Part 5 (1/2)

”That'll do fine,” Gla.s.s said, and unlocked the door and ushered him into the room. ”You wanna beer? Or how about a Scotch?”

Leonard chose Scotch. He had been in here only once before. The desk was covered with papers. He was trying not to look too hard, but he could see that some of the material was technical.

Gla.s.s poured and said, ”You want me to fetch some ice from the canteen?” Leonard nodded and Gla.s.s left. Leonard stepped toward the desk. He had, he estimated, a little under a minute.

Ten.

Every evening Leonard stopped off at Kreuzberg on his way home. He only had to set foot on Maria's landing to know she was not there, but he crossed it all the same and knocked. After the chocolates, he no longer posted gifts. He wrote no more letters after the third. The lady in the carbolic apartment downstairs sometimes opened her door to watch him come down. By the end of the first week her look was more pitying than hostile. He ate supper standing up at the Schnellimbiss Schnellimbiss on Reichskanzlerplatz and most evenings went to the bar in the narrow street to delay his return to Platanenallee. He had enough German now to know that the locals hunched at their tables were not discussing genocide. It was the usual pub grumble-the late spring, the government, the quality of the coffee. on Reichskanzlerplatz and most evenings went to the bar in the narrow street to delay his return to Platanenallee. He had enough German now to know that the locals hunched at their tables were not discussing genocide. It was the usual pub grumble-the late spring, the government, the quality of the coffee.

When he was home he resisted the armchair and the torpid brooding. He was not going to let himself go. He made himself do jobs. He washed his s.h.i.+rts in the bathroom, scrubbing the cuffs and collars with a nailbrush. He did his ironing, polished his shoes, dusted the surfaces and pushed the squeaking carpet sweeper around the rooms. He wrote to his parents. Despite all his changes, he was unable to break with the flat tone, the stifling lack of information or affect. Dear Mum and Dad, Thanks for yours. I hope you are well and over your colds. I've been very busy at work which is going very well. The weather Dear Mum and Dad, Thanks for yours. I hope you are well and over your colds. I've been very busy at work which is going very well. The weather ... The weather. He never gave the weather a second thought unless he was writing to his parents. He paused, then he remembered. ... The weather. He never gave the weather a second thought unless he was writing to his parents. He paused, then he remembered. The weather has been very wet, but it's warmer now The weather has been very wet, but it's warmer now.

What was beginning to oppress him, and it was an anxiety that his household ch.o.r.es could never quite silence, was the possibility that Maria would not return to her apartment. He would have to find out the address of Major Ashdown's unit. He would have to go out to Spandau and catch her coming out of work before she boarded her train for Pankow. Gla.s.s would already have spoken to her. She was bound to a.s.sume Leonard was trying to get her into trouble. She would be furious. The chances of winning her around on the pavement, in full view of the sentry, or in the homeward crush of the U-Bahn ticket hall, were slight. She would stride past him, or shout some German obscenity that everyone but himself would understand. To confront her he needed privacy and several hours. Then she could be furious, then accusatory, then sorrowful and finally forgiving. He could have drawn an emotional circuit diagram for her. As for his own feelings, they were beginning to be simplified by the righteousness of love. When she knew how much he loved her, she must forgive him. For the rest, the deed and its causes, the guilt, the evasion, he tried hard not to brood. That would solve nothing. He tried to be invisible to himself. He scrubbed out the bath, washed the kitchen floor and fell asleep just past midnight with tolerable ease, faintly comforted by a sense of being misunderstood.

One evening during the second week of Maria's disappearance Leonard heard voices from the empty apartment downstairs. He put down his iron and went out onto his landing to listen. Up the elevator shaft came the sound of furniture sc.r.a.ping on the floor, footsteps and more voices. Early the next morning he was descending in the elevator when it stopped at the floor below. The man who stepped in nodded and faced away. He was in his early thirties and carried an attache case. His beard was trimmed neatly in the naval style, and he gave off a scent of cologne. Even Leonard could tell that the dark blue suit was well made. The two men rode down in silence. The stranger allowed Leonard to precede him out of the lift with an economical movement of his open palm.

They met again on the ground floor by the lift shaft two days later. It was not quite dark. Leonard had come in from Altglienicke by way of Kreuzberg and his customary two liters of lager. The lights in the lobby had not been turned on. When Leonard reached the man's side, the lift had just risen to the fifth floor. In the time it took to come back down, the man offered his hand, and without smiling or, as far as Leonard could tell, altering his expression at all, said, ”George Blake. My wife and I live right under your feet.”

Leonard gave his name and said, ”Do I make a lot of noise?”

