Pavel & I (7 page)

‘You have rules?'

He took her in his eye.

‘Like lovers,' he murmured. ‘We like it that way.'

She left him then, thoughtful. Thinking that Pavel was a subtle man, and, as such, dangerous.

Sonia passed the day playing piano. At around six in the evening she started to drink. She drank wine and French brandy, preparing herself for the Colonel. It occurred to her that she had not washed that day but she assured herself that the Colonel would not care; that he was capable of taking pleasure even in her body's stink. She dressed in tweed, silk and furs, like an English lady; stoked the fire, cut ham upon the sideboard in case he should be hungry, and made sure her diaphragm was in place.

He came at eleven sharp and brought the promised present, grinning as she turned away in disgust.

‘I got him from an old
Wehrmacht
corporal who said he used to work in the circus before the war. Isn't he a beaut?'

‘It stinks,' she complained, and made him tie it to the doorknob by its lead.

The monkey screamed and clawed until he fed it some ham and sugared tea; once sated, it hunkered down to pick at its own tail. Only then did the Colonel kiss her welcome, his wet, affable lips twice the size of hers and holding her mouth in his own as though it were a sweetmeat.

‘My darling,' he said. ‘My sweet little strumpet. Play us something on that fabulous piano of yours.'

Sulkily, yet knowing also that he would be amused rather than offended, she chose a dreary funeral march. While she played, he undressed freely in the middle of the drawing room, oblivious to the cold. By the time he asked her to stop, he stood only in his shoes, socks and garters. The cold stretched taut his ample skin. It gave a bladder-like firmness to his girth, baby-pale and shot through with a powder-blue network of veins. He called her over and she obeyed without hesitation. The act itself she performed upon the bed, using her mouth and hands to bruise his skin in the way he liked her to. Then, in the aftermath, it became time to tell him, before he left her for his oaken desk upon which stood the photo of his wife and children, and an ashtray shaped out of a sperm-whale's ivory tooth. Still, she hesitated for another moment or two, knowing perfectly well that it was her time to talk, that she could not risk his finding out by other means. Sonia got up, crossed the room to her dressing table, and watched herself shape the words in the make-up mirror.

‘There is a sick man downstairs,' she said without introduction. ‘He knows Boyd White.'

She had thought that it would rattle him a little, but could spy no reaction in her mirror. He lay still upon his back, fat legs spread wide and a pillow propping up his head far enough so that his eyes could watch her across his stomach's expanse.

‘You don't say,' he said. ‘Downstairs?'

‘We're right on top of him. Crazy, isn't it?'

He chuckled to himself good-humouredly, blew bubbles of spit from his generous lips.

‘Not so crazy,' he said. ‘He told us that much. Fifth floor.'

‘It's the fourth, not the fifth.'

‘Fifth for an American. “We are two cultures divided by a common language.” I wonder who said it first.'

She watched him laugh in her mirror and thought he was taking it rather well.

‘Does he know anything?' he asked.

‘I don't think so. I talked to him this morning and he mentioned Boyd, for no particular reason.' There was no need, she felt, to mention the midget. Not at this stage, in any case. It would get Pavel into trouble, and she had no wish to make more trouble for him than she already had.

‘He's sick?'

‘Yes. Getting better, though. I called a doctor.'

‘Wonderful. Like a Good Samaritan. I expect you can introduce me in the morning.'

‘What will I say?'

‘Nothing,' said the Colonel. ‘You will say nothing. I will do the talking.'

He laughed to himself and used the silk of her nightgown to wipe clean his crotch before retrieving his clothing in the living room. Once he was dressed, he untied his present and fed it some more ham.

‘Take it away,' she begged, but he shook his heavy head.

‘Just give it time. Before long, I'm sure, you will learn to love one another.

‘It's human nature,' he explained, ‘two lonely souls in the prison of their luxury. Don't worry, my dear. Before long, I swear, you two will get on like a house on fire.'

After he was gone, promising to return before dawn, she locked the door and went back to her drinking. She had no stomach now to climb down the stairs and look in upon the sick man.

