“Have a puff, John,” Sonia said.
“Go on, Johnny,” said her mother.
The telephone rang.
I threw myself from the chair and strode urgently to answer it (why did we — why do people — keep a telephone in the hall?). I snatched the receiver from its cradle.
“Yes?”
“Jamie?”
“Yes.” It was Doon. I felt my entire body tremble. I sat down very slowly.
“Did you …” She paused. She sounded upset. “Did you mean what you said that night?”
“What night?”
She hung up. I knew what night, of course. I swore at myself for not thinking faster. But how could I think at all in this farcical Christmas grotto of a house? I put on my overcoat and a hat and went back into the drawing room. Shorrold was relighting the pipe.
“John?” Sonia said, surprised at my appearance.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Problems … Karl-Heinz. He’s ill.”
“But there’s dinner.”
“Save some for me. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
Exultantly, I went outside. There had been some snow earlier in the week but it had thawed. It was a cold dull afternoon as I drove towards the Kurfürstendamm, Schulter Strasse and Doon’s apartment.
There was no reply. I knocked again. I pressed my ear to the cold door listening for signs of movement within.
A neat young man carrying a new briefcase came up the stairs.
“Are you looking for Miss Bogan?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ve just missed her. I passed her in the street on my way here. You might catch her. She’s heading north. Up towards the Knie.”
I spotted her as she crossed the busy intersection at Schiller and Grolmanstrasse. She was wearing a leather coat and a small-brimmed brown felt hat pulled hard down on her head. I thought she must be going to the Schiller-Theater but she passed that by. Why did I not approach her in the street? Run up behind her, tap her on the shoulder?… Because I felt suddenly weak and uncertain, now that I saw her tall figure again, striding so purposefully. Why had she telephoned me after months of silence? What had she meant by her question? I knew what I had said that night, so why now did she want the statement confirmed? I could provide no convincing answers to these questions apart from wishful ones, so I followed her discreetly as we walked through the cold quiet streets, even more deserted now as we moved further from the west end and into the industrial district of Lutzow. She turned right at the Landwehr-Kanal, with the sprawl of the Siemens electrical works opposite, and went through the doorway of what looked like a meeting hall or Low Church chapel.
I paused. The granite afternoon light was fading. The canal looked solid and very cold, as if the water was viscous, at the freezing point. I stood there dithering, getting colder by the minute. Some more people went into the hall. I had no gloves or scarf with me. Should I wait? She might be hours.… I went in.
At the far end of a thin vestibule a young man sat behind a table. He was wearing an overcoat, a roll-neck sweater and a soft brown hat of quite good quality. There were some papers in front of him.
“Afternoon,” I said.
“Are you a member?” He had a square bulging jaw that needed shaving.
“I want to join,” I improvised. “I came to meet Miss Bogan.”
He was impressed by the name. “Oh, good. Excellent. There should be no problem.”
He rummaged in the desk drawer and produced a form. “That’ll be two hundred marks,” he said. “Fill that in and I can give you a temporary card now. We’ll send the official one later.”
What kind of a club was this? I wondered as I handed in the money. I could hear indistinct conversation from the hall. The neighborhood was so drab — too drab for pornography. I filled in half the form — name, address, profession — before I thought to ask what the letters at its head stood for.
The man looked suddenly wary.
“The Revolutionary Artists’ Association,” he said. “Of the KPD.”
The Communist party. “Of course.” I managed a laugh of sorts. “What am I thinking about?”
He filled in my name on a square of cardboard and carefully stamped and initialed its reverse. He stood up and shook my hand.
“Welcome,” he said, then gestured at the door. “The meeting’s just starting.”
There must have been over two hundred people inside, mainly men, but with a fair representation of women. So many artists? I thought. I could see nothing of Doon. I edged diffidently in, pressed my back to a wall and waited. A thin man on a rostrum spoke passionately in clichés. I lost interest in seconds. In those days I was indifferent to politics, creeds and dogmas. Politics especially — I had not yet become one of its hapless victims. As Chekhov puts it, I wanted only to be a free artist. So as I scanned the faces of the audience, intent and earnest, impassive and mobile, I noted only that some of them were well-to-do; these were not all workers or students. I wondered what it was about them or the occasion that drew Doon here.
Speakers changed but the tone of voice and diminished vocabulary remained the same. There was vehement applause at the end of every speech. And then Doon got up on the rostrum. I listened to what she had to say. She attacked the institution of Christmas and, thinking of the travesty my own home had become, found myself loudly applauding all the predictable ideological grievances. She wound up with a plea for donations to party funds. She would be passing among us, she said, taking a collection.
I waited for Doon to reach me. Four people were going through the audience with wooden boxes as the meeting’s business was ponderously concluded by the thin man who had begun it all. I kept changing my position and thus made two donations before Doon and I finally met.
I felt a poignant helplessness suffuse my body as I stuffed notes into her box. To my credit, and my joy, she colored. Admiring noises came from others at my party-spirited largess.
“Thank you, comrade,” she said. Then in a lower voice, “What’re you doing here?”
“I followed you. After you called. I had to see you.”
“Are you a member?”
“Yes.”
“How long? I thought you were a cynic.”
“Oh, not so long.… People are allowed to change their minds, you know.”
“Wait for me at the end.”
I was wrong about it finishing. That meeting ran on for three hours. By its conclusion I was overpoweringly hungry. My stomach was audible at three yards, my mouth awash with saliva as I thought helplessly of Frau Mittenklott’s Christmas rum grog, her rabbit paprika and her Schokoladenstrudel.
It was night when Doon and I finally left. We walked back towards her flat, she talking overanimatedly of the cell, the cause, the struggle, the comrades. I let her natter on — she had slipped her hand through mine and I was close enough to smell her lavender perfume. Eventually I could stand it no longer and steered her into a small cellar café.
I ordered two coffees with kirsch and whipped cream and ate two large but rather solid slices of yesterday’s date torte. Then I put my hand on hers.
“Doon,” I asked, “why did you phone?”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“But you did.”
“God.… I don’t know. I was feeling blue. Fucking Christmas. I hate it.… I left Alex. Two weeks ago. I was sitting waiting for the meeting and I thought I’d — Shit. It was silly of me.”
My mouth was dry. “I still mean it.”
She lit a cigarette. She seemed uneasy now.
“It’s sweet of you to say that, Jamie.” She was trying to be composed. “But you don’t have to. Not on my account. Can I have another coffee?”
“But I do. I’ve known it since I saw you that first day in the Metropol.”