He said, very seriously: ‘You look superb. I am going to enjoy it.’
‘Enjoy what?’ she frowned.
‘Being the object of so much envy from so many men who are going to see me with you tonight.’
‘You’re embarrassing me!’ she said, in weak protest. Without any obvious direction or cause – without even thinking! – their association had become very different. She searched but couldn’t find the word to describe it. She didn’t want a word to describe it. She was happy, whatever it was.
‘I’ll never do that,’ Reimann said, serious still. He would have liked the Kaufmannstrasse apartment to have been bugged, so Moscow could have savoured that remark.
Elke was utterly confused. She gestured further in towards the apartment and the whimpering scratching of the demanding dog and said: ‘Do you want … I mean shall we … what…?’
Reimann took the control he wanted soon to exercise over everything. He cupped her arm, leading her back into the living-room. She realized as he did so that he had a bag in his other hand. From it Reimann produced her book, and said it was returned with grateful thanks, and then immediately a bottle of champagne. ‘I shall take no more of the whisky,’ he announced. ‘Fetch two glasses!’
Elke was glad the banter was back. She got the glasses without releasing Poppi and waited for the cork to explode. It didn’t: he withdrew it expertly, with the faintest of sighs, so that the wine was not bruised. ‘Your toast,’ he ordered, in further demand.
‘I don’t …’
‘… I insist.’
She’d never had to propose a toast, never in her entire life! Didn’t know one: couldn’t remember one, from any of the books she had read. ‘I really don’t …’
‘Make one up!’
Elke searched her memory, not wanting to fail, knowing only a blankness, as if her mind were filled with cotton wool. She started, with the thought incomplete, ‘To …’ and stopped.
‘What!’ demanded Reimann, wanted to keep her on the edge.
‘You make it!’ she begged. ‘Please, you!’
Reimann adopted a ruminative pose. Then he touched his glass against hers and said: ‘To ending each day in the happiness that it began.’
Elke drank, trying to think how many of her days either began or ended in complete happiness. She shouldn’t wallow, in doubt or self-pity, she thought, remembering Ida’s rebuke. ‘Do I learn now where we’re going?’
‘No!’ refused Reimann. She’d taken a great deal of trouble. Not as sophisticated and assured as Jutta: he didn’t think Elke could ever achieve that. But he didn’t consider that a disadvantage. Sophistication and self-assurance could act as a rebuff, and Elke certainly wasn’t rebuffing him. The dress was perfect, just slightly provocative, and as always she had held back from too much make-up. She really was quite a presentable woman. Reimann was irritated at the mental reservation. Not just presentable: positively attractive.
‘I might hate it!’ she said, unconvincingly.
‘You won’t.’
She didn’t. After the champagne, which made her feel comfortable but not drunk, they drove to the smoke-filled, jostling bar off the Münsterplatz alley in which he had met Jutta for their first rendezvous in Bonn.
‘A journalists’ watering hole!’ he announced, which it wasn’t. He thought the cliché appalling.
The ebb-and-flow noise and the push and shove of people all around disorientated Elke. He’d been wrong to tell her that she looked superb, because she felt over-dressed and was glad Ida had advised about the belt, which she excused herself at once to take off. People did not react to her ineffectual efforts to get through to the rest-room and she was jostled further, growing hot with frustration. When she returned to their tiled podium she saw he had bought more champagne, but only a half-bottle this time.
‘You don’t like it!’ he challenged at once.
‘I do, really.’
‘How often do you drink in a place like this?’
‘Not often.’
‘How often?’ he goaded. She had to be reminded of Dietlef – if Dietlef was in fact the father of her bastard child – so there could be a later comparison.
‘Hardly ever,’ she finally admitted. ‘Certainly not for a long time.’ They’d drunk beer then, she recalled, conjuring the memories Reimann wanted her to have. She didn’t recollect the smoke and the noise and the walls and barriers of tightly packed people. When she and Dietlef had come to such pubs they’d known everyone, as if it were a club admitting only recognized members. They’d sung a lot, all supposedly vehemently anti-Nazi: protest songs, anti-war and anti-oppression. She couldn’t believe herself doing it, not now.
