Katherine Carlyle (8 page)

Upstairs in the bar Klaus introduces me to a man with slicked-back hair and a damp handshake. His eyes are damp too. When he looks at me they seem to leave a deposit, as snails do, and I have to resist the urge to reach up and wipe my face. His name is Horst Breitner. Klaus, Horst — German names are truncated, harsh, almost greedy, like bites taken out of something crisp. For a split second I glimpse the apple on the bed in the hotel on Via Palermo.

When Klaus goes off to buy a program, Horst insinuates himself into the space in front of me, blocking my view of the ornate, high-ceilinged room. He holds his champagne flute below his chin and speaks over the rim, in English. “You have known Klaus long?”

“I met him a few days ago.”

“Ah, so this is — how do you say?
— fresh
.”

Horst has an air of urgency, as if he is required to extract certain information from me before Klaus returns. As if he has specific goals or targets. The effect is flattering, but vaguely repellent. I could pretend not to notice, of course. Frustrate him. For some reason, though, I decide to lead him on.

“We met in a café,” I tell him.

“Really?”

“He was sitting at the next table. I asked for the sugar —”

Horst lets out a brief breathy laugh of disbelief.

“We started talking,” I say.

“In a café.” Horst’s eyebrows lift and he turns through ninety degrees. Standing sideways-on to me, he looks away across the bar. He raises his glass to his lips, then tilts it quickly, swallowing a mouthful that is economical, precise. “And now you live with him, in his apartment …”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised,” he says. “Really.”

I shrug, then I too look away, scanning the people to see if they have anything to impart. That’s what life is like now. I hold myself in a constant state of readiness. Every occasion — every moment — trembles with a sense of opportunity. I have no idea where the next communication will come from, but I know that one will come — perhaps even from the unwholesome, insidious man who is still standing beside me.

Klaus returns with two glasses of champagne and a program.

“Quite a crowd,” he says.

“Tchaikovsky’s
Pathétique
.” Horst twists his lips. “Always popular.”

Klaus looks wounded.

“You’re here too,” I say to Horst.

“I have a complimentary ticket,” he says. “I do not pay.”

Soon afterwards he moves away. He approaches a woman in a small close-fitting hat of orange feathers and begins an animated whispered conversation, his mouth only inches from her ear.

“How do you know him?” I ask Klaus.

“We were at school together. I don’t see him often.” Klaus finishes his drink. “He runs a gallery.”

I’m still watching Horst. He notices, and allows himself a quick sardonic smile.

/

Once we are in our seats I consult the program notes. Written shortly after the Second World War, Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony addresses dark themes of loss and damage — “wounds that can’t be healed.” As I lift my head, the conductor raises his arms, and the audience goes still. Loud blasts burst from the brass section, then the strings come in, giddy, out of kilter, somewhat unhinged. I feel as if I missed the beginning but I know I didn’t. The turbulence dies down, and the music becomes melancholic, questing. A gradual awakening, a sense of possibility. Then more bombardment from the horns and trumpets. It’s like trying to listen to several people talking at once, but maybe that’s the whole idea. The lack of a single lucid voice, the absence of a solution.
Wounds that can’t be healed
.

I glance at Klaus, who sits upright with his hands flat on his thighs and his eyes fixed on the orchestra. My mind drifts. I find myself thinking about
The Passenger
. There is a scene where Jack Nicholson’s wife tracks him down to a small Spanish town and he makes a getaway in a white convertible with his new lover, Maria Schneider. Filmed from behind, the convertible speeds into a tunnel while the car carrying the camera pulls over and stops. For a few daring, hypnotic seconds of screen time Antonioni allows the main action of the film to disappear from the film itself. I’ve never known exactly what to make of his decision. I used to think he was drawing attention to Nicholson’s predicament: in taking on a new identity,
a
stranger’s
identity, Nicholson has shrugged off his old life, left it all behind. Now though, with my own thoughts wandering, I see the scene from another angle. What if Antonioni’s parking of the camera is mischievous, or mocking?
The Passenger
is a difficult film, and he might be playing with his viewers, predicting or preempting a lack of concentration. He’s looking away before they do … Just then, the Prokofiev becomes unexpectedly tuneful, almost sweet. Is it me, or does the symphony seem to have turned into a movie soundtrack? Klaus has not reacted. He remains transfixed, lips slightly parted, as if in awe.

