William Boyd - The New Confessions

Our house that December was bedlam. Sonia and Lily were fully occupied with the girls — Emmeline and Annabelle — and for a while I had to oversee the two boys. For some reason Frau Mittenklott — who had followed us from Rudolfplatz — had been given responsibility for the Christmas decorations. There was a vast green fir tree in the drawing room, burning real candles and hung with real cakes and a kind of decorative shortbread. Smaller replicas stood in the hall and dining room. Furthermore boughs had been hewn from other conifers and were suspended wherever possible above doors, windows and staircases. The air was thick with resinous piny fumes that made my eyes sting and reminded me of my father’s antiseptic experiments. Heavy swags of redvelvet ribbon were draped above the fireplaces and from every projecting ledge, picture frame and table corner the good woman had set or hung miniature presents — matchboxes wrapped in bright paper and filled with raisins or nuts to be unwrapped by the children whenever the anticipation proved too much or the wait too long. This was the whimsical custom, so Frau Mittenklott informed me, in the village where she had been born and raised. Our house seemed the very paradigm of festivity, bright symbol of the Christmas season itself. The misery was capped, though my duties diminished, when Vincent and Noreen Shorrold arrived from London to share our joy.

On Christmas Day 1926 we were all present in the sitting room. John James Todd, the film director; his wife, Sonia; their four children — Vincent, Hereford, Emmeline and Annabelle — the nurse, Lily Maid-bow; and the in-laws, Mr, and Mrs. Shorrold, In the kitchen Frau Mittenklott was cooking a goose, three rabbits, a suckling pig — a whole farmyard of animals, as far as I know. I had just opened my present from Sonia. A pipe. A ghastly curved meerschaum with a carved yellow bowl the size of a coffee cup and — this is true — red and green tassels hanging from it.

“I can’t smoke this !” I said, shocked, to Sonia.

“Course you can, Johnny,” Vincent Shorrold said. “Nothing like a pipe for a man.”

“And what on earth does that mean? But — seriously — I can’t put this thing in my mouth. I’d be a laughingstock.”

“Here, I’ll get it going for you, boy,” Vincent Shorrold said, and took it from me. He proceeded to fill it with what looked like fistfuls of shag from his own pouch.

“That’s a right big smoke, that’s for sure,” he said as he tamped down the tobacco with his thumbs. “There’s a tin and a half of ready-rubbed in there.” He put it in his mouth. I saw his jaw muscles clench as they took the strain.

“Fair weight,” he commented. “Give you a right stiff neck, this will.”

It took him five or six matches and as many minutes to ignite the compacted mass of tobacco. The room was soon blue with gently shifting strata of smoke. The twins began to cry, their pure new eyes stinging. I sat very still in my chair, my face fixed. The women looked on with admiration as Vincent Shorrold fumed and blew, thick smoke snorting, apparently, from every orifice in his head.

“Grand cool draw,” he said, coming over, sucking and blowing. “It’ll be going for a couple of hours yet.” He held the vile object out to me, its little tassels swinging, its stem gleaming with Shorrold saliva.

“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.