. “Can I trust you? You’ve made so many promises.” Earl’s close set eyes undressed her with ferocity. “After the diamonds there will be a Mercedes,” he said brutally and grabbed his wife.
And there was McEwen who was pressing all the time for information.
Feeding McEwen, satisfying Frieda, deploying Sturm, cultivating the confidence of the consul, acquiring computers for the office, flipping deals on houses – Gifford felt driven. Still, after years of soldiering without profit, it was gratifying that his time was finally worth money. He plunged back into the real estate bulletins piled up on his desk.
Damn Sturm for not playing and damn Frieda, for phoning every night, asking when he would be home. I love you Frieda. I love each square inch of you. I’ve always told you: you’ll live like a queen. But bear with me. Your Giffy needs a little more time to apply his talent.
THE WILDERESS YEARS
Tony Hanbury’s attempt to erase the Savignyplatz period from existence by filling a suitcase with some clothes, lugging it down four flights of stairs and dashing to the railway station, turned out to be a dismal failure. The experiment in homemaking had branded him, and like all brandings it would be with him forever. As for the impact of his act on Sabine, he never fully realized the extent of the devastation.
She comes home from a university lecture with a shopping bag of things for dinner. Inside the front door she yells, Hallo, ich bin’s! I’m home! and is surprised there is no answer. The flat is orderly. She notices first that both pairs of his shoes are gone, then that the leather jacket isn’t hanging where it ought to. Only in the bedroom, tidy as always, where she discovers the closet is half-empty, does shock begin to hit. She rushes into the living room. Everything normal. Breathing hard she bursts into the kitchen and finds a note: I have to go back. I have no choice. Please, please forgive me. The rent is paid. The stereo is yours. Sabine reads it twice. Her heart ruptures. Whimpering she sinks to the floor.
Throughout the night and into the morning, her face streaked with tears, she feels despair. She searches for reasons, tries to find the grounds that tell her none of this is so. The sun coming up brings hatred. With a hammer she hacks at the stereo. The turntable is quickly smashed; the amplifier and speakers withstand repeated blows, but eventually they break too.
On the train and plane, Hanbury mostly stares out windows. He has difficulty ordering his thoughts. Were he a cynic, he’d be convincing himself Savignyplatz was one of life’s pleasant interludes. But he is not a cynic. Were he a romantic, sensitive to others, he’d be detesting himself. But he’s not a romantic either. Throughout the trip, he experiences something else – incertitude. Did he do the right thing? Could he have done it better? He isn’t sure. He knows if he had stayed to talk it through, Sabine would have convinced him not to leave. That would have caused a huge mistake – of the kind he saw up close when he was being raised. But had he been told as he travelled that his stereo was being savagely dismembered, he wouldn’t have known what to say. And if someone had whispered that Sabine was also breaking up into pieces, ones not easily reassembled, an empty look would have settled on his face. He had no inkling then, nor in the years that followed, that the Savignyplatz experiment, even after Werner Schwartz had come onto the scene, would continue to be Sabine’s deep abomination.
What did Tony Hanbury do during that time, while Sabine hated?
After scampering back across the Atlantic he spent time looking for a job, wrote an exam, attended an interview and accepted an offer from the Service. The Service, Hanbury considered, had a reassuring feel – of being a permanent hideaway. And it provided insurance against risks such as befell him in Berlin. After all, should things ever get sticky, as on Savignyplatz, an assignment to some distant place would never be far off. His first Service job was in the library – the Abbey – a quiet realm, not greatly different from what he thought such medieval hideaways might have been. In fact, what monks did and what he had to do was roughly comparable. Whereas they spent months hand-copying manuscripts, Hanbury took the overnight cables from the four corners of the world to retool them into a few tight paragraphs. This product served the high priest. Each morning, summaries of the world’s great events had to be ready for him on his desk. For almost a year the novitiate laboured from two in the morning until just after the high priest’s working day began, with the benefit of going home when everyone else was jostling to get in. His new stereo was a step down from the one in Berlin, the bedsit was less comfortable than the apartment he shared with Sabine, and Bronson Avenue didn’t hold a candle to Savignyplatz as a place for observing interesting people, but in his monkish existence Hanbury was not unhappy. He had spare time, which he devoted to listening to music.
As Anthony Hanbury was be
ing rewarded for his Abbey diligence – by being assigned as vice-consul to San Francisco – Sabine Müller was turning a new page too.
