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Rex, on a fishing trip with school friends near Potsdam, marvelled as the red perch writhed on the deck of the boat. The fish gasped for air and he could make out the welt where his hook had pierced its flesh.
“There you go, boys. That’s how it’s done.”
He didn’t like to gloat, but his haul always impressed. The water frothed next to their boat and the sun had barely risen over the verdant valley, but here he stood, with a magnificent catch already at the bottom of the boat, while his oldest friends still hadn’t rubbed the sleep from their eyes.
Marcel punched his shoulder. “Not everything is a competition. Unless you want to test how many beers we can put away, that is.”
Rex laughed. He relished these yearly trips away from the call of the city. The pressures of work and family receded into the background, leaving only man and nature, and Jessy, waiting in the shadow of a bush at the shoreline, her eyes trained on him. He would never admit as much to his friends, but he cherished these moments of simplicity with the men he’d known all his life. He rarely stripped back the layers of his prestige and intellect, but here, or later at their favourite fish restaurant that looked out over the bay, he could be himself and remember the boy he’d once been.
“How about another few hours here and then we break for an early lunch?” said Rex.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” said Marcel.
Joseph started spinning fast on his reel. “I’ve got something. I’ve got something.”
They peered together at his catch, and when he brought up an old Wellington boot gushing with murky water, the expression on his face sent them into fits of laughter, rocking the boat.
Rex’s phone sounded in his pocket, cutting short the moment. He preferred to leave technology behind on his rare weekends away from the city, but he promised his wife as his political career burgeoned that he’d always be accessible to her and the children, and the Chancellor had demands of her own. There’d been a number of missed calls from Corinne in the night, but he wouldn’t think to ring her back at this early hour. It must have been urgent after all.
He wiped his hands on his trousers and reached for the phone, surprised to find the Chancellor’s private office number flashing up on his screen.
He sighed. “Silberling.”
Her voice reverberated through the telephone, as ill-tempered as winter frost. “I take it you’ve been keeping pace with the news?”
“I’m on a short trip away from the real world,” said Rex. “Corinne informed your office I’m out of town until tomorrow night.”
“I suggest you get up to speed. I expect you in my office at the Bundestag at two this afternoon,” she said without pausing a beat.
The boat bobbed, and Rex’s trio of friends listened with keen ears.
“Can it wait?” He rolled his eyes at them, signalling his irritation at the Chancellor’s summons. Stupid, vapid woman still thought she knew best.
“It certainly cannot. It seems, in your arrogance, you underestimated the public mood.”
He couldn’t imagine what could have happened to make her so uptight, but he counted to three to calm his ire, then spoke with authority. “I’ll be there at three.”
“Two, Rex. No later.” The line clicked.
He turned to his friends and his cheeks burned with shame. “I have to get back to shore.”
They commiserated with him about his departure, but they didn’t suggest cutting short the trip and finding another date, and it cut him more deeply than he allowed them to see.
Back at his Berlin house, Rex hugged his family to him, holding his wife closer than usual.
She glanced at him in alarm, and the children tumbled to the ground with the dog. “Oh darling. Is everything going to be all right?”
“Yes, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, although his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and his wife sensed the lie. She’d endured so much by his absence over the years, he liked to spare her worry when he could.
He retreated to his office with a stack of newspapers tucked under his arm that he’d picked up en route. Ever faithful Jessy shadowed him. He telephoned Corinne, asking for her to come to his house. When she informed him, her voice heavy with regret, that it would be impossible for her to return before nightfall, a sense of loneliness washed over him despite the warmth of the dog’s sleek silver mass at his feet.
Deciding not to lower himself to reading a blog, Rex pored over the newspapers and noticed how Marina’s journalist and the acrobat had been plastered over the front pages. His heart thumped. In a regrettable turn of events, the circus warden had died, ostensibly from heightened stress following an altercation with an as yet unnamed member of the far right. His skin prickled with the awareness of his own possible culpability. The broadsheets announced that his own political star declined, and declared him an unsavoury blight on the character of post-war Germany. The gutter press gushed over a possible romance between the journalist and acrobat.
