Edge of Eternity (95 page)

Both Cameron and Beep Dewar were students at Berkeley, the San Francisco branch of the University of California. Cam was a weirdo who dressed like a middle-aged man and was more conservative than Barry Goldwater. But Beep was cool, and she introduced Walli to her friends, some of whom lived in his neighbourhood.

Walli lived here when he was not touring with the group or recording in London. While here, he spent most of his time playing the guitar. To play as apparently effortlessly as he did on stage required a high order of skill, and he never let a day go by without practising for at least a couple of hours. After that he would work on songs: trying out chords, putting together fragments of melody, struggling to decide which were wonderful and which merely tuneful.

He wrote to Karolin once a week. It was difficult to think of things to say. It seemed unkind to tell her about movies and concerts and restaurants of the kind that she could never enjoy.

With Werner’s help he had arranged to send monthly payments so that Karolin could support herself and Alice. A modest allowance in a foreign currency bought a lot in East Germany.

Karolin wrote back once a month. She had learned guitar and formed a duo with Lili. They did protest songs and circulated tapes of their music. Otherwise, her life seemed empty in comparison with his own, and most of her news was about Alice.

Like most people in the neighbourhood, Walli did not lock his doors. Friends and strangers wandered in and out. He kept his favourite guitars in a locked room at the top of the house: otherwise he owned little worth stealing. Once a week, a local store filled his refrigerator and food cupboard with groceries. Guests helped themselves, and when the food ran out, Walli went to restaurants.

In the evenings, he saw movies and plays, went to hear bands, or hung out with other musicians, drinking beer and smoking marijuana, in their homes or his own. There was a lot to see on the street: impromptu gigs, street theatre, and performance art events that people called ‘happenings’. In the summer of 1967, the neighbourhood suddenly became famous as the world centre of the hippie movement. When schools and colleges closed for the vacation, youngsters from all over America hitch-hiked to San Francisco and headed for the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The police decided to turn a blind eye to the widespread use of marijuana and LSD, and to people having sex more or less publicly in Buena Vista Park. And all the girls were taking the contraceptive pill.

The girls were Walli’s only problem.

Tammy and Lisa were typical. They came from Dallas, Texas on a Greyhound bus. Tammy was blonde; Lisa was Hispanic; both were eighteen. They had planned just to ask for Walli’s autograph and had been amazed to find his door open and him sitting on a giant cushion on the floor playing an acoustic guitar.

After their bus ride they needed a shower, they said, and he told them to go right ahead. They had showered together without closing the bathroom door, as Walli discovered in an absent-minded moment, thinking about harmonies, when he went in there to pee. Was it coincidence that at that very moment Tammy was soaping Lisa’s olive-skinned little breasts with her white hands?

Walli left and used the other bathroom, but it took all his strength.

The postman brought his mail, including letters forwarded from London by Mark Batchelor, Plum Nellie’s manager. One was addressed in Karolin’s handwriting and had an East German stamp. Walli set it aside to read later.

It was a normal day in Haight-Ashbury. A musician friend strolled in and they started writing a song together, but it came to nothing. Dave Williams and Beep Dewar stopped by: Dave was living at her parents’ house and looking for a property to buy. A dealer called Jesus dropped off a pound of marijuana and Walli hid most of it in the cabinet of a guitar amplifier. He did not mind sharing; but, if he had not rationed it, all of it would be gone by nightfall.

In the evening, Walli went to a diner with a few friends, taking Tammy and Lisa. Four years after leaving the Soviet bloc he still marvelled at the abundance of food in America: big steaks, juicy hamburgers, piles of French fries, mountainous crisp salads, thick milkshakes, all for next to nothing, and coffee with free refills! Not that such food was expensive in East Germany – it just did not exist there at all. Butchers were always short of the best cuts of meat, and restaurants grumpily served mean portions of unappealing food. Walli had never seen a milkshake there.

Over dinner, Walli learned that Lisa’s father was a doctor serving the Mexican community in Dallas, and that she hoped to study medicine and follow in his footsteps. Tammy’s family ran a profitable gas station, but her brothers would take it over, and she was going to art school to study fashion design with the aim of opening a clothing store. They were ordinary girls, but this was 1967 and they were taking the pill and they wanted to get laid.

