Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘And it is … I have to say … I mean, Rebecca, Berlin has a past …’ I sounded like an utterly patronising moron. ‘There’s no getting away from it without not being in Berlin. And we are in Berlin. So I didn’t change it. Because it’s nice. As a hotel.’

  She always understood when he was lying, when he could do nothing else. ‘You can’t help it, can you? Being miserable. You have to be.’

  Becky didn’t add Mother was right, but he heard it in any case – the way that only dogs can hear those special whistles when they’re called to heel. ‘I’m not miserable. I’m interested. I like to keep on being interested.’

  ‘Implying that you think I’ve stopped learning. I’m not interesting now I’m with Terry?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She glanced at him, appraising, while he bleated, ‘No.’ She always knew.

  That was the first of Saturday’s spats. And she had a perfectly valid point: it was probably not fair to pick a hotel – albeit a perfectly acceptable hotel with good reviews – primarily because it stood on the site of what had been the Jüdischen Bruderverein until its forced sale in 1938. And a forced sale did leave an atmosphere of a kind – the pestilent kind – and then, because those intoxicated by the use of force develop a taste for irony, nurture a specialist and heavy-handed brand of humour, the building was taken over by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt Department IV B4 – the department responsible for ‘Jewish Affairs’, which oversaw the seizure of Jews’ homes and possessions, the removal of their German citizenship.

  If there’s a department for you, then you must be a problem. A solution to you must be sought.

  So he and his daughter were, yes, sleeping not quite where Adolf Eichmann slept, but where he worked, where he and his administrators, his planners and implementers, his civil servants worked. Becky and Jon had been eating their warm little kaiser rolls – warm little Berlin Schrippen – and their hot boiled eggs that morning inside the shadow of a building where human beings in clean and orderly surroundings had proved unable to connect their paperwork with other human beings elsewhere, or with reality, or with pain.

  Unable, or unwilling, or uninterested.

  Consenting to one hell, so they could avoid another.

  Most likely there had been a canteen back then, maybe other warm little Austrian Kaiserbrötchen, other Schrippen, Schwarzbrot, maybe eggs.

  Perhaps not always eggs, perhaps not butter, what with the rationing.

  The place had been bombed in the end, like so much of the city. Lord, hadn’t it? He and Becky had already explored the sharply modern and forward-looking riverbank development on foot, its immaculate geometries laid out there between the restored Reichstag and the railway station.

  The RAF reduced that whole area to a town planner’s dream – wall stubs and rubble, only the Swiss Embassy left standing and that by chance. It’s still there now. And who can guess what it remembers, where it echoes. Not that Speer hadn’t thought he should wipe out the streets himself and start again – build a temple to bloodshed, a monstrous dome as big as a fake mountain and colonnades and boulevards for parading. The things leaders need to help them feel truly like leaders. And anything’s possible once you’ve cleared away inconvenient residences and residents.

  Efficient and muscular administration would be required if one were to achieve a plan of such … A legion of servants would have to serve.

  What remained of RSHA Department IV B4 had been torn down in the sixties. And a number of people must have planned and some other people must have given appropriate permissions for and some further people must have built and then maintained and some other people must still be making the customary inspections of what now stood in its place. It was a fairly pleasant hotel in which to house temporary visitors who might be unaware of the site’s past and might also not be infected with fatal levels of obliviousness, although no enquiries were made into guests’ moral character, there were no formal vetting procedures and acceptance of bookings was based solely on apparent ability to pay.

  Jon hadn’t slept properly during his Friday night at the Hotel Sylter Hof. This was partly because, stretched out in the dark of an anonymous bed, he could still hear, to a degree, the neat ruffling of terrible file cards and the clean peck of ribbon typewriters, summoning in filthy things. They disturbed. As did the thoughts of easy canteen chatter, boredom, office gossip and faraway corpses.