“You’re quiet,” were the first words Werner directed at Sabine, but she ignored him. They were walking down a hallway after a history seminar. She suddenly took a side door which opened to the street. “Until next week,” he called after her. Sabine didn’t say much in the seminars, whereas Werner Schwartz spoke up all the time. Outside the classroom she was glacial. He tried various topics, but Sabine would depart quickly, wordlessly. He became an expert at watching her walk away. Delicate hair, fragile shoulders, a hint of a dancing movement in the hips. This didn’t change until Schwartz had an off-day, when he didn’t dominate the seminar discussion.
“Got the ‘flu?” Sabine asked at the end of a session that had dragged.
“I’m not too interested in the 1848 revolution,” Schwartz admitted.
“Well, Bismarck’s next week. Maybe he’ll make you feel better.”
“He makes all of us feel better.” Schwartz answered, watching Sabine waltz off.
Bismarck promoted the thaw, and by the time the French had been decisively defeated in 1871, when the Prussian King was crowned Kaiser and Berlin became Hauptstadt des Deutschens Reiches, Sabine had accepted an invitation to have lunch. She next met his friends. Werner Schwartz, she learned, was part of an intricate web of connections. He was planning a university career and, given the people he associated with, plus his intellect, she didn’t doubt he’d be successful. The more she saw of him the more she entered into a dialogue – entirely with herself – about points in his favour: a Berliner, smart, decisive, orderly and punctual, an apartment full of antique furniture, many fine old books. Ballast, that’s what he had. Everywhere she looked she saw ballast.
Points in favour continued to accumulate, so Sabine moved in with Werner. The apartment she now shared was different from Savignyplatz. It was full of all kinds of things.
In July ‘69, while moving to San Francisco, the new vice-consul stopped in Indian Head. The soil scientist was away in the fields advising farmers. His mother sat on the front porch talking to herself, mostly in French. She had shrunk since he last saw her. For several days he tried to catch what she was saying, but it was hopeless. To escape, Hanbury spent evenings with Keystone, who showed a lively interest in his plans. After three days Hanbury stole out of Indian Head early in the morning, walking up to the Trans-Canada to catch a Greyhound bus. No one was up except Keystone. “Stay in touch, son,” Keystone said across his front gate. “Send us a postcard.”
Few places, the consul was sure, could equal San Francisco. Who wouldn’t want to serve there? The office closed punctually at five, when he became free to roam. Haight-Ashbury, Chinatown, the Wharf. On the weekends, he went across the Bay to Berkeley. Sitting on sidewalks, lying around in parks, observing the scene unfolding, it was inevitable, given the times, that Hanbury would run into a flower child. Her name was Shirley; she was from Ohio. Shirley’s hair went down below her hips. Jeans fitted so tight that everything above the waist seemed voluptuously squeezed out. Her top had fringes on the sleeves and underneath, judging from the trembling, there was nothing but Shirley. She hung out around Berkeley, she explained to Hanbury, because the atmosphere was right. In Berkeley you had to be blind not to see that the establishment was disintegrating. The revolution is on. It can’t be stopped. She talked to Hanbury about pigs too. Pigs are everywhere. Half of them wear blue uniforms; the other half dress in blue suits. Shirley loved going to demonstrations against the Vietnam War and held other views. I’d burn my bra, but I ain’t got one any more.
The mention of revolution made Hanbury think of Günther Rauch. He borrowed some of his Marx and described certain other of Rauch’s theories to Shirley, such as the absurdity of the notion that land (which is permanent) can be owned by people (whose lives are transient). Shirley threw her hair around when she heard this and kept saying,Wow! Wow! That blows my mind! That’s pure truth! The third time they got together, a Sunday afternoon, reclining on a Berkeley lawn with an acid-rock band splintering the air a stone’s throw away, Shirley began asking personal questions. When she learned he was Canadian, she looked bewildered. Is that some place in Scotland? She also insisted, with a name like Tony, he must be a hairdresser. When he described his work, Shirley’s eyes transformed into empty vessels. The vice-consul reassured her. He said in his job he had to help people. “And it’s bread, Shirley,” he argued. “Like everybody else, I gotta eat.” The confession stirred her. I like relating to you. She became personal about herself, saying she spent the days practising a new way of seeing. She explained that the cafeteria in the distance (behind the rock band) wasn’t exactly there. Because of Einstein, space was known to be curved, meaning the cafeteria was actually a little over. Everyone, she insisted, should get used to seeing straight lines as curved lines, but the establishment and the pigs prevented it. Even now, right across America, kids were being screwed up in the schools. Do you realize eighty-five percent of school kids own a ruler? She then revealed another intimate thought. It isn’t hormones, it’s the stars that make love happen.
