The Berlin Assignment (6 page)

The remark had a vague link to the testy subject of Berlin traffic and Lisa seized on it. Straightaway she expounded her current cause, though her hostility was not directed at the Poles, nor the routine disappearance of cars from desirable neighbourhoods. “I won't stand for it,” she said heatedly. Wet strands of hair stuck to sallow cheeks as she began talking about a new, kilometres-long traffic tunnel under the central park, the
Tiergarten
. It had been announced in the morning paper. The article had been accompanied by a map with a double dotted line that showed it snaking from West to East. “A disaster! Is that what we wanted when the Wall came down…more roads, more bridges, more pollution? Of course
not
! We must stop it, Sabine.”

Lisa made her fighting remarks in a loud voice. By the front door Geissler stopped the rhythmic swaying of his head and directed his lenses in the women's direction. Lisa continued. “Everyone knows the more you pamper cars, the more you feed traffic jams. Appeasement
doesn't work. As for the Poles, as far as I'm concerned they can't steal our cars fast enough.” Sabine, although nodding sympathetically, hadn't really listened. She was worried that with the chilling wind and rain, her father, who would be out on his bike as he was every morning, might catch a cold. Colds develop into pneumonia and pneumonia can be quickly fatal for someone over eighty.

The weather, Sabine had noticed, also affected the public's taste in books. She believed that on dreary days customers preferred novels with mystic plots and tragic figures. More of that genre, she sometimes argued, should be displayed on the shelves. But Geissler, with a trivializing motion of his left, his
only
arm – the right one having been severed by shrapnel and left behind in Africa at the time of Rommel – disagreed. With a few almost-swallowed words he'd say the store was his, implying he'd decide the titles that should be moving.

According to some old photos pinned on the wall of a little office at the back, Geissler's forefathers, all of them booksellers, had been well-groomed and correct. But this Geissler was different. He dressed slovenly and seldom shaved. He stooped and his mouth stood slightly open. Then there were his eyes, magnified behind the wire-rimmed glasses, which made him look primitive, even possessed. In short, he didn't have the appearance of a bookseller. The politics of the thirties and forties did this to him. He had no choice then but to fight in a war from which he returned physically maimed and with a mind as badly scarred as his body. The result was silence, decades of haunted silence. Sometimes days went by without him saying a word. He would stand at the front of the store, inspecting the street, pushing back the memories of horror, engaging only in a sweeping motion of his head.

The bookstore went back to Bismarck's time when Berlin boomed.
Bücher Geissler
flourished, then, and through the succeeding generations. But under this last Geissler the business turned static. An ancient bell
jangled when the door opened. Customers entering made the wooden floor boards moan. The lights, partly bare bulbs, partly flickering fluorescents, hung down from electric cords, or makeshift metal chains. In the narrow aisles, where the rows of books on the shelves were always tending to disorder, the air was stagnant, smelling like a cave.

Bücher Geissler
was run down, yes, but at every turn it offered delightful gifts – literary gems – hidden in amongst the volumes on display. Gremlins, it seemed, had been at work to put them there. Rare first editions were always coming out of the cellar. The old books from below had gone through hardship obviously – some kind of upheaval – because often they were scratched or dented, but inside they were new. The pages had not been cut or turned. A vast collection had to be down there, seemingly thrown together in a random pile. When Geissler went into the cellar to rummage around he grunted and groaned as if he was at work in a mine. The cellar door was permanently locked when he wasn't below. Sabine had never, not in twenty years, gone down the stairs. Geissler sometimes referred to his
stock
there, saying it was
difficult to find things
, referring to
awful light
. With a queer, sad shuffling noise he would descend, returning half an hour later with several dozen rare volumes in a basket slung from his sole arm. Geissler positioned the new arrivals erratically amongst the other curiosities, plugging gaps on the shelves where sales left openings. Judging from the antiquarian reinforcements coming up year-in, year-out, from down below, Sabine suspected there was more than a pile of books in the cellar. It had to be at least a mountain, or, as she once told Werner in a moment of dark humour, maybe a book factory operated by history's ghosts.

