William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

“Now, if Utta was the new head of the metal workshop,” Gudrun said, “I’m sure she’d be much more busy than—”

“Don’t start that again,” Tobias said. “I’ve spoken to Meyer. Arndt has his own candidates. You know she has a fair chance. A more than fair chance.” He put his arms around her and squeezed her strongly to him. “Gudrun, my Gudrun,” he exclaimed, as if mystified by this emotion within him. “Why do I want you so? Why?”

They heard the rattle of Utta’s key in the lock, her steps as she crossed the hall into the kitchen.

When Tobias left, Utta came immediately to Gudrun’s room. She was dressing, but the bed was still a mess of rumpled sheets, which for some reason made Gudrun embarrassed. To her the room seemed to reek of Tobias. She pulled the blanket up to the pillow.

“Did he see you when he left?” Gudrun asked.

“No, I was in my room. Did he say anything?”

“The same as usual. No, ‘a more than fair chance,’ he said. He said Arndt has his own candidates.”

“Of course, but ‘a more than fair chance.’ That’s something. Yes …”

“Utta, I can’t do anything more. I think I should stop asking. Why don’t you see Meyer yourself?”

“No, no. It’s not the way it works here, you don’t understand. It never has. You have to play it differently. And you must never give up.”

Spencer checks that the canvas webbing is properly secured under the base, jumps down from the truck and climbs up to the small control platform beside the crane.

I remind Mr. Koenig: “It’s manufactured in three parts. The whole thing can be assembled quickly. It’s painted, finished. We connect the power supply and you’re in business.”

Mr. Koenig was visibly moved. “It’s incredible,” he said. “Just like that.”

I turn to Spencer and give him a thumbs-up. There’s a thin puff of bluey-gray smoke and the crane’s motor chugs into life.

Tobias sat on the edge of his desk, one leg swinging. He reached out to take Gudrun’s hand and gently pulled her into the V of his thighs. He kissed her neck and inhaled, smelling her skin, her hair, as if he were trying to draw her essence deep into his lungs.

“I want us to go away for a weekend,” he said. “Let’s go to Berlin.”

She kissed him. “I can’t afford it.”

“I’ll pay,” he said. “I’ll think of something, some crucial meeting.”

She felt his hands on her buttocks; his thighs gently clamped hers. Through the wall of his office she could hear male voices from one of the drawing rooms. She pushed herself away from him and strolled over to the tilted drawing table that was set before the window.

“A weekend in Berlin …” she said. “I like the sound of that, I must—”

She turned as the door opened and Irene Henzi walked in.

“Tobias, we’re late,” she said, glancing at Gudrun with a faint smile.

Tobias sat on, one free leg swinging slightly.

“You know Miss Velk, don’t you?”

“I don’t think so. How are you?”

Somehow Gudrun managed to extend her arm; she felt the slight pressure of dry cool fingers. “A pleasure.”

“She was at the party,” Tobias said. “Surely you met.”

“Darling, there were a hundred people at the party.”

“I won’t disturb you further,” Gudrun said, moving to the door. “Very good to meet you.”

“Oh, Miss Velk.” Tobias’s call stopped her; she turned carefully to see Irene bent over the drawing table scrutinizing the blueprint there. “Don’t forget our appointment. Four-thirty as usual.” He smiled at her, glanced over to make sure his wife was not observing and blew her a kiss.

At the edge of a wood of silver birches behind the Institute was a small meadow where, in summer, the students would go and sunbathe. And at the meadow’s edge a stream ran, thick with willows and alders. The pastoral mood was regularly dispelled, however — and Gudrun wondered if this was why it was so popular with students — by the roaring noise of aeroengines. The trimotors that were tested at the Junkers Flugplatz, just beyond the pine trees to the west, would bank around and fly low over the meadow as they made their landing approaches. In the summer the pilots would wave to the sunbathing students below.

Gudrun walked down the path through the birchwood, still trembling, still hot from the memory of Tobias’s audacity, his huge composure. She was surprised to see, coming up from the meadow, Paul. He was carrying a pair of binoculars in his hand. He saw her and waved.

“I like to look at the aeroplanes,” he said. “In the war I used to work at an airfield, you know, painting camouflage. Wonderful machines.”

She had a flask of coffee with her and spontaneously offered to share it with him. She needed some company, she felt, some genial distraction. They found a place by the stream and she poured coffee into the tin cup that doubled as the flask’s top. She had some bread and two hard-boiled eggs, which she ate as Paul drank the coffee. Then he filled his pipe and smoked while she told him about the dyeing course at Sorau. He said he thought she needed a more intense blue to finish her rug, something hard and metallic, and suggested she might be able to concoct the right color at the dye works.

“With Tobias,” he said suddenly, to her surprise, “when you’re with Tobias, are you happy?”

He waved aside her denials and queries. Everyone knew about it, he told her, such a thing could not be done discreetly in a place like the Institute. She need not answer if she did not want to, but he was curious.

Yes, she said, she was very happy with Tobias. They were both happy. She said boldly that she thought she was in love with him. Paul listened. He told her that Tobias was a powerful figure in the architecture school, that all power in the Institute emanated from the architecture workshop. He would not be surprised, he said, if one day Tobias ended up running the whole place.

He rose to his feet, tapped out his pipe on the trunk of a willow and they wandered back through the birchwood.

“I just wanted you to be aware about this,” he said, “about Tobias.” He smiled at her. “He’s an intriguing man.” His features were small beneath his wide pale brow, as if crushed and squashed slightly by its weight. There were bags under his eyes, she noticed, he looked tired.

“You’re like a meteor,” he said. “Suddenly you’re attracted by the earth and are drawn into its atmosphere. At this moment you become a shooting star, incandescent and beautiful. There are two options available: to be tied to the earth’s atmosphere and plummet, or to escape, moving back out into space—”

She was baffled at first, but then remembered he was quoting from his own courses, something she had heard in his classes.

“—where you slowly cool down and eventually extinguish. The point is you need not plummet,” he said carefully. “There are different laws in different atmospheres, freer movements, freer dynamics. It need not be rigid.”

“Loose continuity,” she said. “I remember.”

“Precisely,” he said with a smile. “There’s a choice. Rigid or loose continuity.” He tapped her arm lightly. “Do you know, I think I may be interested in buying your rug.”

Spencer tightens the final bolt and crosses the street to join us on the opposite sidewalk. Mr. Koenig, Mrs. Koenig, Spencer and me. It is almost midday, and the sun is almost insupportably bright. I put on my sunglasses and through their green glass I stare at the Koenigs’ mini-diner.

Mr. Koenig turns away and takes a few paces, his finger held under his nose as if he were about to sneeze. He comes back to us.

“I love it, Miss Velk,” he says after apologizing for the few private moments he has needed. “I just … It’s so … The way you’ve done those jutting-out bits. My God, it even looks like a sandwich. The roll, the meat … So clever, so new. How it curves like that, that style—”