In the Mouth of the Bear Read online

had been casual: people may have met here, but few stayed. Except us.

  It was after five: the last of the electro-pop had been played on the bar's cheap stereo; Howard Jones had given way to reels and wailing from somewhere round Zagreb. It was the signal to drink up and leave, bat-blind in the dawn. Unless, of course, you were favoured guests, foot up on the rail at the Stammtisch.

  'Reckon we'd better go?' I said jerking my head towards Phil.

  'Aye, he's cocked it up alright? haha...' Jock slurred a little.

  'Very funny: I'm surprised she let us use the table.'

  ' You're no' wrong. Phil's awfy gubbed, eh?'

  'Feeling guilty, I bet'.

  I asked for the bill. Only in Berlin; a rootless Brit speaking fractured German to a Yugoslavian emigr?e. She'd be a Bosnian Serb nowadays. Berlin was full of 'Balkan' restaurants, Yugoslav run bars -and clip-joints. Phil had complained one night in the Elephant Bar before the cabaret; a whore had hit him, he'd said, to a very large man with a shaven head and a silver-coloured front tooth. What you do? The man had asked, his English as good as his German. Nothing, nothing, Phil had protested, I only asked her what part of Balkania she was from. Maybe the heavy'd just decided against beating someone already brain-damaged; he'd given an angry growl and thrown all of us out.

  Nada offered one for the road; a Bismarck. A powerful schnapps she saved for special occasions. Like Phil's birthday, six months ago.

  The big galoot had got comatose on it: Nada had taken him home. Next days off, in the early evening, I'd asked her what went on.

  'Nichevo, nichts, nothing' the smile had spread across her face, making her look 30-ish - not forty something.

  'What? What's the joke?'

  'First the British sink the Bismarck? then the Bismarck sink the British!'

  She'd exploded with laughter. Tears rolling; the years falling off her as they did. She was an attractive woman; twenty years older than all of us; me, Jock and Phil. The offer of a schnapps for the road seemed genuine.

  Maybe Phil hadn't queered the pitch after all. Nada's brown eyes were blackly unreadable in the crepuscular gloom of the bar. I accepted the drinks for all of us.

  'He's had enough! Just you.' She hissed.

  Phil didn't notice. The grin stayed, but he wasn't there. His body could have followed his mind and left us with the Cheshire teeth gleaming. Nada's lips were taut, every movement was accompanied by a toss of her black hair. Glasses clattered onto the shelves. Her heels machine gunned across the tiles behind the bar. I knew where she was aiming.

  We should all have named Nada as a 'foreign contact'. Any foreign national you met more than once had to be declared to the correct authorities. I'd never have had time to go to work. Anyway, checking up on us gave the men in the sports jackets and brogues something to do. While they missed the real spies in the next door office at the base headquarters.

  Jock eyed this one last drink warily, as if suspecting a mickey. That was ludicrous; we were on the Ku'damm not in Kreuzberg. I raised my glass.

  'Zdorovye, Nada!' I tossed it off in the Slavic style, pretended to throw the glass, before carefully setting it on the copper bar-top. She didn't return the toast. Unusual, but not unexpected in the circumstances.

  'Let us buy you something, Nada.' I suggested.

  'You'll take a whiskey, aye!' said Jock, who never touched the stuff. 'You've the Talisker away up there.' Thereby proving he could read and bluff at the same time.

  Jock was always the most reluctant to leave this bar. After the night of Phil's birthday he hadn't spoken to him for a week. It had been quiet in his car on the way to work. I'd felt like a SALT talks interpreter, a go-between for the irreconcilable.

  'Take him home,' she couldn't say his name.

  'Of course we will'. We chorused, anxious to placate.

  'Don't come back, not with him.'

  She hawked, and spat with vigour on the gleaming copper, in front of the oblivious Phil.

  Error of Judgement

  'We're knackered, now!' I said, out of breath. Doc rolled his eyes, unable to reply, busy heaving in a huge gulp of air, purple with exertion. And why not? It's hard to run after fifteen hours on the toot, as he so quaintly called it. He was dressed as usual according to the Border Farmer's Template #2 : Dances, informal dinners and meetings at the bank. That is, stout brogues, twill and Harris Tweed jacket. Not a common look in the fleshpots of Berlin, I admit.

  We were knackered. Stuffed, stymied, stiffed or just plain fucked, if you prefer. The concrete wall at the end of our blind alley truly marked it as a dead end. Our pursuers hadn't yet followed us in, but they would.

  'What the hell did you say to him, eh?' Not that it mattered, the tall figure had taken the worst kind of offence.

  'I only asked him if he got fed up of ruining his tights on the bristles on his legs!'

  Doc seemed to think this a perfectly reasonable question. And it might have been? On neutral ground; the Hofbrauhaus opposite the Zoo, say, or the Irish Bar in the Europa Centre. But we hadn't been on neutral ground. Ranke Drei, the Warsteiner Pub had kicked out at two a.m. We hadn't had too much to drink then, since we'd left under our own steam with only a few expletives to help us on our way. Friendly ones that is; Adriana, behind the bar, had once gone out with a Royal Welch Fusilier from Mountain Ash and the only English she could remember was 'Fuck off, you English bastards'. Useful in the valleys I suppose. So, at 2.15 we'd had a choice; a taxi ride to Charlottenburg and ten marks a beer, or nip further off the beaten track into the bars on the sidestreets off the Ku'damm and Uhlandstrasse. We'd been in a few of these before, and, well, if we didn't find precisely the one we wanted, we'd stumble on another.

  'Shall we no get a taxi, then?' Doc said. Not a big fan of exercise, we hadn't seen a light in an hour of walking.

  ' Look, we're bound to find one in a minute? turn left here.'

  I looked up at the street sign; 'Katzenjammerstrasse' it looked like. We took the turn. About fifty yards down was a violent splash of pink neon: 'Fingerhutte' it read.

  'What's it called?' asked Doc.

  'It means 'Thimbles'.' I replied.

  What sort of name for a pub is that?'

  'It's a good name for one that's still open.' I said.

  It had about five metres of frontage, so I reckoned they were saving a lot on rates. The sign was as wide as the pub. The window looked very dark. There was a priest's hole arrangement on the door. We knocked.

  'Are you open?' I asked, in pigeon German.

  'