‘You’re really making me feel very good about myself,’ I said.
‘I’m not trying to upset you.’
‘And yet I feel upset.’
‘I just wondered whether, you know, you might have a problem. And, if so, whether you should do something about it.’
I sat back in the chair and found myself, quite unexpectedly, laughing. I was aware that I was coming across as a little hysterical so it was no great surprise when he began to look at me nervously and shift uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Oh, Theo,’ I said, reaching across and patting his hand a few times. ‘Bless you. But of course I have a problem. Do you think that’s news to me? I drink a minimum of seven pints of beer, two double whiskies, a single malt and a glass of Baileys every day, seven days a week. Does that seem like the actions of a rational, uncomplicated, sober man to you?’
‘No, but…’ He frowned. ‘I mean, if you know you have a problem, then why don’t you look for help?’
‘Because I don’t want any.’
‘Everybody needs some—’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, but let me get another drink first. I feel like I’m going to need it. And I’m sure you need a cigarette if you’re going to keep impersonating the Archbishop of Canterbury on the first day of Lent.’
I stood up and he looked annoyed that I was interrupting this particular conversation to return to the bar and, a moment later, he marched past me towards the door, his cigarette pack and lighter in hand, his notepad sticking reliably out of his pocket. I watched him go and couldn’t help but laugh. There was something adorably guileless about the poor boy, I thought. He’d always been like that, of course, ever since he was a child. He’d believed in the tooth fairy a lot longer than other children.
‘I’ll take a whisky too,’ I told the barman when he took my usual order and when it arrived I knocked it back in one go, leaving the empty glass on the counter as I carried the beers to the table.
‘We’ve talked about Dash, about Edith and about The Tribesman,’ said Theo, when he returned. ‘And I think I’ve got everything I need on them. Since his name has come up, perhaps we should finally talk about Erich.’
‘There’s nothing I’d enjoy more,’ I said with a wide smile.
‘You told me that you felt badly about how you treated Dash Hardy but, of course, he doesn’t figure in your work very much. Erich Ackermann does, though. He’s where everything begins for you.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But it was all such a long time ago. Quite honestly, I barely think of him at all any more.’
‘But you must on occasion. And he’s a central part of my thesis, obviously.’
‘On occasion,’ I agreed. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘I’d like to know,’ he said, laying an unexpected stress on the verb, ‘what you feel when you look back at those days. And whether you feel that you treated him fairly?’
‘Well,’ I replied, taking a draught of my pint and considering this, ‘I suppose if you want the absolute truth, I can see that I didn’t treat him quite as well as I might have. I’ll admit that I cultivated his friendship from the start, but I don’t think there’s any great harm in that. Artists have been doing that since the dawn of time. And, let’s face it, you’ve cultivated mine, after all, haven’t you? To get ahead.’
‘Well,’ he replied, blushing a little, and it seemed as if he was about to say something to justify himself, but I didn’t let him.
‘Look, on the night that we met I could see how drawn he was to me. It was so obvious it was almost pitiable. Erich had shut down that part of his soul for decades after the death of Oskar Gött and, for whatever reason, I had reawoken him. He was utterly reinvigorated by my presence, as if he’d taken a deep breath after staying underwater for too long. That’s why he invited me to visit all those cities with him; it wasn’t to help him, it wasn’t to be an assistant, it was because he fancied me. And why not? I was a good-looking boy and I brought him back to life. I may have taken advantage of his good nature, but why not? I flirted with him, made sure that I remained sexually ambiguous at all times. Always a possibility but never a certainty. I led him on to the point where he was so overwhelmed with desire that I think there was literally nothing he wouldn’t have done for me, had I asked. And then, when I got everything I needed from him, I wrote Two Germans.’
‘And your friendship ended there?’
‘This might seem callous to you, Daniel,’ I said. ‘Theo, I mean. But once I had what I needed, why would I have stuck around? Are you planning a lifelong relationship with me after you complete your thesis?’
‘No, but—’
‘I didn’t consider him a friend, anyway, and it’s impossible to define how he saw me. He was paying me, remember, and you don’t pay your friends to travel with you, do you? You pay an assistant. And also, other than a love of books, we had very little in common. Think about it: he was old; I was young. He wanted a lover; I didn’t. His career was almost behind him; mine was yet to begin. You could say that I actually did him a favour when I severed the umbilical cord that connected us, even if the cut did produce more blood than either of us had anticipated. No, the time had come to say goodbye. Anything else would have just made Erich look foolish. If he could only have seen that, then he might have thanked me.’
‘So you dropped him.’
I shrugged. ‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’
‘Would it be fair to say that you took his friendship, his mentoring, and all his belief in you and simply threw it back in his face?’
I considered this for a moment. ‘Try to look at it from my point of view,’ I said. ‘What you’re describing is a young man utterly calculating and dishonest in his actions. But was Erich honest with me? Let’s face it, if I had been two hundred pounds overweight and looked like something that had been washed in on the tides after a particularly brutal storm, do you think he would have asked me to join him for a drink that night in West Berlin? I wasn’t the only waiter working that night, you know, but I was the one he chose. It’s easy to look at me as the villain of the piece but, really, Erich’s actions weren’t entirely honourable either.’
‘I suppose it comes down to motivation,’ said Theo. ‘Whatever Erich did was done out of love. And confusion. And regret for a wasted life. While you were just using him. And, really, did he deserve it? An elderly man who, many decades before, while he was still a teenager, had made a single terrible mistake, one that he’d had to live with ever since. How many young men in Germany at that time did something to send people to their death? Oh, it doesn’t make it right, of course it doesn’t, but he wasn’t a monster. Just a bewildered boy who acted without thinking. He spent his entire life punishing himself for that. Did he need that extra suffering at the end?’
I lowered my head, closed my eyes and tried to control my temper. It seemed a little rich to me that, with all the help I was giving this boy, he had the audacity to be so judgemental towards me. I looked up again, ready to say as much, but he was doing that thing again, tapping his index finger quickly against his thumb, just as Daniel had done, and I softened. I needed his forgiveness, not his condemnation.
‘Like I said,’ I continued quietly, ‘it’s all a long time ago. And if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk about Erich any more. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve spent half of my life discussing that man and, sooner or later, it has to stop.’
‘But—’
‘No, Daniel,’ I said, placing a hand flat on the table. ‘It has to stop.’