Returning to
The Passenger
, I once again see Nicholson and Schneider disappear into the dark mouth of the tunnel. I see the road’s cracked surface, the dusty verge, the weeds. Of course it’s always possible that Antonioni is conjuring a sense of apprehension. He can’t bring himself to follow his characters. He’s fearful of witnessing what’s going to happen.
He doesn’t want to know …
Or perhaps it’s about validity. Perspective. That ordinary stretch of Spanish highway has just as much significance as anything else. Next to the tunnel is a sign that says
GRACIAS POR SU VISITA
. It’s ironic. Or naive —

The curtain falls suddenly, to rapturous applause.

“The interval,” Klaus says.

People rise from their seats. Some have been soothed by the music in a cryptic, almost celestial way. They look benign, incapable of cruelty or violence. Others seem thoughtful, as if they have been set a puzzle or conundrum. And there are those who have a narcissistic air that reminds me of the English couple in the cinema. They have achieved importance simply by attending.

Back in the bar I notice Horst Breitner in the crowd. His eyes rest on me, moist and slightly sticky, then slide away again. Klaus returns with two glasses of white wine. His forehead gleams, as if listening to music is a form of physical exertion.

“Are you enjoying it?” he says.

“Very much,” I say. “But I think I’ve had enough for now.”

“You don’t want to hear the Tchaikovsky?”

“This is a new experience. I’m a bit overwhelmed.”

He stares miserably down into his glass. “Would you like me to take you home?”

“No, no. You go back in. I’ll wait for you.”

“But there’s another hour —”

“That’s fine. I’ll wait.”

When people surge back into the auditorium Klaus is carried along with them. At the doorway he looks over his shoulder. I wave at him. I wonder if he thinks I’m saying goodbye — that I’ll be gone when he comes out, and that he’ll never see me again. It’s not my intention. These days, though, when I leave a room, I often have the sense that I might not return. Steps can’t always be retraced; the path through the forest closes behind me as though it was never there. The repetition that used to characterize my life has gone and I’m left with a trajectory that feels driven, linear. No day is like another day, no moment like the next.

I buy another drink and sit at a table in the corner. Opening my notebook, I begin to describe my move to the apartment on Walter-Benjamin-Platz, and how I have become separated from what might commonly be perceived as the main action of my life. How I have cut loose. How I’m operating with a kind of freedom I never imagined. Sometimes, as I write, I’m aware of the Tchaikovsky,
swelling and fading beyond the closed doors, but mostly it’s blotted out by the chatter of the bar staff and the clink of glasses. I glance down at the page. My handwriting looks unfamiliar to me.

I finish my wine and go outside. Wrapping my coat around me, I sit on the top step and look out over the Gendarmenmarkt. Floodlit churches on either side, the low cloud cover glowing orange. I’m about to open my notebook again when a man approaches. He starts up the steps, but stops when he sees me.

“How are you doing?” His voice has grit and gravel in it. His accent is American.

“Fine,” I say. “You?”

He stands three steps below me, hands in his trouser pockets. The traffic on the east side of the square is on a level with his face. Cars seem to go in one ear and out the other.

“What’s so funny?” he says.

I shake my head. “Nothing.” He’s wearing a gray plastic raincoat and a pair of tennis shoes. One of the laces is undone. “You’re not going to ask me for money, are you?”

“Money?” He looks south, towards the cathedral. “I’ve got more money than I know what to do with.” He takes out a twenty-euro note, holds it between finger and thumb, and sets fire to one corner with a lighter. His thumb and finger open. The burning banknote floats away into the darkness like a vivid ragged moth.

“Beautiful,” I say.

He laughs. It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting.

“Don’t you like Tchaikovsky?” he says.

“Maybe. I don’t know. One symphony’s enough.”

He nods, then gazes up into the sky. I close my notebook but leave it resting on my knees.

“What were you writing?” he asks.

“None of your business.” To anyone else this would be rude. With this man, though, it seems natural, appropriate.

