Back in the Cabinet Secretary’s office, where they went immediately to discuss and agree the session between themselves, Werle said anxiously: ‘Well! Were you impressed?’ He hoped, particularly, that she had recognized his contribution and noted the deference towards him from everyone.
In truth, Elke had not been overly impressed, although passingly she had been aware of Werle’s favoured position. Her mind held on to the knowledge that the meeting had been a momentous one, both politically and historically. Yet none of the discussion or the ideas put forward had struck her as matchingly momentous; she’d been disappointed at the lack of dynamism in either the men or their ideas. She said: ‘It was fascinating.’
Werle smiled his pleasure, wrongly imagining Elke in awe: he had spoken far more than was normal even for him at a Cabinet session, eager to show her his influence and political acumen. ‘Any difficulties, assembling what’s necessary?’ he asked.
Elke replied by reading out the sub-headings for the position reports she had already annotated as the meeting progressed and itemizing the points she considered essential for the overall record. Werle agreed to everything, without addition or correction.
‘It’s going to be very good, our working together like this, isn’t it?’ said Werle.
‘I hope so,’ agreed Elke, cautiously.
He smiled. ‘You don’t object to my calling you Elke?’
She hesitated. ‘Of course not.’
‘As I wouldn’t mind your calling me Günther.’
Elke shook her head. ‘That would be wrong, in front of the rest of the Secretariat.’
‘When we’re not in front of the rest of the Secretariat, then,’ Werle insisted.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t called sooner,’ Reimann apologized. ‘You can guess how busy I’ve been, trying to interpret and comment about everything happening here in Germany.’
‘I can imagine,’ Elke accepted. She’d been depressed, increasingly convinced that he wasn’t going to make any further contact, but it had enabled her to work late several evenings, to get out the position papers and the encompassing report. There had been a congratulatory message, from the Chancellor’s office, on both the speed and the composition.
‘And it’s going to stay that way,’ said Reimann. He allowed a long hesitation, to see if she would say anything. She didn’t. He went on: ‘So I was wondering whether we could do something together on Saturday? During the day, I mean?’
Now the pause came from Elke. It was established – a firm pattern – for her always to go to Bad Godesberg, to Ida: she’d done so, apart from holiday breaks maybe, for years. The counter-argument came at once. There had been holiday interruptions, so the arrangement wasn’t inviolate. What was so important about the visit anyway? He’d think she was reluctant if she went on hesitating as she was doing now. ‘Saturday will be fine,’ she accepted.
‘We’ll make a full day of it. Dress to spend the day outdoors: jeans if you have any,’ Reimann insisted. He was smiling broadly when he put the telephone down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Reimann prepared with consummate care. The delay in any contact was intentional, to make her nervous, and specifically choosing Saturday was a challenge, to gauge her unwillingness to break a fixed arrangement. There had scarcely been any reluctance at all, which was encouraging, if any further encouragement had been necessary. Sure of himself – and of what was going to happen – Reimann considered Sunday, when Elke always went to Marienfels, to be the definitive test.
He collected her early, kissing her in greeting at the doorway, which startled her. Elke thought she managed to conceal it from him. She didn’t. When she got into the car she saw there was a backpack on the rear seat and said: ‘Where are we going?’
‘Outdoors, like I told you!’ he said, lightly. There was an important reason for the outdoor choice.
Elke was glad she’d bought the jeans he’d suggested, although she wished they had not been so obviously new. She was concerned about how she looked in them: she’d spent the previous thirty minutes prior to his arrival trying to survey her rear view in the closet mirror. His jeans were washed and faded, although the light sweater appeared new. She’d taken a chance with canvas shoes: he wore thick, hiking-type boots. Honestly she said: ‘I’ve never really thought of myself as an outdoor sort of person.’
‘It’ll be quite painless,’ he promised.
