Part 4 (1/2)

Leonard's initiation happened to coincide with the coldest week of the winter. By Berlin's harsh standards, the old hands agreed, it was exceptional at minus twenty-five degrees. There were no clouds, and by day even the bomb damage, sparkling in rich orange light, looked almost beautiful. At night the condensation on the inside of Maria's windowpanes froze into fantastic patterns. In the mornings the top layer on the bed, usually Leonard's greatcoat, was stiff. During this time he rarely saw Maria naked, not all of her, all at once. He saw the gleam of her skin when he burrowed down into the humid gloom. Their winter bed, top-heavy with thin blankets, coats, bath towels, an armchair cover and a nursery quilt, was precarious, bound only by its own weight. There was nothing large enough to keep the whole together. One careless move and single items would slide away, and soon the ensemble would be in ruins. Then they would be standing facing each other across the mattress, s.h.i.+vering as they began the reconstruction.

So Leonard had to learn stealth as he burrowed down. The weather was enforcing an attention to detail. He liked to press his cheek against her belly, taut from all that cycling, or to push the tip of his tongue into her navel, as intricately convoluted as a sunken ear. Down here in the semidarkness-the bedclothes did not tuck under the mattress, and there was always light leaking in from the sides-in the closed and clotted s.p.a.ce, he learned to love the smells: sweat like mown gra.s.s, and the moistness of her arousal with its two elements, sharp but rounded, tangy and blunt: fruit and cheese, the very tastes of desire itself. This synaesthesia was a kind of delirium. There were tiny blades of calluses the length of her little toes. He heard the rustle of cartilage in her knee joints. In the small of her back was a mole out of which grew two long hairs. Not until mid-March, when the room was warmer, did he see they were silver. Her nipples sprang erect when he breathed on them. On the earlobes were the marks left by her earring clasps. When he ran his fingers through her babyish hair he saw the roots parting in a three-armed whorl about the crown, and her skull looked too white, too vulnerable.

Maria indulged these Erkundungen Erkundungen, these excavations. She lay in a daydream, mostly silent, sometimes putting words around a stray thought and watching her breath ascend to the ceiling. ”The Major Ashdown is a funny man ... that's good, put your fingers between all the toes, yes, so ... every four o'clock in his office he has a cup of hot milk and a boiled egg. He wants the bread cut one, two, three, four, five, like so, and do you know what he calls them, this military man?”

Leonard's voice was m.u.f.fled. ”Soldiers.”

”Just so. Soldiers! Is this how you win the war? With these soldiers?” Leonard came up for air and she looped her arms around his neck. ”Mein Dummerchen ”Mein Dummerchen, my little innocent, what have you learned down there today?”

”I listened to your belly. It must be dinnertime.”

She drew him in and kissed his face. Marie was free with her demands, and she allowed Leonard his curiosity, which she found endearing. Sometimes his inquiries were teases, forms of seduction. ”Tell me why you like it halfway,” he whispered, and she pleaded, ”But I like it deep, really deep.”

”You like it halfway, just here. Tell me why that is.”

Leonard naturally inclined toward a well-ordered, hygienic existence. For four days after the inception of the first love affair of his life he did not change his underwear or socks, he had no clean s.h.i.+rt and he hardly washed. They had spent that first night in Maria's bed talking and dozing. Toward five A.M. A.M. they had cheese, black bread and coffee while a neighbor just through the wall was messily clearing his throat as he prepared to go to work. They made love again, and Leonard was pleased with his powers of recuperation. He was going to be all right, he thought, he was just like everyone else. After that, he fell into a dreamless sleep from which he was woken an hour later by the alarm clock. they had cheese, black bread and coffee while a neighbor just through the wall was messily clearing his throat as he prepared to go to work. They made love again, and Leonard was pleased with his powers of recuperation. He was going to be all right, he thought, he was just like everyone else. After that, he fell into a dreamless sleep from which he was woken an hour later by the alarm clock.

