Nogin laughed, and felt relieved. The best of friends could quarrel about a woman. But Sinyanski went on to add some other words that he had picked out through the wall of his bedroom: ‘CIA … jeopardy … if necessary … the whole enterprise …’ spoken by the Chechen, interspersed with Perfilyev’s mollifying ‘of course, of course’.
‘And there is something else,’ said Sinyanski. ‘When they were arguing, the Chechen addressed Perfilyev not as Piotr Petrovich but as Andrei Anatolyevich which leads me to suspect that quite possibly he is not the man you suppose.’
Nogin remonstrated. Sinyanski must have misheard. Perfilyev had been sent to him by Keminski, Nogin’s comrade-in-arms during the war. But the more he heard, the less he liked it, and he started to chide Sinyanski for getting them involved. Sinyanski reminded his commander, politely, that it was he who had introduced Perfilyev, and who had agreed to destroy the equipment on the base, at which Nogin exploded, blaming all the misery and misfortune of his country on the machinations and skulduggery of Chekists and Jews. But before Sinyanski left, he had calmed down. The two men were in this together, and neither saw any alternative but to see it through.
PART FIVE
1993
June–July
SEVENTEEN
Only four days before the hanging of the Excursus exhibition was due to start, Andrei Serotkin told Francesca that he had to fly back to Moscow. His father had suffered a stroke. This was not a catastrophe so far as the exhibition was concerned: he had never shown much interest in the hanging. It was sad for Francesca but she did not complain. She knew that Serotkin was close to his father, and could see that he was anxious. He promised to return to Berlin as soon as he could, almost certainly for the official opening in the Old Gallery by President von Weizsäcker, and quite definitely for their assignation on Bastille Day, 14 July.
For the rest of that week, Francesca was kept busy at the office. There were no other crises. The invitations had gone out for the reception following the exhibition given by the city of Berlin, and for the more exclusive lunch at the New National Gallery the next day. All the works of art were ready in the OZF warehouse for distribution to the two galleries on the following Monday morning. The first finished copies of the catalogue came into the office on the Friday morning. They looked superb.
It was only when Francesca awoke that Saturday morning that she started to pine for Serotkin. If she had had a photograph of him, she would have been able to gaze at it; as it was, she had only his toothbrush and pyjamas to remind her that he was not a figment of her imagination. She lay on her bed, musing about him, tantalized as always by the residual mystery in the man she should by now know so well. She recalled her first impression, that he had been ‘dashing’, reminding her of the Bulgarian patriot, Insarov, in Turgenev’s novel, On the Eve. She went into her living room, took the book from the shelf and started to reread it. She laughed when she came to the passage where one of the characters, Bersenyev, comes to see the heroine, Elena, saying: ‘Fancy, our Insarov has disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ said Elena.
‘He has disappeared. The day before yesterday he went off somewhere and nothing has been seen of him since.’
‘He did not tell you where he was going?’
‘No.’
That could well have been an exchange between Günther Westarp and Francesca. She also smiled when she reached the scene where on a picnic a drunken German who pesters the ladies is thrown by Insarov into the river. A prophetic passage, thought Francesca, if you set the scene in Berlin’s Englischergarten and replace the German with three Turks.
She read on and was struck by other similarities that made her feel her love for Serotkin had in some strange fashion followed the same pattern as Elena’s love for Insarov. Serotkin was as mysterious as Insarov, and had the same sense of dedication to a greater purpose, even if it was not clear to Francesca what that purpose was. When Insarov tells Elena that he must go and fight for his country’s independence, she volunteers to go with him. When Insarov falls ill, Elena goes to visit him and, when he is still weak, they make love just as she and Serotkin had done.
It was extraordinary, now that she reread the novel, how many similarities there were between the fictional and the real lives. But then she frowned. How did it end? Stopping, briefly, to make herself some lunch (a prawn salad with low-cal mayonnaise, a slice of Vollkornbrot, a glass of skimmed milk and an apple), she raced through the pages: on the broad lagoon which separates Venice from the narrow strip of accumulated sea sand called the Lido, Elena and Insarov lie in a gondola. In Insarov there is a cruel change.