  He had lain and checked – fastidiously – that he was the man he thought, who tried to do his job well and to think well, while keeping his grip on wider historical perspectives. Jon always tried to remember how wrong life could go, because that was in his nature and also because, possibly, he came from the humanities. He’d been a European-history specialist. And hiring graduates from the humanities had once served a purpose for the civil service: it had perhaps intended to gather a workforce used to doing more than bouncing along the surface of a subject – or even personnel not unfamiliar with the concepts underlying humanity. Specialists could be called on when necessary: accountants, mathematicians. That had been the way.

  IT providers … they were specialists, although Christ knew what purpose they specially, actually served – it seemed one simply fed them money and, some while later, they converted it into insecure shit, uninformative shit, unworkable shit and, in general, shit. And economists – why did you need them? Economics was not a humanity. It was not now, as currently practised, a science. It involved little more than submission to a cult. It made him long for maths, the inarguable truth and perfection of maths.

  And he’d always hated maths.

  The only mathematical form that I can appreciate is music. Which transcends maths – and a person has to be transcendent somewhere … even me.

  Howlin’ Wolf wasn’t thinking of maths when he played. He just felt it. He could feel.

  ‘Heard the whistle blowin’, couldn’t see no train. Way down in my heart, I had an achin’ pain. How long, how long, baby how long.’

  You could see what he felt, know it, share it, taste it.

  It was pure in him and strong.

  And Howlin’ Wolf was also an orderly man and a good boss – in him that was compatible with letting feelings out, with letting himself out. He could burn and sweat and shudder and wail and wail and wail when he needed it for the music. He could keep safe otherwise.

  And he could feel the blues. Deep blues.

  Which is, naturally, not about safety. But he squared the circle and certainly circled the square.

  Jon felt that he was an orderly man and a good boss – his assessments did not undermine this belief.

  Perhaps it is the blues I am feeling.

  Jon grimaced swiftly. Like hell. I am all square and no circle, no matter what I try.

  But I’m not a bad man. In my own way. I am not.

  This is because I keep asking myself if I’m not. And I listen out for ribbon typewriters in the night. And I do, I do, I do what I can.

  Typewriters, as we know, are these days the most secure option. They produce traceable, hard to access, discrete documents. The Russians ordered up thousands straight after Snowden. India followed. Germany. Wise beasts everywhere have shipped them in.

  Taptaptap.

  Peckpeckpeck.

  Me, too. Back at home.

  Tocktocktock.

  The sound of modern caution.

  The sound that I don’t hear at work.

  Only in my dreams.

  Taptaptap.

  I am sorry for the hotel, Becky. I am sorry that I have these blues – these uptight white overcomfortable blues … and that’s the worst kind, baby.

  But the hotel hadn’t really been his problem – not his pressing problem – the fight he started with his daughter on the plane had troubled him more. That’s what stole his sleep.

  It was so plainly imbecilic as a course of action: get your only child alone and immediately criticise her boyfriend. No, not immediately. I mentioned that her shoes were great and that she looked wel
l and wouldn’t this be fun and that we didn’t often get the chance. Then I started in with the ill-advised comments. Just after we were allowed to unfasten our seatbelts. Idiot.

  ‘You don’t like him.’

  ‘I’m not … that’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘No, it’s what I’m saying. You’re barely civil to him. What about at my birthday party?’

  ‘At your …? I wasn’t … Did I do something wrong at your birthday party?’

  ‘You didn’t say one word to him.’

  This seemed unlikely. Jon scrabbled back to an afternoon of blustery wind and having a headache on Becky’s little balcony, feeling sick due to unforeseen events – lots of her friends inside and shouting. It was good that she had so many friends. Otherwise you’d worry. Loud friends. ‘I … Didn’t I? It was an odd day. I think. Stuff was going on—’

  ‘At the office. That office eats you.’

  ‘I’m nearly done.’

  ‘Nobody stays as long as you have, not any more. You could have retired. You could be resting. You could be doing something you might like.’ She’d begun to change the subject and for some reason he hadn’t let her, even though stopping her was insane.