Geissler's painful ceremony with the cellar books, especially its unpredictable timing, provided Sabine with secret excitement. The inexhaustible supply of classical works – German translations of Greek
philosophers, of Russian histories and Czech plays, Hungarian travelogues or, for that matter, Roman poetry, American frontier novels, not to mention the full, rich German literary tradition itself – had an addictive effect. Like other book lovers who picked through the shelves with eager, probing fingers and rocked on their feet in the narrow aisles, reading glasses stuck on the tips of noses, Sabine was mesmerized by the printed word. She appreciated complex plots, fiery characters, elegant dialogue, subtle innuendo. She loved the way books exposed the inner workings of real and imaginary things, the way they allowed life to be suspended, or spent in a different world.

Lisa's visit had not helped Sabine's mood. Shortly after the tirade against the outrageous Tiergarten tunnel, she left for the weekly lunch at Café Einstein. Marching under an immense umbrella, her shoulders knotted up, Sabine felt imprisoned by the weather. Shaking the water out at the café's front door, she saw Martina, smiling overwhelmingly as always, already at their table with a carafe of red. When Sabine had settled, Martina asked how the book business was doing. “Your charms are wasted there, sweetie,” she added cheerfully. “I've told you that before.”

“It's going nowhere,” Sabine answered. “The rent from the apartments upstairs keeps Geissler going. Two people came in this morning and one wasn't even a customer. It was Lisa. She dropped by to tell me about some new social problem. A traffic tunnel somewhere.”

“Well my business is booming,” Martina said nonchalantly, “all over town. Everybody in the West wants to put up advertising in the East. All those run-down buildings with exposed fire walls left over from the war – we're going to cover them with colour. I've told you before, I've got a sales spot waiting for you. You could start tomorrow. You've got a perfect figure for the job.” She padded the back of her platinum-streaked-blond fluffy hairdo.

“Geissler has fewer customers all the time,” Sabine continued. “People are looking for bargains outside Berlin now, though you couldn't get old books cheaper than from him. Some he lets go for nineteen-thirties prices.”

“I don't know much about book prices,” Martina replied, “but the good thing about money nowadays is that Berlin is once again attracting it. Did you know? Fresh men loaded with cash are arriving by the dozens. They're buying everything that's going. Dahlem villas are hot items. I'm very optimistic.”

“I doubt it's for the better. Everything is getting worse with the Wall gone.”

Sabine watched Martina finish off a first glass of wine. She often wondered how someone outwardly slow and slightly eccentric like Martina could be so lightning-swift in business. When Martina talked business her eyes filled with excitement. Disconcertingly, however, they focussed in slightly different directions, as she suffered from an eye problem. When the prospect of business animated Martina, one eye would fix on the person opposite and the other on something in the distance. This could be unsettling. Sabine noticed Martina's eyes began to wander when she talked of layering East Berlin in colour, but as she poured herself another glass of wine, a degree of synchronisation filtered back.

Martina disagreed with Sabine's view that Berlin was in decline. “Nonsense,” she said. “Your problem is those books and that creepy one-armed Geissler. It clouds your vision. He's a frustrated man if ever there was one. It's his right arm that's gone, am I right? I'm sure it interferes with his stroking of the flesh.”

“Martina!” Sabine was partially amused and partially shocked. “He was injured in the war. It's done things to his mind. You can't hold that against him.”

“Maybe. But he landed on his feet right afterwards. In that respect others suffered twice as much as him.”

Gottfried brought the orders, marinated duck breast for Martina, a Greek salad with black olives for Sabine. “For you two healthy orchids,” he said. A titter escaped Martina. “Thank you, Gottfried. So insightful. Orchids have such splendid inner workings.” When he was gone, she said, “If I were him I'd go East. There isn't a decent waiter in all of Mitte. He'd be famous overnight. How's your papa?”

“Out on his bicycle I imagine. As always. Why he goes out on days like this, I don't know. He races around as if he thinks the end is near. He won't slow down.”

“He's an example,” mused Martina, “for young men everywhere.”

