‘Of course Wladimir has offered to do just that.’ He called the theatre director by his first name, but without sounding smarmy. ‘But I can’t take to the stage. Never again.’
‘Because you don’t have a partner any more?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Herr Grün. ‘Because I will always have my partner.’
He insisted on offering them another glass of wine. ‘I have much to be grateful to you for.’
‘I’m already quite tiddly,’ Rachel objected.
‘And it suits you very well.’
It was the first time she had heard anything like a compliment from him.
They walked along side by side, Herr Grün in the middle, Rachel and Désirée on either side of him, taking an arm each. Twenty years before, Rachel had often strolled through the city at night like that, with an admirer on each side and her whole life ahead of her.
Herr Grün took them to the White Cross, a pub to which ‘one’ did not go, because the only people who did were those who didn’t distinguish between drinking and getting drunk. The two women came along without demur; Rachel because she didn’t want to appear like a fuddy-duddy, and Désirée because she didn’t know about the pub’s bad reputation.
It wasn’t far from the theatre to Rössligasse. Herr Grün opened the door, and they were standing in front of a wall of noise, smoke and clinking glasses.
The pub was cramped, and there wasn’t a single empty seat to be seen. But they seemed to know Herr Grün, and freed a table for him. One guest stood up voluntarily, protectively clutching his beer glass to his chest with both hands, a second who had fallen asleep over his glass was lifted away and sat back down next to two others on a bench, where he immediately put his head on the table and went on sleeping.
The landlady herself wiped down the table with a cloth, or distributed the puddles of beer and wine more evenly. ‘The usual?’ she said to Herr Grün, and when he nodded, ‘And the ladies?’ Her tone made it clear that they weren’t equipped for ladies here. Never before had Rachel felt so out of place in her elegant dress.
‘Half a litre of white wine.’ Herr Grün didn’t specify the variety. Such refinements were not called for in the White Cross.
He looked around, as if to make sure that everything was in its place, and said, ‘I like coming here. A place for people who want to forget. That suits me.’
Rachel wrinkled her nose. It was a facial expression that she had got used to in the days when she was much in demand. It had been cute back then. ‘It isn’t very elegant here.’
Herr Grün pushed a few bits of cigarette ash together into a little pile with a beer mat. ‘Depends what you compare it to,’ he said.
The landlady brought the carafe of wine. She set a big glass of clear liquid don in front of Herr Grün.
‘Schnapps?’ said Désirée, without reproach.
‘Water,’ said Herr Grün. ‘I like to allow myself something good.’
Rachel studied her own glass suspiciously and wiped the rim with her handkerchief. Herr Grün smiled.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked.
‘You know something, Fräulein Kamionker? You shouldn’t mix coffee with your henna. Once you’ve got used to it, the colour really suits you.’
She didn’t understand this man.
A few tables away a drunk stood up, reached unsteadily for the back of his chair and dragged it — as a support or as a weapon — over to the three. A tall, thickset man with a puffy face, an athlete who had let himself go, or a worker who drank too much. He placed the chair next to their table, sat down and leaned over to Rachel.
‘Princess,’ said the man. ‘You’re a princess.’
You could hear the alcohol in his voice.
‘I’m the king,’ said the drunk man. ‘Princess and king. Do you notice anything?’
‘Please leave us alone.’ Later Rachel would claim she had remained quite calm.
‘Come home with me,’ said the man. ‘I’ll show you my sceptre.’ He laughed, and when no one at the table joined in, he repeated more loudly, ‘My sceptre. You understand? Sceptre!’
‘That’ll do.’ Herr Grün said it quite calmly, but the man’s head spun around as if someone had cracked a whip.
‘You can’t say that to me.’
‘You want to check?’ asked Herr Grün. His voice hadn’t got any louder, but all conversations fell silent in the White Cross, and someone shook the sleeping man at the next table awake to say to him, ‘You can’t miss this!’
The drunk man looked at Herr Grün.
Herr Grün tilted his head slightly to one side, not menacingly, just asking amicably.
How would you like it?
The drunk man started laughing, not very convincingly, and said, ‘We’re jolly people here. Jolly people. You can take a joke, can’t you?’ And then, to Herr Grün and not at all to Rachel, ‘Excuse me. I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant in a nasty way.’ He got off, dragged his chair back to his table, sat down with his back to them and didn’t turn round again.
All around them the conversations struck up again, but no longer quite as loudly as before.
‘Thank you,’ said Rachel.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Herr Grün.
Désirée ran her fingernail along the rim of her wine glass. ‘He’s stronger than you,’ she said without looking at Herr Grün. ‘He could have beaten you up.’
‘Beatings aren’t a matter of strength. It depends how far you’re prepared to go.’
‘How far would you go for me?’ The alarm was over, and Rachel’s voice was flirty again.
‘No one hits me any more,’ said Herr Grün. ‘Not any more.’ He took a deep draught from his water glass. ‘I’m skilled.’
‘What does that actually mean?’
‘You live here in Switzerland,’ he said ‘you can’t understand. On an island you don’t know what it means to drown. I had to learn to swim. If you didn’t do that…’
He raised both hands above his head and let them fall back down on the table.
‘You’re talking about your friend Blau,’ said Désirée quietly. It wasn’t a question.
‘His name was Schlesinger. Siegfried Schlesinger. Studied German. Knew the Merseburg Charms off by heart, and when he was in a good mood he liked to recite poems in Middle High German. “Du bist beslozzen in minem herzen. Verlorn ist daz slüzzelin, du muost immer drinne sin.” Beslozzen in minem herzen. Locked in my heart,’ Herr Grün repeated and drank his water as if it was schnapps.
‘He would have liked to be a teacher, but for some reason they wouldn’t have him. They wanted to have him as Herr Blau.’
Guten Tag, Herr Blau.
Guten Tag, Herr Grün.
‘Brought a different book to the dressing room every day. If reading books made you fat we’d have had to swap roles.’ Herr Grün laughed, and again it was that pickled laugh from the basement.
‘He had a funny face. Sticking-out ears. That was his good fortune on stage and his misfortune in the camp. He stood out, and if you stand out you haven’t a chance.’
He waved to the landlady, as impatient as a drinker whose alcohol has run out. She brought him his next glass of water and he drank greedily.
‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘If you hit someone with a stick, it sounds different from when you use a whip. Did you know that? With a glove it’s different from when you use your bare hand. Some people didn’t even punch. They preferred to kick. They made you stand bolt upright and then rammed their knee into your privates. Everyone has his own style. Like comics on the stage. There were also double-acts. Just as Grün and Blau were double-acts. One punched, the other kicked. If you have the right partner you understand each other implicitly.