'What's so hilarious?'
'Pardon?' Arkady came out of his reverie.
'What's so hilarious?' The place across the table had been taken by a large man with a florid face and crisp white shirt. A small wool hat perched on a head as bald as a kneecap. He held a beer in one hand and protected a whole roast chicken with the other. Arkady noticed that the entire table was elbow-to-elbow with people hoisting drumsticks, ribs, pretzels, golden beers.
'You're enjoying yourself?' the man with the chicken asked.
Arkady shrugged rather than unveil a Russian accent.
The man's eyes darted to his Soviet coat. He said, 'You like the beer, the food, the life? It's nice. We worked forty years to have it so.'
The rest of the table paid no attention. Arkady realized he hadn't eaten anything except an ice cream. The table was so awash in food that he almost didn't need to. The band slid from Strauss to Louis Armstrong. He finished the beer. Of course there were beer bars in Moscow, but there were no steins or glasses, so patrons filled cardboard milk cartons. As Jaak would have said, 'Homo Sovieticus wins again'.
Not that everyone recognized the fact. When Arkady opened a map, the man across the table nodded, suspicions confirmed.
'Another East German. It's an invasion.'
• • •
Retreating, Arkady headed towards the nearest buildings over the treeline, which proved to be offices for IBM and the tower of a Hilton. The lobby of the hotel could have been an Arab tent. Each chair and divan was occupied by a man in flowing white keffiyeh and jellaba. Many were elderly, with canes, walkers and worry beads; Arkady assumed they had come to Munich for medical attention. Dark boys in Western slacks and button-down shirts played tag. Their sisters and mothers were in Arab dress; married women wore ornate plastic masks showing only their chins and brows, and trailed heavy perfume through the air.
In the hotel driveway, one young Arab was photographing another beside a new red Porsche. When the boy posing sat on a fender, the car's alarm erupted with a blaring horn and blinking lights. As the boys chased round the car and beat on the hood, the doorman and porter watched with expressively blank faces.
Arkady found the route he had come by cab, following the east side of the park to the museums on Prinzregentenstrasse. Cars flashed past under streetlamps. The sky, however, was already darker than a Moscow summer night and the classical facade of the Haus der Kunst looked almost two-dimensional.
It occurred to Arkady that the west side of the park was bordered by Königinstrasse, where Boris Benz lived. The houses were appropriately grand for a '
Queen Street
', stone mansions set behind gardens of aromatic roses and gates with plaques that warnedvorsicht! bissiger hund!
Benz's address was between two enormous houses done in coquettish Jugendstil, the German answer to Art Nouveau. They looked like a pair of matrons peeping over fans. Squeezed in the middle was a garage that had been renovated as medical offices. The second-floor button was for Benz. The lights were out. Arkady pushed the button just in case. No answer.
On either side of the door was a panel of leaded glass for viewing visitors. Inside, on a side table, was a vase of dried cornflowers and three neat stacks of mail.
There was no answer when Arkady pushed the button for the office on the first floor. When he pushed the one for the ground floor, a voice answered and Arkady said, 'Das ist Herr Benz. Ich habe den Schlüssel verloren.' He hoped he'd said that he had lost his key.
The door chimed and opened. Arkady sorted quickly through the post for the doctors: medical journals and advertisements for car care and tanning salons. The only letter for Benz was from the Bayern-Franconia Bank. Someone named Schiller had handwritten his name above the return address.
Whoever had let Arkady in wasn't altogether trusting. The ground-floor door opened and a stern face in a nurse's cap looked out and demanded, 'Wohnen Sie hier?' Her eyes were on the mail.
'Nein, danke.' He backed out the door, surprised she had let him get as far as he had.
Arkady didn't know much about social customs in the West, but it struck him as odd that a housemaid would tell an unknown caller how long her employer would be away from home. Or that she would be so patient with the caller's primitive German. Why was she cleaning the flat if Benz was gone? He wondered about the letter. In Moscow depositors queued with bankbooks. In the West, banks posted statements, but did the envelope usually come personally signed?
