In the Evil Day

34

…HAMBURG…

Inskip was watching the vision from some pale anonymous formica-walled airport terminal, views of queues, of passengers, close-ups of faces when their turns came at the counter. He jumped from queue to queue, face to face.

‘Real time in Belgrade,’ he said. ‘It’s a feed to the people who sold them the system. Quality control purposes.’

‘Very nice,’ said Anselm. ‘What’s our interest?’

‘Intellectual, for the moment. Another breakthrough in techniques of invasion. I thought that earned praise.’

‘It does. You’re a promising person.’

Inskip sniffed. ‘That’s a theatrical sniff,’ he said.

‘Don’t get to the theatre much.’

‘Moving on, I have the new London subject’s hire car in a parking garage near Green Park. Bill’s mounting, they’ve run a check on it.’

Eric Constantine. The name stuck in his mind.

‘Probably a dead end then,’ said Anselm. ‘I’m going home.’

‘Do you do that?’ said Inskip.

Anselm was packing up when the phone rang.

‘It’s yes,’ said O’Malley.

Anselm rang Tilders.

‘Yes,’ said Tilders. ‘They understand this is going to be difficult?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wish us luck.’

‘I do. Luck.’

Anselm had no urge to run home, walk home. He went out into the cold, misty night and, for the first time, took the sagging BMW car home. Outside the house, he got out and opened the wooden gates. It was a fight. Bolts and rusted hinges contested his wishes. He parked in front of the garage. No car had stood there for a long time, on those brick pavers.

Standing on the dark threshold, looking for the key, and inside, when he was sitting in the kitchen, glass in hand, he thought again about his Moritz: pro-Nazi. An anti-Semite. He looked like some count painted by von Rayski. And I look like him.

Anselm went to the photographs on the wall, the photographs Alex had looked at on the first night. There were dozens, going back more than a century-formal portraits, groups, weddings, dinners, sailing pictures, pictures taken at balls, in the garden, on the beach at Sylt, pictures of children, children with dogs, him with his parents and Lucas, Gunther and his wife, him with his grandfather in the garden, both with forks, big and small. No photograph of anyone who could be Moritz.

Surely Moritz could not have missed every single photographic occasion?

He went back to the kitchen, sat down. Alex. He should telephone her and say that he had changed his mind, apologise for wasting her time in Stadtpark. He had enjoyed talking to her, he could say that, but he didn’t want to talk about the past.

The telephone rang and Anselm knew. He let it ring for a while and then, suddenly fearful that the ringing might stop, he went to answer it.

Alex’s apartment was the size of a house, on the third floor of an old building in Winterhude, built between the wars, an Altbauwohnung.

Anselm said, ‘May I lie on a couch? Or have I suggested that before?’

Alex Koenig smiled. ‘You have and you may not. I’ve got coffee. Or brandy and whisky. Some gin left. I like to drink gin in summer.’

She was all in black, a turtleneck sweater and corduroy. Her hair was pulled back. Anselm thought she looked beautiful and it made him even more uneasy.

‘You can’t drink gin after sunset,’ he said.

‘Yes? Is that a British rule? It sounds British.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘But you’re not British.’

‘My mother’s family are English.’

‘Ah, mothers. They like rules. Impose order on the world, that’s a mother’s primary function. There is also beer and white wine.’

‘White wine, thank you.’

She left the room and he went to the window. The curtains were open and he looked out at the winter Hamburg night, moist, headlights, tail lights reflected on the shiny black tarmac skin. The streetlamps made the last wet leaves on the trees opposite glint like thousands of tiny mirrors. He turned, noticed the upright piano, an old Bechstein, went across and opened it, he could not resist. His right hand played. The piano was badly in need of tuning. So was his hand, he thought.

‘You’re musical,’ she said.

Anselm turned around. ‘Playing “Night and Day” doesn’t make you musical.’

‘It makes you more musical than I am.’

He took a glass from her. ‘Thank you. Interesting furniture.’

‘The chairs?’

‘A passage lined with chairs. About twenty chairs in this room. Yes, the chairs.’

‘Kai’s obsession. My ex-husband. Did I say his name? He likes things people sit on. Very much. He seeks out chairs.’

‘Would you say he craved chairs?’

She tilted her head. ‘Chairs he doesn’t have, yes. There is an element of craving.’

‘He must miss them.’

‘I don’t think he cares about them after he’s got them. It’s the thrill of getting them. He wants them but I don’t think he cares about them.’

‘Napoleon was like that,’ Anselm said. ‘So were the Romans, I suppose. Whole nations they didn’t care about and wouldn’t part with. Did this chair thing bother you?’

‘Very much. It kept me awake. And then again, not at all. Are you sure you’ve eaten?’

‘Is this going to be taxing? Do I need to be in shape?’

‘Let’s sit down.’

They sat, a narrow coffee table of dark wood between them, a modern piece. On it was a tape recorder, a sleek device.

‘May I record this?’

‘My instinct is to say no,’ said Anselm. ‘But why not?’

‘Thank you.’ She touched a square button. ‘To begin,’ she said. She wet her lips with wine. ‘Can I ask you about your memory of the events? Is it clear?’

‘It’s fine. It’s earlier and after that’s the problem.’

‘After your injury?’

‘Yes. I don’t remember anything for about a month.’

‘And earlier?’