Elke recognized the approach to the ferry terminal before they reached it. When he lifted the backpack from the car, she heard the clink of glass. As they approached the ticket office he invited her to decide where they would get off, but she demurred, insisting that he should choose. He declared that Koblenz was too far and was tempted to go to Linz, which he knew from his visit with Jutta. He selected Andernach. So close to summer and on a weekend, the ferry was full, but they managed to get seats out on the deck and on the side catching the morning sun. Almost as soon as the ferry set off Reimann began a commentary in opposition to the metallic-voiced public address broadcast about the castles they were passing, on either bank, recounting the legendary folklore of the river but giving it all his own interpretations, always making her laugh. She automatically looked towards Bad Godesbcrg as they sailed by, smiling not at anything Reimann said this time but at Ida’s reaction to her telephoned apology (‘Sorry for what? Do anything to hook him, darling! And I mean anything!’), and gazed ashore again when they went by Schloss Marienfels, wondering about Ursula, although there was little to wonder about. Ursula might be with an escorted party, outside in the grounds of the nearby institution. More likely she would be in the room where she would be for tomorrow’s visit, moving to her music, her poor mind locked and shuttered against any entry.
At Andernach they had to go some way into the tiny township to get a taxi. Reimann strode easily and fast, the walk of someone athletically fit, and Elke had difficulty matching him. She didn’t hear the conversation with the taxi driver, but when they got in he smiled sideways at her and said: ‘He promises he knows just the place.’
‘You still haven’t told me what we’re going to do!’
‘Picnic!’ announced Reimann.
Elke decided it was a perfect place. It took less than fifteen minutes to get beyond the town, and when they followed the path recommended by the driver it led up a gradual incline to a tree-thatched hill, which until they reached the top was deceptive, because it wasn’t a top at all but the lip of an open-ended cleft that cut completely across, creating a deeply grassed and silent hollow. Once inside it any sight of the town – any sight of anything – was lost, except for the Rhine which sparkled and glinted for their pleasure through the open end of the tiny valley. The sun, still not oppressive, was just at the tip of one edge, as if it were looking in curiously: the entire dip was bathed in yellow warmth, with just a small patch of shade, like a blemish, from the tree line.
‘This is idyllic!’ exclaimed Elke.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Reimann agreed. He could not have hoped for better.
Although the grass was not damp he produced a thin blanket from the backpack and laid it out for her with a flourish, making an elaborate arm-sweeping bow for her to sit. As she did so, he said: ‘Simple fare: quails’ eggs, cold guinea fowl, a little bread, a little cheese, some peaches, some grapes. And wine: enough wine to last us through the day.’
Elke decided it was dreamlike: possible, in fact, to imagine herself in a dream instead of in the real, sometimes unsettling world. How good it would be to stay here forever, cocooned, safe, protected. She felt all of those things, with Otto. When he poured the wine – champagne to begin – she realized from its coldness that he had kept it in a freezer compartment. He peeled the eggs for her – carefully collecting the shell in a bag to avoid mess, she noted – and set out the guinea fowl and offered the bread and the cheese selection, an attentive, considerate servant. As the meal progressed he changed from champagne to red wine but went back to the unfinished champagne when they got
to the fruit. As he had on the ferry – as he seemed to do all the time when they were together – he talked and made her laugh: telling self-disparaging fantasy tales that fitted the occasion, of being the worst Boy Scout in America and of being a failed hunter in the American backwoods, and totally false stories of cowardly encounters there with wild animals.
‘Lies!’ she accused, breathlessly. ‘It’s all lies!’
They were sitting sideways and opposite from each other, each resting on an arm, so that he was facing her. Seizing the opening, Reimann became abruptly serious and said: ‘That’s something I will never do: I will never lie to you.’
Elke matched the seriousness. ‘I don’t believe you ever would,’ she said.
Reimann tidied the picnic into the pack, leaving the wine bottles easily accessible, made a mock complaint about the heat and asked if she minded his taking off his shirt: he’d discarded the sweater when they arrived. Elke pretended to look towards the distant river but was able to see him as well. The fitness she’d noticed while hurrying to keep up at Andernach was very obvious: he was hard-bodied and tight-waisted, no excess anywhere, muscles ridged across his stomach and shoulders.