‘You didn’t have to do it,’ said Reimann.
‘Do what?’ asked Elke, further off-balanced.
‘Dress down, by taking off the belt. You were perfect as you were. I told you that.’
She enjoyed the compliment, without blushing this time. ‘You’re extremely observant.’
‘I hope so,’ said Reimann, a remark for his own amusement. ‘You can put it back on, later.’
‘If you’d like me to.’ Elke found herself answering Reimann’s direct stare without any discomfort, conscious of a tension between them, wondering if he felt it too.
Reimann did feel it, because he’d carefully created and then exacerbated it: she was responding just as she should have done. It had to be the control and power a sculptor felt, looking at a block of unformed clay from which he intended to fashion the perfect figure. Reimann broke the tension: it was something she would recall later, for which she would be grateful. ‘Another drink here?’
‘You’re the tour guide: the man in charge,’ said Elke. She was enjoying herself! She hadn’t felt any uncertainty, any awkwardness, when the tension arose between them. Shouldn’t she feel frightened of that, with all its implications? No cause, Elke told herself. She’d liked it. Not the complete moment, with all its unstated inferences, which hadn’t been hidden from either of them but which of course would never be anything more than inferences. What she’d liked was knowing that for a few brief moments she was completely holding a man’s attention, and that he was gazing at her as a woman, thinking of her as a woman. She forced the reflection on, demanding the phrase. As a sex object. She didn’t find that offensive, either, not the way so many other women appeared to do on television or in newspaper comment. Rather, because it had happened to her so rarely, Elke was flattered. Flattered but safe: there could be no danger, no misunderstanding, from someone who had shown himself to be considerate. Impression built upon impression. It was idiotic, but she felt they were old friends: that she knew him and could trust him.
‘Yes,’ said Reimann, another remark for his own amusement. ‘I’ll remain the man in charge, shall I?’
They didn’t have another drink. She recognized the direction to Bad Godesberg as they drove down Adenauerallee: by the Chancellery Reimann slowed to a near crawl, to stop completely against the head-and-shoulders monument. He insisted again that it was garden-gnome design, and Elke laughingly agreed once more. He allowed her three chances to guess their destination. She failed. When he announced it was to be the Maternus she came in quickly – wanting to boast – to say she knew it was the favourite restaurant of government ministers and ambassadors. Smoothly Reimann said he didn’t know. Of course he did: he’d made the choice precisely to impress her.
Elke was impressed, and was glad she’d put the ornamental belt back on when they’d stopped on Adcnauerallee. The Transport Minister who complained about speed limits was three tables away. She recognized the ambassadors of France and Spain. She thought a loud-laughing, straw-haired young girl on the far side of the room was an actress, although she couldn’t make an identification.
‘Silly man,’ said Reimann, nodding in the direction of the minister. ‘Unless he wants to be discovered – which I can’t imagine he does – he shouldn’t eat it in a place as public as this with someone who isn’t his wife.’<
br />
Elke concentrated for the first time upon the man’s companion. She wasn’t quite as young as the straw-haired actress, but it was close. She said: ‘No. I suppose he shouldn’t.’ There was a quick alarm, although the responsibility was not hers. ‘But you’re a …’
‘… not that sort of journalist,’ anticipated Reimann. ‘I don’t seek to expose people. I still think he’s silly, though. It could too easily happen.’ It was an extra to pass back to Moscow, through Jutta, an archetypal destruction or blackmail opportunity; the man was an utter cunt.
Elke allowed herself to think her forbidden word: wonderful, she thought. Everything about Otto – his behaviour and his integrity – was wonderful. She didn’t know what to choose and eagerly accepted his offer to order for her. The veal was cooked to a recipe she did not know and was magnificent. He chose a Mosel wine, a Wehlener Sonnennuhr, and said she would taste the honey, which she did. Poor Horst, she thought, in intrusive comparison.