But Sabine wasn't sure her father should be an example, at least not the side that caused his non-stop cycling. In her opinion it was overdone. The professional side of him – the lawyer – everyone (not just the young men) would benefit from imitating. But when he left his practice he metamorphosed. Professional conformity was left behind and out stepped an idiosyncratic old man. When it came to cycling he was really quite obsessed. Although Sabine quietly adored her father's unpredictability, she was convinced the world would be a chaotic place if his non-conformity were to be copied widely. Who would sail into a pub and order champagne in a litre mug, or show up at social gatherings with his necktie knotted backwards? She complained too, as she was now doing to Martina, about his sporting ambitions. She couldn't fathom them. She knew no precedent. Nowhere in the world of literature, not even in the fairy tales, was there a character like him. Why would an eighty-four year old desire physical competition? Not only that, but he wanted victory too. The annual cycle race for seniors was not far off and all he did was talk of winning. Given this eccentricity, it was all the more surprising that his professional side was
so conformist. The law firm –
Albert Müller, Notar und Rechtsanwalt
, a one-man operation – was known for punctuality, meticulous work and crisply-argued opinions. Immediately after the war, back from being an American POW (the Italian campaign), Müller found a niche. He worked non-stop at settling claims by Jewish families stripped of property by the Nazis. Only in late middle age did he allow himself the luxury of sport, returning to the things he loved most in his youth.

At age sixty Müller decided to become a marathoner. West Berlin, although walled off from the world, wasn't a bad place for running. With a careful choice of route a marathon could neatly take you from one end of the city to the other. After four hours on the pavement, Müller boasted, he'd had a good run.
Did it again. Went Wall to Wall.
Müller ran the marathon throughout his sixties and seventies (the century's seventies and eighties) and would have continued had the Wall stayed up. But when it collapsed, and the cosy, enclosed
Wall to Wall
feeling disappeared, Müller turned to cycling. A great hinterland had opened up. The dream – one day to win a marathon by running into the Olympic Stadium – had been replaced. He now planned to win a yellow jersey just like the greats who do it on the
Tour de France
.

“Three years ago he was featured in a national runners magazine,” Sabine said while Martina worked at her marinated breast of duck. “He was the oldest in his club. Have I told you this?
The Hares
. When the wall came down he switched to cycling.
The Eagles
. They race in Brandenburg. It worries me.” Sabine said this with exasperation and pointed her fork over a shoulder into the general direction of that new eastern state, a place of mortal danger. “The traffic is terrible there. Ossis don't know how to drive modern cars.”

“Ossis have élan,” Martina interjected. As she said this she thought of Professor Kraft, her latest
Kater
, a renowned Ossi philologist. Kraft was more corpulent than herself, but despite his size he was remarkably agile in short bursts.

“He's training for a race,” continued Sabine, still thinking of her father. “From the Polish border to Berlin. Through Brandenburg! At eighty-four! Why? I asked him. He said,
Either I push myself on my bike or you push me around in a wheelchair
. What can you say to that?”

“I advise against outdoor exercise at any age,” Martina said, sounding like a medical advisor. “Strength should be conserved through the day so that it's available at night. I must say, with your papa wasting so much energy, it's a wonder you exist. Maybe his focus was better back then. Didn't he wear out two wives?”

Sabine's mouth dropped and began scolding her best friend for this tasteless remark. Her mother and father had been a loving couple. She never knew her mother, but one could tell it was true from photos. As for the second wife, the stepmother, she'd been high strung. She wore
herself
out. No one mourned her passing, not even, Sabine suspected, her father.

Martina began fiddling with her string of pearls and Sabine recognized this sign of boredom. Her father shouldn't be a topic of conversation too long. This was even truer of her husband, whom Martina didn't like. Nor should she dwell much on her ten-year-old son Nicholas. Family life generally held little interest for Martina. Sabine changed the subject. “What makes you think Gottfried should go to Mitte?” she asked. “As far as I know the restaurants there aren't very good.” A report in the paper about dining in the East had concluded it was still a disaster.