Edge of Eternity

  "What's on your mind?" said Volodya. "You look ready to kill someone."

  "I've got a problem," Dimka told him. "I've made an enemy."

  "Not unusual, in the circles within which you work."

  "This is nothing to do with politics. Nik Smotrov is a gangster."

  "How did you come to fall foul of such a man?"

  "I'm sleeping with his wife."

  Volodya looked disapproving. "And he's threatening you."

  Volodya had probably never been unfaithful to Zoya, his scientist wife, who was as beautiful as she was brilliant. But that meant he had scant sympathy for Dimka. Volodya might have felt differently if he had been so foolish as to marry someone like Nina.

  Dimka said: "Nik kidnapped Grisha."

  Volodya sat upright. "What? When?"

  "Yesterday. We got him back. He was only shut in the cellar of Government House. But it was a warning."

  "You have to give up this woman!"

  Dimka ignored that. "There's a particular reason why I've come to you, Uncle. There's a way you could help me and do the army some good at the same time."

  "Go on."

  "Nik is behind a fraud that costs the army millions every year." Dimka explained about the TV sets. When he had finished he put the file on Volodya's desk. "It's all in there--including the names of the officers who are organizing the whole thing."

  Volodya did not pick up the file. "I'm not a policeman. I can't arrest this Nik. And if he's bribing police officers, there's not much I can do about it."

  "But you can arrest the army officers involved."

  "Oh, yes. They will all be in army jails within twenty-four hours."

  "And you can shut down the whole business."

  "Very quickly."

  And then Nik will be ruined, Dimka thought. "Thank you, Uncle," he said. "That's very helpful."

  *

  Dimka was in his apartment, packing for Czechoslovakia, when Nik came to see him.

  The Politburo had approved Kosygin's plan. Dimka was flying with him to Prague to negotiate a nonmilitary solution to the crisis. They would find a way to allow the liberalization experiment to continue while at the same time reassuring the diehards that there was no fundamental threat to the Soviet system. But what Dimka hoped was that in the long term the Soviet system would change.

  Prague in May would be mild and wet. Dimka was folding his raincoat when the doorbell rang.

  There was no doorman in his building, and no intercom system. The street door was permanently unlocked and visitors walked upstairs to the apartments unannounced. It was not as luxurious as Government House, where his ex-wife was living in their old apartment. Dimka occasionally felt resentful, but he was glad Grisha was near his grandmother.

  Dimka opened the door and was shocked to see his lover's husband standing there.

  Nik was an inch taller than Dimka, and heavier, but Dimka was ready to take him on. He stepped back a pace and picked up the nearest heavy object, a glass ashtray, to use as a weapon.

  "No need for that," said Nik, but he stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him.

  "Piss off," said Dimka. "Go now, before you get into any more trouble." He managed to sound more confident than he felt.

  Nik glared at him with hot hatred in his eyes. "You've made your point," he said. "You're not afraid of me. You're powerful enough to turn my life to shit. I should be scared of you. All right, I get it. I'm scared."

  He did not sound it.

  Dimka said: "What have you come here for?"

  "I don't give a toss for the bitch. I only married her to please my mother, who's dead now. But a man's pride is hurt when another man pokes his fire. You know what I mean."

  "Get to the point."

  "My business is ruined. No one in the army will speak to me, let alone sell me TV sets. Men who have built four-bedroom dachas from the money I've made for them now walk past me in the street without speaking--those who aren't in jail."

  "You shouldn't have threatened my son."

  "I know it now. I thought my wife was opening her legs for some little apparatchik. I didn't know he was a fucking warlord. I underestimated you."

  "So bugger off home and lick your wounds."

  "I have to make a living."

  "Try working."

  "No jokes, please. I've found another source of Western TV sets--nothing to do with the army."

  "Why should I care?"

  "I can rebuild the business you destroyed."

  "So what?"

  "Can I come in and sit down?"

  "Don't be so fucking stupid."