  ‘Well, you don’t …’ A gulp when he swallowed – this was his throat attempting to prevent him from screwing up, yet on he went. ‘You don’t … It’s that when you’re with him and with me, when we’re the three of us and having a meal, or something of that sort … I notice … It’s that …’

  ‘It’s that what?’

  And he shouldn’t ever mention this, except she is his daughter and he does, he does, he does – in his veins and in his breathing and in his blue and buried heart – he does love her and that makes her happiness matter. ‘It’s that when you’re with him you seem not to speak. You stop saying things.’

  ‘Go on.’ Her tone a clear warning that he ought to jump out of the plane before doing any such thing.

  But on he had stumbled. ‘Darling, it’s just that I have been around, alive, for a while and seen relationships – I’m not talking about mine, this isn’t anything to do with mine – seen what happens when the man does all the talking, when either partner does all the talking. I’ve seen what that suggests has happened already between two people … what it means when the woman can’t get a word in sideways and the guy …’ She was condemningly quiet and so he continued to dig his own grave – speaking while she did not and aware of the irony. ‘My generation of men, we had a hell of a job getting it right – the feminism thing – but we tried, we absolutely, not all of us, but we backed up what women were doing and we had no maps and that was – I’m not saying we did well – but that generation, men and women, attempted to change how partnerships went, or some of us did, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t about beautiful and intelligent women with wonderful futures sitting next to blowhard young men and just listening as if they haven’t a thought in their head—’

  ‘Blowhard.’

  ‘I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s not an insult. I was a blowhard, too. It’s automatic. He’s twenty-four. If you’re under thirty and have a penis, you’re a blowhard. It’ll pass. It doesn’t make him a bad person.’

  ‘So what does?’

  ‘He isn’t … I don’t think that he’s a …’

  But I do think that he is a bad person. I kind of am completely certain that he is a bad person. I am aware that everything about him bespeaks a lack of consideration in many areas and with Rebecca in particular – the more intimate they are, the more he will harm her – and this makes me want to stab him in his balls and then his throat. I want to watch him bleed to death in agony and silence. Sorry. I do, though.

  That is the shape of my moral high ground. I would claim it in less time than it takes me to draw this breath as a place of irrevocable mountaintop sacrifice.

  ‘Becky, I don’t want him to hurt you.’

  ‘Because I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was without you explaining? Because I’m a moron. Because I’m like you.’

  Because you’re in love with him. You’re in love.

  Moron is uncalled for.

  You love him and he makes love to you and steals tenderness from you unsweetly I bet and by the time the shine’s gone off it, please Christ you haven’t married him. Or had a baby. It will end badly and I’m trying to spare you that.

  Moron is …

  His body sinking as it would if the engines had failed them and yet just as it was, where it was, only stirring gently in tranquil flight.

  A baby.

  OhGodababy.

  Go on – ask if she’s pregnant – if she’s being careful. That’s the only mistake you haven’t made.

  Moron was fair comment.

  And she’d spoken very softly, been at the edge of inaudibility as the plane grumbled evenly around them, but he had perfectly heard when she said, ‘Not everyone doesn’t notice when they’re being tortured.’

  He’d been nauseous for the remainder of the journey, got through customs and out of Berlin Tegel by the application of grim effort, almost as if his daughter were not there and he were managing alone. They’d checked into the haunted hotel – marble and cream foyer, chandelier, you couldn’t complain – in an ache of isolation – at least he had ached – and they’d not said night night. No kiss. He hadn’t even felt secure in mentioning when they might join each other for breakfast the following morning, as they ground up in the lift to their rooms. So he had to rise early the following day and sit and drink endless tea until she’d appeared and did sit facing him across his littered table, did smile, but only enough to indicate that he wasn’t out of trouble yet.

  There was mercy, though. Eventually. By the time they were there on the Spree.

  ‘Dad, I have to, ahm, do this for myself, you know?’ Her hand making small contrapuntal squeezes at his while she spoke. ‘Terry’s better to me than you think. You have to believe me about that and try and be civil.’ The boat kicking merrily under them for a playful moment, then pressing on.