“You were recording your impressions of the city,” he says. “Or your dreams. You always dream when you go somewhere new.”

“You don’t look rich,” I say.

He laughs again, then looks at me askance, across one cheek. “You know what they say about appearances.”

His face is blunt and dented as a boxer’s and his hair is thinning, wild. He’s probably about my father’s age but he has lived a very different life.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

First Oswald, now this stranger in a plastic coat. Everybody wants to show me something.

I hesitate. “But my friend —”

“He’s still inside?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be back in five minutes. Ten at the most.” Mock-gallant, he places his hand on his heart. “I give you my word.”

We cross the Gendarmenmarkt. Turning right, then left, we emerge into another spacious paved area, bordered on the east side by the Staatsoper. According to the American, the opera house is closed for renovation work. In front of us, fifty meters away, a ghostly fan of light rises from the ground, reminding me of the photo booth in Hauptbahnhof Zoo. Portraits of me with my eyes closed, as if asleep or dead.

“That’s where we’re going,” he says.

Set in the middle of the square and flush with the paving stones is a thick glass pane. I stop at the edge. Beneath the pane is a
brightly lit white room, its walls lined with shelves that are pristine, empty.

“This marks the place where the Nazis burned the books,” the man tells me. “One of the places, anyway. Forty thousand people gathered here to watch.”

The crackle of a fire. Pages lift, then shrivel.

The man looks away into the sky again. “In those days, the square was called Opernplatz, after the opera house. Now it’s named after August Bebel, one of the writers whose work was thrown into the flames.”

I stare down into the empty room. “If you keep looking you start to see a library.”

He nods. “Maybe that’s the whole idea.”

As he walks me back to the Gendarmenmarkt I ask what line of work he’s in.

“Import-export,” he says.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I thought you knew everything.”

I give him a look. We’re acting as if we know each other, as if we’ve known each other for years, but he only walked out of the darkness half an hour ago.

“It’s an umbrella term,” he says. “Right now, I’m working with a bunch of Russians.” Outside the Konzerthaus, he turns to face me. “The city’s full of Russians.”

I sense a stirring inside me as if my body is a room with all its windows open and a breeze has just blown in. At that moment people come spilling down the steps. The concert is over. The man stands his ground, forcing the crowd to flow round him. Klaus appears, his mobile pressed to his ear.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he says.

“Did you think I’d gone?”

He puts his phone away. “No. I don’t know.”

“I came outside. I needed air.”

“You didn’t get cold?”

“No.”

The man gives Klaus a look that is challenging and oddly resolute, but Klaus doesn’t notice. Either that or he chooses to ignore it. Somehow it doesn’t feel right to introduce the two men to each other. I hardly know them myself.

“I called a taxi,” Klaus says.

As he turns away to scan the street, the man in the raincoat hands me a small white card. Putting his thumb to his ear and his forefinger to his cheek, he signals that I should call him, then he winks at me and walks away.

“Who was that man?” Klaus asks later, as we pass the Hotel Adlon.

I tilt the card so the streetlights play over it. “J. Halderman Cheadle,” I say, “apparently.”

“You met him tonight?”

I nod. “He’s some kind of messenger, I think.”

“Messenger?”

“He’s got something to tell me. That’s why he was there.” I look out of the window as the taxi accelerates past the Gedächtniskirche and on into the Ku’damm. “The weird thing was, he seemed to know it. They don’t usually know.”

“The way you talk.” Klaus gives a little exasperated waggle of his head. “You sound like a spy.”

I lean back, green and yellow neon streaming through the inside of the car. “So how was the Tchaikovsky?”

/

I meet Oswald on Tuesday evening, as planned, under the sign with the frankfurters and the flames. He tells me it’s a famous
Treffpunkt
— a meeting place — especially after hours. If you come at three in the morning you see millionaires, porn stars, criminals. He indicates the menu on the back wall. That should give me some idea, he says. Though the place functions as a fast-food outlet, offering the usual
Currywurst
and
pommes-frites
, I notice that Russian vodka is available, and Scotch, and even, at a price, Dom Perignon. All very interesting, but I have to remind Oswald, after a while, that I only agreed to meet him because he had something to show me. Unless, of course, this is it.