He came up from under the bedclothes into a cold that contracted his skull. He lifted Maria's arm free of his waist, and s.h.i.+vering naked on all fours in the dark, he found his clothes beneath the ashtray, under the omelette plates, under the saucer with the burned-out candle. There was an icy fork in the arm of his s.h.i.+rt. He had thought to store his gla.s.ses in a shoe. The wine bottle had toppled, and the dregs had drained into the waistband of his underpants. His coat was spread over the bed. He pulled it clear and rearranged the covers over Maria. When he groped for her head and kissed it, she did not stir.

With his coat on he stood at the kitchen sink, moved a frying pan to the floor and splashed stinging cold water over his face. He remembered there was, after all, a bathroom. He turned on its light and went inside. For the first time in his life he used another person's toothbrush. He had never brushed his hair with a woman's hairbrush. He examined his reflection. Here was the new man. The day's growth of beard grew too spa.r.s.ely to make for a dissolute stubble, and there was the hard red beginning of a pimple on the side of his nose. But he fancied that his gaze now, even in exhaustion, was steadier.

All day long he wore his tiredness well. It was just one aspect of his happiness. Lightweight and remote, the components of his day floated before him: the ride on the U-Bahn and the bus, the walk past a frozen pond and out between the white spiky fields, the hours alone with the tape recorders, the solitary steak and french fries in the canteen, more hours among the familiar circuits, the walk in the dark back to the station, the ride, then Kreuzberg again. It was pointless, wasting the precious workless hours by continuing past her district and heading for his own. That evening when he arrived at her door she was just back from work herself. The apartment was still a mess. Once again they got into bed to keep warm. The night repeated itself with variations, the morning was repeated without them. That was Tuesday morning. Wednesday and Thursday went the same way. Gla.s.s asked, rather coolly, if he was growing a beard. If Leonard needed proof of his dedication to a pa.s.sion, it was in the matted thickness of his gray socks and the aroma of b.u.t.ter, v.a.g.i.n.al juices and potatoes that rose from his chest when he loosened the top b.u.t.ton of his s.h.i.+rt. The excessively heated interiors at the warehouse released from the folds of his clothes the scent of overused bedsheets and prompted disabling reveries in the windowless room.

It was not until Friday evening that he returned to his own apartment. It seemed like an absence of years. He went around turning on the lights, intrigued by the signs of a former self-the young man who had sat down to write these nervous, scheming drafts strewn across the floor, the scrubbed-clean innocent who had left sc.u.m and hairs round the bath and towels and clothes on the bedroom floor. Here was the inexpert coffee maker-he had watched Maria and knew all about it now. Here was the childish chocolate bar and beside it his mother's letter. He read it over quickly and found the little anxieties expressed on his behalf cloying, really quite irritating.

While the bath was filling, he padded around the place, luxuriating once more in s.p.a.ce and warmth. He whistled and sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of songs. At first he could not find the untamed number to carry his feelings. The crooning love songs he knew were all too courteously restrained. In fact, what suited him now was the raucous American nonsense he thought he despised. He recalled sc.r.a.ps, but they were elusive: ”and make a something with the pots and pans. Shake, rattle and roll! Shake, rattle and roll!” In the bathroom's flattering acoustics, he boomed this incantation over and again. Bellowed in an English voice it sounded foolish, but it was the right sort of thing. Joyous and s.e.xy, and more or less meaningless. He had never in his life felt so uncomplicatedly happy. He had solitude for the moment, but he was not alone. He was expected. He had time to clean himself up and tidy the flat, and then he would be on his way. ”Shake, rattle and roll!” Two hours later he opened his front door. This time he took with him an overnight bag, and he did not return for a week.