Late dawn over Berlin. The sun still in hiding behind great Russian plains, its rays giving her away, albeit feebly. In Sonia's flat, in Charlottenburg, the Colonel naked before his morning mirror. Foam in the face and upon the throat, a razor poised beneath his chin's fleshy dimple. Sonia in the kitchen, waiting, kettle in hand, for the electricity to be turned on. In the living room a frantic animal, running leathery paws over a Bösendorfer keyboard. One flight down Pavel dreams, no longer of kidneys, but of a tuba player stranded on Crusoe's island; smiles, too, for it seems absurd to him. Next door, a sleeping boy and a dead midget: the latter stiff and indifferent as befits his state, the former splayed out, luxuriously, his face screwed up in the intense concentration of the slumbering babe. Elsewhere in town, the last stirrings of bought love in a Russian-sector brothel. Across from it a young engineer, German, relieved not to wake to an officer's gun and the emphatic invitation to relocate eastwards, where Magnitogorsk has need for men with his expertise. Westward, at a Wedding butcher's, the day's first blood is drawn with bone saw and filleting knife; before the gate already his customers are waiting, food coupons buried in their mittens. Closer to home, an adolescent – Paulchen – sleeping stiff-necked upon the barrel of his Luger which protrudes from underneath his pillow; two flights down, an old
woman coughing knotty phlegm into a handkerchief as stiff with cold as she is herself. Closer still – it will take them mere minutes to drive – an impromptu morgue; a steel gurney; a body curled around death in the shape of a jagged hole, a little north of the sternum, its shins split and cheekbones broken, for whoever worked on it, they knew their business. Late dawn in Berlin, and the scene set for action. A morning like this and I wake on my berth feeling old and spent like the god Odin who gave one eye so he should know past and future through the other.

Do you think he ever lived to regret his trade?

They came in without bothering to knock. The woman, Sonia, entered first, made a show of shaking hands with him with a coldness and formality new to their acquaintance, then declared that she had brought him a visitor.

‘Another doctor?' Pavel asked.

‘No,' she said. ‘A friend.'

She started to say more but bit her lip instead. Pavel was charmed by the movement. It reminded him of the boy. He turned his attention to the visitor.

He came in like he owned the place. A most singular man. Fat, for starters, quite possibly the fattest man Pavel had ever known. It had crept into his every extremity, from the lobes of his ears to the musculature of his palms; they looked padded like a newborn's. Fat fingers made fatter by a half-dozen rings, gold and precious stones, the nails manicured and glossy. Upon his entrance, a flutter of furs. Mink, it had to be mink: a woman's coat that fell to mid-thigh, tailored at the waist and rising up to the crest of a foot-wide collar. It crouched upon his shoulders and nuzzled his neck. Underneath, an ill-fitting officer's uniform, British, brass buttons straining against his
girth. His skin was the colour of dough; cakes or Kaiser rolls, not a kernel of rye. A basset's cheeks, no hair on his head. Wet lips that formed an enormous, bulging oval. The upper lip was as thick as the lower, with no furrow beneath the nose: sausages for lips, though not unbecoming. His step delicate, the tread soundless. A beautiful voice, the words shaped to perfection; his handshake dry and dexterous. Deliberately, the man placed one plump palm upon Pavel's cheek to test his fever, then wiped it on a handkerchief. A most singular man, strolling in upon a cloud of perfume. The gun on his belt holster looked oiled, and like it had never been used.

‘So,' said the fat man with an air of concern. ‘Sonia's sick new friend. Enchanted, I am sure.'

Pavel lay dazed, tasting perfume in his mouth, and thought that he would never be able to resist this man.

‘Richter,' he said. ‘My name is Richter.'

‘Fosko. Colonel Stuart Melchior Fosko, at your service. I am here about a friend of yours. You know a man named Boyd White? Boyd Ferdinand White, Private, US Army, honorably discharged some nine months ago and since then active in Berlin gambling and prostitution circles? The thing is, Mr Richter, I have some bad news for you. Boyd White's dead. Dead as a dodo. I should like to figure out who made him so.'

The Colonel smiled with those wet lips of his, and Pavel found he had no choice but to return the gesture, grit his teeth and smile as he bore the news of his best friend's murder.

The Colonel gave him no time to recover from the shock. He had hardly stopped talking when the door swung open again and two British privates entered, carrying a stretcher between them and a canteen filled with French brandy. Fosko would not hear of Pavel's
remonstrations that he was well enough to walk, but simply bid him roll onto the stretcher once it had been placed parallel to his narrow bed, then slipped the canteen into his hand and instructed him to take a few swallows, ‘against the cold'. The soldiers carried him down the stairs at a precarious angle: Pavel went head first and felt himself slide helplessly towards the frontman's buttocks. When he finally made contact the latter pushed him back unceremoniously, with a grunt and a flip of the hips. On the street the cold crept down Pavel's windpipe and assaulted his lungs. The day was clear, icy, the sky stuck in a peculiar shade of leaden blue. Gruffly the soldiers assisted Pavel into a waiting car. They promised a wheelchair at the end of the journey. The boy tried to get in next to him but the Colonel cut him off and manoeuvred his girth into the adjacent seat. His thighs bulged in his uniform and threatened to crawl up Pavel's own; he felt his shoulder disappear in his neighbour's breast and turned his face towards the window. Sonia squeezed in next to the Colonel and offered her lap to the boy. The soldiers got in at the front, lit cigarettes, rubbed warm their hands. They drove in silence through broken Berlin, the rubble frozen into jagged edifices of ice and stone.