‘I’m having a wonderful evening,’ he said.
Now he was using the word! ‘So am I.’
‘Yet I know more about your car than I do about you!’
Elke laughed. How much she would have enjoyed telling him of the importance of her new promotion! Out of the question, of course: although, despite his being a journalist, she surely could have talked about it to him after the discretion he’d just illustrated over an indiscreet government minister! Still out of the question. ‘I’m very dull,’ she said, inviting the contradiction.
Reimann made it, knowing it was required. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
She was dull, thought Elke, in faint desperation. But she refused to panic. She began – and continued for some time – to speak haltingly, unrehearsed and listening with critical unease to her own words. She tried to move the focus away from herself, talking instead of Ida and Horst and dismissing her function at the Chancellery as little more than that of a senior secretary. He had fixed her with that unwavering concentration again, sitting at one stage with his chin supported in his hands, his elbows on the table, and Elke ached to say more, to exaggerate even. When he pressed he did so gently, asking about her family without openly questioning about boyfriends or husbands in the past. Elke spoke of her parents and her father’s war service, ignoring the more obvious invitation, and Reimann didn’t press further.
It all served as a confirmation, Reimann decided, with cold objectivity. Everything she’d said checked out against the briefing he had received in Moscow. All, of course, except Ursula. He’d been intrigued whether she might admit to the child, without really expecting her to do so. Had she done so Elke Meyer would have shown herself to be a different character from that he’d already assessed: maybe made him revise his opinion and his approach. He was happier – relieved – that she hadn’t. This way it was easier to intercept. She had a secret – believed she had a secret – she wanted to keep from him, frightened of it becoming an obstacle between them. Which meant she was anxious to prevent any such obstacle: that she wanted the relationship to grow.
‘Now you!’ demanded Elke.
Reimann was conscious of her increased confidence from that initial, bewildered encounter: she was comfortable – felt secure – with him now. He launched into the carefully prepared legend, talking of emigration to America – lying about cities like New York and Chicago and San Francisco, knowing he could not be caught out because she had never been to any of them either – and inventing journalistic escapades in America and Latin America and Australia. Throughout he guessed what she really wanted to hear and so he never offered it.
Elke listened with rapt attention, never interrupting, never doubting. Could she ask? she demanded of herself, when it was obvious he was coming to an end. Ida said she could – had urged her to – but Elke wasn’t sure. She supposed it depended on how she phrased the question.
‘It’s been a busy life? Exciting?’
‘I guess so. Although it’s not how I think of it.’ Not bad, he judged, knowing her effort: she deserved five out of ten.
‘All-consuming, too.’
Reimann shrugged, without replying, letting her splash out of her depth.
‘Not a lot of opportunity for any personal life?’
After a reasonably good start she was running out of control down the hill, he thought. Coming to her aid, Reimann said: ‘I’ve regretted that, sometimes. Maybe I have committed too much to the job: sometimes I think how nice it would have been, to have got married and had kids.’
‘But you never did?’ Elke persisted. She had to get it now: get it one hundred and one per cent certain, so there wouldn’t be any doubt at all.
Her knickers were practically around her ankles in her anxiety, reflected Reimann. He had to nudge her at the same time as placating her. Looking momentarily away, as if in genuine sadness, he said: ‘No, I never did.’ His head came around at once. ‘And you? Don’t you regret never marrying? Never having children?’
Elke’s face blazed. She couldn’t, immediately, speak. At last she managed: ‘Yes. Sometimes. Sometimes, yes,’ and realized how foolish she must appear to him. Why had she said it, told such an outright, easily exposed lie? But what choice had she had? She’d been trapped, with no alternative!
Now there’s a burden! decided Reimann, happily. She had the supposed secret of Ursula and now she’d denied the child’s existence, which was a positive deceit she might have openly to confess to him in the future. Would have to confess, determined Reimann. He’d make her do so: make her anxious to compensate. That’s what she had to become, ultimately: consciously eager to please and to compensate for mistakes, real or imagined. And that’s what she would become. Reimann had no doubt at all now that he could mould her – like the clay he’d thought about earlier – into whatever he wanted her to be.