During these early days, Maria would not come to Leonard's flat, despite his exaggerated description of its luxuries. She worried that if she started spending nights away, the neighbors would soon be telling each other that she had found a man and a better place to live. The authorities would hear about it, and then she would be out. In Berlin, demand even for a one-bedroom flat with no hot water was enormous. To Leonard it seemed reasonable she should want to be on home ground. They bundled up in bed, made dashes to the kitchen for hastily fried meals. To wash, it was necessary to fill a saucepan and wait in bed until it had boiled, then hurry to the bathroom to tip scalding water into the frozen basin. The plug leaked, and pressure in the single cold tap was unpredictable. For Leonard and Maria, work was where they got warm and ate decently. At home, there was nowhere else to be but bed.

Maria taught Leonard to be an energetic and considerate lover, how to let her have all her o.r.g.a.s.ms before he had his own. That seemed only polite, like letting a lady precede you through a door. He learned to make love in der Hundestellung der Hundestellung, doggy fas.h.i.+on, which was also the quickest way to lose the bedclothes, and also from behind as she lay on her side, facing away from him, on the edge of sleep; and then on their sides, face to face, locked in tight, barely disturbing the bedclothes at all. He discovered there were no set rules for her preparedness. Sometimes he only had to look at her and she was all set to go. At others he worked away patiently, like a boy over a model kit, only to be interrupted by her suggesting cheese and bread and another round of tea. He learned that she liked endearments murmured in her ear, but not beyond a certain point, not once her eyes began their inward roll. She did not want to be distracted then.

He learned to ask for Praservative Praservative in the in the Drogerie Drogerie. He found out from Gla.s.s that he was ent.i.tled to a free supply through the U.S. Army. On the bus he brought home four gross in a pale blue cardboard box. He sat with the package on his knees, aware of the pa.s.sengers' glances, and somehow knew the color was a giveaway. Once, when Maria offered sweetly to put one on him herself, he said no too aggressively. Later he wondered what had troubled him. This was his first intimation of a new and troubling feature. It was hard to describe. There was an element of mind creeping in, of bits of himself, bits he did not really like. Once he was over the novelty of it all, and once he was sure he could do it just like everyone else, and when he was confident that he was not going to come too soon-when all that was cleared away, and once he was quite convinced that Maria genuinely liked and wanted him and would go on wanting him, then he started having thoughts that he was powerless to send away when he was making love. They soon grew inseparable from his desire. These fantasies came a little closer each time, and each time they continued to proliferate, to take new forms. There were figures gathering at the edge of thought; now they were striding toward the center, toward him. They were all versions of himself, and he knew he could not resist them.

It began on the third or fourth time with a simple perception. He looked down at Maria, whose eyes were closed, and remembered she was a German. The word had not been entirely prised loose of its a.s.sociations after all. His first day in Berlin came back to him. German. Enemy. Mortal enemy. Defeated enemy. This last brought with it a shocking thrill. He diverted himself momentarily with the calculation of the total impedance of a certain circuit. Then: she was the defeated, she was his by right, by conquest, by right of unimaginable violence and heroism and sacrifice. What elation! To be right, to win, to be rewarded. He looked along his own arms stretched before him, pus.h.i.+ng into the mattress, at where the gingerish hairs were thickest, just below the elbow. He was powerful and magnificent. He went faster, harder, he fairly bounced on her. He was victorious and good and strong and free. In recollection these formulations embarra.s.sed him and he pushed them aside. They were alien to his obliging and kindly nature, they offended his sense of what was reasonable. One only had to look at her to know there was nothing defeated about Maria. She had been liberated by the invasion of Europe, not crushed. And was she not, at least in their game, his guide?

But next time around the thoughts returned. They were irresistibly exciting, and he was helpless before their elaborations. This time, she was his by right of conquest, and then, there was nothing she could do about it there was nothing she could do about it. She did not want to be making love to him, but she had no choice. He summoned the circuit diagrams. They were no longer available. She was struggling to escape. She was thras.h.i.+ng beneath him, he thought he heard her call out ”No!” She was shaking her head from side to side, she had her eyes closed against the inescapable reality. He had her pinioned against the mattress, she was his, there was nothing she could do, she would never get away. And that was it, that was the end for him, he was gone, finished. His mind was cleared and he lay back. His mind was clear and he thought about food, about sausages. Not bratwurst or bockwurst, but English sausages, fat and mild, fried brownish-black on all sides, and mashed potatoes, and mushy peas.

