‘It doesn’t show,’ assured the other woman. ‘You’ve no cause for concern. I’m the one who should be worried.’
Elke was aware for the first time of a rare plumpness around her sister’s waist and hips. She extended the examination, recalling the long ago but frequent, flattering comparison of others between them in their teens and even later: constant surprise at their close similarity, going as far as repeated insistences that they had to be twins, not just sisters. Elke supposed it was understandable. Both she and Ida had the same luxuriant white blonde hair – the colouring Doris had inherited – and deep blue eyes and had never had to worry about growing-up spots or blemishes, each equally lucky with clear, unmarked skin that still only required a minimum of make-up. During those teenage years, although never with envy, they’d matched and measured each other’s femininity: because she was older Ida’s bust had been bigger, but Elke had caught up to be just as heavily breasted, their measurements eventually identical, just as they were identical in those other parts and places which had seemed so important then.
But Elke knew there was a difference between them. Not physically, not even now, but in other ways. She sought an explanation of the dissimilarity, wanting to get it right. Attitude, perhaps. Demeanour, although that sounded too stiffly formal. Personal ambience? Some way towards what she was trying to find. Ida had always seemed to possess more internal enthusiasm, about everything. She bounced rather than walked. Laughed more easily. Cried, too, unashamed of showing emotion. Elke thought back to her impression when her sister had first entered the room: how exuberance had immediately come to mind. That was how it had always been. Ida filled a room when she entered it: people looked at her and were drawn to her, wanting to be enclosed in the charisma which surrounded her and in which she moved.
Elke knew she didn’t have charisma. She might look the same and feel the same but there was one comparison that didn’t exist at all between them. She didn’t so unconsciously, so effortlessly or so attractively project herself, as Ida did: side by side, coiffured the same, dressed the same, it had always been Ida to whom people – to whom men – looked, never her. Quickly, aware of the extended silence, Elke said: ‘We should go on a diet together.’
‘Does it show?’
‘Yes,’ said Elke, with the honesty there always was with each other.
‘Shit!’ said Ida, but without too much feeling. ‘Sometimes I wish you’d lie a little.’
‘What’s all the news?’ asked Elke.
Her sister shrugged. ‘Georg got a commendation, for his mathematics. Doris finally started her periods, last week. I told her she was a woman now. She seemed quite proud. There were hardly any cramps, thank God. Horst tried to increase his loan from the bank, to get a new car, but they deferred a decision so it looks like we’ll have to struggle on with that bloody old Opel, although I’m frightened to risk a trip even to somewhere as close as Bonn any more …’ The woman stopped, grinning. Then she announced: ‘And Horst’s deputy made a pass at me.’
‘What?’
‘Made a pass at me,’ Ida repeated, still smiling.
Elke realized with surprise that her sister wasn’t at all upset. ‘How? When?’
‘It was a boring retirement dinner for someone in the Finance department,’ Ida recounted. ‘I was sitting next to Horst’s deputy and just when the speeches started I felt a hand upon my leg.’ Ida smiled again. ‘Actually under my skirt.’
‘You’re not serious!’
‘Of course I’m serious.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing!’
‘Darling,’ said Ida, patiently. ‘He was sitting more or less upright beside me. There was no way he could reach the interesting parts, was there?’
‘You mean you just sat there and let him do it!’
‘It was more interesting than all the mumbled crap about what a fine man the Finance Controller had been.’
‘You’re mad,’ declared Elke, genuinely shocked. Was that what Ida intended? If it was, her sister was succeeding.
‘Where’s the harm?’
‘Your husband’s deputy was running his hand up your leg, under your skirt, and you ask me where the harm is!’
‘He wasn’t really running his hand up my skirt. He couldn’t because the skirt was quite tight.’
‘Mad,’ insisted Elke. She wanted better words: stopping words.
‘Then he asked if he could call me.’