He walked a couple of hundred metres up Königinstrasse, crossed to the park and strolled back on a path overhung with maples and oaks to sit on a bench with a view of Benz's house. It was the hour when Müncheners walked their dogs. They favoured small ones – pugs and dachshunds not much larger than their beers. This parade was followed by a promenade of elderly, elegantly dressed couples, some with matching canes. Arkady wouldn't have been amazed to see carriages rolling down Königinstrasse behind them.
People came in and out of the house. The doctors drove away in long, sombre cars. Finally the nurse of the dour countenance emerged, gave the street a parting look that put it on its good behaviour and walked in the other direction.
At a certain point, Arkady became aware that the lamps were brighter, the path darker, the night black. It was eleven p.m. All he was sure of was that Herr Benz had not returned.
It was one a.m. before he returned to the pension. If the rooms had been searched in his absence he couldn't tell; they simply looked as barren as before. He remembered that he should have bought food. There were so many things he forgot to do. Here he was in the lap of luxury and it was as if he craved starvation.
He sat at the window with his last cigarette. The station was still. Red and green switches lit the yard, but no trains were moving. At one corner of the station was a bus terminal. It had shut down too. Empty buses lined the street. An occasional headlight went by, racing after... what?
What is the thing we crave most in life? The sense that someone somewhere remembers and loves us. Even better if we love them in turn. Anything can be endured if that idea holds fast.
What could be worse than discovering how fatuous, how ignorant that assumption can be?
So, better not to seek.
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
In the morning, Arkady was visited by Federov, who flitted around the flat like a maid on inspection.
'The vice-consul asked me to check on you yesterday, but you weren't around. Not last night, either. Where were you?'
Arkady said, 'Sightseeing, walking around the city.'
'Because you have no proper introduction to the Munich police, no authority and no idea of how to conduct an investigation here, Platonov is concerned that you will get into trouble and make trouble for everyone else.' He looked in the bedroom. 'No blankets?'
'I forgot.'
'I wouldn't bother, actually, if I were you. You won't be here long enough.' Federov opened the closet and pulled out drawers. 'Still no suitcase? You're going to take back everything you buy in your pockets?'
'I haven't actually gone shopping yet.'
Federov marched back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. 'Empty. You know, you're such a typical Soviet cripple. You're so unused to food that you can't even buy it when it's all around you. Relax, it's real. This is Chocolateland.' He shot a smile back at Arkady. 'Afraid of being taken for Russian? It's true they despise us so much they're actually paying us millions of marks in moving expenses to leave the DDR, building barracks for us in Russia just so we'll go. All the more reason to buy while you can.' He shut the refrigerator door and shivered as if he had looked into a tomb. 'Renko, you could be gone any minute. You should treat this like a holiday.'
'Like a leper on holiday?'
'Something like that.' Federov tapped and lit a cigarette for himself. Arkady didn't necessarily want a cigarette first thing in the morning, but one thing he could say for Russians at home, even interrogators, was that they shared.
&n
bsp; 'This must be a bore for you, having to check on what I have for breakfast.'
'This morning I have to take the Byelorussian Women's Chorus to the airport, welcome a delegation of honoured state artists of the Ukraine and get them situated, attend a lunch meeting with representatives of Mosfilm and the Bavarian Film Studios, and then oversee a reception for the Minsk Folkloric Dance Group.'
'I apologize for any complication I've caused.' He offered his hand. 'Please call me Arkady.'
'Gennady.' Federov shook hands reluctantly. 'Just as long as you understand what a pain in the arse you are.'
'Do you want me to check in? I could give you a call later.'
'No, please. Just do what's normal. Shop. Get some souvenirs. Be back here by five.'
'By five.'
Federov strolled to the door. 'Have a beer at the Hofbraühaus. Have a couple.'
