Olya waited until he was breathing regularly and slipped out of bed. She knew he would sleep deeply for at least two or three hours. The sleeping draft was added to the cocktail. At the table in the restaurant, as if she had just happened to think of it, Olya would exclaim: "Oh! I completely forgot! They do a cocktail here – you know, it's a rather… Russian-style combination – absolutely delicious."
If for any reason the "subject" refused, the waiter would bring exceptionally salty caviar. In the bedroom, after the delights of love had made him breathless, the foreigner would take eager drafts of the cool wine thoughtfully poured out by his attentive companion.
Olya took a large black plastic envelope out of her bag, put the German's briefcase into it and closed the zipper. Then she placed the envelope close to the door, gently withdrew the key from the lock and went over to the telephone. She dialed twice and, without waiting for the customary "Hello," murmured "Forty-six" and hung up. Two minutes later the lock clicked softly, the door opened slightly and a hand deftly seized the black envelope. To avoid falling asleep, Olya did not lie down – she sat in an armchair.
Almendinger was lying on his back, stretched out fully, his great bony hands crossed on his chest. The neon light from the street silvered his face. It was a face that resembled a mournful plaster mask. And it now seemed impossible that the petrified folds of this mouth should, only a few minutes ago, have sought and touched her lips, those hands held her body.
During dinner at the restaurant he had talked a good deal, joking and correcting her mistakes. He bore himself with such worldly ease and there was such precision in all his words and gestures that Olya had no need to act. It felt as if he knew the scenario quite as well as her, that the allocation of roles suited him and in no way discomfited him. It even felt as if it was all so familiar to him that he was intent on making the most of this May evening, the presence of this young escort, as unexpected as she was inevitable, and of the chance, possibly for the last time in his life, to assume the rewarding role of social lion.
With smiling grace he talked about trips he had made, knowing that for his young companion the names of Venice or Naples had the same exotic ring as that of Eldorado. Generally in such recitals Olya used to detect a note of superiority, be it open or covert, on the part of those who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Almendinger's stories were different. For example, in Italy he had for the first time in his life heard a cats' concert. A sadistic Neapolitan had gathered up a dozen cats, had arranged them according to their voices, putting them into tiny cages fitted inside a piano. He had inserted needles into the felt on the hammers so that every time the keys were struck they pricked the cats' tails. The wretched animals each emitted a different sound and their wailing blended into a horrible and pitiful symphony. The sadistic pianist had almost been lynched by the members of the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
After telling, this story Almendinger threw Olya a somewhat sheepish glance.
"I shouldn't be telling you about such horrible things. After all, we Germans have the reputation among you as a people somewhat lacking in humanity. Yes, that war… When I think that in '41 I could see the Kremlin towers through my binoculars! And now I can see them from my bedroom window. It truly is as the Bible says: 'Die Wege Gottes sind unergrundlich.' God's ways are unfathomable. Have you ever come across that expression?"
He fell silent, his gaze lost somewhere among the cups and plates. Remembering the part she had to play, Olya suggested with exaggerated animation: "Oh listen, Wilfried! I'd completely forgotten. They have an absolutely delicious cocktail here…"
Never before had those words seemed so loathsome to her. It was just at the moment when they brought the cocktail that he began to talk about the Germany of his childhood.
"You know children these days have a great many toys. But all these toys are too cold, too – how can I put it? – technological. When I was a child I had a collection of miniature lighthouses. The top of each one unscrewed and inside there was sand. Each contained a different kind of sand that came from a different beach in Europe…"
Almendinger lay there, his arms folded, his face motionless, now and then emitting a sigh, a brief moan. He knew he would have to remain lying there like that for an hour, or maybe two. He had heard Olya standing stock-still above him, listening to his breathing, then telephoning. He had also heard the door open and close again. He somewhat regretted having chosen to remain stretched out on his back. On his side, with his face hidden in the pillow, it would have been easier. On the other hand, by slightly opening his eyes he could observe what was happening in the room. But even this was of little interest to him. Within his attaché case, a few pages of anodyne disinformation had been slipped with professional dexterity into the middle of a wad of scientific documents. This should smooth the path for his successor as he made a start in Moscow. What Almendinger was preparing to take away with him boiled down to four columns of figures learned by heart.
While he was talking about his childhood collection of lighthouses and their sand, he had been slowly bending the straw in his cocktail glass with his thumb. The glass stood behind the bottle of champagne and the carafe of water. Olya could not see it. He drew gently on the straw and slipped the end of it into an empty glass.
"And then," Almendinger went on, "my cloudless childhood came to an end, alas. I turned into a clumsy great oaf, a nasty little monster. One day I poured out all the sand into one small heap on the lawn. I mixed it ah up."
Olya, who was listening attentively and dreamily, asked in surprise in German: "Warum?"
Almendinger smiled. She suddenly seemed so young to him!
"Und warum sind die Bananen krumm?" he asked her, laughing. "Why are bananas bent?" After that he remarked: "This cocktail is quite excellent. I must remember its name. What did you say? ' Moscow Bouquet'? Ah! A very good name for it…"
He put the straw to his lips. The last drops of delicate pink foam were disappearing from the bottom of the glass.
And now, lying there in the darkness of his bedroom, he reflected that everything in this world was strangely linked. That mixing of the sands had come back to him one night in a trench near Moscow. It was appallingly cold. The soldiers crowded round the stove. The red-hot metal burned their hands, while their backs grew hard and stiff like bark under the piercing snow squalls. Above their heads the icy stars twinkled. And close by, in similar trenches, crouched their enemies, the Russians. But these men, savages that they were, did not even have a stove.
"Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow," he was thinking, "we'll be in Moscow. We'll have dealt with Russia. It'll be warm and clean. I'll get a medal…" A solitary flare went up, momentarily eclipsing the starry sky. Then their eyes had adjusted to the dark once more. And once more the stars began to shine and the deep black of the sky was restored. Trying to think of nothing, he reached out toward the stove, mentally repeating: "Tomorrow we'll be in Moscow. It'll be warm, and clean…" But the thought he was trying to keep at bay returned. It returned not in words but in a vivid, instinctive flash: this snow-filled ditch dug in the earth, floating away into the dark of the night, among the stars. And all of them in this ditch, who have already seen death, who have already killed. And over there in a similar ditch, covered in hoarfrost, those whom they will have to kill. And this stove into which all the heat in the universe is concentrated that night. And the grains of sand from all the shores of Europe mixed up together in a little grayish mound on the lawn in a German town that has recently come to know the whistle of falling bombs…