The Junkers [antikvár]

Part One Chapter One This is what happened to me in Germany. I was living in Berlin in 1963, posted there as second Secretary in the office of our Political Adviser to the Ck)mmander-in-Chief to serve the interests of my coimtry. Great Britain. I spent much of my time sitting in the cafés on the Kurfürstendanmxj normally Ztmtz or Kempinskij watching the pretty girls eating cake and drinking coflfee. Among their long legs - brown from the infra-red lamps in their smaU rooms - and the narrow trousers of their boy-friends, there were the long skirts of their landladies and, occasionally, the wide trousers with tum-ups covering polished, laced shoes - those of Helmuth von Rummelsberg. I noticed him not because of the wide trousers and turnups but because of the girl who always sat with him. Of all the girls in the Zuntz or Kempinski cafés, of all those in the Old Vieima, the Paris Bar or the Eden Saloon, she was the most beautiful and she was the one I came to love. After only a month in Berlin I started to go up to the Kur-fiirstendamm for tea. I was introduced to this habit by the first friend I made while I was there, Armand Foch, my equivalent in the office of the French Political Adviser. We were toth free at that time of day and liked to meet to discuss our experiences of the night before or our plans for the night to come - plans and experiences of a sort Armand did not take to my girl but he was impressed by my fidelity to this figure at another table and in time she took on an identity and worth beyond that of all the other pretty girls. One afternoon Axmand brought a miniature camera which, he said, was standard issue to those working for the French in the East. We sat at a table quite near to the man and the girl and Armand, with professional discretion, took some snaps from which I can describe what she was like then because I have them in front of me now. There are three photographs: in two of them she was looking at Helmuth von Rummelsberg and since Armand was sitting behind him she seems now to be looking at me. It