Mexico Set

‘Werner is a Jew. He was born in Berlin when the Nazis were running things. Werner instinctively sees things in people that you and I have to learn about. You can’t compare his knowledge of Berlin and Berliners with anything I know.’

‘Calm down. Everyone knows Werner is your alter ego, and so mustn’t be criticized.’

‘What do you want? You can have “lean meat”, “pure meat”, “meat without fat” or “a bit of everything”.’

‘What’s the difference between …’

‘Don’t let’s get into semantics,’ I said. ‘Try surtido, that’s a bit of everything.’ Dicky nodded his agreement.

Dicky, who always showed a remarkable aptitude for feeding himself, now discovered that a carnitas stand is always conveniently close to those that sell the necessary accompaniments. He provided us with salsas and marinated cactus, and was now discovering that tortillas are sold by the kilo. ‘A kilo,’ he said as the tortilla lady disappeared with the payment and left him with a huge pile of them. ‘Do you think they’ll keep if I take them back for Daphne?’ He wrapped some of the pork into the top tortilla. ‘Delicious,’ he said as he ate the first one and took a second tortilla to begin making another. ‘What are all those pieces?’

‘That’s ear, and those pieces are intestine,’ I said.

‘You just wait until Daphne hears what I’ve been eating; she’ll throw up. Our neighbours came out to Mexico last year and stayed in the Sheraton. They wouldn’t even clean their teeth unless they had bottled water. I wish I had my camera so you could photograph me eating here in the market. Now what is it again – carnitas? I want to get it exactly right when I tell them.’

‘Carnitas,’ I said. ‘Surtido.’

Dicky wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and stood up and looked round the market square. Just from where we were sitting I could see people selling plastic toys, antique tables and gilt mirrors, cheap shirts, brass bedsteads, dog-eared American film magazines and a selection of cut-glass stoppers that always survive long after the decanters. ‘Yes,’ said Dicky. ‘It’s really quite a place, isn’t it? Fifteen million people perched at seven thousand feet altitude with high mountain tops all round them and thick smog permanently overhead. Where else could you find a capital city with no river, no coastline and such lousy roads? And yet this is one of the oldest cities the world has ever known. If that doesn’t prove that the human race is stone-raving mad, nothing will.’

‘I hope you don’t think I’m going to walk right up to Stinnes and offer him a chance to defect,’ I said.

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Dicky. ‘The Volkmanns already know him. Shall we let them make the first overtures?’

‘Werner doesn’t work for the department. You just told me that.’

‘Correction,’ said Dicky. ‘I said that Werner’s knowledge of Berlin is not sufficient reason for using him in Berlin. Let’s remember that Werner has had a “non-critical employment only” tag on his file.’

‘You can be a spiteful bastard, Dicky,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about that signals leak in 1978. You know very well that Werner was completely cleared of suspicion.’

‘It was your wife who did it,’ said Dicky. Suddenly he was angry. He was angry because he’d never suspected Fiona of leaking secrets, and now I realized that Dicky saw me as someone who had helped to deceive him rather than as Fiona’s principal victim.

The sky was darkening with clouds now and there was the movement of air that precedes a storm. I never got used to the speedy effects of the heat and humidity. The sweet smell of fresh fruits and vegetables had filled the air when we first arrived at the market. Now it was already giving way to the smells of putrefaction as the spoiled, squashed and broken produce went bad.

‘Yes, it was my wife who did it. Werner was innocent.’

‘And if you’d listened you’d have heard me say that Werner has had a “non-crit” tag on his file. I didn’t say it was still there.’

‘And now you’re going to ask Werner to enrol Stinnes for you?’

‘I think you’d better put it to him, Bernard.’

‘He’s on holiday,’ I said. ‘It’s a sort of second honeymoon.’

‘So you told me,’ said Dicky. ‘But my guess is that they are both getting a bit bored with each other. If you were on your honeymoon – first, second or third – you wouldn’t want to spend the evenings in some broken-down German club in a seedy part of town, would you?’

‘We haven’t seen the club yet,’ I reminded him. ‘Perhaps it’s tremendous.’

