William Boyd - The New Confessions

Karl-Heinz

He had given his address: 129B Stralauer Allee, Berlin …

I remember that morning with perfect clarity. Sonia had gone out and left me with baby Vincent. I was sitting at the kitchen table in vest and trousers, drinking a cup of strong tea. Vincent was crying lustily in his cot. I was faintly nauseous from the smell of old beer seeping up through the floorboards from the pub below. I needed a shave. I thought this tableau might have been done justice by some modern Hogarth: Jobless Man , perhaps. Or The Artist’s Dream Frustrated . I heard letters being pushed through the letter box and went down to the hall to collect them. There were two bills — one from my solicitor and one from a tailor — and Karl-Heinz’s postcard. I read it as I trudged back upstairs towards Vincent’s irritating screeching. And then I felt as if I had been punched in the chest — that sudden thump of exhilaration that is the physical corollary of a brilliant idea. Of course! Of course. How parochial and hidebound of me! There were other film industries — America, France, Germany — far more audacious and inspirational than what was going on at home. Why stay put and marinate in one’s own self-pity? I would go to Berlin, join Karl-Heinz. We would make films together.…

My mind began to work faster. I would leave as soon as possible — and alone. Whenever I was established I would send for Sonia and Vincent. I suddenly saw all the splendid potential in the idea. How vastly more intriguing to make one’s name abroad in one of the real capitals of film. No more pap or trash. No more Wee MacGregors . I felt a stimulating sense of freedom. I was almost grateful to Raymond Maude for going broke and to Harold Faithfull for his vindictive spite.

* * *

I left home at the end of October, promising Sonia that I would send for her and Vincent before Christmas. I went by boat — cargo steamer — from London to Bremerhaven, and from there by train to Berlin. It was pouring with rain when we left the docks at London and I did not trouble to go up on deck. I sat in the small, dusty, paneled saloon drinking a warmish mug of unsweetened cocoa and I glanced only once or twice through the portholes at the rain-smudged views of the disappearing city. I had very little money, not quite fifty pounds (I had been naturally obliged to leave the rest of what remained in our savings with Sonia, who as a further economy had quit the flat above the Salisbury and had moved in with her parents), but I felt much the same as I had that night I ran away from Minto Academy and caught the night train down to London. The future lay before me like an empty sheet of paper. All I had to do was make my mark on it.

I had written and cabled to Karl-Heinz about my impending arrival, but I had received no reply. The train from Bremerhaven arrived at Lehrter Station in Berlin at six o’clock in the morning. It was just growing light and was decidedly cold. I bought a cup of coffee and two round bread rolls from a stall outside the entrance and wondered what to do — I thought it a little too early to turn up at Karl-Heinz’s. So I left the station and walked along the Spree for a while (I had only one suitcase with me). The river water was dark, bottle-green, sluggish. Barges were moored here and there. I crossed the river at the Marschall Bridge and wandered into the center of the city.

Berlin … first impressions. I will try to recall them, after all these years, after familiarity has worn down the images like old coins. Berlin that cold morning in October was very clean, extraordinarily clean. Wide, broad streets. Trees, statues — statues everywhere — and fountains. It felt modern, recent. It had a new feel, a busy feel. Above my head stretched a matrix of electric tram wires. Trams were everywhere, even at this hour. I wandered through the streets — Friedrichstrasse, Behrenstrasse, Unter den Linden (with its disappointing spindly limes), past the somber palaces, the palatial stores and the fabulous hotels. It was like … Take a prosperous British Victorian city center — Bradford, Manchester, Glasgow. Buff up all the heavy overdecorated architecture, then push the buildings far apart to form clear prospects and broad avenues. Scatter young trees and white statues wherever space permits. Then add all the paraphernalia of the modern city: the motors, the tram and cable cars, the billboards, the neon signs, the yellow autobuses, the green taxicabs with their white-hatted drivers, and an urgent hurrying smart population. That was the Berlin I saw that morning. Its newness was my abiding impression: a city that seemed only as old as its inhabitants, as if it possessed no past beyond the memory of the generations that lived and worked among its spick-and-spanness.

There were other Berlins, of course, that looked like Amsterdam, or medieval French towns, or cramped urban slums, or featureless industrial cityscapes, and I was to see them later that day, but I was inspired by its contemporariness as I passed among its prosperous commuters and pedestrians. I could sense no dead hand of tradition about its open squares and immaculate boulevards. I knew I could achieve great things here.

It took me some time to find 129B Stralauer Allee. Eventually, having obtained the necessary information from a helpful English-speaking clerk at a railway station, I took the Stadtbahn east to the Stralau-Rummelsberg stop. Stralauer Allee ran along the north bank of the Spree, and here the city faintly resembled stretches of London by the Thames at Chelsea before the embankment was built. Old buildings with cellar shops and cafés, wooden jetties and unsteady rickety steps leading down to the slow river whose banks were crowded with barges lashed together.

Number 129 was a narrow five-story house built round a small brick courtyard. The apartment where Karl-Heinz lived was on the first floor. I went through the main entrance, saw no concierge and mounted the central stone staircase to Apartment B. The name above the doorbell was Pfau.

I was about to ring for the third time when it opened to reveal a large untidy man in a collarless shirt. He had straight, short gray hair and a large crude face with the sort of creases and dewlaps one associates with certain types of hound — a basset or a pug, say — rather than a human. He had damp lusterless eyes and a blunt nose with big hair-choked nostrils that needed clipping. He was smoking a cigar.

“Karl-Heinz Kornfeld?” I inquired.

The man — Herr Pfau, I assumed — shouted for Karl-Heinz, who, after a short pause, came to the door wiping shaving soap from his face. His hair was longer but otherwise he was unchanged. Tall, thin, dark, vital.

“So, Johnny,” he said calmly. “How wonderful to see you.”

I stepped over the threshold and we shook hands. He saw my suitcase.

“What brings you to Berlin?”

“Didn’t you get my letter? My cable?”

“What letter?”

“You had no idea I was coming?”

“No, of course not. But it’s a delightful surprise. Come in, come in.” He introduced me to Pfau — Georg — who said hello and disappeared into another room. Karl-Heinz led me through a sitting room, dining room and kitchen and on into his own bedroom. The apartment was very badly designed. There was no hall or corridor. One room simply gave onto another a s one moved around the central courtyard. The bathroom was at the end. I was so perturbed by the nonarrival of my letter that I did not really take in the simple decor and well-worn furniture. But I did notice that the walls of most rooms were lined with wooden boxes, like lockers, and stacks of fine wire-mesh cages. The apartment was very warm, as well. The air was filled with a faint electric hum, as if there were powerful dynamos in the basement.