  Rage flared again in Nik's eyes, and Dimka feared he had gone too far, but the flame died down, and Nik said meekly: "Okay, here's the deal. I'll give you ten percent of the profits."

  "You want me to go into business with you? In a criminal enterprise? You must be mad."

  "All right, twenty percent. And you don't have to do anything except leave me alone."

  "I don't want your money, you fool. This is the Soviet Union. You can't just buy anything you want, like in America. My connections are worth far more than you could ever pay me."

  "There must be something you want."

  Until this moment Dimka had been arguing with Nik just to keep him off balance, but now he saw an opportunity. "Oh, yes," he said. "There is something I want."

  "Name it."

  "Divorce your wife."

  "What?"

  "I want you to get a divorce."

  "Divorce Natalya?"

  "Divorce your wife," Dimka said again. "Which of those three words are you having trouble understanding?"

  "Fuck me, is that all?"

  "Yes."

  "You can marry her. I wouldn't touch her now anyway."

  "If you divorce her, I'll leave you alone. I'm not a cop, and I'm not running a crusade against corruption in the USSR. I have more important work to do."

  "It's a deal." Nik opened the door. "I'll send her up."

  That took Dimka by surprise. "She's here?"

  "Waiting in the car. I'll have her things packed up and sent around tomorrow. I don't want her in my place ever again."

  Dimka raised his voice. "Don't you dare hurt her. If she's even bruised, the whole deal is off."

  Nik turned in the doorway and pointed a threatening finger. "And don't you renege. If you try to screw me I'll cut off her nipples with the kitchen scissors."

  Dimka believed he would. He suppressed a shudder. "Get out of my flat."

  Nik left without closing the door.

  Dimka was breathing hard, as if he had been running. He stood still in the small hall of the apartment. He heard Nik clattering down the stairs. He put the ashtray down on the hall table. His fingers were slippery with perspiration, and he almost dropped it.

  What just happened seemed like a dream. Had Nik really stood in this hallway and agreed to a divorce? Had Dimka really scared him off?

  A minute later he heard footsteps of a different kind on the stairs: lighter, faster, coming up. He did not go out of the apartment: he felt stuck where he was.

  Natalya appeared in the doorway, her broad smile lighting up the whole place. She threw herself into his arms. He buried his face in her mass of curls. "You're here," he said.

  "Yes," she said. "And I'm never going to leave."

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Rebecca was tempted to be unfaithful to Bernd. But she could not lie to him. So she told him everything in a convulsion of repentance. "I've met someone I really like," she said. "And I've kissed him. Twice. I'm so sorry. I'll never do it again."

  She was scared of what he would say next. He might immediately ask for a divorce. Most men would. Bernd was better than most men, though. But it would break her heart if he were not angry but simply humiliated. She would have hurt the person she loved most in the world.

  However, Bernd's response to her confession was shockingly different from anything she had expected. "You should go ahead," he said. "Have an
affair with the guy."

  They were in bed, last thing at night, and she turned over and stared at him. "How can you say that?"

  "This is 1968, the age of free love. Everyone is having sex with everyone else. Why should you miss out?"

  "You don't mean that."

  "I didn't mean it to sound so trivial."

  "What did you mean?"

  "I know you love me," he said, "and I know you like having sex with me, but you mustn't go through the rest of your life without experiencing the real thing."

  "I don't believe in the real thing," she said. "It's different for everyone. It's much better with you than it was with Hans."

  "It will always be good, because we love each other. But I think you need a really good fuck."

  And he was right, she thought. She loved Bernd and she liked the peculiar sex they had, but when she thought about Claus lying on top of her, kissing her and moving inside her, and how she would lift her hips to meet his thrusts, she immediately got wet. She was ashamed of this feeling. Was she an animal? Perhaps she was, but Bernd was right about what she needed.

  "I think I'm weird," she said. "Maybe it's because of what happened to me in the war." She had told Bernd--but no one else, ever--how Red Army soldiers had been about to rape her when Carla had offered herself instead. German women rarely spoke of that time, even to one another. But Rebecca would never forget the sight of Carla going up that staircase, head held high, with the Soviet soldiers following her like eager dogs. Rebecca, thirteen years old, had known what they were going to do, and she had wept with relief that it was not happening to her.

