David John - Flight from Berlin

T he carriage juddered over the points, shaking Denham’s bones on the wooden seat. His head lolled against the window. He’d undone his tie and taken off the rented woollen tailcoat, which in the warmth seemed to give off the accrued odour of a thousand dinner-dances. An elderly couple watched him with sour faces, sniffing the alcohol on him. Berliners were not afraid to stare. He put a foot up on the seat opposite. The couple exchanged glances. An infraction of the S-Bahn rules. He put the other foot up and tapped his shoes together.

He’d had to wait a long time for a chance to meet Sir Eric. The ambassador was beset with introductions, talking to guest after guest in French, German, or Italian, nodding away, poker-faced. A monocled curiosity from the days of the Great Game. Now and then he’d laugh judiciously, allowing some Nazi boor to feel he possessed the wit of Voltaire. In the end, Denham caught him as he towelled his hands in the gents’ washroom. His face registered no surprise, as if he’d been expecting this approach at precisely this moment.

‘ “The Rhineland-Backyard Belligerence,” ’ Sir Eric said, taking time to adjust his sash and buttonhole rose in the mirror. ‘I’ve sent transcripts of that piece you wrote to every appeaser in the cabinet. Surprised you got away with that one.’

‘My luck may have run out.’

They walked back to the party, the ambassador a foot shorter than Denham. His shoulder was hunched on one side, like an aged cat’s.

‘We’re running a team of fielders at the moment, Denham. Players who can only watch patiently in the hope of catching our opponents out and limiting their innings. Regrettably, we’re not supported much by our home crowd… Plenty of them, you know, are very “pro.” Quite a few here this evening. Lord Londonderry, for instance, thinks he can placate a monster by cooing…’

Beneath the tact and avuncular manner Denham detected a steely directness.

‘So, my question is,’ Phipps said, patting Denham’s shoulder, ‘are you willing to field for us…?’

‘Well sir, I-’

‘ Good man.’

They could say no more. Someone was presenting the tombstone figure of Avery Brundage.

And then that girl, that beautiful American from the magazine.

If she had talked of anything else-whatever girls her age talk about-he would have stayed as quiet as a mouse in stockings. Instead she and her friend had blundered with panache into the most loaded of subjects. Why hadn’t he just let her be?

But he’d had to put her right, enlighten her.

The train careened into a tunnel with a metal scream. A loud crack, and he saw that he’d rammed his heel into the wooden slat of the bench.

W hen she arrived home at the Dodds’ house on Tiergartenstrasse Eleanor placed a telephone call to Gallico’s hotel.

‘Eleanor? Too late for a drink. I’m in my pyjamas.’

‘Paul, honey, I know you and the boys are planning to petition the AOC about getting me back on the team…’

‘Yeah, we’ve got a meet with Brundage tomorrow. I think there’s a pretty fair chance that-’

‘Well, look. Thanks for thinking of me, but I don’t want you to do it.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘Stone-cold sober. I’ve changed my mind. I’m through. I don’t want to be on the goddamned team, or have anything to do with these Games.’

Denham rose early and headed for the Cafe Kranzler on Friedrichstrasse. A full breakfast, he decided, was the best cure for his hangover.

He bought a paper at the station kiosk and climbed the steps from the U-Bahn. The air was cool and fresh, the sky marbled with cirrus clouds. It was going to be a fine day. Traffic was still sparse; a yellow tram clangoured along the tracks on Unter den Linden, bell ringing.

He took a table in the sun, ordered coffee, eggs, smoked ham, and pastries, and began to scan the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. The report of Jesse Owens’s victory in the hundred-metre sprint yesterday was tucked away inside. This time there was no mention of Owens’s colour, despite weeks of unembarrassed references to der Neger. On a separate page Denham spotted a curious notice, evidently lifted from a Chancellery press release. ‘The Fuhrer cannot be present at all the final competitions and is therefore unable to receive the winners of different nations. Receptions for the winners in the Fuhrer’s box will no longer take place.’ All that to avoid shaking a black man’s hand.

Coffee at the Kranzler was the best in Berlin. He’d just ordered another cup when he saw her. She was crossing the street towards the cafe, hatless, and wearing a white suit and round white-rimmed sunglasses, like an advertisement for Lux toilet soap. He raised the newspaper to hide himself and was waiting for her to walk past when a sugar cube flew over the top of the page and hit him on the chin.

‘Too late, mister, I already saw you.’

Denham lowered the paper and put his hand up to shield his eyes. She stood hand on her hip, with the sun behind her. Light blazed through her golden hair.

‘Relax, I’m not going to bite your head off,’ Eleanor said, removing her sunglasses.

‘Won’t you join me?’

‘Thanks. By a strange coincidence I was thinking of you. It’s Richard, right?’

‘Sorry that I upset you last night.’

She took a Chesterfield from a tortoiseshell case in her handbag. He lit it for her, and she inhaled.

‘It’s me who should apologise,’ she said, the smoke coming out with the words. She waved at the waitress. ‘Coffee, uh, bitte?

‘Richard, I come from a long line of stubborn idiots, and my father is the most stubborn of them all. When he’s convinced of the truth of something he runs with it like a dog with a bone, even if it’s a lost cause…’ She held her cigarette up at an angle, staring at nothing in particular.

‘Surely lost causes are the ones worth fighting for,’ Denham said.

She smiled. ‘That’s what Dad says. He tried talking me out of going to Germany, but being his stubborn idiot daughter, here I am. What I’m trying to say is… my old dad’s cause may have been lost but that’s not to say it wasn’t right. We shouldn’t have come here. None of us.’

Denham’s breakfast arrived.

‘Mind if I ask what made you change your mind?’

‘Let’s just say I got my rose-tinted glasses knocked off… of all places in a rose garden…’ Her expression darkened, and she fell silent for a minute while he ate, before saying, ‘Hey, what’re you doing today?’

Denham took the Olympic programme from his jacket and showed her.

‘There’s a story I’m after about a German fencer. She’s competing in the opening heats at the House of German Sport at ten o’clock.’

‘Mind if I join you? As a fellow reporter I mean, not as a date or anything. I’m sorry, I don’t even know if you’re married. Not that that’s relevant. Hey, why don’t I shut up?’

Denham laughed into his napkin. ‘As a fellow reporter I’d be delighted. And I promise you my former wife couldn’t care less what I do.’

I n the Cupola Hall of the House of German Sport every bench was packed. Smatterings of applause punctuated the female fencing elimination heats. Denham and his new associate sat at the end of a row, next to a rowdy party of Hungarian girls. A high amphitheatre surrounded a stage, behind which great frosted-glass windows admitted a soft light, almost silhouetting the contestants. The place smelled of fresh paint and floor polish.

‘Who are we here to see?’ said Eleanor once they were seated.

‘Hannah Liebermann.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘No, why?’ Denham found the American habit of asking exclamatory questions tiresome.