Look all you want, thought Reimann, aware of her covert examination: you’re going to see that and a lot more. In feigned apology he said: ‘I should have suggested you bring a suntop: a swimsuit top, perhaps.’ When he’d first seen her photographs in Moscow he’d guessed her soft-skinned, liable to burn in strong sunlight, he remembered. He thought, now, that was a wrong impression.
‘I’m quite all right, really,’ insisted Elke, who was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt. She didn’t possess either a suntop or a swimsuit. She wouldn’t have worn either in front of him.
Reimann shifted, positioning himself behind her and said: ‘Why don’t you lie back: use my legs for a pillow. Your arm will go dead, leaning like that. Mine was beginning to.’
Her arm was starting to numb, sitting as she was. But to lie as he suggested would bring her very close to his bareness. Fool! she thought. Elke twisted, so that she was at right angles to him, putting her head on his thigh. It was comfortable, as he’d said it would be.
Unseen above her, Reimann smiled down at her hesitation. He said: ‘I really was sorry not to have called sooner. But it’s been incredibly busy.’
Elke lay with her eyes closed against the sun’s brightness, drifting both in its warmth and the warmth of the wine. She said: ‘I know. I had to work late every night.’
So there’d been a Cabinet session, Reimann guessed at once: and of greater length or importance, if she’d had to work late every night, because from the observation before his arrival in Bonn he knew her days ran to clockwork regularity. He tried to think of any particular event in the East to link with such a Cabinet meeting, but couldn’t. ‘I keep forgetting how involved you must be.’
What had she said! Elke stopped herself drifting, recalling the words. No harm, she decided, relieved. ‘Hardly at all.’
‘I think you’re being over-modest.’
How impressed he would be, she reflected, wistfully. She tried to think of something to say that was not banal – to show that she did have an opinion and an attitude – and recollected her impression after the Cabinet committee. She said: ‘Which is not a failing of politicians. Don’t you often find them disappointing, when you see them in action, supposedly doing their job?’
What the hell did that mean? Being a personal assistant to the Cabinet Secretary elevated her into a fairly high-ranking position, but not high enough, he wouldn’t imagine, for her to make a remark like that: as if she had seen them in action. So what was the surmise? Whatever the outcome of the Cabinet gathering, she was critical of it. Contemptuous, maybe? No, he withdrew at once. It would be wrong to try to speculate too deeply. In attempted encouragement he said: ‘It’s how I find them most of the time. Everyone seems to forget politicians are really ordinary people, not the infallible supermen they expect them to be …’ He paused, to make her think he was joking, then added: ‘Dictatorship is the only answer! One man for the job: democracy does not work!’
‘It was a series of dictatorships in the East, wasn’t it?’ retorted Elke, pleased with herself. ‘And look what’s happened to them! They’ve all crumbled into nothing.’
It could be a useful avenue, decided Reimann. He said: ‘It’s changing. I am not convinced that communism has totally crumbled, not yet.’
‘Crumbling,’’ said Elke, accepting the difference.
She was unwittingly perfect in providing him with openings, thought Reimann: he hoped, with sexual cynicism, she would go on doing it. He said: ‘I hope not.’
Elke twisted her head, squinting against the sun to look up at him. ‘Why ever should you hope that?’
‘I’m employed as a political commentator, right?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Elke. She put her hand up, the better to shield her eyes: his features were in darkness, almost concealed against the sun’s brilliance, which at the same time made it look as if he were surrounded by an aura. And in between was the hard-muscled body.
‘I’ve made a speculative interpretation,’ said Reimann, in apparent admission. ‘I spoke to a lot of people, of course: heard a lot of theories. But one of the suggestions that emerged, one that has hardly ever been advanced, is the reverse side of the coin.’