It was a warm night. After eating, they all went to the park. They sat down with a group of people singing gospel songs. Walli joined in, and no one recognized him in the dark. Tammy was tired after the bus journey, and she lay down with her head in his lap. He stroked her long blonde hair and she went to sleep.

A little after midnight, people began to leave. Walli strolled home, not noticing until he got there that Tammy and Lisa were still with him. ‘Do you two have a place to spend the night?’ he said.

Tammy said in her Texas accent: ‘We could sleep in the park.’

Walli said: ‘You can crash on my floor if you want.’

Lisa said: ‘Would you like to sleep with one of us?’

Tammy said: ‘Or both?’

Walli smiled. ‘No, I have a girlfriend, Karolin, back in Berlin.’

‘Is that true?’ said Lisa. ‘I read it in the paper, but—’

‘It’s true.’

‘And you have a baby daughter?’

‘She’s three years old, now. Her name is Alice.’

‘But no one still believes in fidelity and all that crap, do they? Especially not in San Francisco. All you need is love, right?’

‘Goodnight, girls.’

He went upstairs to the bedroom he normally used and got undressed. He could hear the girls moving around downstairs. It was just after one-thirty when he got into bed – an early night for a musician.

This was the time of day when he liked to read and reread Karolin’s letters. It soothed him to think about her, and he often fell asleep imagining that she was in his arms. He settled on his mattress, sitting upright with his back to a pillow propped against the wall, and pulled the sheet up under his chin. Then he opened the envelope.

He read:

Dear Walli –

That was strange. She normally wrote ‘My beloved Walli’ or ‘My love’.

I know this letter will bring you pain and distress, and for that I am so sorry that my heart is almost breaking.

What on earth could have happened? He read on fast.

You left four years ago and there is no hope of us being together in the foreseeable future. I’m weak, and I cannot face a lifetime alone.

She was ending their affair – she was breaking up with him. It was the last thing he expected.

I have met someone, a good man who loves me.

She had a boyfriend! This was even worse. She had betrayed Walli. He began to feel angry. Lisa had been right: no one still believed in fidelity and all that crap.

Odo is the pastor of St Gertrud’s church in Berlin-Mitte.

Walli said aloud: ‘A fucking clergyman!’

He will love and care for my baby.

‘She calls her “my baby” – but Alice is my baby too!’

We are going to get married. Your parents are upset but they have not ceased to be kind to me, as they always are to everyone. Even your sister Lili tries to understand, though she finds it difficult.

I bet she does, thought Walli. Lili would hold out longest.

You made me happy for a short while, and you gave me my precious Alice, and for that I will always love you.

Walli felt hot tears on his cheeks.

I hope that in years to come you will find it in your heart to forgive me and Odo, and that one day we may meet as friends, perhaps when we are old and grey.

‘In hell, maybe,’ said Walli.

With love,

Karolin

The door opened and Tammy and Lisa came in.

Walli’s vision was blurred with tears, but it seemed to him that they were both naked.

Lisa said: ‘What’s the matter?’

Tammy said: ‘Why are you crying?’

Walli said: ‘Karolin broke up with me. She’s going to marry the pastor.’

Tammy said: ‘I’m so sorry,’ and Lisa said: ‘Poor you.’

Walli was ashamed of his tears but he could not stop them. He threw the letter down, rolled sideways, and pulled the sheet over his head.

They got into bed either side of him. He opened his eyes. Tammy, facing him, touched the tears on his face with a gentle finger. Behind him, Lisa pressed her warm body against his back.

He managed to say: ‘I don’t want this.’

Tammy said: ‘You shouldn’t be alone, feeling so sad. We’ll just cuddle you. Close your eyes.’

He yielded, and shut his eyes. Slowly his anguish turned to numbness. His mind emptied and he drifted into a doze.

When he woke up, Tammy was kissing his mouth and Lisa was sucking his penis.

He made love to each of them in turn. Tammy was gentle and sweet; Lisa was energetic and passionate. He was grateful to them for consoling him in his grief.

