'It's a matter of definition, Silas. Rearmament can be described in economic terms or political ones without bending the figures.'
Silas took another bean from its pod and examined it. 'We'll huff and we'll puff and we'll blow their Wall down.' He offered Bret a bean. Bret didn't want one.
'I'm not the big bad wolf,' said Bret.
14
East Berlin. September 1983.
Fiona Samson was surprised when her secretary, Hubert Renn, invited her to his birthday party and she spent an hour or so thinking about it. She knew that Germans liked to celebrate birthdays, but now that she had got to know him better she had found him to be a pugnaciously independent personality, so set in his ways that it was hard to imagine him going to the trouble of arranging a birthday party, let alone one to which his superior was to be invited.
Fiona had come to terms with him but she knew that Renn did not easily adapt to taking orders from a young person or from a woman, let alone a young foreign woman. But Renn was German and he did not make his feelings evident in any way that would affect his work.
And there was the problem of what present to give him, and what to wear. The first was quickly solved by a visit to the valuta shop where Fiona, as a privilege that went with her job, was permitted to spend a proportion of her salary on goods of Western manufacture. She bought a Black and Decker electric drill, always one of the most sought-after imports in a country where repairs and construction were constant problems. She wrapped it carefully and added a fancy bow.
What to wear was not so easily decided. She wondered what sort of event it was to be. Would it be a small informal dinner, or a big family gathering, or a smart affair with dancing to live music? She rummaged through the clothes she'd brought with her – all of them selected for banality of design and sombre colours – and decided upon a short afternoon dress she'd bought long ago at Liberty in Regent Street: narrow stripes of black and crimson with pleated skirt and high buttoned collar. She had bought it for a holiday with Bernard and the children. They had stayed at a farm in western Scotland and it had rained almost every day. She had brought the dress home again still unworn. She looked at herself in the mirror and decided that, now she had at last discovered a reasonably good hairdresser, it would do.
The dinner party, for such it turned out to be, was given in a private room in an elaborate sports club complex near Grünau. Although she could have asked for the use of a car, Fiona went on the S-Bahn to Grünau Station, and then caught a street-car.
Here in this attractive suburb southeast of the city, the River Spree has become the Dahme and there is extensive forest on both banks. The club's main entrance, around which the new premises had been built, dated from the 1936 Olympics. Along this 2,000 metres of swastika-bedecked Berlin river, thirty thousand spectators had seen the amazing triumphs of physically perfect German youth using radically new designs of lightweight sculls and shells. Hitler's Olympics were transmitted on the world's first public TV service and Leni Riefenstahl made her world-acclaimed film Olympiad. The golden successes resulting from selection, dedicated training and German technology – and the way in which the propaganda machine used them – provided the Third Reich with a political triumph. The 1936 Olympics afforded a glimpse of the Nazi war machine in mufti. It had been, in all its aspects, a taste of things to come.
Fiona was in the lobby looking at the Tenth Olympiad photos, and some of the old awards, displayed in a big glass case, when Hubert Renn saw her. She offered him her best wishes and he bowed. 'Are you interested in sport, Frau Direktor?'
'At college I was on the swimming team. And you, Herr Renn?'
'No. Apart from hockey I was never able to do very much. I was not tall enough.' Renn was dressed in a suit she hadn't seen before, with a red bow tie and matching kerchief in his top pocket. 'I am so glad you were able to honour us with your presence, Frau Direktor. It will be only a small gathering and it won't go on too late. We are simple people.'
The day of the celebration was not his saint's day, of course; Renn's father, a dedicated atheist, could never have sanctioned a baptism. But there were candles in abundance, for in Germany – where the pre-Christian heritage is evident in every old festival and custom – no revelry is complete without the flame of the candle.
It was a small gathering, held in the Gisela Mauemayer room, named in honour of Germany's 1936 world discus champion. Her portrait was painted on the wall, a beautiful sad-eyed girl with long blonde hair worn in a bun. The table was laid out with wines and water already to hand. At the head of the table a few small presents had been placed next to Hubert's plate. Renn's wife, Gretel, was wearing a wonderful dress. When Fiona admired it she admitted that it had belonged to her grandmother and she hadn't had a chance to wear it for over eight years. Gretel was a shy slim woman, aged about fifty, with greying hair that had obviously been specially tinted and waved for this evening.
The meal was excellent. Some hunter friend of the Renns always provided venison as a birthday gift. Marinated in wine, spices and herbs, it made a delicious pot roast at this time of the year when the Berlin evenings were becoming chilly.
It was a curious party, marked by a certain stiffness that was in no way accounted for by any shortcoming in Fiona's grasp of the language. Yet the birthday rituals seemed rehearsed, and even when the drink had been consumed, Fiona noticed no substantial relaxation amongst the guests. It was as if they were all on their best behaviour for her.
Among those seated round the table there was Renn's daughter Käthe, noticeably pregnant, and her dutiful husband who worked in one of the lignite-burning power stations that polluted the Berlin air. Hubert Renn's bearded brother Felix was a retired airline pilot, seventy years old and a veteran of Spain's civil war. There were also a man and his wife who worked as clerks in the same building as Fiona and Renn, and, seated next to Fiona, a cordial Englishwoman named Miranda. She was, like Fiona, in her middle thirties and spoke with the brisk accent affected by smart Londoners, and those who wish to be mistaken for them.
'It's an unusual name,' said Fiona. 'Is that a tedious thing to say?'
'I chose it. I was an actress before I married. It was my stage name. I discovered it when I was in The Tempest at school. I was a terrible little snob. It stuck.'
'It's a lovely name.'
'No one over here thinks it's very unusual, of course, and I've got used to it.'
'Were you an actress in England?'
'Yes. I was quite good. I should have kept to it but I was getting on for thirty years old and I'd never had a decent West End part. My agent had decided to retire. A man fell in love with me and I married him. You know how it happens.'
'And he was German?'
'Very German… young and sexy and masterful, just what I needed at the time, I suppose. He was on holiday in England and staying with people I knew.'
'And he brought you to Berlin?'
I'd been a member of the party since I was eighteen so I couldn't yield to the capitalist lures of Hollywood, right? And my mister-right had friends at the Babelsberg film studios. Babelsberg, I thought, the UFA studios; Josef von Sternberg, Emil Jannings, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich. Wow! And this Wunderkind guaranteed that there would be plenty of acting work over here.'
'And was there?'
'I don't know, I promptly became pregnant, so after a few one-day jobs playing Englishwomen and American women for TV, I looked for other work. I did ghastly little jobs translating for various government departments: travel adverts and that sort of garbage. And then my husband died.'