Rex stared at their earnest faces and committed their names to memory.
“Pah!” He tossed the papers towards the wastepaper basket and it toppled onto the floor.
Jessy barked, her mood matching his. He ruffled her ears, leaving the mess for the cleaner to tidy up, then headed to the shower to wash the remains of fish, guts and saltwater from his skin. As the water pressure kneaded his shoulders, defeat washed over him, unfamiliar and stinging. When he’d finished, he dressed carefully and schooled his expression, knowing that the hacks would be waiting to crow over his fall, because there could be no doubt what the Chancellor intended.
His driver scrambled to open the car door for him as he descended the steps down from his house, for once leaving Jessy behind although he would have been grateful for her silent friendship. The engine hummed to life, and with the windows sealed and the city rushing past, it seemed to Rex he’d been entombed. He rolled down the window and leaned out, drawing in deep gasps of air, hoping to still the storm at the centre of him.
Even if the worst happened and he lost his job, he’d pick himself up. The Chancellor assumed that just because she happened to be party leader, she held all the cards. But he'd always possessed the ability to scope out the whole terrain, to find new routes where others would have been flummoxed. Even without the Christian Democratic Union party, there would always be other avenues open to him. He was a survivor.
As they approached the south bank of the Spree, the Bundestag loomed, with its imposing neo-classical stone columns, magnificent glass dome, and flags rippling in the wind. Sure enough, a member of the Chancellor’s team had leaked rumours of his possible political demise to the news-hounds.
It didn’t surprise him: he’d seen events such as these unfold countless times, and it was every man for himself. Or woman.
The cameras flashed and a horde of journalists rushed towards him as he emerged from the car, his lips set in a grim line, knuckles white against his dark blue suit. Rex nodded to acknowledge their presence though he refused to comment.
“Minister Silberling, is it true that your job is in danger?”
“Did you collude with neo-Nazis to aggravate tensions against Berlin’s immigrant community?”
“Are you aware of the personal stories of the immigrants under your care, Minister?”
“Do you deny that you siphoned off public funds to pay the editor of Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung in exchange for favours?”
“Minister, do you believe in freedom of the press? How about democracy? Are you a law unto yourself?”
Rex ducked his head and pushed on, leaving the voices calling after him, incessant, like a wave about to submerge him. He’d stalked these halls of power, revelling in the deference and respect that came with an office of state. Every step now weighed heavy with humiliation. Not even the fine cut of his suit could lend him the confidence that Ellie Richter had stolen.
He seethed with rage against her.
This felt like a public flogging. He’d been so close to winning.
He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. There had to be a way to salvage the damage to his reputation. He could have tried to blame his rogue assistant, but by this point, Corinne had almost become family. He wouldn’t sink that low. Perhaps he could talk the Chancellor around. He arranged his features into their most charming constellation, loosening the tension in his face, lifting his chin to lend firmer lines to his weak jaw, and pushing his shoulders back so that when he arrived in the Chancellor’s inner sanctum, he’d be on the front foot.
He needn’t have bothered.
She stood in front of her desk, her hair like a helmet, legs in a wide stance, arms folded, ready for battle. “You’re late.”
“My apologies,” he said smoothly, keen to unruffle her feathers. A glance at his Raymond Weil told him it had only just passed two o’clock.
“Be under no illusion, this won’t take long. My time is more valuable than yours.”
Her combative mood didn’t surprise him, but he still harboured hopes of winning her over, if only to save his job, not his pride. He motioned to a seat. “May I?”
She shook her head then seemed to waver, and gave him a curt nod. “Tell me, you sold me the idea of the circus, Rex. Why?”
