15

There was a time when Lisl Hennig's house seemed gigantic. When I was small child, each marble step of that grand staircase was a mountain. Scaling mountains had then required an exertion almost beyond me, and I'd needed a moment's rest when each summit was won. And that was how it now was for Frau Lisl Hennig. The staircase was something she tackled only when she felt at her best. I watched her as she inched her way into the 'salon' and berthed in a huge gilt throne, plumped up with velvet cushions so she didn't put too much strain upon her arthritic knees. She was old, but the brown dyed hair, big eyes and the fine features in her wrinkled face made it difficult to guess exactly how old.

'Bernd,' she said, using the name by which I'd been known at my Berlin school. 'Bernd. Put my sticks on the back of the chair where I can find them if I want them. You don't know what it's like to be crippled in this way. Without my sticks I am a prisoner in this damned chair.'

'They are there already,' I said.

'Give me a kiss. Give me a kiss,' she said testily. 'Have you forgotten Tante Lisl? And how I used to rock you in my arms?'

I kissed her. I had been in Berlin for three days, waiting for Werner to come back from his 'short reconnaissance' to the East Sector, but every day Lisl greeted me as if seeing me after a long absence.

'I want tea,' said Lisl. 'Find that wretched girl Klara and tell her to bring tea. Order some for yourself if you'd like to.' She had always had this same autocratic demanding manner. She looked around her to be sure that everything was in its rightful place. Lisl's mother had chosen these hand-carved pieces of oak furniture, and the chandelier that had been hidden in the coal cellar in 1945. In Lisl's childhood this room had been softened by lacework and embroidery as befits a place to which the ladies retired after dining in the room that now contained the hotel reception desk. This 'salon' was where where Lisl's mother gave the fine ladies of Berlin afternoon tea. And on fine summer days the large windows were opened to provide a view from the balcony as the Kaiser Alexander Guard Grenadiers went marching back to their barracks behind their band.

It was Lisl who first called it a 'salon' and entertained here Berlin's brightest young architects, painters, poets, writers and certain Nazi politicians. To say nothing of the seven brawny cyclists from the Sports Palace who arrived one afternoon with erotic dancers from one of the city's most notorious Tanzbars and noisily pursued them through the house in search of vacant bedrooms. They were here still, many of those celebrities of what Berlin called 'The Golden Twenties'. They were crowded together on the walls of this salon, smiling and staring down from sepia-toned photos that were signed with the overwrought passions that were an expression of the reckless decade that preceded the Third Reich.

Lisl was wearing green silk, a waterfall rippling over her great shapeless bulk and cascading upon her tiny, pointed, strap-fronted shoes. 'What are you doing tonight?' she asked. Klara – the 'wretched girl' who was about sixty and had worked for Lisl for about twenty years – looked round the door. She nodded to me and gave a nervous smile to show that she'd heard Lisl demanding tea.

'I have to see Werner,' I said.

'I was hoping you'd play cards,' she said. She rubbed her painful knee and smiled at me.

'I would have liked that, Lisl,' I said, 'but I have to see him.'

'You hate playing cards with your old Tante Lisl. I know. I know.' She looked up and, as the light fell on her, I could see the false eyelashes and the layers of paint and powder that she put upon her face on the days she went outside. 'I taught you to play bridge. You were only nine or ten years old. You loved it then.'

'I would have loved it now,' I protested untruthfully.

'There is a very nice young Englishman whom I want you to meet, and old Herr Koch is coming.'

'If only I didn't have to see Werner,' I said, 'I would have really liked to spend an evening with you.' She smiled grimly. She knew I hated card games. And the prospect of meeting a 'very nice young Englishman' was rivalled only by the idea of spending the evening listening to the-oft-repeated reminiscences of old Mr Koch.

'With Werner?' exclaimed Lisl, as if suddenly remembering. 'There was a message for you. Werner is delayed and can't see you tonight. He'll phone you early tomorrow.' She smiled. 'It doesn't matter, Liebchen. Tante Lisl won't hold you to your word. I know you have more interesting things to do than play bridge with an ugly old crippled woman like me.'

It was game, set and match to Lisl. 'I'll make up a four,' I said with as much grace as I could muster. 'Where was Werner phoning from?'

'Wundervoll,' said Lisl with a great smile. 'Where was he phoning from, darling? How would I know a thing like that?' I think she'd guessed that Werner was in the East Sector, but she didn't want to admit it, not even to herself. Like so many other native Berliners she tried not to remember that her town was now a small island in the middle of a communist sea. She referred to the communist world by means of jokes, half-truths and euphemisms, the same way that 300 years earlier the Viennese had shrugged off the besieging Ottoman Turks. 'You don't really understand the bidding,' said Lisl. 'That's why you'll never be a good bridge player.'

'I'm good enough,' I said. It was stupid of me to resent her remark, since I had no ambition to become a good bridge player. I was piqued that this old woman was able to trap me into an evening's bridge using the same obvious tactics that she'd used on me when I was an infant.

'Cheer up, Bernd,' she said. 'Here is the tea. And I do believe there is cake. No lemon needed, Klara. We drink it English style.' The frail Klara set the tray down on the table and went through the ritual of putting out the plates, forks and cups and saucers, and the silver bowl that held the tea-strainer. 'And here is my new English friend,' said Lisl, 'the one I was telling you about. Another cup and saucer, Klara.'

I turned to see the man who'd entered the salon. It was Dicky's college chum from Mexico City. There was no mistaking this tall, thin Englishman with his brown, almost ginger, hair brushed flat against his skull. His heart-shaped face still showed the effects of the fierce Mexican sun. His ruddy complexion was marked in places by freckles that, together with his awkwardness, made him look younger than his thirty-eight years. He was wearing grey flannels and a blue blazer with large decorative brass buttons and the badge of some cricket club on the pocket. 'Bernard Samson,' he said. He stretched out his hand. 'Henry Tiptree. Remember?' His handshake was firm but furtive, the sort of handshake that diplomats and politicians use to get through a long line of guests. 'What good luck to find you here. I was talking to a chap named Harrington the other night. He said you knew more about this extraordinary town than any other ten people.' His voice was cultured, throaty and rather penetrating. The sort of voice the BBC assign to reading the news the night someone very important dies. 'Extra… awwwrdinary town,' he said again, as if practising. This tune he held the note even longer.

'I thought you worked in Mexico City.'

'Und guten Tag, gnädige Frau,' he said to Lisl, who had been wrinkling her brow as she concentrated enough to understand this sudden onslaught of English. Henry Tiptree bent over to kiss the bejewelled hand which she lifted for him. Then he bowed again and smiled at her with that sort of sinister charm that baritones show in Hollywood musicals about old Vienna. He turned to me. 'You thought I worked in Mexico City. And so did I. Haw haw. But when you've worked in the diplomatic service for a few years, you start to know that the chap you last heard of doing the Korean language course in Seoul will next be seen working as an information officer in the embassy in Paris.' He scratched the side of his nose reflectively. 'No, some guru in the Personnel Department considered that my schoolboy German was just what was needed for me to be attached to you chaps for an undecided period of time. No explanation, no apologies, no time to get ready. Wham, bam, and here I am. Haw haw.'