Read Online The Berlin Assignment by Adrian de Hoog - Free Book Online

beggars from Eastern Europe transforming the city’s sidewalks, turning them into obstacle courses. Martina acknowledged all this was true, but countered it was wonderful too how East Berlin was responding to freedom. “Take cabaret,” she said. “It’s razor sharp there. They really know how to cut us up. I mean
all
of us, from East
and
West. It’s exhilarating. You ought to go.”
    After Gottfried delivered two cappuccinos, Martina said, “Have I told you about Helmut? What he says about the universities is remarkable. Students in the West want to study in the East, and vice versa. Young blood is so versatile. Some days I think we should all have a transfusion.”
    No, Sabine had not heard of Helmut. “Oh…Doctor Kraft, professor at Humboldt University. An elegant man. He survived the recent academic purge. He’s a linguist, a wonderful English speaker, but more than that…” Martina dropped her voice to a confidential whisper, “…he admits he’s always desired Western women. The Wall stimulated his fantasies. He says that even now he finds thinking of women from the other side as erotic. What an invitation! And he’s not the only one that thinks like that. We need to take advantage of such sentiments, Sabine, before they disappear. I could help you with some introductions.”
    As she described Professor Kraft’s longings, Martina placed her hand on Sabine’s, a token of their bond. Whenever Martina described a newlover, she took Sabine’s hand this way. There was never an old lover, a fading lover, or a problem lover in Martina’s life. There were only new lovers. And at their corner table in the library of Café Einstein, Martina would talk about them with the enthusiasm of a child.
    The rain had eased when they finished lunch, although the leaden clouds continued racing eastward, as if on a seek-out-and-destroy mission. “Next week?” asked Sabine. “Of course,” Martina replied, jabbing her umbrella at a passing taxi. Delivering airy kisses to each of Sabine’s cheeks, she solemnly remarked, “If by then I’ve had a chance to cheat on Helmut, you’ll be the first to know.”
    On Wednesdays, Sabine did not return to the bookstore after lunch, a concession won from Geissler when Nicholas was an infant. When she first asked for a shorter working week – Wednesday afternoons off – the discussion faltered before it began. Shaking his head, he had lumbered away into the store’s dark recesses, hiding there until closing time. But on her third attempt he relented, even though afterwards he sulked for weeks. Even now, ten years later, Geissler could still be strange on Wednesdays. When her stepmother died, Nicholas being older by then, Sabine transferred her few hours of free time each week from her son to her father.
    Müller was suspicious at first. “I’m too busy,” he said when his daughter called to say she wanted to come around. She tried to make light of her plans. “Children have a right to see their parent.”
    â€œYou think you have a right to see me?” the old lawyer grumbled. “That’s different. Your generation thinks mostly about inheritance rights. But visiting rights? They exist. Of course they do. In prisons. What are you trying to say? That I’m a prisoner of old age?” The daughterlaughed. The father continued. “I can’t keep track of all the rights nowadays. Soon there will be a law that creates a right to die. Then someone will claim it has to be balanced with the right
not
to die. The world will then be divided into two camps – those that want to live forever and those that want to die forever. But if you insist, I suppose you can come. Don’t stay long though. I’m very busy.” Although he tried not to show it, her father was delighted by the visit. Sabine could tell. It was the first afternoon they