He sank into the chair and decided to appeal to her maternal side, to dig out the child he’d been from the graveyard of his mind. Just to survive the meeting. “I loved the circus when I was a child. Some part of it must have stuck. I wanted to give the immigrants a chance to escape the usual structures. Give them a chance to shine.”
In that moment, there was no artifice, and he wondered what it would have been like if he’d run away as a child. How his life might have been different if the stakes had been lower, if he’d done something physical with his body instead of relying on his mind. Even then, though, he’d been aware that circuses employed misfits, and that the word itself had become sullied by general acceptance, and Rex wanted more than anything not just to belong, but to dominate.
The Chancellor’s scathing laugh echoed around her office. “What a pile of crock. Is everything a performance for you?” She stopped short. “They’re refugees, Rex, not just immigrants. We owe them more than you’ve given.”
“Well, yes—” He filled his face with contrition, but her virtue signals bothered him, her ability to paint everything in black and white, as if there weren’t other considerations. As if it wasn’t their job to be responsive to public opinion.
She continued, unabated, her face a black cloud of displeasure. “We need more trust in our politicians. I expect integrity. Not this whipping up of mob mentality by the very officials who are supposed to serve the people. I can’t help but think you wouldn’t have acted this way had you been a woman. You had close hand experience of the refugees and their stories. You had the means to help them. Why didn’t you innovate? Why didn’t you breathe life into those corners of despair? Instead you schemed and lurked and you brought my Government into disrepute.”
My Government.
Her words fell like a whip about him, and he cringed, understanding finally that there would be no convincing her to let him keep his job. He shuddered at the thought of how his standing would be lowered in the eyes of the nation and his fawning acquaintances and his family. How many people would celebrate his downfall, or at least feel a frisson of schadenfreude?
How ridiculous for the Chancellor to have brought gender into it, but he didn’t ostensibly react in case she wrested away the little power he had left. She would allow him time to draft a resignation letter, she owed him that much. Then he could at least manipulate the narrative, cast himself in a less damning light and prepare the way for a return.
He didn’t know who he was without the mantle of power politics had given him, without the path to the top it had marked out for him.
The Chancellor rattled on, in full flow, and Rex sat inert and irrelevant, like a crumbling statue. “I won’t do you the honour of allowing you to tender your resignation.”
He sprang to his feet. “That is outrageous.” His head spun. Inside, shame twisted him into a pathetic version of himself. “All this on the hearsay of what some journalist has concocted. Please, please. Maybe if you understood—”
She cut him off, her eyebrows knotted above stern, unforgiving eyes. “I sent in a team to scrutinise the finances at the Interior Ministry this morning. I understand plenty. You would only use your resignation as a means to repair your own reputation rather than atone. You’re entirely without scruples.”
Rex floundered for the words to create an advantage for himself before the window closed, but the Chancellor was in no mood to dally. Even now, her intercom buzzed and she rustled her papers, ready to dismiss him.
She arched an eyebrow and he recognised the ruthless streak in her that he’d always admired in himself. “I will issue a statement through my press office about your firing.”
It was done.
His stomach rolled and a sour taste invaded his mouth, stealing his words.
“If I didn’t fear for the stability of my own Government, I would order an inquiry into your department,” said the Chancellor. “But that would be self-harm, and so, we’ll sweep this under the carpet, and I’ll make reparations to the refugees on your behalf.”
“I see,” said Rex, though fingers of dread greyed out the corners of his field of vision. She hadn’t even shaken his hand or thanked him for his years of service. His bravado drained away. Her announcement would leave him in the political wilderness. How would he maintain the standards he had set for his family?
“Let’s be certain of one thing. If you seek to challenge me, I’ll make sure you never work in politics again, not even at local party level. Our colleagues in the party won’t take kindly to a shark amongst their waters.”
She looked him over, and he couldn’t find even an ounce of sympathy in her expression, though he searched hard for it.
“You may go.” She picked up her telephone.
Rex stood, buttoned up his suit jacket, and went to meet the cameras with a weighted chest and sealed mouth.
