Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [130]
“You’ll like the show. It’s a Russian show, but some of the pieces have never been seen in Moscow, not publicly.”
“Irina wrote the catalog,” Max said. “She really should be there.”
“It’s just about the provenance of the painting, Arkady, but the painting itself is beautiful.”
“Are critics allowed to use the word beautiful?” he asked.
“In this case,” she promised him, “it’s perfect.”
Arkady enjoyed hearing about this other life of hers, this new and independent mix of knowledge and opinions. He was now, as a benefit of experience, a skilled hauler of nets and gutter of fish. Why shouldn’t she be an expert on the arts? Max seemed just as proud.
From the backseat, he couldn’t tell at what point they crossed what had been the old East German border. As the highway narrowed they slowed for farm equipment that lunged in and out of the mist. When the road cleared, they raced ahead again, as if the three of them were in a bubble caught in a river fed by the rain.
There was a sense of suspended time in the situation. Part of it was Max’s self-control. Arkady thought Max had wanted to kill him in Moscow; instead he had let him escape to Munich. He was sure Max had wanted him dead in Munich, yet here he was driving him to Berlin. On the other hand, Arkady couldn’t touch Max. With what authority? As a refugee? He couldn’t even ask questions without Irina accusing him of using her again, without losing her a second time.
Max said, “Since Irina is going to be busy tomorrow, let me take you around the city. You’ve been to Berlin before?”
“In the army. He was stationed there,” Irina answered for Arkady. He was surprised she remembered.
“Doing what?” Max asked.
Arkady said, “Listening to the American command, translating for the Soviet command.”
Irina said, “Like you at Radio Liberty, Max.”
More and more she was given to sarcastic attacks on Max, and the walls of the bubble would tremble. Yet it was Max’s luxurious car they rode in, his destination they drove to. “I’ll show you the new Berlin,” he told Arkady.
When they reached the city late at night, the rain had stopped. They entered on the Avus, the old raceway through the Berliner Woods, then drove directly onto the Kurfürstendamm. Instead of the homogeneous affluence of Munich’s Marienplatz, the Ku’damm was a chaotic collision of West German shops and East German shoppers. For block after block, crowds in Socialist off-colors milled around display cases of silky Italian scarves and Japanese cameras. Their faces had the tight, poutish look of poor relations. A phalanx of skinheads marched in leather jackets and boots. Street lamps hung on ornate Nazi-era poles. Tables sold pieces of the Wall, with graffiti and without.
“It’s terrible, it’s a mess, but it’s alive,” Irina said. “That’s why the art market had always been here. Berlin is the only international city in Germany.”
Max said, “The city between Paris, Moscow and Istanbul.” He pointed to a sidewalk vendor with a rack of uniforms. Arkady recognized the gray chest and blue shoulders of a Soviet Air Force colonel’s greatcoat. The vendor himself was covered with Soviet military medals and ribbons from his collar to his belt. “You should have kept your uniform,” Max said.
Stas had forced a hundred Deutsche marks on Arkady before he left Munich; he had never been richer or felt poorer.
They passed the Kaiser Wilhelm Church’s shattered, floodlit brow. Looming behind it was a glass tower topped by a Mercedes star. Max left the boulevard and followed a dark, arterial route along a canal. All the same, Arkady’s internal compass began to function. Before they even reached Friedrichstrasse, he knew they were in what used to be East Berlin.
Max turned down the ramp of a garage. As they drove in, the garage lights automatically went on. A smell of wet cement hit their nostrils like the chlorine of a pool. Electrical junction boxes hung by wires from the walls.
“How new is this building?” Arkady asked.
Max said, “It’s still under construction.”
Irina said, “Believe me, no one will