Elke shook her head in disbelief. ‘What did you say?’
‘Of course.’
‘So what are you going to say, when he does?’
‘I’m not sure, not yet.’
Elke twisted on the lumpy couch. ‘You’re surely not going to do anything about it! Have an affair, I mean?’
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t telephoned yet.’
‘Ida!’
‘His name’s Kurt. He’s got soft hands …’ Ida smiled at the outrage on her sister’s face. ‘… And a stutter.’
‘What are you going to do?’ insisted Elke.
‘I already told you, I don’t know.’
‘What about Horst? And Georg and Doris?’
‘Darling! Nothing’s happened.’
‘It sounds as if it’s going to.’
‘No one’s made a pass at me for years.’
‘So you’re flattered,’ accused Elke. ‘That’s juvenile!’ No one had ever put their hand on her knee under a dinner table.
‘I told you, the speeches were boring.’
‘I know I shouldn’t give warnings … that I’m the last person to give warnings … but don’t be as stupid as I was.’
Ida’s face seemed to dim, as if a light had gone out. ‘You didn’t have to say that. I’ve never once thought you were stupid. Just unlucky.’
‘It’s just …’ Elke waved a hand, without direction. ‘… You’re worrying me!’
‘I’m playing!’ said Ida.
‘You mean it never happened?’
‘Of course it happened. I mean I’m not going to do anything about it, even if he does call. His prick’s probably smaller than Georg’s.’
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘No it’s not. Don’t you ever look at a man and wonder how big his prick is?’
‘No!’ said Elke, tightly and at once.
‘You told me you did once,’ accused Ida. ‘About the geography teacher at college.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Elke, who did.
Ida used her free hand to measure from that holding the wine glass. ‘You said you thought it would be that big, at least. That you’d like to see it.’
‘I didn’t,’ denied Elke. She knew she had coloured.
‘You don’t have to worry!’ said her sister. ‘I’m sorry I told you now.’ She straightened herself abruptly, which had always been a signal that any discussion between them was concluded, like the closing of a book. ‘You seeing Ursula tomorrow?’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’
‘There wouldn’t be any point. I’ve told you before.’
‘I’d still like to come, one weekend. It’s been a long time.’
Elke listlessly raised and dropped her shoulders. She didn’t like anyone coming with her, not even Ida, which was why she always tried to avoid company. Ursula belonged to her, no one else: anyone else was an interloper. She said: ‘That would be nice, sometime.’
‘One weekend soon,’ pressed Ida.
Kissel came back into the room, rubbing his hands like a workman who had completed a hard day’s labour. ‘The wine’s open,’ he announced. ‘I’ve called the children down: Doris has taken the dog out to pee.’
The child returned from the garden as they were sitting down. The lunch was veal, with sauerkraut and dumplings, not what Elke had earlier hoped it would be. She refused potatoes and only ate half a dumpling, looking quizzically at Ida, who ate a whole portion of each while ignoring
the accusing stare. Elke congratulated Georg on the commendation and listened politely to an interminable story from Kissel that had something to do with the difficulty of installing the necessary electronic links throughout Europe to accommodate the incredible demand for facsimile machines. The man made it sound as if he were personally installing every line. Elke was ready when Kissel insisted upon the inside stories of high-level government and what was really happening in East Germany and in all the other former communist countries, because Kissel made the same demands at every visit. She replied as she always did with what had appeared in every newspaper and been broadcast on every television channel during the preceding week. Kissel appeared not to recognize some of the stories, which was a frequent reaction, and Elke wondered if the man ever repeated what she said, trying to convey some special knowledge. She hoped not: she wouldn’t have wanted to expose him to ridicule.
The wine at lunch was worse than the aperitif: Elke only drank half the first glass. Ida drank less. Kissel finished the first bottle and consumed half of a second and immediately after the meal announced he was going to bed for an afternoon siesta, as all true gentlemen were supposed to do. It was a customary conclusion to a Saturday lunch.
