They began arguing again. With the feeling that something inside him was dying, Ivan realized that Semyonov was speaking the truth. And in his fear of believing him he jumped up, knocking over his glass, and with a hoarse shout grabbed hold of the man. He let go at once, so pitiful and light did his crippled body feel. Semyonov began yelling: “You idiot, don’t you understand? I’m trying to open your eyes. You strut about like a peacock with your shining Star. You don’t understand that we’ve been had. We’ll go together tomorrow. I’ll show you this ‘night duty’ I know one of the guys in the cloakroom at the Intourist Hotel. He’ll let us in…. Yes, I promise you, they’ll let us in, you’ll see. I’ll go without crutches, I’ll take a stick. Here, take a look at this artificial leg I have.
Semyonov scrambled off the chair onto the floor, rummaged under the bed and pulled out a metal leg with a huge black leather shoe. It seemed to Ivan as if he were living through a horrible and absurd dream. Semyonov let himself fall back on the bed and began to fit on his false leg, calling out: “I’m only a half-portion. What goddamned good am I to anyone? They gave me the false leg for free. If you wear it for a day your stomach bleeds all week. But for you, Vanya, I’ll put it on. Tomorrow you’ll see, I’ll show you what your Star’s worth…. Under a warm quilt with my wife, you said…. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
The cloakroom attendant let them settle down in a dark corner, hidden behind the dusty fronds of a palm tree growing in a big wooden plant holder. From there could be seen the elevators, a small part of the restaurant, and, through the dark French doors, the rear courtyard filled with trash cans from the kitchen. Also visible were the two panels of the sliding doors to the inner entrance hall that opened automatically That evening, possibly because of the wet snow, these doors were not working properly They kept opening and closing all the time, with a mindless mechanical obedience, even when no one came near them.
Ivan was sitting beside Semyonov behind the palm tree, on the polished wooden planks that concealed the radiators. Semyonov was leaning sideways with his rigid leg stretched out. From time to time he gave explanations to Ivan in a low voice: “There, you see, in the basement behind the cloakroom, they have a va-lyutka, a currency bar. It’s reserved for capitalists. And the girls, of course. You see that couple there walking toward the elevator? And there, look at that tight-fitting dress. She’s going to go with him. Ten minutes’ work and she’ll pocket what you used to earn in a month driving trucks.”
Ivan saw people coming and going who were unusual not only in their language and clothes but even in the way they moved.
Silently the elevator doors opened and closed. A very young girl ran up to the cloakroom, meowing like a cat: “You wouldn’t have a packet of Marlboros, would you?”
“He trades, that one. He’s no fool,” Semyonov explained to Ivan. “She doesn’t want to spend her currency, and maybe she hasn’t earned it yet. She’s very young….”
A large, dazzling woman sailed past, her bosom opulent beneath a fine knit dress. She walked on heels so high and pointed that her calves looked as if they were tensed with cramp. A young man in an elegant suit, a newspaper in his hand, stopped near the cloakroom desk. He exchanged a few offhand words with the attendant, glancing now at people emerging from the lifts, now at those entering the hotel. “A guy from the KGB,” whispered Semyonov.
Ivan was wearied by the uninterrupted parade of faces and the mechanical creaking of the malfunctioning door. The blond woman in the tight dress emerged from the elevator and made for the cloakroom. “Job done,” thought Ivan. The woman put on some lipstick in front of the mirror and headed for the exit. Absently he watched her go.
At that moment Ivan saw Olya.
She was walking beside a tall man, whose face Ivan did not have time to notice, such was the fascination with which he was staring at his daughter. Olya was talking to her companion, relaxed and natural. Semyonov nudged Ivan with his elbow and murmured something to him. Ivan heard nothing. He felt a horrible tensing inside himself and a salty taste tightening his jaws. He understood he ought to react, leap up, cry out, but he could not. When he began to hear again he caught a remark of Semyonov’s: “They’re talking German, Ivan, can you hear …?”
