The Information Officer

IT WASN’T A DIARY. HE HAD ALWAYS DISLIKED THE IDEA of diaries. They smacked of vainglory. What drove people to record the mundane drift of their ordinary lives for posterity’s sake? Did they really think that posterity didn’t have better things to concern itself with?

His scribblings were of an altogether different kind, a loose assemblage of thoughts and impressions and memories laid down for his own benefit. Not to mention the deeds. The deeds were anything but mundane.

He kept only one notebook, and the moment its pages were filled, he destroyed it, ritually, always with fire. He felt no sense of loss at the notebooks’ annihilation. Quite the reverse. He set about despoiling the virgin pages of a fresh notebook with renewed vigor, starting again, telling the story from scratch, reaching back to the very first days.

The years lent a proper perspective. He was continually evolving, and so should the record be.

What did the blinkered musings of some former self—some lesser self—have to offer him? Why revisit the youthful confusion of that long walk home through the rain from Mrs. Beckett’s house? Far better to see it in its proper context, as part of the overarching pattern, a necessary step in his metamorphosis.

If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Beckett, Bad Reichenhall would never have happened. That was the truth of it, the undeniable logic.

Her name was Constanze, and she was a first cousin of Lutz Kettelmann. Blond and voluble, she was also keen to point out that she was a couple of years older than the two boys, although this didn’t stop her from searching out their company at every opportunity. Her haughtiness irritated Lutz, whereas it washed over him. Whenever she talked down to them, which was often, he would simply smile and think of Mrs. Beckett facedown on the bed, her naked rump in the air.

Constanze wasn’t the only reason he looked back on his time at Bad Reichenhall with fondness. He appreciated the routine, the Teutonic order of the place, the almost comical devotion to saltwater cures and vigorous exercise. At that time, Germany was still suffering, but the winds of change were blowing through it, bringing good things to the Kettelmanns and their kind. Breakfast in their hotel was at eight o’clock sharp, and while the brisk and efficient staff buzzed around their long table under the awning on the terrace, Herr Kettelmann would draw up the day’s timetable, marshaling his troops, getting them to repeat their orders so that there would be no unfortunate slipups. Since children were not generally afflicted by the sort of ailments that drew the adults to the waters of Bad Reichenhall every summer, they were spared the morning session in the spa baths. There was to be no idling, though. The surrounding countryside offered any number of opportunities for building up a healthy appetite for lunch. It was an impressive landscape, a landscape of extremes, of soaring pine-clad mountains and deep emerald-green lakes.

Constanze loved to walk, but she loved bathing more, and the three of them spent much of their time at the Thumsee, a lake to the west of town. He had shared many moments with Lutz at Brooklands, but their friendship was forged on the shores of that lake, lazing in the sun and swimming in the crystal-clear waters. Maybe friendship was overstating it, even now, but he could remember feeling anchored by the company, no longer adrift on a boundless sea.

Constanze never once made mention of his father’s death, almost as if she knew that it had left no gaping hole in his life. Once, when Lutz was skimming stones at the water’s edge and he was alone with Constanze on the grassy bank of the lake, she claimed that she could read his thoughts, which he interpreted as meaning that she had felt his eyes on her. He wasn’t embarrassed. Embarrassment was an emotion he no longer experienced. Besides, she was right. It was hard to ignore her, parading about in her costume with her long pale limbs and her high firm breasts. He asked her if she had ever kissed a boy. Of course not, came her indignant reply; she had only ever kissed men. The intended snub fell on deaf ears, and her eyes almost popped out of her head when he told her about Mrs. Beckett. He left out the stuff about blackmailing her into bed, but told it pretty much as it had been. He also asked her not to say anything to Lutz. It was to be their secret.

The ploy worked. The secret festered away over the following days. Constanze was as puffed-up as ever, maybe more so, but he caught the conspiratorial looks she threw his way, and sometimes she brushed against him unnecessarily. Then came the urgent, whispered questions whenever they found themselves alone for a moment. Had he really done it with Mrs. Beckett? Was it really like he had said?

The evening before they were all due to leave Bad Reichenhall, she took him aside and suggested they meet up later after everyone was in bed. She billed it as a last walk to the Thumsee, a final farewell to their lake. Her excuse for not including Lutz in the expedition was that his bedroom adjoined that of his parents, and he was liable to give the game away if he joined them.

It was a warm, balmy night, and a crescent moon lit their path to the lake. They stripped off and swam to the big rock and back. Then they kissed in the shallows and her hand closed uncertainly around him. She gave a small squeal of pain as his hand returned the favor, fingers probing, delving. She released him immediately and made off out of the water, long and lean and ivory-white in the moonlight. He knew that his crude fumblings had killed the moment, but he was damned if he was going to take all the blame. After all, it was she who had lured him there with the promise of greater things.

She was too preoccupied with pulling on her clothes to see him coming. He grabbed her and spun her around and forced his tongue into her mouth. She resisted, of course, even when he told her that he would hurt her if she didn’t stop. Seizing her hair seemed the sensible thing to do, as it would leave no mark. It certainly subdued her enough for him to have his way with her, right there on the grassy rise beside the lake. And while he did it, he told her why he was doing it. After a month of her stuck-up ways, he was not lost for words. The more she tried to twist free of him, the more pleasure he derived from her struggles, a dark and deeply satisfying pleasure he had not felt with Mrs. Beckett. And when it was over, he didn’t thank her and promise his eternal silence, as he had done with Mrs. Beckett. He threatened her with a fate far worse than the one she’d just endured if she ever breathed a word of it.

While they were getting dressed, he took a more reasoned tack, pointing out that it would be her word against his. Even if she persuaded people of the truth, her reputation would still be in tatters. “I understand,” she said. And she seemed to.

The following morning she was at breakfast at eight o’clock sharp, composed, if somewhat more subdued than usual. This was put down to the prospect of returning to Bremen after a glorious month in the Alps.

She had gone on to marry a wealthy corn merchant. He knew this because over the years he had asked after her, and Lutz had filled him in on the dreary details of her life: another child, a new holiday house by the sea, her charity work for the unemployed. Unsurprisingly, the war had restricted these updates, but he still thought of her with something approaching affection. She might not have been the very first, but it was she who had triggered the first stirrings of life in him, she who had set him on the road. He had taken wrong turns, dangerous deviations that had almost proved to be his undoing, but he was wiser now—more cautious, more patient, and far better at covering his tracks.