The garden at the rear of the house was not quite so overgrown as the front, so there was enough room for two lounging chairs and the women could relax, read newspapers or magazines or doze. Doris played with Poppi, tiring him out, and Georg disappeared again to his bedroom and his tape deck. Throughout the afternoon Elke was continuously aware of the dull throb of pop guitars and drums and synthesized keyboards. She thought it all sounded like the heartbeat of some huge animal: maybe something prehistoric, on the point of death.
Kissel was still in bed when Elke was ready to leave. She asked her sister to say goodbye and thanks and Ida promised she would.
‘I think I’m happy with Horst,’ declared Ida, unexpectedly. ‘He’s full of bullshit and I don’t listen to a lot of what he says, most of the time, but I do love him, which I guess might be difficult for a lot of people to understand. Not blind, fucking-every-night kind of love: more like a contented, satisfied feeling. Knowing all the time where he’ll be, if I want him. So you mustn’t worry.’
‘I hope I don’t have to,’ said Elke. She was uncomfortable at her sister’s swearing.
The Volkswagen was untouched in its safe car-park and the traffic back along Adenauerallee was comparatively light, so there was no delay in Elke getting back to her apartment. She did not want to eat again. She settled Poppi and decided there was nothing to watch on television. She had four new books, two in original English. She tried one of the German novels, a Günter Grass reprint, but she was not in the mood, so she abandoned it. For an hour before she went to bed she listened to a radio recital by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, although Bach was usually too strident for her. Her final act, before going to bed, was to enter her diary. She did not, of course, record her sister’s confession. Elke wrote: Lunch with Ida and family. A pleasant day.
She’d made the identical entry the previous week. And the week before that.
The two men who had followed Elke Meyer throughout the day were part of the initial surveillance squad, in place for more than three months. The weak joke between them was that by now they knew more about Elke Meyer than she knew about herself. It was an exaggeration, of course. But only just.
As the light went out in the identified flat, the driver of the car said: ‘I never thought at the beginning we’d have to keep the observation up as long as this.’
‘Moscow’s certainly taking a lot of trouble over this one,’ agreed the observer, from the passenger seat. ‘It’s understandable, I suppose.’
‘It’s difficult to believe that professionally she holds down the job she does,’ said the first man. ‘Have you ever known anyone lead such a boring private life?’
‘Yes,’ said the second man at once. ‘All the other grauen Mäuse in Bonn.’
Grauen Mäuse is the slang term in the West German capital – and in every espionage service – for lonely, unattached women employed in government service.
It means grey mice.
Chapter Two
It was Elke’s unalterable practice to set out early to make allowances for the Sunday traffic, deciding as she drove south along the valley road that the precaution would be increasingly necessary in the coming weeks, now that the better weather was coming. It wasn’t always possible to see the Rhine looping and curling to her left but when it was the water glittered silver in the pale, early sunshine: several times she saw holiday ferries fussily churning to the pick-up points for the first excursions of the day, down to Remagen or Linz or Neuwied or even as far as Koblenz. Elke had gone on river outings in the past, but not for a long time, and she resolved to do it again soon. If she went all the way to Koblenz and back it would occupy a whole day: activities that occupied a whole day were important.
The home was just short of Marienfels, set high in the mountain foothills in its own park. Because of her early start Elke approached long before the scheduled visiting hours, which she invariably did, climbing part of the way towards the higher ground before pulling into her accustomed layby, to wait. She urged Poppi from the back seat, to sniff and leave his mark, able on the little used road to let him wander without a lead. She leaned against the side of the car, waiting for him to return, gazing down upon the waterway she could see completely now. She was just able to pick out people moving around on Nonnenwerth island and squinted further, fully across the river towards the Drachenfels and the wine slopes from which Kissel claimed to get his sour wine. Elke doubted it had come from Drachenfels at all.