At the same moment the elevator doors began to slide shut behind Olya and her companion. Reflected in the mirror in the cabin, Ivan saw a man’s face with short gray hair, neatly trimmed. The elevator doors closed smoothly.
Ivan tried to get up but was overcome with such a fit of trembling that his knees gave way. And once more he felt a salty lump in his throat. He had never before experienced such a painful, almost physical pang. He did not realize that what he was suffering from at this moment was a kind of jealousy.
Semyonov tugged at his sleeve, exclaiming in a muted voice: “Vanya, Vanya, what is it? What’s the matter with you? You’ve gone as white as a sheet….”
Stunned, Ivan gazed at him without seeing him and, unable to control a quivering at the corner of his mouth, breathed softly: “That’s my daughter.”
4
“HE’S CALLED WILFRIED ALMENDINNER…. No, not ‘Almendinner,’ what am I saying? Almendinger … There’s a surname for you! A real tongue twister! We’re going to take a great interest in him. Svetlana was supposed to be looking after him. But she’s on sick leave, you see. As to conversation, don’t worry. To begin with, your German is perfectly adequate, and in any case he speaks Russian. He was here in the war. He was taken prisoner in the Ukraine and learned the language while they were rebuilding Leningrad. I’m telling you this, Olya, to give you a certain amount of background, so you can prepare yourself a little psychologically. But when you’re talking to him, of course, you’re not supposed to know this. In any case you know your business and you don’t need me to remind you of it.”
Vitaly Ivanovich took a cigarette from the pack and lit it. He had a weary and disappointed air. Ever since the winter he had been looking forward to the blissful torpor that awaited him on the beach at the KGB’s vacation home beside the Black Sea. And suddenly everything was turned upside down, the spring and summer vacations had been put back to the fall and the order had been given to prepare for the International Festival of Youth and Students.
“They’re all going to be gathering here, the whole pro-Communist rabble,” Vitaly Ivanovich swore internally. “And because of them, I’ll have no vacation. What bizarre routines we’re falling into. Almost every year there’s something: one year it’s the Olympic Games, then it’s conferences, now this festival…. They come here to make love. It’s ‘Workers of the world, copulate!’ This festival’s a farce! If only I could take my leave in September, at least I could go mushroom picking. But no! I’ll get it around the new year….”
Vitaly Ivanovich pulled a face, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and went on with a sad smile: “That’s right, Olya, we’re going to take a great interest in him. He comes here as the representative of a firm of chemical products, but he has links with the secret services, we know that for certain. In fact, for a time he was an expert on military affairs, but that’s just for your information. We think he’s going to make a contact. So it’s not impossible that someone may pass documents to him. It would be very helpful for us to be able to examine his briefcase. Clearly that can only be done at night, you understand. Of course, customs will check him with a fine-tooth comb when he leaves. But before they get to customs they generally have time to encode it or learn it by heart or even entrust it to the diplomatic pouch. So you see your role is crucial, Olya. He arrives on May the third and leaves on the seventh. He’ll be staying at the Intourist.”
Olya passed on the German’s briefcase, a smart black attaché case, for inspection the very first night. It was an object of quality and price, like all the things this man used.
Olya waited until he was breathing regularly and slipped out of bed. She knew he would sleep deeply for at least two or three hours. The sleeping draft was added to the cocktail. At the table in the res
taurant, as if she had just happened to think of it, Olya would exclaim: “Oh! I completely forgot! They do a cocktail here — you know, it’s a rather … Russian-style combination — absolutely delicious.”
If for any reason the “subject” refused, the waiter would bring exceptionally salty caviar. In the bedroom, after the delights of love had made him breathless, the foreigner would take eager drafts of the cool wine thoughtfully poured out by his attentive companion.
Olya took a large black plastic envelope out of her bag, put the German’s briefcase into it and closed the zipper. Then she placed the envelope close to the door, gently withdrew the key from the lock and went over to the telephone. She dialed twice and, without waiting for the customary “Hello,” murmured “Forty-six” and hung up. Two minutes later the lock clicked softly, the door opened slightly and a hand deftly seized the black envelope. To avoid falling asleep, Olya did not lie down — she sat in an armchair.