The lift came and they stepped inside. Blake pushed the fourth and fifth b.u.t.tons, and when they were moving looked from Leonard's face to his shoes and said in a neutral way, ”Carpet slippers would help.”

”Well, sorry,” Leonard said with as much aggression as he dared. ”I'll get some.”

His neighbor nodded and pressed his lips together, as if to say, That's the spirit That's the spirit The door slid back and he went off without another word. The door slid back and he went off without another word.

Leonard reached his apartment resolved to pound the floors harder than ever. But he could not quite bring himself to it. He hated to be in the wrong. He trod heavily along his hall and took his shoes off in the kitchen.

Over the months that followed he occasionally saw Mrs. Blake about the place. She had a beautiful face and a very straight back, and although she smiled at Leonard and said h.e.l.lo, he avoided her. She made him feel shabby and awkward. He overheard her talking in the lobby and thought she sounded intimidating. Her husband became a little friendlier over the summer months. He said he worked for the Foreign Office at the Olympic Stadium, and he was politely interested when Leonard told him he worked for the Post Office, installing internal lines for the Army. Thereafter, he never failed to say on the few occasions they pa.s.sed each other in the lobby or shared the lift, ”How are the internal lines?” with a smile that made Leonard wonder if he was being mocked.

At the warehouse the tap had been declared a success. One hundred and fifty tape recorders stopped and started day and night, triggered by the amplified Russian signals. The place emptied rapidly. The horizontal diggers, the tunneling sergeants, had long departed. The British vertical men had left just as the excitement was growing, and no one noticed them go. All kinds of other people-experts whose fields, it seemed, were known only to themselves-drifted away, as did the senior Dollis Hill staff. MacNamee called in once or twice a week. All that remained were the men monitoring or distributing the take, and these were the busiest and least communicative. There were also a few technicians and engineers keeping the systems running, and the security people. Leonard sometimes found himself eating in an empty canteen. His instructions were that he should stay on indefinitely. He carried out routine checks on the integrity of the circuits and replaced faulty valves in the tape recorders.

Gla.s.s stayed away from the warehouse, and at first Leonard was relieved. Until he was reconciled with Maria, he did not want to hear news of her through Gla.s.s. He did not want Gla.s.s to have the power of an intermediary over him. Then he began to find excuses to walk past the American's office several times a day. Leonard was often at the water fountain. He was certain that Maria would be cleared, but he had his doubts about Gla.s.s. The interviews would be opportunities for seduction, surely. If Maria was still angry and Gla.s.s was sufficiently energetic, the worst might be happening even as Leonard stood outside the locked room. Several times he almost phoned Gla.s.s from home. But what was he to ask? How would he bear the confirmation, or believe the denial? Perhaps the very question would seem to Gla.s.s a form of incitement.

As the weather grew warmer in May, the off-duty Americans set up softball games in the rough ground between the warehouse and the perimeter fence. They were under strict instructions to wear the insignia of radar operatives. The Vopos over by the cemetery watched the games through field gla.s.ses, and when a long ball sailed over the sector boundary they ran forward willingly and lobbed it back. The players cheered, and the Vopos waved good-naturedly. Leonard sat out with his back to the wall watching the games. One reason he refused to join in was that softball looked like nothing more than rounders for grown-ups. The other reason was that he was useless at any game with a ball. In this one the throws were hard and low and pitilessly accurate, and the catches were all taken in an obligatory offhand manner.

Every day now there were hours of idleness. He often leaned against the wall in the sun below an open window. One of the Army clerks propped a wireless on the sill and broadcast AFN to the players. When a lively song came up, the pitcher might pat out a rhythm on his knees before a throw, and the men out on the bases would snap their fingers and practice little shuffles. Leonard had never seen popular music taken so seriously. Only one performer could temporarily halt the game. If it was Bill Haley and the Comets, and especially if it was ”Rock Around the Clock,” there would be shouts for more volume, and players would drift toward the window. For two and a half minutes no one could strike out. To Leonard, the unrestrained exhortation to dance for hours on end seemed puerile. It was a counting song that girls with a skipping rope might chant in the playground. It was ”Hickory d.i.c.kory Dock,” it was ”One potato, two potato, three potato, four....” But with repet.i.tion, the thumping rhythm and the virile insistence of the guitar began to stir him, and he moved from hating the song to pretending to hate it.