But, for all that, no matter how he tried, he could not come.

40

The mine dog was getting tired.

He was a thin Vietnamese boy wearing nothing but cotton shorts. He had to be about thirteen years old, Jasper Murray guessed. The boy had been so foolish as to go into the jungle to gather nuts this morning just when a platoon of D Company – ‘Desperadoes’ – were setting out on their mission.

His hands were tied behind his back and attached by a string, thirty yards long, to a corporal’s web belt. The boy walked along the path ahead of the company. But it had been a long morning, and he was still a kid, and now his steps were faltering, causing the men to catch up with him inadvertently. When that happened, Sergeant Smithy threw a bullet at him, hitting him on the head or back, and the kid would cry out and go faster.

The jungle trails were mined and booby-trapped by the resistance, the Vietcong insurgents, usually called Charlie. The mines were all improvised: reloaded American artillery shells; old US Army Bouncing Betties; dud bombs turned into real ones; even French Army pressure mines left over from the fifties.

Using a Vietnamese peasant as a mine dog was not very unusual, although no one would admit it back in the States. Sometimes the slants knew which stretches of the trail had been mined. Other times they were somehow able to see warning signs invisible to the grunts. And if the mine dog failed to spot the trap he would get killed instead of them. No downside.

Jasper was disgusted, but he had seen worse things in the six months he had so far spent in Vietnam. In Jasper’s opinion, men of all nations were capable of savage cruelty, especially when they were scared. He knew that the British Army had committed gruesome atrocities in Kenya: his father had been there, and now, whenever Kenya was mentioned, Dad looked pale and muttered something feeble about brutality on both sides.

However, D Company was special.

It was part of Tiger Force, the Special Forces Unit of the 101st Airborne Division. Supreme Commander General William Westmoreland proudly called them ‘my fire brigade’. Instead of regular uniforms they wore tiger-striped battledress without insignia. They were allowed to grow beards and carry handguns openly. Their specialty was pacification.

Jasper had joined D Company a week ago. The assignment was probably a bureaucratic error: he did not particularly belong here, but Tiger Force mixed men from many different units and divisions. This was his first mission with them. In this platoon there were twenty-five men, about half black and half white.

They did not know Jasper was British. Most GIs had never met a Brit, and he had got bored with being an object of curiosity. He had changed his accent, and to them he sounded Canadian, or something. Never again did he want to explain that he did not actually know the Beatles.

Their mission today was to ‘cleanse’ a village.

They were in Quang Ngai province, in the northern part of South Vietnam known to the army as I Corps Tactical Zone, or just the northern region. Like about half of South Vietnam, it was ruled not by the regime in Saigon but by the Vietcong guerillas, who organized village government and even collected taxes.

‘The Vietnamese people just don’t understand the American way,’ said the man walking alongside Jasper. He was Neville, a tall Texan with an ironic sense of humour. ‘When the Vietcong took over this region there was a lot of uncultivated land, owned by rich people in Saigon who couldn’t be bothered to farm it, so Charlie gave it to the peasants. Then, when we started to win territory back, the Saigon government returned the land to the original owners. Now the peasants are mad at us, can you believe that? They don’t get the concept of private property. That tells you how dumb they are.’

Corporal John Donellan, a black soldier known as Donny, overheard and said: ‘You’re just a fucking Communist, Neville.’

‘I am not – I voted for Goldwater,’ Neville said mildly. ‘He promised to keep uppity Negroes in their place.’

The others within earshot laughed: this kind of banter was enjoyed by soldiers. It helped them deal with their fear.

Jasper, too, liked Neville’s subversive sarcasm. But during their first rest stop this morning he had noticed Neville rolling a joint, and sprinkling into the marijuana some of the unrefined heroin they called brown sugar. If Neville was not a junkie, he soon would be.

Guerrilla fighters moved among the people as fish swam in the sea, according to the Chinese Communist leader, Chairman Mao. General Westmoreland’s strategy for defeating the Vietcong fish was to take away their sea. Three hundred thousand peasants in Quang Ngai were being rounded up and moved to sixty-eight fortified concentration camps, to leave the landscape deserted but for the Vietcong.