The Berlin Connection (44 page)

We went toward my hotel, underneath the old trees along the promenade with its bright, snow-capped candelabra.

"Can you... can you ..." I could not say the words.

"Yes," she said.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, I can understand you, Peter. I can understand it"

"ReaUy?"

"ReaUy!"

"I did want to make Shirley happy."

"I know what you wanted."

"Happy. I wanted to make her happy."

"That's impossible to do."

"It is?"

"Or very rarely. Not many people succeed."

"But there are many happy people!"

"How long does their happiness last?"

"I know some people who are always happy."

"Then they are happy from within. But for how long can one person make another happy?"

"Not for long?"

She shook her head

"No, not for very long." And quietly she said, "Just think, Peter, if only it were possible—a happy world—a world of truly happy people . . ." We had reached the hotel. '*You must go and sleep now. You have another day of shooting ahead of you."

"Fll see you home."

We walked to the next street comer. The street was deserted.

"HowisMisha?"

"I took him to another specialist."

"And?"

"Don't ask. Please."

So the specialist told Natasha what Schauberg had already told me: that the sounds the little boy produced were no reason to hope, that there would not be a change in Misha's condition.

We had reached the door.

"Good night, Peter."

"I very much wish I could help you," I said

"You—^help me, now?'*

I nodded

"No one can help anyone. You know what they say: Everybody has to fight his own battles."

"Natasha," I whispered (why was I whispering?), "when I saw you in your apartment that last time you

said to me: *Leave now. Quickly, and don't ever come back here.' "

She did not reply and looked away.

"May I come again?

"May I?" I was more urgent now.

She was still silent as she stepped inside the opened door.

"Please," I said. "Please Natasha. Not often. Only sometimes. I'll call you. You say yes. Or no. But don't say no now. Leave me that one hope that I can see you again, talk with you again ... go for a walk . . . talk . . . may I hope for that?"

She nodded quickly and a moment later the door closed behind her. I walked back to the hotel.

Joan was asleep when I looked in. She was still sleeping when I got up the next morning. Schauberg, who was giving me my injections in the drawing room, told me: "Your condition is not at all good, dear Mr. Jordan. I'll have to try to wash your blood."

"What's that?"

"Nothing dangerous. It will make you feel good and help you through those last few days."

It was a routine studio day. Everybody was friendly and considerate. It hadn't stopped snowing. At night, on my way back to Hamburg, my car was stuck in a drift from which strangers helped drag it. When I entered my suite Joan, in her bedroom, was packing her suitcases. She wore no make-up and seemed old, her face gray. Her excessively blonde hair was dishevelled. She did not return my greeting.

"What's going on? What are you doing?"

She continued carrying dresses to the suitcases and did not look at me.

"Joan, I asked you, what are you doing!"

Without looking at me she replied, "I'm going home."

"Home?"

"Tonight. At midnight."

**But why? What happened?"

Now she stopped, very close to me, and she stared. In her usually gentle brown eyes I saw hate, terrible, dreadful, burning hate.

"You want to know what happened? Really? Do you really want to know?"

12

Rome, May twenty-sixth, 1960.

Today I was hypnotized for the third time.

Now I fall asleep after only a few minutes. The glowing little globe is not necessary any more. It is sufficient when Professor Pontevivo speaks to me and massages my neck and forehead. After today's session we talked. I told him how remarkably successful he had been in overcoming my initially negative attitude by saying, "It is very important that you keep your eyes open."

"I wanted to keep them open, Professor! I wanted to keep them open to—**

"—^to annoy me."

**Yes. To prove to you that I could not be hypnotized. But you said it was important that I keep them open. Your order confused me. I did not know what I could do to annoy you... and you succeeded."