‘I love the way you said that, Bernard. I wish I could have recorded the way you said “tremendous”. Yes, it might be Mexico’s answer to Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, or the Paris Lido, but don’t bank on it. You see, if it was me on a second honeymoon with that delectable little Zena, I’d be in Acapulco, or maybe finding some sandy little beach where we could be undisturbed. I wouldn’t be taking her along to the Kronprinz club to see who’s winning the bridge tournament.’

‘The way it’s turned out,’ I said, ‘you’re not taking the delectable little Zena anywhere. I thought I heard you saying you didn’t like her. I remember you saying that one honeymoon with Zena would be enough for you.’ From the sulphurous yellow sky there came a steady drum-roll of thunder, an overture for a big storm.

Dicky laughed. ‘I admit I was a little hasty,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t been away from home for very long when I said that. The way I feel now, Zena is looking sexier and sexier every day.’

‘And you think talking to Stinnes about Western democracy and the free world will give the Volkmanns a new interest in life,’ I said.

‘Even allowing for your sarcasm, yes. Why don’t you put it to them and see what they say?’

‘Why don’t you put it to them and see what they say?’

‘Look at those children and the donkey and the old man with the sombrero. That would make the sort of photo that wins prizes at the Photo Club. I was so stupid not to bring a camera. But have you seen the sort of price you have to pay for a camera in this country? The Americans are really putting the squeeze on the peso. No, I think you should put it to them, Bernard. You get hold of Werner and talk with him, and then he could go along to the Kronprinz Club tonight and see if Stinnes is there.’ He stopped at a stall to watch a man making chiles rellenos, putting meat fillings into large peppers. Each one got a big spoonful of chopped chillies before being deep-fried and put in a garlicky tomato sauce. Just looking at it made me feel queasy.

‘Werner will have to know what London is prepared to offer Stinnes. I assume there will eventually be a big first payment, a salary and contractual provisions about the size of the house they’ll get and what sort of car and so on.’

‘Is that the way it’s done?’ said Dicky. ‘It sounds like a marriage contract.’

‘They like it defined that way because you can’t buy houses in East Europe and they don’t know the prices of cars and so on. They usually want to have a clear idea of what they are getting.’

‘London will pay,’ said Dicky. ‘They want Stinnes; they really want him. That’s just between us, of course; that’s not for Werner Volkmann to know.’ He touched the side of his nose in a conspiratorial gesture. ‘No reasonable demand will be refused.’

‘So what does Werner say to Stinnes?’ On the cobbled ground there were shiny black spots appearing one after the other in the grey dust. The rain had come.

‘Let’s keep it all very soft-sell, shall we?’ said Dicky. His wife Daphne worked in a small advertising agency. Dicky told me that it had very aggressive methods with really up-to-date selling techniques. Sometimes I got the feeling that Dicky would like to see the department being run on the same lines. Preferably by him.

‘You mean we don’t brief Werner?’

‘Let’s see how the cookie crumbles,’ said Dicky. It was an old advertising expression that meant put your head in the sand, your arse in the air and wait for the explosion.

My prediction that the rain came only in the afternoons was only just right. It was a few minutes after one o’clock when the rain started. Dicky took me in the car as far as the university, where he was to see one of his Oxford friends, and there – on the open plaza – let me out into steady rain. I cursed him, but there was no hostility in Dicky’s self-interest; he would have done the same thing to almost anyone.

It was not easy to get a cab but eventually an old white VW beetle stopped for me. The car’s interior was battered and dirty, but the driver’s position was equipped like the flight deck of a Boeing jet. The dashboard was veneered in walnut and there was an array of small spanners and screwdrivers and a pen-shaped flashlight as well as a large coloured medallion of the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In contrast to the derelict bodywork of the little car, the young driver was dressed in a freshly starched white shirt with a dark-grey tie and looked more like a stockbroker than a cab driver. But Mexico is like that.

