Funeral in Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page B

switched the set off. We broke the wax on the fruitflavoured vodka and Stok and Vulkan began discussing whether twenty-four bottles of Scotch whisky were worth a couple of cameras. I sat around and drank vodka until they had ironed out some sort of agreement. Then Stok said, ‘Has Dorf got power to negotiate?’—just like I wasn’t in the room.
    ‘He’s a big shot in London,’ said Vulkan.‘Anything he promises will be honoured. I’ll guarantee it.’
    ‘I want lieutenant-colonel’s pay,’ Stok said, turning to me, ‘for life.’
    ‘Don’t we all?’ I said.
    Vulkan was looking at the evening paper; he looked up and said, ‘No, he means that he’d want the UK Government to pay him that as a salary if he comes over the wire. You could promise that, couldn’t you?’
    ‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘We’ll say you’ve been in a few years, that’s five pounds four shillings a day basic. Then there’s ration allowance, six and eight a day, marriage allowance, one pound three and something a day, qualification pay five shillings a day if you get through Staff College, overseas pay fourteen and three and…you would want overseas pay?’
    ‘You are not taking me seriously,’ Stok said, a big smile across his white moon of a face. Vulkan was shifting about on his seat, tightening his tie against his Adam’s apple and cracking his finger joints.
    ‘All systems go,’ I said.
    ‘Colonel Stok puts up a very convincing case,’ said Vulkan.
    ‘So does the “find the lady” mob in Charing Cross Road,’ I said, ‘but they never come through with the QED.’
    Stok threw back two vodkas in quick succession and stared at me earnestly. He said, ‘Look, Idon’t favour the capitalist system. I don’t ask you to believe that I do. In fact I hate your system.
    ‘Great,’ I said. ‘And you are in a job where you can really do something about it.’
    Stok and Vulkan exchanged glances.
    ‘I wish you would try to understand,’ said Stok. ‘I am really sincere about giving you my allegiance.’
    ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I bet you say that to all the great powers.’
    Vulkan said, ‘I’ve spent a lot of time and money in setting this up. If you are so damn clever why did you bother to come to Berlin?’
    ‘OK,’ I told them. ‘Act out the charade. I’ll be thinking of words.’
    Stok and Vulkan looked at each other and we drank and then Stok gave me one of his goldrimmed oval cigarettes and lit it with a nickelsilver sputnik.
    ‘For a long time I have been thinking of moving west,’ said Stok. ‘It’s not a matter of politics. I am just as avid a communist now as I have ever been, but a man gets old. He looks for comfort, for security in possessions.’ Stok cupped his big boxing-glove hand and looked down at it. ‘A man wants to scoop up a handful of black dirt and know it’s his own land, to live on, die on and give to his sons. We peasants are a weak insecure segment of socialism, Mr Dorf.’ He smiled with his big brown teeth, trimmed here and there with an edge of gold. ‘These comforts that you take for granted will not be a part of life in the East until long after I am dead.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We have decadence now—while we are young enough to enjoy it.’
    ‘Semitsa,’ said Stok. He waited to see what effect it would have on me. It had none.
    ‘That’s what you are really interested in. Not me. Semitsa.’
    ‘Is he here in Berlin?’ I asked.
    ‘Slowly, Mr Dorf,’ said Stok. ‘Things move very slowly.’
    ‘How do you know he wants to come west?’ I asked.
    ‘I know,’ said Stok.
    Vulkan interrupted, ‘I told the colonel that Semitsa would be worth about forty thousand pounds to us.’
    ‘Did you?’ I said in as flat a monotone as I could manage.
    Stok poured out his fruit vodka all round, downed his own and poured himself a replacement.
    ‘It’s been nice talking to you boys,’ I said. ‘I only wish you had something I could buy.’
    ‘I understand you,