A street flower-vendor entered the restaurant, offering individual roses wrapped in silver foil. The minister beckoned and Reimann groaned inwardly at an opportunity being lost by the absence of any photographer. There’d be other chances, he consoled himself: the man was too much of an imbecile to escape it.
‘No!’ Elke protested, weakly, when the flower-seller approached their table and Reimann nodded to buy one.
‘It’s what happens in all those romantic Hollywood films,’ he said.
Elke tried to evade the remark. Still in apparent protest, she said: ‘You’re always buying me roses.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Reimann, refusing her the escape because he wanted to raise the tension again. ‘I’d like always to be buying you roses.’ Christ, he thought: how crass! He was sincerely grateful no one else would hear what he was saying, on any concealed listening device. Reimann selected a wrapped rose he guessed would die within an hour and presented it to her.
Elke accepted it, smiling her thanks, answering the look once more. What would she do later if…? She stopped the question from completely forming, not wanting to confront it. He wouldn’t expect it: she was sure he wouldn’t. But what if he did? No, she decided, positively. Despite the way she felt, about knowing him for a long time, in reality she knew him not at all. Which would be only the first ground for refusal. If there was going to be anything like a proper relationship it had to be correctly – firmly – established. On respect. Understanding. And…? Why didn’t she bring the word forward, for examination? Properly established on love, she thought at last. Not on lust or excitement or on Ida’s terms, for fun. She hoped so much that he didn’t try, tonight. Everything had been so perfect – he was so perfect – and if he pressed her tonight it would all be ruined.
‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘You’ve become very quiet.’
‘Thinking,’ said Elke.
‘What about?’ Shall I? Shan’t I? Shall I? Shan’t I? he guessed.
‘What a lovely evening it’s been,’ Elke evaded, again.
‘Is being,’ Reimann corrected. Wishing to maintain her uncertainty he added: ‘It’s not over yet.’
He was sure that her smiled response was weaker, in her apprehension.
When they left the restaurant he held her arm, ostensibly to help her through the door, but retained it afterwards, detecting the faintest stiffening at his touch. It stayed until just before they reached the Mercedes, where he released her. Inside he offered to help with her seatbelt, which would have brought them close together again, but quickly Elke insisted she could manage, which she did, clumsily hurrying. Reimann stoked the mood, driving back towards Bonn without talking, curious if she would try to break the silence. She didn’t.
At Kaufmannstrasse Reimann stopped the car directly outside Elke’s apartment building and turned off the engine. He twisted towards her and said: ‘It was a good evening.’
‘I’ve enjoyed it too,’ said Elke. She should invite him in, for coffee or a nightcap! For something! No! Not for something. For a coffee or a nightcap, that’s all.
Reimann created the pause, looking at her expectantly: her hands were shifting one over the other in her lap, tiny washing movements. ‘Well…?’ he said, after sufficient time.
She had to do it! She had to invite him inside: invite him inside and hope he wouldn’t do anything to embarrass them both, to spoil everything. She said: ‘Would you like to come…?’ but Reimann refused to let her finish.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of you, but I still have some work to do. You’re not offended, are you?’
The relief flooded through Elke. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m not offended.’
Next time, Reimann thought: next time, little innocent near-virgin, I shall take you to bed: I know you want me to. He said: ‘I’d like to see you again.’
‘Yes,’ said Elke, glad of the darkness inside the car. ‘I’d like that, as well.’ A man wanted to see her again! An attractive, funny, wonderful man was interested in seeing her, Elke Meyer!
Reimann escorted her to the entrance to the block. There was no stiffness in the arm he held now. At the doorway he kissed her lightly, not fully on the mouth. At the moment Elke realized what he was going to do she came forward, to meet him.
Little Grey Mice Page 23