He had grown thin, old, pale and bent: he was constantly coughing a short dry cough, and his sunken eyes shone with a strange brilliance.
Consumption, thought Francesca, munching her apple, the AIDS of the day. They go to the opera in Venice. Insarov grows weaker.
‘It’s all over … I’m dying. Goodbye, my poor girl, goodbye, my country …’
Elena sends for the doctor. The doctor comes. ‘Signora, the foreign gentleman is dead.’
Francesca shuddered. That was not how her story would end. Soon they would return to the Soviet Memorial and make a commitment to one another for life. Then either she would go back to Russia with Andrei, or he would change his mind about leaving his country in the lurch and go back to America with her. The first solution was the more romantic; the second, the more practical. Francesca was not sure what she would do in Moscow, or how they would live on a salary paid in roubles. Nor did she like the sound of Russian obstetrics: she took it for granted that Andrei would want a child.
Knowing that Andrei Serotkin was away, Sophie Diederich invited Francesca to supper that Saturday evening, a small private celebration for the authors of Excursus now that the donkey work was done. ‘Everyone said it was impossible,’ said Sophie. ‘But we did it. And it would be nice to have one last quiet evening together – just you and Günter and Stefi and me – before all the public celebrations begin.’
Francesca felt a little sad that Serotkin’s name was not included in this inner circle, but she had to concede that it had no right to be there. She also acknowledged that, if it had not been for Stefi and Sophie, she would not have been chosen to organize Excursus; and if she had not been chosen to organize Excursus, she would not have met Andrei Serotkin. For that, she owed the Diederichs at least one last tedious evening at their flat in the Wedekindstrasse.
Francesca felt mildly ashamed that she now found the Diederichs a bore and, as she drove across Berlin that evening, she tried to analyse why it was so. Undoubtedly, Serotkin was part of the reason: the bright light that shines from one’s lover always makes others seem dim. Stefi could be witty, and undoubtedly had a lively mind, but Francesca still found him insubstantial and unconvincing. She realized that politicians were inevitably insincere, but Stefi gave the impression that he was untrustworthy through and through. It was partly this that had led to Francesca’s growing exasperation with dear, sweet and slightly stupid Sophie: how could she love so uncritically a patent shyster, particularly when she had been married to a man like Paul?
Perhaps, in a way, Paul had been to blame. His very nobility had encouraged in Sophie the kind of hero-worship that came naturally to the traditional German wife. When Paul had had his nervous breakdown, showing that he had weaknesses too, Sophie had simply transferred her loyalties to the understudy waiting in the wings.
The memory of Paul gave Francesca a twinge of guilt. She thought of him, she realized, as if he was either dead or locked up in a lunatic asylum when in fact he was living as an Evangelical pastor at Bechtling, a village only an hour or two’s drive from Berlin. Why had she not been to see him? She had been too busy. And when the work had eased up, there had been Andrei. At the back of her mind, there was a niggling prick of conscience which told her that if Paul had been in a position to further her career, she would certainly have found time to pay him a visit. Now, with the hanging startin
g on Monday, followed two weeks later by the opening of the exhibition, and God knew what thereafter, Francesca wondered whether she would ever get to see him unless she drove out to Bechtling the next day.
Stefi was drunk. This surprised Francesca because she had never seen him drunk before. Sophie tried to cover it up as soon as Francesca arrived by whispering that her husband was ‘in a filthy mood’; but it was quite apparent from Stefi’s bloodshot eyes and his slightly slurred speech, as well as the glass of vodka held in his hand.
‘So, the American,’ he said as soon as he saw Francesca, bowing with an ironic flourish. ‘So elegant, as always, as befits a princess from the triumphant superpower …’
Francesca frowned. She had, in fact, dressed down (black trousers, a blue shirt) and, if her wardrobe lacked the versatility to plumb the depths reached by Günter Westarp who sat despondently on the sofa, it was hardly the costume of a princess.