They smoked a joint. That over with, abandoning herself to deep exhilaration, Shirley took control. Come with me. Nearby stood a thicket of large rhododendrons. On hands and knees she crawled in like a toddler at play, the vice-consul following. It was peaceful underneath nature’s canopy. The acid rock was muted. Diffuse light filtered in. The waxy leaves afforded the privacy of a tent. With one smooth, practised movement, Shirley slipped her top off, mesmerizing Hanbury with the beauty of her breasts. Shirley took his reflection as a faltering, as an expression of male responsibility. It’s OK. I’m on the pill. Her tight jeans came off quick, panties joining a scanty heap of clothing. The vice-consul now joined in. He was quickly naked too, following which some of the techniques acquired on Savignyplatz came back. He felt he was putting in a credible performance. Afterwards, Shirley wanted to know something. Where did you learn to fuck like that? Hanbury didn’t want to get into a discussion on Berlin, so he said, “Picked it up on the prairies. You’re pretty mobile yourself.” Underneath the rhododendrons, this compliment led to a lengthy enumeration of Shirley’s lovers.
A few days later, Shirley, her interest piqued in a vice-consul who was both slightly timid and very worldly, knocked on his door. The apartment was spartan and she liked that. She also fell in love with the stereo. The record collection, on the other hand, failed the inspection. You have weird tastes. You listen to this stuff? Shirley declared she’d fix the problem. Tony needed exposure to the best music there was. To help the cause, she moved in. Sort of. Her presence in the apartment was off and on. It was determined by galactic signals that only she could read. We’re both free to come and go, she ruled. Also, neither asks who else the other’s fucking. OK?
At the office, a new consul general, an intellectual with a close-cropped beard, picked the vice-consul’s brain on the local scene and was impressed by what Hanbury knew about the anti-war movement in the universities. He wanted the vice-consul to accompany him on calls to keep notes. He also instructed his young assistant to attend political events. Hanbury was suddenly busy, day and night and often on the weekends. This caused things to switch around in the apartment. Shirley was there more than Hanbury, often waiting for him to come home. I hung around ‘cause I thought you might like a piece of tail, she’d say, making it sound as if she were offering him some leftovers from dinner. She smoked a lot of hash alone, which made her moody.
One day, a federal cabinet minister came to San Francisco to give a speech. The vice-consul was responsible for logistics, from the VIP arrival at the airport through to a night out on the town. It went well. Cars arrived on time. Doors opened when they should. There was an audience for the speech. A couple of journalists asked a few questions about a crisis in Quebec. What’s going on in Canada, they wanted to know, and what the hell is all this about a War Measures Act? The minister
loved the attention. He invited the consul general and the vice-consul to join him for dinner in a restaurant of their choice. “Up to you, Tony,” the consul general said. “You know Frisco.” Hanbury proposed a restaurant in Chinatown.
When Hanbury arrived home to change, Shirley was sulking. Y ou’re always out. Stay home. Smoke some dope. Have a fuck. Listen to the Grateful Dead. When Hanbury was quietly leaving for dinner, she was sprawled on a large, bean-filled leather bag before the stereo, not a stitch on. It hurt her to see Tony go out dressed in a clean, freshly-pressed blue suit. She shouted after him,You’re a fucking pig.
The dinner was a great success since the minister had a sharp eye for girls and the restaurant was full of them, mostly office girls on holiday from places like Boise, Idaho, Sioux City, Iowa, and Pierre, South Dakota. The minister winked and nodded and ordered waiters to serve the girls wine. The consul general smiled benevolently. The vice-consul also thought it was fun. After dessert, the minister, beginning to look greedy, said, “Time boys. Time.” He shifted a knowing gaze towards the consul general, who redirected it to Hanbury. Both men looked questioningly at him. After a pause, something dawned. Hanbury caught a waiter’s eye. “The bill please,” he said, “and a taxi.”
The Berlin Assignment Page 13