Soon he was glad when the mail clerk crossed his office at a cue from the announcer and turned up the volume. More than half a dozen players would come and stand around where he was sitting. They were mostly sentries in their late teens, clean and huge, with bristling heads. All of them knew his first name by now, and they were always friendly. For them the song seemed to have more than musical importance. It was an anthem, a rite; it bound these players and separated them from the older men who stood waiting on the field. This state of affairs lasted only three weeks before the song lost its power. It was played loudly, but it did not interrupt the game. Then it was ignored altogether. A replacement was needed, but it did not come until April of the following year.

It was at the height of Bill Haley's triumph at the warehouse, just as the young Americans were jostling around the open window one afternoon, that John MacNamee came looking for his spy. Leonard saw him walking from the administration offices toward the din. MacNamee had not yet seen him, and there was just time to dissociate himself from what the government scientist was bound to despise. However, he felt a certain defiance, and a degree of loyalty to the group. He was an honorary member. He compromised by standing and pus.h.i.+ng his way through to the edge of the crowd, where he waited. As soon as MacNamee saw him, Leonard went toward him, and together they set off for a walk along the perimeter fence.

MacNamee had his lit pipe between his baby teeth. He leaned toward his charge. ”I suppose you've had no luck.”

”Not really,” Leonard said. ”I've been in five different offices with time to look around. Nothing. I've made approaches to various technical people. They're all very security-conscious. I couldn't press too hard.”

The truth was he had had one unsuccessful minute in Gla.s.s's office. He did not find it easy to fall into conversation with strangers. He had tried a couple of locked doors, that was all.

MacNamee said, ”Did you have a go at that chap Weinberg?”

Leonard knew the one, a whippet-shaped American with a skullcap who played chess with himself in the canteen. ”Yes. He didn't want to talk.”

They stopped and MacNamee said, ”Ah well ...” They were looking toward the Schonefelder Chaussee, more or less along the line of the tunnel. ”That's too bad,” MacNamee said. He spoke with an unfamiliar tightness, Leonard thought, a deliberation that seemed more than disappointment.

Leonard said, ”I did try.”

MacNamee looked away while he spoke. ”We've got other possibilities, of course, but you keep trying.” His flat emphasis on this last word, an echo of Leonard's, suggested skepticism, an accusation of some sort.

With a farewell grunt, MacNamee set off for the administration section. There came to Leonard an image of Maria walking away from him too, across the rough ground. Maria and MacNamee, showing him their backs. Across the gra.s.s the Americans were already back at their game. He felt his failure as a weakness in his legs. He had been about to walk back to his place by the window, but for the moment he did not feel like it, and remained where he was, out by the wire.

Eleven.

Leonard stepped out of the lift onto his landing the following evening and found Maria waiting for him by his door. She was standing in the corner, her coat b.u.t.toned up, both hands on the strap of her handbag, which hung down in front of her, covering her knees. It might have been an att.i.tude of contrition, but she held her head up and her eyes were on his. She defied him to a.s.sume that by seeking him out she had forgiven him. It was almost dusk, and very little natural light reached the landing through the east-facing window. Leonard had pushed the timed light switch at his elbow, and it had begun to tick. The sound resembled the panicked heartbeat of a minute creature. The doors slid shut behind him and the lift sank away. He said her name, but he made no move toward her. The single overhead light made deep shadows under her eyes and nose and gave her face a hard appearance. She had not spoken yet, she had not moved. She was staring at him, waiting for whatever he had to say. The b.u.t.toned coat and formal grip on the handbag hinted that she was ready to leave if she was not satisfied.

Leonard was fl.u.s.tered. Too many half-sentences were crowding before him. He had been handed a gift he could easily destroy in the unwrapping. The light-switch mechanism by him raced softly, making it harder to settle on a coherent thought. He said her name again-the sound simply left his throat-and took a half-step toward her. From the shaft came the rumble of the cables hauling their burden upward, the sigh of the lift settling on the floor below, then the doors opening and Mr. Blake's voice, urgent and muted. It was abruptly cut off by the sound of his front door closing.

Nothing in her expression had changed. Finally he said, ”Did you get those letters?”

She blinked in acknowledgment. The three letters of love and breathless apology and the chocolates and the flowers were not to be considered here. He said, ”What I did was very stupid.” She blinked again. This time the lashes touched for a fraction longer, suggesting a softening, a form of encouragement. He had his tone now, simplicity. It was not so difficult. ”I ruined everything. I've been desperate since you went. I wanted to come and find you in Spandau, but I was ashamed. I didn't know how you would ever be able to forgive me. I was ashamed of approaching you in the street. I love you very much, I've been thinking about you all the time. I'll understand if you can't forgive me. It was a horrible and stupid thing ...”

