28

He looked up at the painting. It was seven feet wide and covered the entire wall at one end of the room. All the faces were there, Käthe’s, Erich’s, Ingrid’s, Jana’s, his own. It seemed somehow to explain everything about how his life had turned out the way it had; and yet provide no answers to the question of ‘What next?’

As usual for a weekend, he spent the night in Potsdam. The next morning, he ate breakfast with Käthe in the small kitchen, then repaired to the terrace whilst she dressed, and taking a seat to the left side where the view over the city was best, he drifted into a listless state, peering over the tangle of rooftops as the sun dazzled upon his eyelids. He closed his eyes and allowed the orange-red patterns of light to mingle almost sensuously with the memories of the last few days.

How life had shifted. It had taken just four weeks to sell the apartment building in Berlin as a single going concern. In the event, the initial asking price was easily exceeded thanks to a clamour of interested speculators; in the bidding war that followed, another fifteen-thousand marks was added onto the final selling price.

On the day after the sale, he was greeted by Malik at the street door, who was holding a large paper bag filled with oranges. He set the bag down on the step and proposed the fruit to be a gift for his ex-roommate.

‘It’s been wonderful!’ he shouted, ‘but all things must end. These are for you, Thomas, as a thank you.’

‘Where will you go?’ Thomas said, feeling suddenly sentimental over the young student.

‘I’ve taken a place on the south-side, half the rent – don’t worry about me. I’ll be well looked after by new friends. Now please, try an orange.’

Malik picked up the bag and pushed it towards Thomas, causing several of the fruits to dislodge and roll into the road. Thomas grabbed one before it disappeared beneath the wheels of a cart and began to peel it. He thanked Malik and asked who his new friends were.

‘Some affiliates of, well, friends of friends, let’s say. We have formed an important movement.’ He waved his hand in the air ceremoniously. ‘You will see us on the streets soon!’ he said, adding, ‘And you? Where are you going Thomas?’

‘I’ve taken an apartment not far from here. Just temporarily, until I find my feet again. The rooms are bigger than here. Where I go after that, only time has the answer.’

‘It’s no coincidence that fortune has favoured you,’ Malik said, adopting his wise-man tone. He was about to say more, to lavish compliments in the way he enjoyed to do, until Thomas interrupted to save his embarrassment.

‘Are you sure you’ve got everything?’ he said, watching as Malik struggled to gather up his belongings: beneath his arm he had a collection of books, and in each hand a suitcase. Between his fingers he clasped a copy of the Lokalanzeiger, a newspaper of satirical cartoons and scandal.

‘I might have left a few things. They can be gifts to you too.’ Then, as he waddled off down the street he called, ‘You and old Beenken were the best friends a man could have.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Thomas whispered to himself as he waved goodbye.

 

 

The ten o’clock church bells chimed and woke Thomas from his reverie. By midday, he and Käthe were strolling beneath the ash trees of the Sanssouci park.

Walking and chatting, he conveyed his fond memories of his old friends. ‘I don’t mind admitting, I’ll miss them both.’

They sat on the grass. ‘I just wish we could have given Beenken a more lavish finale,’ he said as he thought of the marginal plot in the state cemetery where Beenken had been buried after a basic funeral service, watched over only by Käthe, Malik and himself.

‘You did your best,’ she said. ‘Let’s face it. He didn’t have many friends.’

‘I didn’t even like him,’ he said, smiling.

Later, as they walked through the park, they came upon a concert hall where a performance was taking place that same evening. It was busy outside the hall. Queues of people bustled to snap up the last remaining seated tickets; the rest would have to make do with whatever standing-room was left. Käthe opted immediately for a standing ticket and wasted no time in pushing past the shoulders and handbags of the people who still couldn’t decide. ‘I know the very best place to stand,’ she said.

When it was time for the concert, she took them to a certain spot in the hall where, so she explained, the acoustics were at their best. There happened also to be a small step onto which she climbed to see above everyone else’s head. When the orchestra emerged from behind a curtain, the audience began to clap, and Käthe made more noise than anyone.

The musicians were dressed in glistening black suits and immaculate haircuts. They took up their instruments in unison whilst a photographer came forward with his tripod. Much fuss was taken over the preparation of the flashbulb; the musicians stood quiet and still, occasionally adjusting their bowties and well-trimmed moustaches. Finally the flashbulb flared, and the crowd in the front few rows roused a small round of applause.

Meanwhile, the orchestral noises had begun, the period of tuning and limbering up, a whistle of a flute here, a drone of an oboe there, a practice drum-roll, a clarinet, a cello, all slowly but steadily converging on the single tuning note, louder and louder until it eventually overwhelmed the hum and murmur of the waiting audience, at which point everyone fell quiet. The performance was about to begin.

Now the conductor took to the stage, welcomed by another round of applause. He thanked the audience with a silent bow, then turning, raised his arms and incited the musicians to bring their instruments to the ready. Käthe looked at Thomas with a grin and he widened his eyes in agreement. The conductor’s baton swooped, then with a pluck of a bass note from the string section, the music started up: rousing, loud and turbulent.

After the concert, the pair found a coffeehouse to relax in. Käthe’s face flickered with excitement, a kind of impermanence that told of genuine happiness. Soon, she said, they would set up home in Berlin. For now, her Potsdam apartment was a fine nest for their fledgeling love affair.

Over the few months following, they spent every weekend together in Potsdam. Beneath a September sun that seemed focused into a rare and vivid beam, like a spotlight that followed the pair wherever they went, their romance bloomed. Thomas would later recall how their lips seemed constantly fused and their fingers always awake. The tips of all ten of his fingers fidgeted insatiably, as they wound around her hair and down her neck. The gloss of her skin was like an ice-rink for his skating fingertips, where pirouettes spiralled upon apricot-white skin that glowed like snow-piles, or better still, sand-dunes, soft and firm at the same time, made up of a million crystals, in each an entire universe.

 

Käthe preferred to wash in the evenings. Sometimes Thomas found himself loitering at the door to the bathroom, just listening to the sound of water being scooped up and allowed to fall. He sometimes pressed his eye to a long crack in the door and saw her crouched on her bare feet, kneeling, the long curve of her back defined against an oak chest of drawers behind. Her skin was white and shiny like the bark of a silver birch tree. He watched as she took the yellow sponge laden with water and swept it across her body, cascading liquid that dribbled and dripped onto the floor.

She looked up: ‘Is that you Thomas? Are you there?’ casting her gaze towards the door.

‘Yes it’s me. I’m here. It’s fine.’

Now the very last stream of sunlight squeezed through the long window behind her and lit everything to a glisten. He moved away from the door and took a breath. He went out to the terrace for the final moments of sundown. A straw-coloured beam of light seeped across the patio and cast an indefinite pattern of colours on the floor. He put his hands on the railings and looked out. From here he could smell the town’s history, could almost touch its luscious baroque buildings and its hundred-year old trees, its parks and concert halls where old orchestras played. Then, as the skies turned purple, there was nothing left but the cold terrace, set in shadow as the town shut her eyes.

At which, his mind returned to Berlin, the city that would glow like an ember all through the night. For the first time in years, he felt a pulse of electricity move through his body: the energy of choice and power and potency. These strengths, which he realised had been rising in him over months, now lay brooding on his consciousness like the gauzy bloom of light that hung above the great city at night, marking the presence of the metropolis in the starry sky. And as he felt these energies move through him, he wondered, ‘What next?’