She decided to rise above the irony, and try to make her mood match his. ‘Forget the superpower, Stefi. Let’s drink to the superman, Stefan Diederich, who has done what everyone said could not be done – planning and staging a major exhibition in under a year.’
‘Thank you.’ He bowed again, then reached over to the sideboard where he kept his drink. ‘You will drink vodka, yes? We are all drinking vodka here.’
‘I’d rather have a glass of white wine.’
‘So, you have a taste for Russians but not for Russian drink.’
‘Stefi!’ said Sophie.
Francesca laughed. ‘Funnily enough, Andrei doesn’t drink that much.’
‘Most dangerous,’ said Stefi. ‘A Russian who doesn’t drink.’ He handed Francesca a glass of white wine.
‘Why?’
‘A symptom of megalomania.’
‘I don’t get it.’
Stefi refilled his glass with vodka. ‘A man who conquers his own weaknesses thinks he can conquer the world. Look at Lenin, Stalin, Gandhi …’
‘Gandhi was hardly a conqueror.’
‘On the contrary. He thought he could conquer the forces of evil, like the megalomaniac of all megalomaniacs, Christ.’
‘Phooey,’ said Sophie. ‘You’re just trying to justify getting drunk.’
‘What was it Caesar said? “Let me have men about me that are fat; sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights.” Does he sleep o’nights, Francesca?’
‘Stefan!’ shouted Sophie again. ‘You go too far?’
‘He sleeps very well, thank you,’ said Francesca.
‘But he is not fat.’
‘No. As a matter of fact, he is exceptionally fit.’
‘Exceptionally fit! Have you never paused to wonder why?’
‘I guess he feels better that way.’
‘And can dispose of Turkish rapists just like that.’ Stefi gave an impression of a kung fu fighter, spilling the vodka he held in his hand.
‘It certainly came in useful.’
‘“Would he were fatter,”’ said Stefi.
‘Why?’
‘“Such men as he be never at heart’s ease, while they behold a greater than themselves, and therefore are they very dangerous.”’
Francesca frowned. She knew that Stefi disliked Russians in general, and Serotkin in particular, but that was no reason to badmouth him in her presence. ‘I don’t think that Andrei’s dangerous,’ she said.
‘Why should he be dangerous?’ asked Sophie.
Stefi turned to Westarp. ‘Why should he be dangerous Günter? Tell us.’
Günter looked mournfully at Stefan Diederich. ‘You tell me, Stefi. You always know best.’
This jibe seemed to annoy Stefan. ‘Know best? How can one know best? We either know, or we don’t know, and what we know often turns out to be lies. First it is socialism and the dictatorship of proletariat; then it is capitalism and democracy. What can we do, Günter, but be picked up and blown hither and thither by the strongest gust of wind?’
Günter did not answer.
‘Gloomy riddles,’ said Sophie. ‘We are meant to be celebrating, and all we get are these gloomy riddles. Well, let’s eat, and see if some food won’t improve our morale.’
Sophies’s veal fricassee and potato dumplings had a sobering effect on her husband, and improved the mood of Günter Westarp. Over strudel and coffee, Günter even made a short speech saying that ‘whatever the outcome’, he felt privileged to have been associated with Excursus, in particular to have worked alongside Francesca McDermott. Her example had taught him how professionalism and hard work could be combined with courtesy and charm. He raised his glass to her – the Diederichs followed – and drank to Francesca.
Feeling a heel for the horrible things she had thought about Günter, Francesca replied to the toast, saying how working on Excursus had changed the course of her life, not just professionally, but also from a human point of view (giggles from Sophie). Stefan had taught her how an artistic phenomenon could be turned into a political message that would enlighten and inspire the nations of Eastern Europe, dispossessed by Communism of their culture and tradition; and Günter had shown how the indomitable spirit of a single man could survive decades of intellectual oppression in one of the most efficient totalitarian states known to history. The lights had seemed to go out behind the Iron Curtain, but small flickering flames had remained alight in men and women like Stefi, Sophie and Günter Westarp; and only a small flame was needed to reignite the spiritual conflagration represented by the works of art now in the Excursus exhibition – the greatest collection of modern Russian painting that the world had ever seen.