"One can always succeed, Mr. Jordan. The exceptions are the insane. Insane persons cannot concentrate. The ability to concentrate is the only prerequisite for hypnosis. One reason why the patient must always be sober at a session. Most people doubt the success of treatment by hypnosis. Knowingly or subconsciously they also intend to resist the treatment, to show how strong-willed they are. As you have experienced, all that is taken into consideration. Your negative attitude helped me; it showed that you did not exclude the possibility of success. Else you

would not even have assumed a negative attitude! It is most difficult with people who are indifferent."

"How long does each session last? What I mean is: For how long do you talk to me? I always seem to sleep for hours afterward."

"It varies, Mr. Jordan. I have to be very careful to prevent your dependence on me. I want you to be healthy. A healthy human being is not dependent on anyone or anything. Since you have told me about Wanda it has become much easier for me. I know your guilt complex."

"What will you do now?"

"I shall try to remove it. And what else?"

"I don't know."

"I shall try to give you another complex."

"Another complex?"

"Certainly, Mr. Jordan." The slight, rosy-cheeked, white-haired man said breezily, "You are actually missing

one."

'What kind of complex?"

*You will see in time," answered the professor.

13

"You want to know, what happened?" asked Joan. "Really? Do you really want to know?"

"What kind of nonsense is this? Of course, I want to know!"

"Sit down."

Joan was suddenly a stranger to me. A woman I had never known, whose voice I had never heard. A woman who looked at me as if I were a murderer.

"This morning I was asked to come to the hotel office," said the woman to whom I had been married for ten years. "They were very polite. They told me that they had

waited for days now but since we had not returned the key they assumed that we did not know."

"Know what?"

"Know about the safe."

"What safe?"

"Shirley had rented a deposit box in the hotel safe. The gentlemen wanted the key returned. I looked for the key among Shirley's possessions. It took a long time because she had hidden the key in the lining of a handbag. Yes?"

"I didn't say anything."

"When we opened the box I, Shirley's mother, was asked to take its contents. Do you know what the box contained?"

"No."

She placed on a small table the valuable ring she had given to Shirley on the eve of their arrival in Hamburg.

"Your ring..."

"Yes. It is my ring again. Do you know what else was in the box?"

"What else?"

"A package of letters. About fifty. They were all addressed to Shirley. They had all been written by the same man."

I was sUent.

Joan's mouth twisted with contempt. She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a letter. Her voice was without expression as she read, "Dearest Heart, I know exactly how you must feel when you read this letter. Let me say right now, before anything else: I love you. I have never loved anyone as much as I love you ..."

It was the letter I had sent to Los Angeles on the day of my first attack. I had instructed her to destroy the letter but she had saved it. She had not destroyed any of my letters. Many times I had asked her, "Did you destroy my letter?" "Yes," she answered. "I burned it." "Do you bum an of them?" "Yes. All of them." "Right away?" "Right away." "Always?" "Always."

Obviously she had Ked.

"Shirley, my All, you must now be brave and sensible," Joan read, her voice frigid and expressionless. "It is impossible for you to have this child..."

She continued to read. It was a certainty that she also knew the contents of the other letters. I had always destroyed Shirley's letters. But women apparently find it difficult to part with love letters. They rent safes and hide those letters as if they were treasures and do not consider that they might die, any day, any hour, senselessly and horribly, as, for instance, under the wheels of a bus.

"... We shall have a child, Shirley—^but not this one. I am also writing to Gregory Bates. You know him ..."

One could not escape fate. Shirley was dead. I had thought that Joan would never find out the truth. Perhaps I would have left her. Perhaps not. Now, since Shirley was dead, that did not really matter. Perhaps we would have continued Hving together as we had until now. I had been certain that Joan would never have found out about Shirley and our love for each other.

"... Shirley, dearest Heart, you know I'm making this movie here in Hamburg for both of us ..."

Joan was still reading. I wanted her to stop but I lacked the strength to tell her to stop. Shirley, dead Shirley, had returned through my letters.

I remembered the words the priest had spoken at the grave. "I am the Resurrection and the Life . . . Whosoever believeth in Me shall live though he be dead ..."