Over the following days, his embarra.s.sment faded. He accepted the obvious truth that what happened in his head could not be sensed by Maria, even though she was only inches away. These thoughts were his alone, nothing to do with her at all.

Eventually, a more dramatic fantasy took shape. It recapitulated all the previous elements. Yes, she was defeated, conquered, his by right, could not escape, and now, he was a soldier he was a soldier, weary, battle-marked and b.l.o.o.d.y, but heroically rather than disablingly so. He had taken this woman and was forcing her. Half terrified, half in awe, she dared not disobey. It helped when he pulled his greatcoat further up the bed, so that by turning his head to the left or right he could catch sight of the dark green. That she was reluctant and he was inviolable were the premises of further elaborations. As he went about his business in a city full of soldiers, the soldier fantasy appeared ridiculous, but it was easy enough to put out of mind.

It was more difficult, however, when he found himself tempted to communicate these imaginings to her. Initially, he only squeezed her harder, bit her with considerable restraint, held her outstretched arms down and fantasized that he was preventing her from escaping. He slapped her b.u.t.tocks once. None of this seemed to make much difference to Maria. She did not notice, or she pretended not to. Only his own pleasure was intensified. Now the idea was growing ever more urgent-he wanted her to acknowledge what was on his mind, however stupid it really was. He could not believe she would not be aroused by it. He slapped her again, bit and squeezed harder. She had to give him what was his She had to give him what was his.

His private theater had become insufficient. He wanted something between them. A reality, not a fantasy. Telling her somehow was the next inevitable thing. He wanted his power recognized and Maria to suffer from it, just a bit, in the most pleasurable way. He had no trouble keeping quiet once they had finished. Then he was ashamed. What was this power he wanted recognized? It was no more than a disgusting story in his head. Then, later, he wondered if she might not be excited by it too. There was, of course, nothing to discuss. There was nothing he was able, or dared, to put into words. He could hardly be asking her permission. He had to surprise her, show her, let pleasure overcome her rational objections. He thought all this, and knew it was bound to happen.

Toward the middle of March featureless white cloud covered the sky and the temperature rose sharply. The few inches of dirty snow melted in three days. On the walk between Rudow village and the warehouse there were green shoots in the slush, and on the roadside trees, fat sticky buds. Leonard and Maria emerged from their hibernation. They left the bed and the bedroom and brought the electric heater into the living room. They ate at a Schnellimbiss Schnellimbiss together, and went to a local together, and went to a local Kneipe Kneipe for a gla.s.s of beer. They saw a Tarzan film on the Kurfurstendamm. One Sat.u.r.day evening they went to the Resi and danced to a German big band that alternated romantic American love songs with bouncy Bavarian numbers in strict oompah time. They bought sekt to toast their first meeting. Maria said she wanted to sit apart and send messages through the pneumatic tubes, but there were no vacant tables. They had a second bottle of sekt and just enough money left over to take a bus halfway home. As they walked to Adalbertstra.s.se, Maria yawned loudly and put her arm through Leonard's for support. She had put in ten hours overtime in the previous three days because one of the office girls was out with the flu. And the night before, she and Leonard had been awake until dawn, and even then they had had to remake the bed before they slept. for a gla.s.s of beer. They saw a Tarzan film on the Kurfurstendamm. One Sat.u.r.day evening they went to the Resi and danced to a German big band that alternated romantic American love songs with bouncy Bavarian numbers in strict oompah time. They bought sekt to toast their first meeting. Maria said she wanted to sit apart and send messages through the pneumatic tubes, but there were no vacant tables. They had a second bottle of sekt and just enough money left over to take a bus halfway home. As they walked to Adalbertstra.s.se, Maria yawned loudly and put her arm through Leonard's for support. She had put in ten hours overtime in the previous three days because one of the office girls was out with the flu. And the night before, she and Leonard had been awake until dawn, and even then they had had to remake the bed before they slept.

