/
“The way I see it,” Cheadle says, “you could use some support. Some backing.”
We are sitting at a corner table. It’s Saturday, a fortnight since I landed in Berlin. The restaurant walls are yellow and the air smells of lemongrass and coconut. The light is operating-theater bright.
“Here’s the thing.” The American hunches over, his head wedged between his shoulders, no neck apparent. “How about I adopt you?”
I’ve heard a few propositions in my time but never anything like this. A devious smile creeps onto his face, not because he’s joking but because he knows he has wrongfooted me.
“Adoption of adults,” he says airily, “it happens all the time. In Japan, for instance. To give the person in question better prospects.”
“Better prospects?” I consider his plastic raincoat, his dented face. His wild, wispy hair.
“We’d have to do it legally. Everything kosher. There’ll be forms to fill in. Depositions. Affidavits. Whatever the fuck the word is.”
I look past him, into the restaurant. The other customers are mostly people in their twenties. People leading normal lives. Apartments, jobs. Relationships.
“You only met me twice,” I say.
Cheadle finishes his whiskey, then reaches for his beer. “Sometimes you’ve got to go with your instincts.”
I could hardly disagree with that.
“Who’s the guy you were with the other night?” Cheadle asks.
“That was Klaus.”
“You sleeping with him?”
“Not really.”
“ ‘Not really.’ ” Cheadle chuckles.
“He’s been very generous,” I say.
“I bet he has.” Cheadle signals for another whiskey. “So anyway, you want to become my daughter?”
“I’m not sure my father would approve.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“Isn’t that bigamy or something?”
Cheadle laughs so loudly that people at the nearby tables turn and stare at us.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I’d take better care of you than he does.” A prawn cracker explodes between Cheadle’s teeth. “I’d probably leave you more money too. You’d be better off all round.”
“What’s in it for you?”
He stops chewing and I realize I’ve impressed him. Perhaps that’s what he likes about me: the quickness, the unpredictability — the cheek.
“Nothing,” he says. “I’m a philanthropist.”
“In the great American tradition.”
“Right.”
“No small print? No hidden clauses?” I’m thinking of Klaus’s promise of privacy. “No strings attached?”
Cheadle opens his raincoat, like a man about to try and sell me watches. “No strings.”
“Where are these Russians, anyway?”
“They said they’d be here at ten.”
I glance at my watch. It’s twenty past.
“So you’ll think about it?” Cheadle says.
When you’re young, a lot of older people have a grasping quality, like vampires. They’re all over you, even if it’s only with their eyes. They used to be like you, though you usually can’t see it. That’s why they need you around. They want to siphon off a bit of what they’ve lost. Because you’ve got plenty and you don’t even know it — or if you do, you take it for granted. I don’t think Cheadle’s any different, though he’s more adept at disguising it.
A metallic-sounding guitar starts up, bright chords with surf crashing and hissing underneath. Cheadle takes out his phone.
“I spent a lot of time in Santa Cruz,” he says.
He puts the phone to his ear and stares past me at the wall. He says yes and no, and very little else.
When the call’s over, he tells me that his Russian friends aren’t coming after all. “Still, Pavlo should be here soon.”
“Who’s Pavlo?”
“He runs a gallery on Winterfeldplatz. He sells icons. Beautiful things.” Cheadle pauses. “Pavlo’s from Sebastopol.”
“That’s not Russia.”
Cheadle shrugs. “Close enough.”
Actually, I think, you’re wrong. It isn’t.
/
Pavlo is a small muscular man with a closely trimmed gray beard and mustache. His clothes are sober — a black jacket over a black V-necked sweater — but he has a pumped-up, skittish quality, like a thoroughbred before a race. The moment he sits down he tells Cheadle he’s in love.
“Who’s the lucky girl?” Cheadle asks.
Pavlo ignores the sarcasm. She’s twenty-three, he says. From Lithuania. Her name is Katya. She works in the Laundromat next to his gallery. For the next hour he talks about nothing else, his eyes welling up when he describes her.
It’s not until we order coffee that the conversation turns to icons. Most of the pieces he acquires have a Russian provenance, Pavlo tells me — or sometimes they come from Greece. They tend to date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s always been profitable, he says, but he would never have been able to open a gallery if Cheadle hadn’t come in as a partner.
“So he really is a rich American,” I say.
“Rich?” Pavlo’s mouth turns down. “I don’t know. All I know is, he invested in my business.”
Cheadle reaches into his inside raincoat pocket, takes out a piece of paper, and passes it to me. It’s a bank statement. The account is in the name of J. H. Cheadle, and the balance is in excess of one million euros.
“Believe me now?” he says.
I’m not sure what to believe, but Cheadle seems to feel that he has proved a point.
Later, when Pavlo has left, Cheadle walks me to the nearest U-Bahn station. We pass a shop that sells electrical equipment. There must be forty or fifty TVs in the window, all tuned to CNN. I come to a standstill, shock waves spreading outwards from my heart. It’s a moment before Cheadle notices I have stopped.
“You want a TV? I’ll buy you a TV.” He steps back and stares at the sign above the shop. “I’ll buy the whole damn place.” He drank beer and whiskey with dinner, and his eyes have a fanatical glitter.