Funeral in Berlin Read Online Free PDF

like Bismarck was expected back. I drove around the white plain of Marx-Engels Platz and, at the largeslab-sided department store at Alexanderplatz, took the road that leads to Karl Marx Allee.
    I recognized the car park and pulled into it. Karl Marx Allee was still the same as when it had been Stalin Allee. Miles of workers’ flats and state shops housed in seven-storey Russian-style architecture, thirty-foot-wide pavements and huge grassy spaces and cycle tracks like the M1.
    In the open-air cafe across the road, lights winked under the trees and a few people danced between the striped parasols while a small combo walked their baby back home with lots of percussion. ‘Warschau’, the lights spelled out and under them I saw Vulkan get to his feet. He waited patiently until the traffic lights were in his favour before walking towards the car park. A careful man, Johnnie; this was no time to collect a jaywalking ticket. He got into a Wartburg, pulled away eastward down Karl Marx Allee. I followed keeping one or two cars between us.
    Johnnie parked outside a large granite house in Köpenick. I edged past his car and parked under a gas lamp around the corner. It was not a pretty house but it had that mood of comfort and complacency that middle-class owners breathe into the structure of a house along with dinner-gong echoes and cigar smoke. There was a large garden at the back and here near the forests and the waters of Müggelsee the air smelled clean.
    There was just one name-plate on the door. It was of neat black plastic: ‘Professor EberhardLebowitz’, engraved in ornate Gothic lettering. Johnnie rang and a maid let us into the hall.
    ‘Herr Stok?’ said Johnnie.
    He gave her his card and she tiptoed away into the interior.
    In the dimly lit hall there stood a vast hallstand with some tricky inlaid ivory, two clothes-brushes and a Soviet officer’s peaked hat. The ceiling was a complex pattern of intaglio leaves and the floral wallpaper looked prehensile.
    The maid said, ‘Will you please come this way?’ and led us into Stok’s drawing-room. The wallpaper was predominantly gold and silver but there were plenty of things hiding the wallpaper. There were aspidistras, fussy lace curtains, shelves full of antique Meissen and a cocktail cabinet like a small wooden version of the Kremlin. Stok looked up from the 21-inch baroque TV. He was a big-boned man, his hair was cropped to the skull and his complexion was like something the dog had been playing with. When he stood up to greet us his huge hands poked out of a bright red silk smoking-jacket with gold-braid frogging.
    Vulkan said, ‘Herr Stok; Herr Dorf,’ and then he said, ‘Herr Dorf; Herr Stok,’ and we all nodded at each other, then Vulkan put a paper bag down on the coffee table and Stok drew an eight-ounce tin of Nescafé out of it, nodded, and put it back again.
    ‘What will you drink?’ Stok asked. He had a musical basso voice.
    ‘Just before we move into the chat,’ I said, ‘can I see your identity card?’
    Stok pulled his wallet out of a hip pocket, smiled archly at me and then peeled loose the stiff white card with a photo and two rubber stamps that Soviet citizens carry when abroad.
    ‘It says that you are Captain Maylev here,’ I protested as I laboriously pronounced the Cyrillic script.
    The servant girl brought a tray of tiny glasses and a frosted bottle of vodka. She set the tray down. Stok paused while she withdrew.
    ‘And your passport says that you are Edmond Dorf,’ said Stok, ‘but we are both victims of circumstance.’
    Behind him the East German news commentator was saying in his usual slow voice, ‘…sentenced to three years for assisting in the attempt to move his family to the West.’ Stok walked across to the set and clicked the switch to the West Berlin channel where a cast of fifty Teutonic minstrels sang ‘See them shuffle along’ in German. ‘It’s never a good night, Thursday,’ Stok said apologetically. He