24

THE CABDRIVER was friendly and talkative, and when he learned that Dix had been three months in Berlin, surprised. You were wise to spend some time among us. Americans were so restless, they arrived one day and left the next, always in a rush. A great city was like a human being, revealing itself slowly, and some of its contradictions would never be resolved. A hospitable city, would you not agree? Not a city of repose, and therefore not a city for the faint of heart. And amusing also, if you had a taste for sarcasm. He asked if Dix agreed that music was the soul of Berlin. Music was to Berlin what skyscrapers were to New York. Had he heard the Philharmonie? The Israeli Barenboim was a genius. Only the other night Barenboim conducted the full orchestra and the baritone dwarf Quasthoff in Brahms’s German Requiem. Sublime, sublime. Five curtain calls and still the audience would not leave. Many wept. A beautiful performance, sir.

No, Dix had not been to the Philharmonie.

Not once?

Not once, Dix said.

You do not appreciate music?

The opportunity did not arise.

The cabdriver was silent a moment, evidently disappointed. He said that he and his wife and their son and his girlfriend often went to the Philharmonie and then to the cellar in Kreuzberg for cabaret. Of course Berlin cabaret was not what it once was. Some of the spirit had gone out of it, and many of the great musicians were dead. Greta Keller, she is dead now, but when she was in the prime of her life she was the best. She could sing in seventeen languages! She was to us what Piaf was to the French. That one, she could break your heart with a lyric and then, in an instant, you would be laughing. That is the essence of cabaret, entertainment that is at once ambiguous and perverse. One moment your heart is full, and the next you see that she has cut it with a razor blade.

If I may ask, sir. What is your profession?

The movies, Dix said.

You are an actor?

Director, Dix said.

You were working in Berlin?

On Wannsee 1899. You know it?

I know it. I do not watch it.

Dix smiled and turned his attention to the traffic, slowing as they approached the airport. An early morning fog obscured the lights but every few minutes he heard the roar of jet engines. The cabdriver eased his Mercedes close to the curb and stopped.

Maybe an American can make sense of it. It makes no sense now.

I hope so, Dix said.

Prussian nostalgia, the cabdriver said.

Dix laughed. Is that the worst kind?

Not the worst. Almost the worst. But I was born a Rhinelander. I have no patience with Prussians. They are very sure of themselves, always.

Dix paid the fare and laid a fat tip on top.

Thank you, sir. Have a pleasant trip.

I intend to, Dix said.

Next time, see Barenboim.

I have seen Barenboim in Chicago, Dix said.

But Chicago is not Berlin, the cabdriver said.

It is closer than you think, Dix said.

 

There were no direct flights from Tempelhof to North America, Berlin not yet a magnet for either tourism or commerce, the capital of the nation merely another midsized, landlocked German city. The way out was via Frankfurt, Geneva, or Paris. Dix had flown in from Paris and was going out the same way, connecting with the midday run to Los Angeles. Now he was stalled on the tarmac in the fog, aboard one of the scores of aircraft standing nose to tail, awaiting clearance. The intermittent rush of engines told him the wait would not be long, an hour at most. The pilot thought less but admitted he might be mistaken.

The cabin was warm. A steward came by with a tray of drinks. On offer was orange juice, coffee, and champagne. Claire on his mind, Dix took coffee with sugar and said no to breakfast. He heard a rustle of newsprint and gruff laughter following a whispered conversation from the businessmen in the seats ahead, normal cabin sounds, somehow muted owing to the enveloping fog. Nothing was visible in it. He could not see the terminal but he knew it was receding and believed then that he had come full circle, leaving Berlin at about the same time of day that he had arrived. Claire was on his mind then, too. But things never came full circle. Perfect circles did not exist, in nature or in life. Three months was not duration enough for a circle, perfect or otherwise. He believed he had described an arc, a fragment beginning at one point on the circle and ending at another, with much that had gone before and something still to come.

Herr Greenwood?

The steward offered the tray, and this time Dix took champagne.

A rush from the engines, and the jet motored forward. The pilot said something unintelligible; progress, apparently. Dix did not know what he would find when he returned to his wife. For these months they had lived inside different narratives. His had nothing to do with hers and she, too, was in the dark. Each had slept without the other. He had found an audience and she was not a part of it—but that was how they had always lived, never with the whole story but with the scenario. Not the fact, but the shadow of the fact. In any case, he had nothing left to do in Berlin. Shaking hands on the front stoop of Mommsen House that morning, Henry Belknap had smiled and said, You’ve closed all your accounts, congratulations.

And what happens now, Dix?

I have no idea. Go home. Make it up to Claire.

You’ll be back, Henry said.

Maybe so, Dix said.

You’ve found a home in Berlin. I can tell.

It suits my temperament, that’s true.

You think Berlin’s an audience.

You don’t get away with a lot, Dix said.

You don’t get away with anything in Berlin, Henry replied.

Dix massaged his knee, Claire still in his thoughts. He reminded himself again that they were in the movie business, shadow puppets, a bright flickering light, and a happy ending. When you didn’t like the line, you rewrote it. When you didn’t like the shot, you did it over. Could you lower your voice when you call him darling? He looked forward to describing Berlin to Claire, the people he had met and the stories they told him, Chef Werner and Willa and Karen Hupp and the others, Henry and Frau Munn, and Jana most of all. Harry Greenwood was there somewhere, too, with his tales of wartime interrogations and John Huston’s red wagon. The story belonged to whoever could tell it best, and Berlin was a narrators Utopia, the story of the world, ruin and rebirth. No question, the weather caught you off guard. The wind came from all directions and never let up. A prewar wind was replaced in an instant by a freshening breeze from just yesterday. But the old wind lingered, never absent, a part of every day, and in that way you were reminded of the dawn of the modern world. He believed that German weather was motion picture weather, you could make of it whatever you wished. The audience was there, too.

He did believe that sooner or later she would be in touch, a visit or a telephone call as unexpected as the afternoon in Wannsee when he did not recognize her voice or her name. She would never return to a normal life, and in time she would make another film, either with him or with someone else. Certainly she would recover from her injuries, otherwise they never would have released her from the hospital. Still, he was worried about her lopsided look, her face asymmetrical and at odds. They seemed sympathetic toward her. The doctor was very sympathetic. It was hard not to be. She was full of life, that one. She would never surrender. And when Jana found herself boxed in, she said goodbye. A person had the right to go away when she chose to, and the absolute right to accept the consequences, and return at a time of her own choosing.

She cherished privacy, and surely there was something to be said for possessing the identity of an inconspicuous people, a people ever on the margins of an environment organized and supervised by—another breed of cat, as Harry used to say. Of course there were disadvantages. It was hard to climb other people’s stairs. You had to keep your nerve and maintain a conscious equilibrium so that you could never be overthrown. Mischief was in there somewhere, too, an appreciation of life’s sinister aspects and an urge to get even, if only for an hour, to let them know that you were still among them. Dix lifted his glass and wished her well on her journey, hoping she would return soon. He seemed to need her, not as a lover but as a provocateur. He admired her conscience, and the insubordination that went with it. Almost always, when you were attracted to someone, you saw the person you were not.