It was overdone, and Francesca’s images had got a little out of hand, but it led Sophie to clap her hands and Günter to mumble, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ as a big tear ran down his cheeks into the brush of his Günter Grass moustache.
For a moment, Stefi remained silent, his head bowed, his eyes staring down at the table. Then he looked up. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘You must make such a speech at the opening of Excursus. When I am in Bonn, I shall make sure that you are included in the programme. Spiritual conflagration. I like that. Von Weizsäcker will like it too.’
At nine the next morning, Francesca set out in her Golf to visit Paul Meissner. She had not told Sophie nor forewarned Paul: since it was a Sunday, she felt reasonably certain that she would find the pastor at Bechtling. The traffic was light. She quickly reached Neuruppin, and then drove north to Dierberg where she turned off onto a side road that led through beautiful forests and past numerous small lakes. A second turn took her out of the forests into vast pastures with large herds of cows.
The brick church at Bechtling was visible a mile or two away, its pointed black spire like a witch’s hat. When Francesca reached the village, she felt saddened that a man who had held such promise should now live in such an obscure parish, ministering to the needs of peasants from the local collective farm. She stopped her car in the village square, embarrassed that it should seem so conspicuous beside two shabby Trabants and a rusty Skoda. There was no one in sight to ask for directions to the house of the pastor. The single shop was closed. There was no café or Gaststätte. She looked at her watch: it was twenty to eleven. The pastor was probably in his church.
When Francesca opened its huge creaking door, a dozen people in the congregation all turned to look at the intruder. Francesca almost fled, but in the pulpit above the row of gnarled faces she saw one that she knew of old. Paul was preaching. Seeing her, he stopped in mid-sentence and said: ‘Please come in.’ He smiled. He had recognized her. Francesca sat down in the back pew and Paul continued his sermon.
Francesca could not concentrate on what he was saying: she was too shaken by the change in his appearance. He had aged – twice the number of years that had passed since she had last seen him. Yet despite his lined face and his grey hair, she saw how much the boy she had seen at the Diederichs looked like him, and realized how hard it must have been for him to have been separated from his children.
Paul
was preaching about love and forgiveness – a predictable homily, perhaps, but a controversial message in a once Communist country where the victims were now the victors. It was up to God to punish the wicked for their sins, he said. It was Christ, not man, who was to judge the living and the dead. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay.
The sermon ended. Paul came down from the pulpit and went to the altar. Francesca, who had only entered a church for the odd funeral or wedding, did not know when to kneel or sit or stand; but neither, it seemed, did most of the congregation, and since she sat at the back, her confusion was hardly noticed.
At the end of the service, they sang a hymn. Again, few of those present appeared to know either the music or the words. There was no organ, and the only voice that saw them through was that of the pastor himself, far stronger than his enfeebled appearance would lead one to suppose.
The hymn over, the villagers shuffled out of the church, glancing slyly at Francesca as they passed her. Paul Meissner had left the altar, and Francesca thought that perhaps she should go round to the back of the church to intercept him as he left; but as she rose from her seat, Paul came out of the sacristy dressed not in the robes of a pastor but wearing grey trousers, a shirt and a jersey. When he reached her, he smiled. ‘Come,’ he said, putting his arm around her to lead her out of the church.
He closed the door with a large key, then set off from the church towards the village, Francesca walking beside him. ‘I had hoped to see you,’ he said. ‘I had heard that you were in Berlin.’
‘I have been arranging an exhibition.’
‘Yes. Excursus. I look forward to it.’
‘It was thanks to Sophie …’
‘And Stefi. I know.’
‘I’d wanted to see you, but we became so busy …’
He smiled. ‘Of course. That doesn’t matter. For God, a day is the same as a year and a year the same as a day. So long as you remembered me …’