  He’d rushed into the promise, ‘I will.’ One he couldn’t keep. ‘I will. I’m sorry. I’ve been getting anxious.’ Inside a pocket of his coat there was the flinch of his phone as it gathered a text, the small noise that warned him of incoming communications. Becky glowered at the interruption and he blurted, ‘I’m not answering. I won’t. I’ll turn it off, even … if you want.’

  ‘Do what you like.’ She undoubtedly knew this would always drive Jon to do what she would like. ‘Dad, I don’t need the lectures about women.’

  ‘No. I realise. It’s presumptuous. I simply … The only country in the world where there’s a majority of women in a parliament is Rwanda. Rwanda. That’s when women get power, real power – if the men are either dead or in prison. Convicted genocidaires. A high percentage.’

  ‘Could we not talk about genocide.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t get it. And I care. And I made a donation to that place you said I should.’

  ‘Did you?’ Turning to look at her and realising that his expression would be this dreadful, fond open smile, this doting that probably seemed absurd both to observers and Rebecca. ‘They’re good people. The money goes where it should. If you can afford it.’

  ‘I gave them fifty quid – it’s not going to render me homeless. Can we just sit and enjoy this and then have lunch. Not on the boat and not in the hotel – somewhere we can relax. I’ll buy you lunch.’

  ‘No, I should.’

  ‘You paid for the holiday.’

  ‘And the depressing hotel.’

  ‘And the depressing hotel. Do you understand that I hate it when you’re sad and that I would rather you weren’t and when you volunteer for it – what am I meant to do?’

  ‘Nothing. You don’t … I don’t expect …’ Having to stare down at this nesting of hands at his knee – hers and his – rather than face her and become … something else she would hate because it would look like sadness, when
mostly he got wet-eyed over good fortune rather than injuries and his good fortune was her and that was the issue currently in play. ‘Please let’s, yes, pick somewhere for lunch and have a nice meal before the plane and then … I really did, I really have, I really have enjoyed this time. I appreciate it.’ Nodding and breathing raggedly.

  And she’d kissed him underneath his left ear, softly clumsy like a girl and this had torn his last level of restraint and made him sniff. And he was nodding and grinning and uneven in his heart while she’d released his hand – it was cold once she was as gone as gone – and she’d worked her arm in behind him, hugged his waist, and leaned her head snug to his shoulder. Berlin had progressed outside in blinks and smudges and he’d kept nodding and nodding while Rebecca fitted herself to him until they were comfortable.

  He’d let his cheek drift over and away from her, find the glass and settle. And his daughter was wonderful and that was something very plain, along with how remarkable it was that two wrong parents had produced the beginnings of such a person, given her enough to build upon.

  And his daughter rode a bicycle to work – cycled in London – which was reckless of her, crazy of her, and yet unpreventable.

  And any slighting references to cyclists became, therefore, provocations that outstripped his ability to express outrage – an ability which had atrophied into, at most, a show of pursed lips and perhaps firm but appropriately crafted comments, delivered at apposite moments, or kept in reserve, kept in perpetual reserve.

  Nonetheless, as he waited for the cab to progress from Chiswick to Westminster, Jon pictured the way he might grin as he stepped from the taxi and dragged the driver out by his lapels, ears, by something available, and punched him, threw him into the path of oncoming traffic without a helmet or relevant licence, because there was no relevant licence, you don’t need a licence to be crushed.

  As he racked up another three inches towards his workplace, Jonathan Sigurdsson cleared his throat, ‘What do you reckon? Much longer?’

  ‘No idea, mate. Not a clue.’

  ‘Ah, well.’ Jon rubbed his thumb across the pads of callous he was growing on the fingertips of his left hand – small areas of invulnerability which were helping him learn to play the guitar. Rhythm and blues. He felt that was a style which might forgive his lack of skill. And his love. It was a place to indulge his love with an entity which would neither care nor take advantage.