  Bernd asked perceptively: "Do you also feel guilty that you escaped while Carla suffered?"

  "Yes, isn't that strange?" she said. "I was a child, and a victim, but I feel as if I did something shameful."

  "It's not unusual," Bernd said. "Men who survive battles feel remorse because others died and not them." Bernd had got the scar on his forehead during the battle of Seelow Heights.

  "I felt better after Carla and Werner adopted me," Rebecca said. "Somehow that made it all right. Parents make sacrifices for their children, don't they? Women suffer to bring children into the world. Perhaps it doesn't make much sense, but once I became Carla's daughter I felt entitled."

  "It makes sense."

  "Do you really want me to go to bed with another man?"

  "Yes."

  "But why?"

  "Because the alternative is worse. If you don't do it, you'll always feel, in your heart, that you missed out on something because of me, that you made a sacrifice for my sake. I'd rather you went ahead and tried it. You don't have to reveal the details: just come home and tell me you love me."

  "I don't know," Rebecca said, and she slept uneasily that night.

  On the evening of the next day she was sitting next to the man who wanted to become her lover, Claus Krohn, in a meeting room in Hamburg's enormous green-roofed neo-Renaissance town hall. Rebecca was a member of the parliament that ran the Hamburg city-state. The committee was discussing a proposal to demolish a slum and build a new shopping center. But all she could think about was Claus.

  She was sure that after tonight's meeting Claus would invite her to a bar for a drink. This would be the third time. After the first he had kissed her good night. The second had ended with a passionate clinch in a car park, when they had kissed with mouths open and he had touched her breasts. Tonight, she felt sure, he would ask her to go to his apartment.

  She did not know what to do. She could not concentrate on the debate. She doodled on her agenda. She was both bored and anxious: the meeting was tedious but she did not want it to end because she was scared of what would happen next.

  Claus was an attractive man: intelligent, kind, charming, and exactly her age, thirty-seven. His wife had died in a car crash two years ago, and he had no children. He was not good-looking in the movie-star sense, but he had a warm smile. Tonight he was wearing a politician's blue suit, but he was the only man in the room with a shirt open at the neck. Rebecca wanted to make love to him, wanted it badly. And at the same time she dreaded it.

  The meeting came to an end and, as she expected, Claus asked her if she would like to meet him at the Yacht Bar, a quiet place well away from city hall. They drove there in their separate cars.

  The bar was small and dark, busiest in the daytime, when it was used by people who had sailboats, quiet and almost deserted now. Claus ordered a beer, Rebecca asked for a glass of Sekt. As soon as they were settled she said: "I told my husband about us."

  Claus was startled. "Why?" he said. Then he added: "Not that there's much to tell." All the same he looked guilty.

  "I can't lie to Bernd," she said. "I love him."

  "And you obviously can't lie to me, either," Claus said.

  "I'm sorry."

  "It isn't something to apologize for--just the opposite. Thank you for being honest. I appreciate it." Claus looked crestfallen, and amid all her other emotions Rebecca felt pleased that he liked her enough to be so disappointed. He said ruefully: "If you've confessed to your husband, why are you here with me now?"

  "Bernd told me to go ahead," she said.

  "Your husband wants you to kiss me?"

  "He wants me to become your lover."

  "That's creepy. Is it to do with his paralysis?"

  "No," she lied. "Bernd's condition makes no difference to our sex life." This was the story she had told her mother and a few other women whom she was really close to. She deceived them for Bernd's sake: she felt it would be humiliating for him if people knew the truth.

  "Well," said Claus, "if this is my lucky day, shall we go straight to my apartment?"

  "Let's not rush, if you don't mind."

  He put his hand over hers. "It's okay to be nervous."

  "I haven't done this often."

  He smiled. "That's not a bad thing, you know, even if we are living in the age of free love."