”Ich bin mude, mude, mude,” she said quietly as they began to climb the apartment stairs. Indoors, she went straight to the bathroom to prepare for bed. Leonard finished off a bottle of white wine while he waited in the living room. When she appeared he took a couple of paces toward her and stood blocking her way to the bedroom. He knew that if he acted confidently and was true to his feelings, he could not fail.

She went to take his hand. ”Let's sleep now. Then we'll have all the morning.”

He had moved his hand away and rested it on his hip. She gave off a childish smell of toothpaste and soap. She was holding the hairclip she had been wearing.

Leonard kept his voice level and, as he thought, expressionless. ”Take off your clothes.”

”Yes, in the bedroom.” She went to step around him.

He held her by the elbow and pushed her back. ”Do it here.”

She was annoyed. He had antic.i.p.ated that, he knew they would have to go through that. ”I'm too tired tonight. You can see that.” These last words were spoken in a conciliatory way, and it cost Leonard some effort of will to reach out and take her chin between his forefinger and thumb.

He raised his voice. ”Do as you're told. In here. Now.”

She shoved his hand away. She really was surprised, and now a little amused. ”You're drunk. You drank too much at the Resi and now you are Tarzan.”

Her laughter irritated him. He ran her against the wall, harder than he intended. The air was knocked from her lungs. Her eyes were wide. She got her breath and said, ”Leonard ...”

He knew that fear might come into it, and that they had to get beyond that as soon as possible. ”Do as I tell you and you'll be all right.” He sounded rea.s.suring. ”Take it all off or I'll do it for you.”

She pressed herself against the wall. She shook her head. Her eyes looked heavy and dark. He thought this might be the first indication of success. When she began to obey she would understand that this pantomime was all for pleasure, hers as well as his. Then the fear would disappear completely. ”You'll do as I say.” He managed to suppress the interrogative.

She dropped the clip and pressed her fingers against the wall behind her. Her head was still and a little bowed. She drew a deep breath and said, ”Now I'm going to the bedroom.” Her accent was more than usually p.r.o.nounced. She had moved no more than a few inches from the wall before he pushed her back.

”No,” he said.

She was looking up at him. Her jaw had dropped and her lips were parted. She was looking at him as though for the first time. It could have been wonder on her face, or even astonished admiration. At any moment it would all be different, there would be joyous compliance, and transformation. He hooked his fingers by the catch of her skirt and pulled hard. There was no going back. She yelped, and said his name twice quickly. She held her skirt up with one hand and the other was half raised, palm outward for protection. There were two black b.u.t.tons on the floor. He took a fistful of material and jerked the skirt down. At that moment she made a lunge across the room. The skirt ripped along a seam and she tripped, scrabbled on the floor and fell again. He rolled her onto her back and pressed her shoulders down on the boards. They should be laughing, he thought. It was a game, an exhilarating game. She was wrong to overdramatize. He was kneeling by her, holding her with two hands. Then he let her go. He lay beside her awkwardly, propped on an elbow. With his free hand he pulled at her underwear and unb.u.t.toned his fly.

She lay still and looked at the ceiling. She hardly blinked. This was the turning point. They were on their way. He wanted to smile at her, but he thought this might destroy for her the impression of his mastery. He kept a stern face as he positioned himself. If it was a game, it was a serious game after all. He was almost in place. She was tight. It was a shock when she spoke so calmly. She did not s.h.i.+ft her gaze from the ceiling, and her voice was cold.

She said, ”I want you to leave. I want you to go home.”

”I'm staying here,” Leonard said, ”and that's that.” He did not sound as forthright as he wanted.