Arkady had coffee at a stand-up cafeteria in the train station. Federov was right: outside Russia he didn't know how to conduct an investigation. He had no Jaak or Polina. Without official authority he couldn't enlist local police. Minute by minute, he felt more a stranger than at home. The counter was banked with apples, oranges, bananas, sliced sausage and pig's knuckles, all for sale, yet he found his hand starting to swipe a sugar packet. He stopped. It was the hand of a Soviet cripple, he thought.
At the end of the bar was a man almost identical to him, with the same pallor and dishevelled jacket, except that he was stealing both sugar and an orange. The thief gave him a conspiratorial wink. Arkady looked around. At either end of the central hall was a pair of soldiers in grey uniforms with H&K submachine guns. Anti-terrorist troops, he realized; Munich had its troubles, too.
He fell in with a group of Turks walking by the cafeteria towards the underground. At the steps, he turned and joined the crowd climbing up and hurrying to the station exits. Outside, he balanced on the plaza curb, waiting with all the good Müncheners for the light to change, when he suddenly took off on his own against the red, through a gap in the traffic, to an island in the middle of the street, then raced, again alone, toward people who were lined along the far curb and watching him, aghast.
Arkady made a detour through an arcade and came out on the pedestrian mall of the day before. He kept moving, checking each passing telephone booth without success for a directory, until at a sidestreet car park he found a yellow kiosk with a phone, bench and book. A tiny woman whose coat touched her toes stood by the kiosk and looked pointedly at her watch, as if Arkady were late. The phone rang and she glided by him to take possession of the booth.
A sign on the door indicated that this was one of the few German public phones that accepted calls. The woman's conversation was explosive but quick, ending with a decisive slap of the receiver on the hook. She slid the door open, announced, 'Ist frei,' and walked away.
The telephone was his hope. In Moscow, public booths were gutted or out of order. Phones, when they rang, were usually ignored. In Munich, booths were maintained like bathrooms – better than bathrooms. When the phone rang, Germans answered.
Arkady looked up the Bayern-Franconia Bank and asked to speak to Herr Schiller. He imagined he would be stirring up some clerk, but there was a certain hush on the other end that let him know his call had gone to another level.
A different operator asked, 'Mit wem spreche ich, bitte?'
Arkady said, 'Das Sowjetische Konsulat.'
He waited again. One side of the street was taken up by a department store whose window offered woollens, horn buttons, felt hats, the paraphernalia of Bavarian identity. On the other side, people headed to and from a garage. Cars rolled up and down the ramps, BMWs and Mercedes bumper to bumper, steel bees in a giant beehive.
An authoritative voice came on the other end of the line and asked in Russian, 'This is Schiller. Can I help?'
'I hope so. Have you ever been to the consulate?' Arkady asked.
'No, I regret...' By the sound of it, it wasn't a bottomless regret.
'We're fairly new here, as you know.'
'Yes.' A dry tone.
'We have some confusion at the consulate,' Arkady said.
The answer mixed caution and amusement. 'How so?'
'It may just be a misunderstanding or something lost in the translation.'
'Yes?'
'We were visited by a certain firm that wants to engage in a joint venture in the Soviet Union. Of course that's good; that's what the consulate is here for. What is especially promising is that the firm claims it can produce financing in hard currency.'
'Deutschmarks?'
'Quite a large sum of Deutschmarks. I was hoping you could give us some assurance that these funds are, in fact, available.'
A deep breath at the other end suggested the effort necessary to explain finances to small children. 'The firm may have a sufficient corporate budget, private funds, a loan from a bank or other institutions, there are many combinations, but Bayern-Franconia can only give you information if it is a partner in the venture. My advice is that you should study their credentials.'
'Precisely what I was getting at. They led us to believe – or we misunderstood them to say – that their firm was associated with Bayern-Franconia, and that all the funding would come from you.'
A new gravity issued from the other end. 'What is the name of this company?'
'TransKom Services. It's engaged in recreational and personnel services -'
'This bank has no subsidiaries involved in the Soviet Union.'
Arkady said, 'I was afraid not. But the bank might have committed itself to such financing?'