Almendinger was lying on his back, stretched out fully, his great bony hands crossed on his chest. The neon light from the street silvered his face. It was a face that resembled a mournful plaster mask. And it now seemed impossible that the petrified folds of this mouth should, only a few minutes ago, have sought and touched her lips, those hands held her body.
During dinner at the restaurant he had talked a good deal, joking and correcting her mistakes. He bore himself with such worldly ease and there was such precision in all his words and gestures that Olya had no need to act. It felt as if he knew the scenario quite as well as her, that the allocation of roles suited him and in no way discomfited him. It even felt as if it was all so familiar to him that he was intent on making the most of this May evening, the presence of this young escort, as unexpected as she was inevitable, and of the chance, possibly for the last time in his life, to assume the rewarding role of social lion.
With smiling grace he talked about trips he had made, knowing that for his young companion the names of Venice or Naples had the same exotic ring as that of Eldorado. Generally in such recitals Olya used to detect a note of superiority, be it open or covert, on the part of those who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Almendinger’s stories were different. For example, in Italy he had for the first time in his life heard a cats’ concert. A sadistic Neapolitan had gathered up a dozen cats, had arranged them according to their voices, putting them into tiny cages fitted inside a piano. He had inserted needles into the felt on the hammers so that every time the keys were struck they pricked the cats’ tails. The wretched animals each emitted a different sound and their wailing blended into a horrible and pitiful symphony. The sadistic pianist had almost been lynched by the members of the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
After telling this story Almendinger threw Olya a somewhat sheepish glance.
“I shouldn’t be telling you about such horrible things. After all, we Germans have the reputation among you as a people somewhat lacking in humanity. Yes, that war … When I think that in ‘41 I could see the Kremlin towers through my binoculars! And now I can see them from my bedroom window. It truly is as the Bible says: ‘Die Wege Gottes sind unergründlich.’ God’s ways are unfathomable. Have you ever come across that expression?”
He fell silent, his gaze lost somewhere among the cups and plates. Remembering the part she had to play, Olya suggested with exaggerated animation: “Oh listen, Wilfried! I’d completely forgotten. They have an absolutely delicious cocktail here.
Never before had those words seemed so loathsome to her. It was just at the moment when they brought the cocktail that he began to talk about the Germany of his childhood.
“You know, children these days have a great many toys. But all these toys are too cold, too — how can I put it? — technological. When I was a child I had a collection of miniature lighthouses. The top of each one unscrewed and inside there was sand. Each contained a different kind of sand that came from a different beach in Europe….”
Almendinger lay there, his arms folded, his face motionless, now and then emitting a sigh, a brief moan. He knew he would have to remain lying there like that for an hour, or maybe two. He had heard Olya standing stock-still above him, listening to his breathing, then telephoning. He had also heard the door open and close again. He somewhat regretted having chosen to remain stretched out on his back. On his side, with his face hidden in the pillow, it would have been easier. On the other hand, by slightly opening his eyes he could observe what was happening in the room. But even this was of little interest to him. Within his attaché case, a few pages of anodyne disinformation had been slipped with professional dexterity into the middle of a wad of scientific documents. This should smooth the path for his successor as he made a start in Moscow. What Almendinger was preparing to take away with him boiled down to four columns of figures learned by heart.
While he was talking about his childhood collection of lighthouses and their sand, he had been slowly bending the straw in his cocktail glass with his thumb. The glass stood behind the bottle of champagne and the carafe of water. Olya could not see it. He drew gently on the straw and slipped the end of it into an empty glass.
“And then,” Almendinger went on, “my cloudless childhood came to an end, alas. I turned into a clumsy great oaf, a nasty little monster. One day I poured out all the sand into one small heap on the lawn. I mixed it all up.”
Olya, who was listening attentively and dreamily, asked in surprise in German: “Warum?”