‘There are holes. Missing bits. But I don’t always know what’s missing. There are things you don’t think about.’

‘Yes. So, the beginning. Your experience in trouble spots, that would have prepared you to some extent?’

‘Well, by ’93 Beirut wasn’t really a trouble spot. Southern Lebanon, yes. Anyway, I thought we were dealing with GPs.’

‘GPs?’

‘Gun pricks. Paul Kaskis coined the term. Long before. A prick with a gun.’

‘Ah. You would fear them surely? Gun pricks.’

Gun pricks. She said the words with a certain relish.

‘There’s a survival rule,’ said Anselm. ‘Paul invented that too. DPGP. Don’t Provoke Gun Pricks. He didn’t but they killed him anyway.’

‘So you were scared?’

‘I was scared. I thought you were interested in personal history?’

‘I am. But I need to know about the specific circumstances too. Does it bother you to talk about them?’

He had come in trepidation and had been right to. He didn’t want to talk about Beirut, it was stupid to have agreed to. She wasn’t that interesting, appealing, she wasn’t going to be the answer, an academic, they bled most of them of personality before they gave them the PhD. But he wanted to behave well, he had a bad history with her, he didn’t want her to think he was disturbed.

‘Well,’ said Anselm, ‘you should always be scared around GPs. The first few minutes, there’s usually a lot of shouting, all kinds of crap, you just hope it dawns on them killing you might not be smart. Or that someone more intelligent or less drugged will come along, tell them to back off.’

‘So you thought it would soon end?’

‘I hoped. It’s new every time. You hope. You pray. Even the godless pray. You shut up. Keep still, try to breathe deeply.’

‘When did it change?’

Now was the moment to go. He felt the pulse beating in his throat, he knew that pulse, that sign, the blood drum.

She said, ‘Your glass is empty. Can I?’

He nodded, relieved. She went out and came back in seconds with the bottle, filled his glass.

She’d known, she’d felt his pulse.

Anselm drank, lowered the level by an inch. ‘They taped us,’ he said. Then, quickly, ‘Wrists and ankles, across the eyes, put hoods on, I couldn’t breathe.’

He had said it. I couldn’t breathe.

‘And that scared you even more?’ she asked, voice soft.

There was no turning back. ‘Yes.’

Silence. He didn’t look at her, wanted a cigarette badly. There was an ashtray on a side table. After a while, he looked at her and said, ‘What did Riccardi tell you?’

‘He was…a little emotional.’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He said you were silent in the beginning.’

‘I had tape over my mouth.’

‘After that, in the first place they kept you.’

‘Riccardi is a vocal person. It’s like having the radio on. I’m surprised he noticed.’

‘He says he talked because you were both silent.’

‘Riccardi doesn’t need an excuse to talk. He talks in all circumstances. He’d talk over the sermon on the mount, the Gettysburg address. What else did he say?’

‘He says he never thought it was political.’

‘Everything’s political. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to make Riccardi your judge of what’s political. He’s a photographer. Born to take snaps. I was with him in Sri Lanka for a month and in the plane on the way back he said, “So what was all that about, anyway?”.’

‘He says it was never clear to him what you and Paul Kaskis were doing in the Lebanon.’

‘Kaskis wanted to talk to someone. He asked me to go with him, I had nothing better to do.’

‘Talk to someone? About what?’

‘I don’t know. Paul never told you anything. How does this line of inquiry further post-trauma research?’

She frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just curious. You have to be in my work.’

‘Riccardi might have asked me before he opened his heart to you.’

As he said the words, Anselm heard the whine in them. He sounded like a betrayed lover

‘He didn’t think he was doing any harm,’ Alex said. ‘He’s your friend. He admires you very much. And he finds relief in talking about a painful experience. Most people do. Is it that you don’t?’

‘Can I smoke?’

‘Of course, I should have said. This place was full of smoke when Kai was here. Pipe smoke. I rather liked it. It reminded me of my father.’

He fetched the ashtray and lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the distant ceiling. ‘I was more than scared when they put the tape over my mouth, the hood,’ he said quickly. ‘I panicked. I lost control of myself.’

‘Your body?’

‘Yes.’

There was relief. Why had the thought of that moment of helpless indignity been so clenched in him? He knew. Because, at that moment, John Anselm reporter, John Anselm detached observer, was no more. He had become a victim. He wasn’t the storyteller any more. He was in the story. He had joined it. He was a foul-smelling minor figure in an ancient story, no different from any civilian casualty of war, from any red-eyed, black-garbed crone pushing a barrow of sad possessions down a rutted road on the way from precious little to much, much less.

He remembered too that, in the aftermath of that moment, it had come to him with complete certainty that there would be no return to safety and a shower, to drinks and a meal, more drinks, reminiscences, laughter, to a long sleep in a bed with sheets.

‘I think I have to go,’ said Anselm. ‘I think I’ve changed my mind about talking. I’m sorry.’

Alex shook her head. ‘It’s not to be sorry about. This is painful for you, I understand that. We can talk about something else.’

‘I have to go.’

At her front door, he turned, awkward. ‘Goodbye. I’ve wasted your time.’

She put out a hand, seemed to hesitate, then she touched his arm, just above the elbow. ‘No. Not at all. Can I ask you one more thing? A personal thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like to see me again? Not professionally?’