13

It was the morning after Prince Joppi's party that I was walking along South Audley Street and bumped into Rolf Mauser. Rolf was about seventy years old, a wartime artillery captain who didn't let anyone forget that he'd won the coveted Knight's Cross. He was an unprincipled rogue but he had an engaging manner, and when he worked for my father, and later as the barman in Lisl's hotel, I saw a lot of him. It was Rolf Mauser who'd shown me how to pick a lock and how to hold a playing card out of sight while shuffling the rest of the pack. When I was a child I'd been devoted to him and even though I'd long since seen him for what he really was I'd never completely shaken off some of that awe. Although for me Rolf had become an elderly figure of fun, underlying the fun there was something ruthless and frightening.

I was surprised to see him here in London, for the last I'd heard of him he'd settled down to live permanently in East Berlin.

'You're looking well, Rolf. What are you doing in London?' He was a big fellow and wore one of those heavy brown leather overcoats with plenty of straps and buttons. Its tight fit made him look as if he was about to explode out of it. This impression of impending detonation was heightened by the rosiness of his cheeks and nose.

'Bernd! Hello! I'm visiting my relatives. I have a cousin who lives in Luton.'

'Where are you living nowadays?' I asked.

He bent his head and touched his green loden hat as if to ease the constriction of its band, but it would be possible to read into this physical gesture a hint of apology. 'I'm still in the East. When you get to my age, Bernd, you're looking for peace and quiet. And what's more it's cheap.'

'Still in the same apartment?' He'd put me up there once. His apartment was large, comfortable but somewhat neglected, rather like Rolf himself.

'Prenzlauer Berg, yes. Fifty-five marks a month! The rent of my apartment is the same now as it was twenty-five years ago. Can you say that about any apartment in the West?'

'No.'

He lowered his bushy eyebrows and defensively added, 'Sometimes there are shortages: but basic foodstuffs – bread, milk, meat and eggs – are cheap. So are restaurant meals, and fares and theatres and concerts. I'm comfortable in the East, Bernd. Very comfortable.' It sounded like a little speech he'd rehearsed.

'And a little money goes a long way over there,' I said.

His face stiffened. Mauser had worked for the Department and was probably in receipt of some small pension through the good offices of Schneider, von Schild and Weber, the bank which discreetly handled such delicate financial affairs in Berlin. Social security payments for the old – unlike almost all other types of benefit – are not high in the DDK. Only a dedicated cynic like Rolf could be extolling, even to me, the wonders of this regime under which he'd chosen to retire, while he was largely living on the proceeds of the pension he'd got from trying to overthrow it. That's what I was saying, isn't it?'

'It's good to see you, Rolf.'

'So I have to line up for groceries and meat sometimes: I don't mind lining up. I have time to spare. And when I walk home from the shops I don't have to worry about being burgled or mugged.'

'You're lucky. Where are you going?'

'Yes, I am lucky,' he asserted as if he wasn't quite sure of my sincerity. 'No matter how tough they are with the youngsters, old fellows like me can come and go as we like. I don't have to climb over the Wall, Bernd.' He grinned.

If I knew anything about Rolf Mauser – and I knew quite a lot – he would never see eye to eye with any socialist regime. He was a rebellious loner. The Communists, like the Nazis and indeed the Church, had always welcomed converts to their cause but it was difficult to imagine Mauser acquiring sozialistisches Staatsbewusstsein, that unquestioning enthusiasm for the regime that the DDR expects of its citizens. Mauser was a pragmatist and a self-centred one at that. Long, long ago I'd heard my father describe Rolf Mauser as the sort of arrogant, bellicose German who earned for his race the civilized world's contempt. Calmly my mother had asked him why he went on employing him; because he'll do things no one else will even attempt, replied my father.

'Come and have coffee?' I suggested. I guessed that he would be very short of hard currency, and casual cups of coffee are one of the first things such indigents sacrifice.

'I'd like that, Bernd. That's the one thing I can't get at a reasonable price. Luckily my son sends me a packet every month. I can't live without a cup of good coffee in the morning.'

There was a smart little coffee house nearby and we walked there quickly with Rolf complaining at great length about the weather. 'It gets right into my bones,' he said as we sat down. It was the dampness, of course. Rolf, like most Berliners, found the marginally warmer English climate poor compensation for the penetrating chilly moisture that most natives don't even notice.

The coffee house was a chintzy place that I knew well. I used to have coffee here with Fiona when we worked in a nearby office. That was before we were married. I ordered a big pot of coffee before we found a table. It was the best way to get things moving.

'How is Axel? I haven't seen him for a long time.' I was at school with Mauser's son. At one time we'd been close friends.

'They live in a nice house in Hermsdorf but his marriage is not too smooth. Ever since that wife of his got that wonderful job and started earning big money she's become a monster.' He shrugged and reached for a Danish pastry.

'I'm sorry.'

'Work work work that's all she thinks about. She's a career woman,' he said contemptuously. 'But Axel won't hear a word against her. I don't see the attraction she has for him. He needs a real woman.' I'd heard Rolf railing against his daughter-in-law for many long years. The way he spoke of her you wouldn't think the marriage had lasted a couple of decades and that they had a teenage son.

'Axel was one of the brightest boys in the school,' I said. Rolf hadalways been smug about the way Axel was consistently top of the class. He especially liked to tell my father that Axel had done better than I had.

He tore the wrapping from a sugar cube. There was a ferocity – if not to say malignity – to everything he did. Helios, goodbyes, even thank-yous were a part of this belligerent spirit. I wondered if it was a pose he'd cultivated to maintain his authority as a young army officer, a pose that eventually devoured his true nature. 'And now he's working as a clerk in the Polizeiprasidium. I know, it's a waste of a good brain, but he won't listen to me.' He tossed the sugar into his coffee.

'I suppose he's worried about his son.'

'His son? What is there to worry about?'

'I didn't mean that,' I said. 'I meant that Axel probably works hard to keep his marriage going so that his son has a mother and father and a settled home life.'

'Nonsense!' said Rolf Mauser. He chewed his pastry, his mouth moving as if in anger.

'Axel loves the boy,' I said. 'I remember how he assembled a racing bicycle for him. He put it together with such loving care.'

'I know, I know. The kid had an accident: some fool in a Porsche: broke his leg; kept driving, didn't stop. He'd had a few drinks, I suppose. Axel blamed himself. That's stupid isn't it?'

'I don't know,' I said. In fact, of course, most fathers would have felt equally guilty. It was only roughnecks like old Rolf who saw things in such a simplistic light. I suppose it was the war. I remember Rolf telling stories about the last days of the Berlin fighting. Hauptmann Rolf had been sent off on patrol with a 'flying court martial' and they summarily executed anyone on the street who couldn't give a proper account of himself. They shot him there and then and hanged the body in full view with a sign saying 'I deserted my post'. Axel had said he couldn't imagine his father doing such things but I saw Rolf in a different light. I knew that Rolf could be a cold-blooded killer if he thought it necessary.