Almendinger smiled. She suddenly seemed so young to him!
“Und warum sind die Bananen krumrn?” he asked her, laughing. “Why are bananas bent?” After that he remarked: “This cocktail is quite excellent. I must remember its name. What did you say? ‘Moscow Bouquet’? Ah! A very good name for it…”
He put the straw to his lips. The last drops of delicate pink foam were disappearing from the bottom of the glass.
* * *
And now, lying there in the darkness of his bedroom, he reflected that everything in this world was strangely linked. That mixing of the sands had come back to him one night in a trench near Moscow. It was appallingly cold. The soldiers crowded round the stove. The red-hot metal burned their hands, while their backs grew hard and stiff like bark under the piercing snow squalls. Above their heads the icy stars twinkled. And close by, in similar trenches, crouched their enemies, the Russians. But these men, savages that they were, did not even have a stove.
“Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow,” he was thinking, “we’ll be in Moscow. We’ll have dealt with Russia. It’ll be warm and clean. I’ll get a medal….” A solitary flare went up, momentarily eclipsing the starry sky. Then their eyes had adjusted to the dark once more. And once more the stars began to shine and the deep black of the sky was restored. Trying to think of nothing, he reached out toward the stove, mentally repeating: “Tomorrow we’ll be in Moscow. It’ll be warm, and clean….” But the thought he was trying to keep at bay returned. It returned not in words but in a vivid, instinctive flash: this snow-filled ditch dug in the earth, floating away into the dark of the night, among the stars. And all of them in this ditch, who have already seen death, who have already killed. And over there in a similar ditch, covered in hoarfrost, those whom they will have to kill. And this stove into which all the heat in the universe is concentrated that night. And the grains of sand from all the shores of Europe mixed up together in a little grayish mound on the lawn in a German town that has recently come to know the whistle of falling bombs….
In the bedroom the silence of the night reigned. Only from time to time the hiss of a car disappearing up Gorky Street and apart from that, somewhere up on another floor, the short, sharp creak of a floorboard. From the Kremlin tower came the airborne melody of the chimes, then three solemn and measured strokes.
Olya was comfortable in her armchair. She observed the German as he slept and with difficulty restrained an incomprehensible impulse — to approach the bed on tiptoe and run her hand
lightly over that plaster mask and bring it back to life.
Almendinger was automatically counting the vibrant strokes from the chiming clock in the tower: “One, two, three. Three o’clock…. They’re spending a long time searching. They’re testing it by radio, they’re listening with a stethoscope. No, it’s better not to think about it. Once you focus your mind on it for a minute you realize the totally phantasmagoric nature of everything around us. The night… and them. They’ve put their gloves on and now they’re fingering, reading, taking photos. Red-eyed, yawning, their shirt sleeves rolled up. And I’m lying here stupidly motionless. I who, forty years ago, lay on the frozen earth, dreaming of warmth and rest in Moscow … And her. She’s still so young; I have a daughter older than her. She sits there in her armchair, waiting for that idiotic briefcase. Absurd!”
Once more he remembered how, as a prisoner, he had been led through the streets of Moscow in that interminable column with other German prisoners. On both sides of the road, the people of Moscow stood on the sidewalk, staring at the gray tide of soldiers with somewhat wary curiosity. After them, following in their footsteps, came a slow-moving water cart, more or less symbolically washing the streets of the capital clean of the “Fascist plague.” It suddenly seemed to Almendinger that he was starting to picture the faces of the Muscovites standing in the street, to hear snatches of their conversation….
The door lock clicked softly. He realized he had fallen asleep for a moment. Furtive footsteps glided over the carpet, the attaché case returned to its place beside the desk. As he fell asleep Almendinger felt the coolness of a light palm upon his face. But he was already so engulfed in his sleep that all he could do was to turn his face with closed eyes toward this hand, and smile, already dreaming, and murmur a few words in German.
* * *
By noon it was very hot in the colorful streets, awash with people and sunlight. You could already smell the summer, the scent of hot dusty asphalt.
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