"Left over," someone translated needlessly. "It has no meaning, Mr. Schulmann. It is left over."
The moment was past, the gap had sealed, and the next glimpse Alexis had of Schulmann,he was poised discreetly at the door, in the act of leaving, his broad head turned part way towards Alexis, his watch arm raised, but in the manner of somebody consulting his stomach rather than the time. Their eyes did not quite meet, yet Alexis knew for certain that Schulmann was waiting for him, willing him across the room and saying lunch. The Silesian was still droning on, the audience still standing aimlessly round him like a bunch of grounded airline passengers. Detaching himself from its fringe, Alexis tiptoed quickly after the departing Schulmann. In the corridor,Schulmann grasped his arm in a spontaneous gesture of affection. On the pavement--it was a lovely sunny day again--both men took off their jackets and Alexis afterwards remembered very well how Schulmann rolled his up like a desert pillow while Alexis hailed a taxi and gave the name of an Italian restaurant on a hilltop on the far side of Bad Godesberg. He had taken women there before, but never men, and Alexis, in all things the voluptuary, was always conscious of first times.
On the drive they barely spoke. Schulmann admired the view and beamed about with the serenity of one who has earned his Sabbath, though it was midweek. His plane, Alexis recalled, was scheduled to leave Cologne in early evening. Like a child being taken out from school, Alexis counted the hours this would leave them, assuming Schulmann had no other engagements, a ridiculous but wonderful assumption. At the restaurant, high up on the Caecilian Heights, the Italian padrone made a predictable fuss of Alexis, but it was Schulmann who quite rightly enchanted him. He called him"Herr Professor" and insisted on preparing a big window table that could have seated six. Below them lay the old town, beyond it the winding Rhine with its brown hills and jagged castles. Alexis knew that scenery by heart, but today, through the eyes of his new friend Schulmann,he saw it for the first time. Alexis ordered two whiskies. Schulmann did not object.
Gazing appreciatively at the view while they waited for their drinks to arrive,Schulmann finally spoke: "Maybe if Wagner had left that fellow Siegfried in peace, we might have had a better world of it, after all," he said.
For a moment, Alexis could not understand what had happened. His day till then had been crowded; he had an empty stomach and a shaken mind. Schulmann was speaking German! In a thick, rusted Sudeten accent that grizzled like a disused engine. And speaking it, moreover, with a contrite grin that was both a confession and a drawing-together in conspiracy. Alexis let out a small laugh,Schulmann laughed too; the whisky came and they drank to each other, but with none of the heavy German ceremony of "look, sip and look again," which Alexis always found too much, especially with Jews, who instinctively saw something menacing in German formality.
"They tell me you are getting a new job soon, down in Wiesbaden,"Schulmann remarked, still in German, when these mating ceremonies were behind them. "Some desk job. Bigger but smaller, I hear. They say you are too much man for the people here. Now that I have seen you, and seen the people--well, I am not surprised."
Alexis tried not to be surprised either. Of the details of a new appointment nothing had been said--only that one would be forthcoming. Even his replacement by the Silesian was still meant to be a secret; Alexis had not had time to breathe a word of it to anyone, not even his young girlfriend, with whom he conducted rather meaningless phone calls several times a day.
"That's the way it goes, huh?"Schulmann remarked philosophically, speaking as much to the river as to Alexis. "In Jerusalem, believe me, a man's life is equally precarious. Upstream, downstream. That's the way it goes." He seemed a little disappointed, all the same. "I hear she's a nice lady too," he added, once again crashing in upon his companion's thoughts. "Attractive, bright, loyal. Maybe she's too much woman for them."
Resisting the temptation to turn the occasion into a seminar upon the problems of his own life, Alexis directed the conversation towards this morning's conference, but Schulmann answered vaguely, remarking only that technicians never solved anything, and that bombs bored him. He had asked for pasta and ate it the prisoner's way, using his spoon and fork automatically, not bothering to look down. Alexis, afraid to interrupt his flow, kept as quiet as he knew how.
First, with an older man's ease of narrative,Schulmann embarked upon a mildly worded lament about Israel's so-called allies in the anti-terror business: "Back in January, when we were running a quite different investigation, we called on our Italian friends," he declared, in a voice of homey reminiscence.
"Showed them some nice proofs, gave them some good addresses. Next thing we knew, they had arrested a few Italians, while the people that Jerusalem were after sat safe back home in Libya looking bronzed and rested, waiting for their next assignment. That was not what we had intended." A mouthful of pasta. A dusting of the lips with the napkin. Food is fuel for him, thought Alexis; he eats so that he can fight. "In March, when another matter came up, it was the same story exactly, but that time we were dealing with Paris. Certain Frenchmen were arrested but nobody else. Certain officials got some nice applause too, and, thanks to us, promotion. But the Arabs"--he made a large, indulgent shrug. "Expedient it may be. Sound oil policy, sound economics, sound everything. Justice it isn't. And justice is what we like." His smile broadened, in direct contrast to the scale of the joke. "So I would say that we have learned to be selective. Better tell too little than too much, we have decided. Somebody is nicely disposed towards us, has an impressive record--a fine father in his background, like yours--with him we will do business. Guardedly. Informally. Between friends. If he can use our information constructively for himself, advance himself in his profession a little--all the-better that our friends should obtain influence in their professions. But we want our half of the deal. We expect people to deliver. Of our friends we expect this particularly."
It was the nearest Schulmann ever came, that day or later, to stating the terms of his proposition. As to Alexis, he did not state anything at all. He let his silence declare his sympathy. And Schulmann,who understood so much about him, seemed to understand this too, for he resumed their conversation as if the bargain had been struck and they were squarely in business together.