'Unfortunately Bayern-Franconia does not believe the economic situation in the Soviet Union is stable enough to recommend investment at this time.'
'Strange. He used the name of Bayern-Franconia freely at the consulate,' Arkady said.
'Which is something we take seriously at Bayern-Franconia. Just who am I talking to?'
'Gennady Federov. We would like to know, today if possible, whether the bank stands behind TransKom or not.'
'I can reach you at the consulate?'
Arkady paused a suitable length of time to check a schedule. 'I'll be out most of the day. I have a Byelorussian chorus to meet at the airport, then Ukrainian artists, lunch with the Bavarian Film Studios, then some dancers.'
'You do sound busy.'
'Could you call at five?' Arkady asked. 'I will keep that time clear to speak to you. The best line to reach me on is 555-6020.' He was reading the number of the phone booth.
'What was the name of the representative of TransKom?'
'Boris Benz.'
There was a pause. 'I'll look into it.'
'The consulate appreciates your interest.'
'Herr Federov, my interest is in the good name of Bayern-Franconia. I will call at five exactly.'
Arkady hung up. He assumed the banker would verify the call by immediately phoning the listed number of the consulate to ask for a Gennady Federov, who should be safely bearing bouquets to the airport. He hoped the banker wouldn't be inquisitive enough to ask for anyone else at the consulate.
As he stepped out of the booth, he felt something change – a foot withdraw into a doorway or a shopper suddenly transfixed by a window display. He considered slipping back into the department store until he caught sight of himself reflected in the window. Was that him? This pale apparition in a shrinking jacket? In Moscow, he could pass as one scarecrow among many; among the robust sausage-eaters of Munich, he was frighteningly unique. He could no more lose himself among shoppers and tourists in the Marienplatz than a skeleton could hide by wearing a hat.
Arkady turned to the garage and walked up a ramp under a yellow and black sign that said, AUSGANG! A BMW roaring down the chute squealed and rocked on its shocks while he pressed himself against the wall. The driver's beefy head swivelled and shouted, 'Kein Eingang! Kein Eingang!'
On the first level, cars cruised among parked rows and concrete pillars in search of an empty slot. Arkady co
unted on an exit to the opposite street, but all the signs pointed to a central lift with steel doors and a line of Germans dressed well enough to go to heaven. He found emergency stairs to the next floor, which was a similar scene of cars reverberating to the throaty urgency of gas engines and the deliberate ticking of diesels, circling around a similar congregation at the lift.
Fewer cars reached the next level. Arkady saw a number of parking places and a red door at the other end of the floor. He was halfway to it when a Mercedes rose from the ramp and coasted between open slots. The car was an older model, a white chassis crazed like old ivory, with the tinny resonance of a punctured muffler. It stopped in the dark under a missing light. Arkady walked with his hand on his pocket, in the manner of a man reaching for keys. As soon as he cleared the last car, he started to trot. He should have studied German more, he thought. The sign on the red door said KEIN ZUTRITT; 'No admittance', he translated, too late. The jamb had a built-in digital lock that he fumbled with for a second before giving up and looking back for the Mercedes.
Which had vanished. But was not gone, because the walls echoed with its rheumatic tremor. Alone on this level, the sound seemed to be amplified. He could hear the knock of cylinders, the chime of a loose tailpipe. The driver had moved behind the lift, he thought, or into one of the parking bays on the side. The bays were unlit, a good place to hide.
His return route to the emergency stairs crossed one open space where there were no pillars or parked cars to protect him. There was a different way out, down the 'Up' car ramp, defying the KEIN EINGANG prohibitions painted on either side. He slipped between cars and was at the head of the ramp before he realized his mistake. The white Mercedes was waiting. It had backed down the ramp to watch him.
Arkady raced the car to the stairs. He didn't know what sounded worse, his lungs or the car behind him, although the driver seemed to be keeping pace at Arkady's heels more than trying to run him over. At the first side bay filled by a car, Arkady dove in. The Mercedes stopped, effectively blocking the bay, and the driver got out.
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