  "I slept with two boys at university. Then I married Hans, who turned out to be a police spy. Then I fell in love with Bernd and we escaped together. There, that's my entire love life."

  "Let's talk about something else for a while," he said. "Are your parents still in the East?"

  "Yes, they'll never get permission to leave. Once you make an enemy of someone like Hans Hoffmann--my first husband--he never forgets."

  "You must miss them."

  She could not express how much she missed her family. The Communists had blocked calls to the West the day they built the Wall, so she could not even speak to her parents on the phone. All she had was letters--opened and read by the Stasi, usually delayed, often censored, any enclosure of value stolen by the police. A few photos had got through, and Rebecca had them next to her bed: her father turning gray, her mother getting heavier, Lili growing into a beautiful woman.

  Instead of trying to explain her grief she said: "Tell me about yourself. What happened to you in the war?"

  "Nothing much, except that I starved, like most kids," he said. "The house next door was destroyed and everyone in it killed, but we were all right. My father is a surveyor: he spent much of the war assessing bomb damage and making buildings safe."

  "Do you have brothers and sisters?"

  "One of each. You?"

  "My sister, Lili, is still in East Berlin. My brother, Walli, escaped soon after I did. He's a guitar player in a group called Plum Nellie."

  "That Walli? He's your brother?"

  "Yes. I was there when he was born, on the floor of our kitchen, which was the only warm room in the house. Quite an experience for a fourteen-year-old girl."

  "So he escaped."

  "And came to live with me, here in Hamburg. He joined the group when they were playing some grimy club on the Reeperbahn."

  "And now he's a pop star. Do you see him?"

  "Of course. Every time Plum Nellie play in West Germany."

  "What a thrill!" Claus looked at her glass and saw that it was empty. "Would you like anoth
er Sekt?"

  Rebecca felt a tightness in her chest. "No, thanks, I don't think so."

  "Listen," he said. "Something I want you to understand. I'm desperate to make love to you, but I know you're torn. Just remember that you can change your mind at any moment. There's no such thing as the point of no return. If you feel uncomfortable, just say so. I won't be angry or insistent, I promise. I would hate to feel I'd pushed you into something you weren't ready for."

  It was exactly the right thing for him to say. The tightness eased. Rebecca had been afraid of getting in too deep, realizing she had made the wrong decision, and feeling unable to back out. Claus's promise set her mind at rest. "Let's go," she said.

  They got into their cars and Rebecca followed Claus. Driving along she felt a wild exhilaration. She was about to give herself to Claus. She pictured his face as she took off her blouse: she was wearing a new bra, black with lace trimming. She thought of how they would kiss--frantically before, lovingly after. She imagined his sigh as she took his penis in her mouth. She felt she had never wanted anything so badly, and she had to clamp her teeth together to prevent herself crying out.

  Claus had a small apartment in a modern building. Going up in the elevator, Rebecca was assailed by doubts again. What if he didn't like what he saw when she took off her clothes? She was thirty-seven: she no longer had the firm breasts and perfect skin of her teenage years. What if he had a hidden dark side? He might produce handcuffs and a whip, then lock the door--

  She told herself not to be silly. She had the normal woman's ability to know when she was with a weirdo, and Claus was delightfully normal. All the same, she felt apprehensive as he opened the apartment door and ushered her in.

  It was a typical man's home, a bit bare of ornament, with utilitarian furniture except for a large television and an expensive record player. Rebecca said: "How long have you lived here?"

  "A year."

  As she had guessed, it was not the home he had shared with his late wife.

  He had undoubtedly planned what to do next. Moving quickly, he ignited the gas fire, put a Mozart string quartet on the record deck, and assembled a tray with a bottle of schnapps, two glasses, and a bowl of salted nuts.

  They sat side by side on the couch.

  She wanted to ask him how many other girls he had seduced on this couch. It would have struck a wrong note, but all the same she wondered. Was he enjoying being single, or did he long to marry again? Another question she was not going to ask.