Elke shifted, so that she could focus better upon him. Hot now, she rolled up the sleeves of her shirt: she would have been much more comfortable in something briefer. ‘I don’t understand that.’
‘All the stress in the West has been upon a practically automatic assumption that those living in the East want to abandon the principle of communism, run as fast as they can through holes and walls or open checkpoints and settle in the West. Wouldn’t you agree?’
This wasn’t going as she’d wanted, thought Elke, her absolute contentment slipping. She had wanted to go on being pampered and cared for in a glade which no one else knew of or could enter, a magic place. But they were talking politics now: argued-for-a-compromise, adjustable-if-necessary, brutal-if-required politics. None of which had any place in her drifting, euphoric, cocooned dream. Her fault, Elke conceded at once. She’d started it, wanting to impress him: definitely her fault. ‘That would seem to be the case, publicly at least,’ she admitted.
Publicly, isolated Reimann: she spoke as if she had knowledge of a contrary, opposing assessment. ‘Who says so?’ he demanded. ‘OK, so the people in the East want changes. Travel changes, electoral changes. Changes in their standards of living.’
‘So?’ asked Elke. How could she stop this conversation: get back to what it had been like when they’d first arrived?
‘My interpretation,’ said Reimann, in apparent explanation. ‘I don’t believe everything is as automatic and simplistic as it is being analysed, so far. I’ve acknowledged that the East demands freedom, certainly. But definitely not a loss-of-identity absorption.’ The moment to drop the stone into the water and watch the ripples, he thought. He went on: ‘And I’ve had people agree with me, finally: accept that the assumption of a Europe bound together is premature by years if not decades. So that’s the article I have written. That the demand is for a special kind of democracy, one that doesn’t abandon the principles of communism …’ The ultimate pause ‘… and that the government here in Bonn privately accepts and recognizes that reality, whatever the public leaks and assurances might be. That despite all the public posturing they go along with the differing ideologies and are willing to make compromises.’
Reimann was worriedly aware that towards the end his invented argument had started to lose direction. Looking down at her – surprised at the awareness even coming to mind – he suddenly saw her as frail and vulnerable, lying as she was. He hoped she’d stay that way: but then how else could she be?
Elke’s concerned reaction was that his complete assessment wasn’t at all her understanding. Nor that of Günther Werle, with whom she’d discussed it more ti
mes than she could now remember, assembling their joint accounts of the Cabinet committee. Not the Bonn attitude, at least: she conceded that his modified communism thesis might be valid, but that was all. So he’d be wrong. This considerate, kind, attentive man who had done so much for her had concluded a flawed judgement: one, even, that might in its turn be commented upon, professionally ridiculing him. She could correct – avoid – that happening, Elke realized. Just a few words, a phrase: I’m not at all sure about one aspect… have you thought out the possibility of… don’t forget the Constitutional pledges … Forbidden, Elke accepted, reluctantly: positively and unequivocally forbidden. She wanted so much for him not to be ridiculed: she felt helpless. She said: ‘It’s an interesting hypothesis.’
‘Do you agree with it?’ demanded Reimann. He wanted to think he had trapped her, into a box.
There was no warmth from the wine now: little, seemingly, from the sun, although outwardly it was still hot. She shouldn’t be involved – forbidden, she told herself again – in this sort of conversation, absolutely innocent and safe though she knew it to be with someone like Otto. She’d never before allowed it to happen; and certainly shouldn’t, now that she occupied the position she did. She was fortunate that it had occurred with Otto, with whom there could never be any danger. Elke smiled and said: ‘You’re the expert. I don’t have the political awareness or knowledge to agree or disagree.’ She lay back against his leg, hoping he would regard that movement as an end to what they were talking about.
Shit! thought Reimann, as he concluded just that. The balance simultaneously adjusted. He’d learned something, although as yet he did not know how to assess it. And it was infantile to expect any more, at this stage. There was still the rest of the weekend, after all. Quickly he said: ‘Forgive me?’
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