Leonard had never in his life spoken about himself and his feelings in such a way. Nor had he even thought in this manner. Quite simply, he had never acknowledged in himself a serious emotion. He had never gone much further than saying he quite liked last night's film, or hated the taste of lukewarm milk. In fact, until now, it was as though he had never really had any serious feelings. Only now, as he came to name them-shame, desperation, love-could he really claim them for his own and experience them. His love for the woman standing by his door was brought into relief by the word, and sharpened the shame he felt for a.s.saulting her. As he gave it a name, the unhappiness of the past three weeks was clarified. He was enlarged, unburdened. Now that he could name the fog he had been moving through, he was at last visible to himself.

But he was not in the clear. Maria had not s.h.i.+fted her position or her gaze. He said, after a pause, ”Please forgive me.” At that moment the time mechanism clicked and the light went out. He heard Maria breathe in sharply. When his eyes had adjusted he could see the gleam of the window behind him reflected on the clasp of her handbag and in the whites of her eyes as she seemed to glance away. He took a risk and came away from the light switch without pressing it. His elation gave him confidence. He had behaved badly; now he was going to put things right. What was demanded of him was truth and simplicity. He would no longer sleepwalk through his misery, he would name it accurately and in that way dispel it. And with the opportunity provided by this near darkness, he was about to re-establish by means of touch the old bond between them, the simple, truthful bond. The words could come later. For now, all that was required, he was convinced, was that they should hold hands, perhaps even kiss lightly.

As he crossed toward her she moved at last, back into the corner of the landing, deeper into the shadows. When he came close he put out his hand, but she was not quite there. He had brushed her sleeve. Again, he caught sight of the whites of her eyes as her head appeared to duck away. He found her elbow and held it gently. He whispered her name. Her arm was crooked tight and unyielding, and through the material of her coat he could feel her trembling. Now he was close, he was aware of her breathing fast and shallow. There was a sweaty taste in the air. For an instant he thought that she had mounted swiftly to the extremities of s.e.xual arousal, a thought rendered instantly blasphemous when he moved his hand to her shoulder and she half called out, half screamed an inarticulate sound, followed by ”Mach das Licht an. Bitte! ”Mach das Licht an. Bitte! Turn on the light!” and then, ”Please, please.” He placed a second hand on her shoulder. He shook her gently, rea.s.suringly. All he wanted to do was wake her from this nightmare. He had to remind her who he was really, the young innocent she had sweetly coaxed and brought on. She screamed again, this time at full strength and piercingly. He backed off. A door opened on the floor below. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs that ran around the lift shaft. Turn on the light!” and then, ”Please, please.” He placed a second hand on her shoulder. He shook her gently, rea.s.suringly. All he wanted to do was wake her from this nightmare. He had to remind her who he was really, the young innocent she had sweetly coaxed and brought on. She screamed again, this time at full strength and piercingly. He backed off. A door opened on the floor below. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs that ran around the lift shaft.

Leonard pressed the light switch just as Mr. Blake rounded the corner of the half-landing. He took the final flight of stairs three at a time. He was in s.h.i.+rtsleeves and without a tie, and he had silver armbands around his biceps. His face was hard, emanating ferocious military competence, and his hands were tensed and open at the ready. He was prepared to do someone a lot of harm. When he arrived at the top of the stairs and took in Leonard, his face did not relax. Maria had let her handbag drop to the floor and had raised her hands to cover her nose and mouth. Blake took up a position between Leonard and Maria. His hands were on his hips. He already knew he was not going to have to hit anyone, and this added to his ferocity.

”What's going on here?” he demanded of Leonard, and without waiting for a reply he turned away impatiently and confronted Maria. His voice was kindly. ”Are you hurt? Has he tried to hurt you?”

”Of course I haven't,” Leonard said.

Blake called over his shoulder, ”Shut up!” and turned back to Maria. His voice was immediately kind again. ”Well?”

He was like an actor in a wireless comedy, Leonard thought, doing all the voices. Because he did not like Blake standing between them like a referee, Leonard crossed the landing, pressing the light switch on his way to give them another ninety seconds. Blake was waiting for Maria to speak, but he seemed to know that Leonard was coming up behind. He put out an arm to stop Leonard walking around him and going to Maria. She had said something Leonard had not caught, and Blake was replying in competent German. Leonard disliked him more. Was it out of loyalty to Leonard that Maria answered in English?

”I'm sorry to make this noise and bring you from your house. It's something between us, that's all. We can make it better.” She had taken her hands from her face. She picked up her handbag. Having it in her hands seemed to restore her. She spoke around Blake, though not quite to Leonard. ”I'll go inside now.”

Leonard took out his key and stepped around Maria's savior to open the door. He leaned in and turned on his hall light.