Elke remained unsettled by Ida’s account of being fondled under a dinner table, not wholly satisfied with her sister’s easy assurances that it meant nothing. Ida had always been the more impulsive – another difference between them – and Elke could not lose the fear that in a certain mood on an aimless day Ida might respond to a telephone call in a way she shouldn’t. It was unimportant that she would not regard it seriously: that she’d think of the entire episode as an experiment or an adventure or simply just fun. Because it wouldn’t be any of those things. It would be a deceit – the way Ida had talked yesterday had been deceitful – and Elke had not known her sister be that before.
Would Elke have flirted if she were married to someone as pretentiously dull as Horst Kissel? Immediately her mind grew more unsettled. Fantasies about marriage, what sort of man her husband would be and what sort of home they’d have and how they would live and what they would do had long ago been shut out, like giggled speculation about how big some men were in certain places. And she didn’t believe she knew properly how to flirt anyway, a further trait unshared with Ida: it was something she had never been able to learn or develop, as she supposed most girls did. What about…? Elke began to think but quickly stopped, positively refusing the reverie. She was no longer unsettled – no longer considering Ida – but hot with anger at herself for letting such a thought even begin to grow. She never allowed herself to remember that, not as she had been doing then. It was nothing to remember. Just to forget: as best she could ever forget, that is. She could not, of course, feel any annoyance or irritation at her sister, but there was regret: regret that Ida had so casually talked about a hand on her leg and of doing nothing about it. The greatest regret of all was that the conversation had eased open, just a little, doors that Elke had believed forever closed and bolted in her mind.
A Mercedes she recognized, carrying the parents of another afflicted child, swept by on its way up to the home. Elke called Poppi and lifted the obedient animal into the back of the car when he returned, hurriedly setting off to follow. Although there was no way Ursula could ever possibly know, Elke always needed to be one of the first to arrive. It was a tiny ritual but it mattered to Elke: Elke Meyer was a person of tiny rituals.
It was not a high-security institution but there was a moderately tall surrounding fence and a m
anned gatehouse for the patients’ own safety. Quite unaware of what they were doing, some inmates, in the past, had tried to leave: the fear was for the suffering if one did wander away, particularly in the sub-zero winters, before being located by concerned searchers.
Elke was known but still checked at the entrance before being allowed to continue along the lazily curved drive towards the main building, a hugely square, stone-built mansion erected more than a hundred years earlier by a banker who made his fortune financing the Prussian royal family at exorbitant rates of interest. The extensive grounds remained as they had been originally landscaped, full-skirted firs and conifers and trees she could not name now grown to towering maturity. There were several groups of patients in those grounds, walking or sitting in chairs, always with an attendant within a few metres. Elke strained hopefully, trying to locate Ursula among them, but couldn’t see her daughter. She turned familiarly into the designated area to the left of the mansion and parked alongside the Mercedes. From the social gatherings arranged from time to time – and which Elke hated for their artificiality and false happiness, as if there was something to celebrate – she knew the man who owned the car to be a wine exporter, from Cologne. Passingly she wondered what his opinion would have been of Horst Kissel’s wine selection.
The system was for senior members of staff to greet visitors just inside the surviving entrance hall, a high-ceilinged, chandeliered vault only minimally converted into a functional vestibule, which consisted of a glassed-off office and a separate receptionist’s desk. The desk was dominated by an elaborate display of vivid orange gladioli: Elke remembered it as the predominant colour in the flower market, the previous day.
Dr Schiller, the principal, was standing in front of the desk, white-haired and cadaverous and stooped forward, shoulders hunched, as if perpetually ready to listen considerately to everything said to him. For no obvious reason, because Elke always brought the dog – carrying him in her arms because she never felt she was drawing attention to herself here – Schiller looked curiously at Poppi before smiling a yellow-toothed smile towards Elke. ‘Ursula is in her room.’
Little Grey Mice Page 2