Thanking him, I select two brown sugar lumps, drop them into my coffee, and pass the bowl back to him. “I’m sorry,” I say. “My German’s hopeless.”
“Not at all.” The angle of his head alters. “You were here yesterday.”
I smile but say nothing.
“What are you doing in Berlin?” He puts his paper down. “Are you a student?”
“Not exactly.” I lower my eyes, looking at my coffee. I imagine the sugar lumps dissolving — a thin layer of crystals on the bottom, and the hot bitter darkness overhead. “No one knows I’m here. In Berlin, I mean.”
“You’ve run away?”
“I’m nineteen. Nearly twenty.”
He looks past me, towards the door. “I didn’t mean —”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t really go into detail, though. Let’s just say that I’m experimenting with coincidence.”
“Is that what this is — a coincidence?”
I give him a quick look. Has the Englishwoman been on the phone to him? We ran into this girl the other day — at the cinema … But no, why would she mention me? Above all, why would she mention me to him? I didn’t even hint that I might be interested in her friend, Klaus Frings — and besides, it’s clear from his expression that he’s teasing me.
“So where do you live when you’re not” — and he pauses — “experimenting?”
“Rome.”
“Ah. That explains the tan.” He appears to think for a moment, leaning back in his chair, one hand massaging the back of his neck. “Are you staying in the neighborhood?”
“No.” I mention the hotel where I have spent the last two nights. He hasn’t heard of it, which is hardly a surprise. I tell him where it is. His frown returns.
“That’s not a good area. At night it can be —” He doesn’t want to say it. The word dangerous.
“It’s not so bad.”
“How long do you plan to stay there?”
“I’m not sure.” Once again I look down into my coffee cup.
His gaze lingers on me — I can feel it, like heat — then he glances at his watch. “I must go.” He stands up. “Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Probably.”
He extends a hand. “Klaus Frings.”
I know.
“I’m Katherine Carlyle,” I tell him. “Most people call me Kit.”
“Kit.” He nods, then turns away.
Through the window I watch him run across the road. I don’t think it’s because he’s in a hurry. I think it’s because he knows I’m watching and he wants to look active, young.
By the time I leave the café it’s after nine. I move through the city with no destination, no agenda, following whichever street takes my fancy. Unlike Rome, Berlin doesn’t seem to have any hills. The sky, though cloudy, feels immense. At midday I catch a bus going west and spend the afternoon walking in the Grünewald. As I circle the Teufelssee, a small lake hemmed in by pines and birches, a woman appears on the path ahead of me. She’s wearing a one-piece bathing suit. Her feet are bare. She puts a hand out to steady herself, steps down into the lake, and then stands still. The water cuts her off at the knees. Her bathing suit and the water are both black, which makes her white limbs look detached, dismembered. At last she bends down and pushes forwards, her freestyle neat and confident, almost hydraulic. The lake peels back behind her, and suddenly my head is empty but for a single thrilling intuition. The world will part before me. I’m on a smooth sweet path to everything that matters.
/
Towards the end of the afternoon, on Heerstrasse, I hail a taxi and ask the driver to take me to Café Einstein. We labor east, through heavy traffic. Mist hides the tops of buildings and blurs the brightly lit shop windows.
I passed the Einstein on my first morning, noting the name on the liver-colored canopies above each window, and the inside of the café is just as ornate as the exterior. The rooms have high molded ceilings and dark wood paneling, and the décor is old-world, all pale custard, clotted cream, and eau-de-nil. The waitresses wear starched white aprons that reach down to their ankles at the front, and the coffee is served in cups whose rounded rims are encircled with a band of gold. Sitting at a marble-topped table I look sideways. Infinite versions of myself curve off into the still green depths of a mirror.
I remember the time my father took me to a restaurant in Chinatown. This was during the winter when our house in Tufnell Park was up for sale. I would have been eight or nine. My father ordered Peking duck and chicken noodles. Afterwards, he bought me a gold cat with a paw that moved up and down in the air. He told me it would bring good fortune and I pretended to believe him, though I knew he had no time for lucky charms and wasn’t even remotely superstitious. I can still see the cat’s gold paw glinting and the red lanterns with their tasseled fringes swaying above the street. I can still remember the feeling of my hand in his. On our way home, as we stood on the lower deck of the bus, a man got on, his eyes so dark around the edges they looked burnt. He pointed a long trembling finger at us and said, You’re terminated. I looked at my father and we both began to laugh. Later, my father told me he thought the man was ill — he had got on at a bus stop outside a hospital — but it became our catchphrase. Until my mother heard it, that is. She had already been diagnosed with cancer by then, and she didn’t see the funny side. Turn around three times and spit. Both of you.
The waitress who takes my order has tawny hair that is pinned up in a chignon. Her features look chiseled but when she smiles her face lights up and softens. Strapped to her hip is a chunky leather wallet that bounces like a holstered pistol as she strides about. When she returns with my coffee I feel the urge to speak to her, though I can’t think of anything that isn’t superficial or mundane.
“I really like this place,” I say.
“It’s a strange place,” she says. “It has a history.” She tells me the villa was once the home of Goebbels’s mistress, a silent movie star, and also an illegal gambling den for SS officers.
I glance around but nothing of the past remains. “Despite all that, there’s something — I don’t know — relaxing about it.”
“Not if you work here.” The waitress smiles with her eyes. “Is this your first time?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see the garden?”
“No, not yet.”
“It’s at the back. It’s very nice to sit out there, especially in the summer.”
“I don’t think I’ll be here then.”
“That’s a shame.” She looks at me, her eyes seeming to narrow a little, as before. “Maybe you should come back — when the weather’s warmer.”
“I’d like to,” I say, “but it’s not so easy.”
“Oh.” Glancing down, she smooths her apron over her hips. “Well, anyway. Enjoy your stay.”
/
“I’ve been thinking,” Klaus says as he approaches my table.
It’s my fourth day in Berlin. The tree outside the café quivers in the wind, and a man hurries past, one hand pressed to the crown of his hat. Klaus is wearing a different overcoat, charcoal gray with black trim on the pockets and the collar, but his briefcase is the same, and judging by its ancient polished look I would guess it’s a family heirloom, since he doesn’t seem the type to go to flea markets. I ask him if he would like to join me.
He sets his briefcase on the floor and sits down. All his actions are deliberate, precise. I’m beginning to be able to imagine his apartment. It will be ordered, spartan. Meticulously clean.
“I’m glad you came.” He sounds faintly disgruntled, as if there’s an aspect of meeting me that he finds difficult.