Shirley had believed in Him. She was alive, risen from the dead, and present here in this room.

"... in my thoughts I am always with you—^united with you on the beach, on our boat, in the bungalow and the dunes, everywhere where we were happy together. Soon we will be again. Forever. Peter." Joan dropped the letter. Her eyes burning with hate, "p.s.," she said without looking at the letter, "As always, destroy this letter at once."

I remained silent and withstood her look.

"She didn't destroy it," said Joan. "And she saved all the other letters too. I have read them alL"

"NaturaUy," I said.

"I have already sent all the rest to my lawyer."

'Tsfaturally," I said.

"I talked to him, I have instructed him to start divorce proceedings."

"Naturally," I said.

"I have retracted the declaration which gave you half of all I own. As soon as I am in the States I shall make a formal complaint against you. My lawyer quoted me the paragraph applicable to you from the penal code of California. It says ..."

"I know what it says,"

"Then you admit it."

"I admit everything."

"Shirley was expecting your child?"

"Yes." To anticipate her next logical question (strange that just then I should think to protect Schauberg and his student) I said quickly, "I would have spoken to you as soon as the film was finished."

'What would you have told me then?"

"That I wanted a divorce since I did not love you any

more."

"Nothing else?"

**Nothmg else."

"No," she said, "nothing else, of course. Too bad Shirley kept your letters."

"It is dreadful that she died."

"That's too bad for you." She put the letter back into the pocket of her robe and began to pack again. "It's better for me this way. It makes everything I intend to do much easier. Do you know what I am going to do?"

"Everything possible to hurt me."

"Everything to destroy you."

"I know."

"I was not aware of anything until today. I never had one moment of doubt, not one moment when I distrusted you. My God! The wrong I have done to Shirley—all her life! I thought she was destroying our marriage. I was going to send her away ... my child ... and all the time it was you . .. you .. . you seduced her—didn't you—or are you going to deny that?"

"No," I said, "I'm not denying anything. I seduced her."

"I swear to you: I'm going to avenge Shirley!"

I thought: You, of all people, you want to avenge Shirley? You, who always hated her, sent her away, never loved her? No, you don't want to avenge Shirley, you want to revenge yourself! Which, after all, is your right and perfectly understandable.

"No woman could forgive what you have done. I cannot forgive you. Please go now."

I rose.

"I don't ever want to see you again. If you come back here tonight, if you should come to the airport, if you should try to prevent me from leaving tonight, I'll create the biggest scandal Hamburg has ever known."

"AU right, Joan," I said. "All right. Good-by."

She held a cocktail dress in her hands and her back was turned to me. She did not turn around again. She spoke into the bathroom. "For as long as I live: You can be sure of my hate and disgust for you."

I looked at her once more, the slim woman in the elegant robe, the woman with the exaggerated hair, the sloping shoulders which now began to twitch convulsively. This woman, her back turned to me, had begun to cry, sobbing intensely. I left the bedroom and closed the door. I never saw Joan again.

432

I

Schauberg called it '^washing blood." He did it for the first time orl the evening of December seventeenth.

Now there was only one bedroom adjoining the drawing room. Joan's bedroom had been locked; a cupboard hid the door.

I was lying on my bed. Schauberg was working in shirtsleeves. He had brought a dialyzing unit, an apparatus to which I was to be connected by means of tubes.

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

"In a shop which sells medical equipment"

"Anybody can buy that?"

"Anybody. Strange, isn't it? You could go into such a store and they would sell it to you. Everybody wants to make money."

"But isn't what you are doing here unlawful? It's charlatanism!"

"Dear Mr. Jordan, if everybody were to apply such rigid ethical standards half the equipment used in modern medicine could not be sold."

He bound my arm and the very large needle he inserted hurt for only a moment.

"What's this equipment supposed to do?"

"It is going to wash your blood, filter out the impurities. It won't take long. A drink and a couple of sleeping pills afterward and you'll be good as new by tomorrow!"