The traffic moved slowly through the heavy rain but it didn’t make less noise. There were two-stroke motorcycles and cars with broken mufflers and giant trucks – some so carefully painted up that every bolt-head, rivet and wheel-nut was picked out in different colours. Here on the city’s outskirts, the wide boulevard was lined with a chaos of broken walls, goats grazing on waste ground, adobe huts, rubbish tips, crudely painted shop-fronts in primary colours and corrugated-iron fences defaced with political slogans and ribaldry. Despite the rain, drunks sprawled full-length on the pavement and the barbecue fires hissed and flared at the taco counters.

By the time we got near to Werner Volkmann’s apartment, the rainstorm was flooding the gutters and making great lakes through which the traffic splashed, and in which it sometimes stalled. There was a constant racket of car horns and engines being over-revved by nervous drivers. The cab moved slowly, and I watched drenched and dirty kids offering dry, clean lottery tickets that were protected inside clear plastic bags. And plenty of well-dressed shoppers had chauffeurs who could hold an umbrella in one hand and open the door of a limousine with the other. I couldn’t imagine Zena Volkmann anywhere but here in the Zona Rosa. Within the area contained by the Insurgentes, Sevilla and Chapultepec there are the big international hotels, smart restaurants, the shops with branches in Paris and New York. And in the crowded cafés that spill out on to the pavement are to be heard every new rumour, joke and scandal that this outrageous town provides in abundance.

Zena Volkmann could live anywhere, of course. But she preferred to live in comfort. She’d learned to respect wealth, and the wealthy, in a way that only a poverty-stricken childhood teaches. She was a survivor who’d climbed up the ladder without benefit of any education beyond reading and writing and painting her face, plus a natural ability to count. Perhaps I did her an injustice but sometimes I had the feeling that she would do anything if the price was high enough, for she still had that fundamental insecurity that one bout of poverty can inflict for a lifetime, and no amount of money remedy.

She made no secret of her feelings. Even amid the contrasts of Mexico she showed no great interest in the plight of the hungry. And like so many poor people she had only contempt for socialism in any of its various forms, for it is only the rich and guilty who can afford the subtle delights of egalitarian philosophies.

Zena Volkmann was only twenty-two years old but she’d lived with her grandparents for much of her childhood. From them she’d inherited a nostalgia for a Germany of long ago. It was a Protestant Germany of aristocrats and Handküsse, silvery Zeppelins and student duels. It was a kultiviertes Germany of music, industry, science and literature; an imperial Germany ruled from the great cosmopolitan city of Berlin by efficient, incorruptible Prussians. It was a Germany she’d never seen; a Germany that had never existed.

The elaborate afternoon Kaffee-Trinken that she’d prepared was a manifestation of her nostalgia. The delicate chinaware into which she poured the coffee, and the solid-silver forks with which we ate the fruit tart, and the tiny damask napkins with which we dabbed our lips were all parts of a ceremony that was typically German. It was a scene to be found in the prosperous suburbs of any one of a hundred West German towns.

Zena’s brown silk afternoon dress, with embroidered collar and hem below the knee, made her look like a dedicated hausfrau. Her long dark hair was in two plaits and rolled to make the old-fashioned ‘earphone’ hairstyle virtually unknown outside Germany. And Werner, sitting there like an amiable gorilla, had gone to the extent of putting on his tan-coloured tropical suit and a striped tie. I was only too aware that my old rain-wet open-necked shirt was not exactly de rigueur, as I balanced the coffee-cup on the knee of my mud-splashed nylon pants.

While Zena had been in the kitchen I’d told Werner about my trip to Biedermann’s house, about the Russians I’d seen there and Biedermann’s confession to me. Werner took his time to answer. He turned to look out of the window. On a side-table the broken fragments of a cup and saucer had been arranged in a large ashtray. Werner moved the ashtray to the trolley that held the TV. From this sixth-floor apartment there was a view across the city. The sky was low and dark now, and the rain was beating down in great shimmering sheets, the way it does only in such tropical storms. He still hadn’t answered by the time Zena returned from the kitchen.

‘Biedermann always was a loner,’ said Werner. ‘He has two brothers, but Paul makes all the business decisions. Did you know that?’