At the apartment in Friedrichshain he told Frau Wiesner what Jens had told him. I dont believe it, she said. Felix will tell you what really happened. He gave the two girls a lesson, and promised to come by on the following Tuesday when he returned from Hamburg. Driving back across town to pick up Effi, he wondered how to dispel the sense of gloom that seemed to be enveloping him.
He needn't have worried. It was about 200 kilometers to Stralsund, and by the time they reached it Effis defiant mood of romantic adventure had overtaken him. After crossing the narrow sound on the steam ferry, they drove the last 40 kilometers to Sassnitz in gathering darkness. On one forest stretch their headlights caught two deer hurrying each other across the road.
As Russell had expected the small resort was virtually empty, and they had their pick of those hotels not closed for the winter break. They chose the Am Meer, right on the promenade, and were given a room with views across the darkened Baltic. With the dining room closed for refurbishing, dinner was served in the lounge, in front of a dancing fire, by a girl of about fourteen. Happy and full, they walked out across the promenade and listened to the comforting caress of the tide. Above the sea the sky was bursting with stars, and over the hills behind them a thin crescent moon was rising. As they clung together for warmth, and kissed on the stony beach, it crossed Russells mind that this was as perfect as life ever got.
Back in their room they discovered, much to Effis amusement, that the bed squeaked and creaked at their slightest movement, and midway through making love she got the giggles so badly that they had to take a break before resuming.
The good weather continued, sunlight advancing across their bed the following morning. After wrapping up warmly they set out for the famous Stubbenkammer cliffs, a ten-kilometer drive through the Stubnitz beech woods. After gingerly looking over the 140-meter precipice, Russell gave Effi her first driving lesson on the large expanse of tarmac laid out for the summer sightseeing coaches. Clanking the gears atrociously, she jerked her way through several circuits before pronouncing: This is easy!
They had lunch in a restaurant they had noticed on the drive up, a sprawling wooden building with intricately carved facades which nestled among the beeches, and then spent a couple of hours walking along the well-tended paths of the sun-dappled forest. The only other signs of human life were various fragments of a Hitler Youth group on a weekend trip from Rostock: groups of two or three boys, their eyes flickering from compass to path and back again. Their leaders, who brought up the rear, claimed to have seen a bear, but the beer on their breath suggested otherwise.
It got dark too early, but there was always the creaking bed. Afterward, they drank, ate, and sat in front of the same fire, hardly speaking, and not needing to. The bed was uncomfortable as well as noisy, but Russell slept better than he had for weeks.
On their final morning he drove them northwest toward the long sandspit which connected the Jasmund and Wittow peninsulas. Seeing that the road along the spit was empty he relinquished the wheel to Effi, and she drove the next twenty kilometers, far too fast, with a huge smile lighting up her face. At the end of the spit they took to the sandy beach, walking a kilometer or more and back again, watching the wind raising whitecaps on the water and the clouds scudding eastward across the blue-gray Baltic. No cars went by, no walkers. No ships appeared on the horizon. The earth was theirs.
But not for long. Effis train back to Berlin left Stralsund at three, and as they made their way back across the island the sunshine became increasingly intermittent, finally disappearing beneath a looming wall of cloud. The short ferry ride was choppy, the railway carriages clanking ominously in their chains, and rain was falling by the time they reached the Hauptbahnhof.
This is really sad, Effi said. Youll only be back for a day or so, and youll be gone again. And Ive no idea what the filming schedules going to be.
Its only a couple of weeks, he told her.
Of course, she smiled, but he knew hed said the wrong thing.
Lets do this again, he said. Soon.
Please. A whistle sounded, and she leaned out of the window to kiss him. Are you sure we have this the right way round? she asked. You should be on a train to Hamburg and I should be driving back to Berlin.
Sometimes other people want to use the road, he told her as the train jerked into motion.
She made a face, and blew him a kiss. He stood there watching the trains red taillight recede into the distance, then strode back down the platform and out of the station. The car seemed colder without her.
THE ROAD ACROSS THE NORTHERN heathlands was mostly empty, the rain persistent and occasionally heavy. He drove west at a steady fifty kilometers an hour, half-hypnotized by the steady slap of the windshield wiper as his eyes struggled to pierce the gloom ahead. Darkness had fallen by the time he left Lubeck, and on the last stretch across southern Holstein a stream of trucks did their best to blind him with their headlights. The dimly lit suburbs of eastern Hamburg came as a blessed relief.
He had already booked himself a room with bath at the Kronprinz Hotel on Kirchenallee. This was one of the Hamburg establishments favored by journalists on an expense account. It was expensive, but not that expensivethe journalists concerned could always produce proof that other hotels were more so. The receptionist confirmed what he already expected, that he was a day ahead of the crowd. With the launch set for lunchtime Tuesday, most of the press would be arriving late on Monday.
After examining his room and eating dinner in the hotel restaurant he went out. The Kronprinz was just across from the main station, which lay at the eastern end of the old town. Russell walked through the station and down Monckebergstrasse toward the looming tower of the Rathaus, turning right before he reached it, and headed for the Alsterbassin, the large square of water which lay at the citys heart. He had visited Hamburg many times over the last fifteen years, and walking the mile-long, tree-lined perimeter of the Alsterbassin had become almost a ritual.
Despite the damp cold, many others were doing the same. On summer days the water was usually busy with rowing, sailing, and steamboats, but on this winter evening the seagulls had it to themselves. Russell stopped for a beer at a cafe on one of the quays, and thought about Effi. She was wonderful with children, but he couldn't remember her ever saying she wanted them. Did he want another one, with her? Despite the fact that the world was about to collapse around them, he rather thought he did. Far across the water a seagull squawked in derision.
He slept well, ate a large breakfast, and drove across the city to St. Pauli, the suburb between Hamburg and Altona which housed a high proportion of the citys seafaring population. His British agent had particularly liked the idea of including sailors among his Ordinary Germans, and this was an obvious place to find them. Interviewing men past active service seemed like a good way of deflecting any suspicion that he was collecting intelligence rather than human interest news, and his first port of call was one of several homes for retired seamen close to the waterfront.