She said, ”Please ...”Her eyes filled with tears. She continued to stare at the ceiling. At last she blinked and displaced a trickle. It ran straight down her temples and vanished into the hair above her ears. Leonard's elbow was stiff. She sucked her lower lip and blinked again. There were no more tears and she trusted herself to speak once more. ”Just go.”

He stroked her face, along the line of her cheekbone, down to where the hair was wet. She held her breath, waiting for him to stop.

He knelt up and rubbed his arm and b.u.t.toned his fly. The silence hissed around them. It was unjust, this unspoken blame. He appealed to an imaginary court. If this had been anything other than playfulness, if he had meant her harm, he would not have stopped when he did, the very moment he saw how upset she was. She was taking it literally, using it against him, and that was quite unfair. He did not know how to begin saying any of this. She had not moved from the floor. He was angry with her. And he was desperate for her forgiveness. It was impossible to speak. She let her hand go limp when he took it and squeezed. Half an hour before they had been walking arm in arm along Oranienstra.s.se. How would he ever get back to that? There came to him an image of a blue clockwork locomotive, a present on his eighth or ninth birthday. It used to pull a string of coal trucks round a figure-of-eight track until one afternoon, in a spirit of reverent experimentation, he had overwound it.

Finally Leonard stood and took a couple of steps back. Maria sat up and arranged her skirt over her knees. She too had a memory, but only ten years old and more burdensome than a broken toy train. It was of an air raid shelter in an eastern suburb of Berlin, near the Oberbaum bridge. It was late April, the week before the city fell. She was almost twenty. An advancing Red Army unit had installed heavy guns nearby and was sh.e.l.ling the city center. There were thirty of them in the shelter, women, children, old people, cowering in the din. Maria was with her Uncle Walter. There was a lull in the firing, and five soldiers sauntered into the bunker-the first Russians they had ever seen. One of them pointed a rifle at the group while another mimed for the Germans: watches, jewelry. The collection was swift and silent. Uncle Walter pushed Maria deeper into the gloom, back to the first-aid station. She hid in a corner, wedged between the wall and an empty supply cupboard. On a mattress on the floor was a woman of about fifty who had been shot in both legs. Her eyes were closed and she was moaning. It was a high, continuous sound on one note. It attracted the attention of one of the soldiers. He knelt by the woman and took out a short-handled knife. Her eyes were still closed. The soldier lifted her skirt and cut away her underclothes. Watching over her uncle's shoulder, Maria thought the Russian was about to perform some crude battlefield surgery, removing a bullet with an unsterilized knife. Then he was lying on top of the wounded woman, pus.h.i.+ng into her with jerking, trembling movements.

The woman's voice dropped to a low sound. Beyond her, in the shelter, people were turning away. No one made a sound. Then there was a commotion, and another Russian, a huge man in civilian clothes, was pus.h.i.+ng through to the first-aid station. He was a political commissar, Maria learned later. His face was blotchy scarlet with a fury that stretched his lips across his teeth. With a shout he seized the soldier by the back of his jacket and pulled him off. The p.e.n.i.s was vivid in the gloom, and smaller than Maria had expected. The commissar hauled the soldier away by the ear, shouting in Russian. Then it was silent again. Someone gave the wounded woman a drink of water. Three hours later, when it was certain that the artillery unit had moved on, they emerged from the shelter into the rain. They found the soldier lying face downward by the edge of the road. He had been shot in the back of the neck.

Maria stood. She supported her skirt with one hand. She pulled Leonard's greatcoat off the table and let it fall at his feet. He knew he was going because he could think of nothing to say. His mind was jammed. As he pa.s.sed her, he placed his hand on her forearm. She stared down at the hand, and looked away.

He had no money, and had to walk to Platanenallee. The following day, after work, he called on her with flowers, but she was gone. The next day he learned from a neighbor she was with her parents in the Russian sector.