[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
prompt him.
I tried to sleep but sleep didn t come. There was so much to think about. And
I couldn t help noticing the promptness with which Frank had denied knowing
Jim Prettyman. He hadn t hemmed and hawed or asked why I d mentioned his name.
It was a flat no and a change of subject. It wasn t like Frank s normal
behaviour to be so lacking in curiosity: in fact it wasn t like anyone s
normal behaviour.
I told Willi not to put that damned machine in here, Werner said, looking
up from his big plate of beef to where two white coated surgeons were poking
screwdrivers deep into the entrails of an old jukebox that had clearly been
kicked into silence. Willi Leuschner, the proprietor, watched as grim-faced as
any grieving relative. Apparently certain pop-music aficionados of the late
evening hours voted with their feet. We were sitting in one of the booths near
the window. When we were kids we had all firmly believed that the people in
the window seats got bigger portions to attract passers-by. I still don t know
whether it s true or not but it wasn t something that either of us wanted to
take a chance on.
You can t trust music critics, I said. Toscanini could have told him
that.
I ll bet that his jukebox is not insured. said Werner. He had the sort of
mind that thought in terms of expenditure, percentages, interest rates, risk
and insurance. It was offered cheap, I explained. Willi thought it would
bring more teenagers.
He d make a lot of money from penniless teenagers, wouldn t he? said Werner
with heavy irony. He should be glad they keep away, not trying to find a way
of attracting them.
Even after a lifetime s friendship, Werner could still surprise me. It was
his often expressed view that juvenile delinquency was to be blamed on TV,
single-parent families, unemployment or too much sugar in the diet. Was this
new reactionary stand against teenagers a sign that Werner was growing old,
the way I d been all my life?
Werner made his money by avalizing: which means he financed East European
exports to the West with hard currency borrowed from anywhere he could get it.
He paid high interest and he lived on narrow margins. It was a tough way to
make a living but Werner seemed to flourish on the hazards and difficulties of
this curious bywater of the financial world. Like many of his rivals he had no
banking experience, and his formal education went no further than the
legerdemain that comes from prodding a Japanese calculator.
I thought you liked young people, Werner, I said. He looked at me and
scowled. He was always accusing me of being intolerant and narrow-minded, but
on the issue of keeping my haunts Jungend-frei I was with him, and so were a
lot of Berliners. You don t have to walk far down Potsdamer Strasse before
starting to believe that universal military conscription for teenagers might
be a good idea.
Page 38
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
There was something different about Werner today. It wasn t his new beard - a
fine full-set with moustache - when it was fully grown he d look like a
prosperous Edwardian beer baron or some business associate of Sir Basil
Zaharoff. It wasn t just that he was noticeably overweight, lie was always
overweight between his dedicated slimming regimes; nor the fact that he d,
arrived absurdly early for our appointment. But he was unusually restless.
While waiting for the meal to arrive he d fidgeted with the salt and pepper as
well as tugging at his earlobes and pinching his nose and staring out of the
window as if his mind was somewhere else. I wondered if he was thinking of
some other appointment he had, for Werner, in his tailor made suit and silk
shirt, was not dressed for this sort of eating place.
We were in Lcuschner s, a once famous and fashionable cafe near
Potsdamerplatz. It was shabby now and almost empty. It had been like this for
many years, for the great expanse of Potsdamerplatz - once the busiest traffic
intersection in all Europe - was now a still and silent place where armed
sentries patrol constantly between the massed barbed wire and, with a
compassion not extended to their fellow-countrymen, carefully restrain their
attack-trained dogs from running into the minefields . And as the district
became a backwater, Cafe Leuschncr became the sort of place where men were
cautious what they said to strangers, and policemen came regularly to inspect
everyone s identity papers.
Once great luxury hotels stood here, adjacent to the mighty Anhalter railway
terminal, that was the biggest in the world. The posters in the museum listed
one hundred and forty-five trams arriving each day, eighty-two of them
long-distance luxury expresses that came complete with cocktail bars, sleeping
compartments and diners. Beneath the road, by means of a specially constructed
tunnel, baggage porters, labouring under steamer trunks and cases made of the
hides of crocodile and pig, and smartly dressed pages conducted the arriving
passengers under the swirling traffic, directly into the plush foyer of the
famous Excelsior Hotel next door. Here they would be conveniently close to the
fine shops of Leipziger Strassc, the embassies, palaces and grand houses that
adjoined the Tiergarten , and the government offices of the newly created
German Reich and the Palace of its Emperor. By day the traffic seemed
never-ending; and the night-fife continued until breakfast was served free to
any reveller who was still awake. Now the Anhalter Balmhof is gone, except for
a large section of old yellow brickwork that used to be the ticket hall. In
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]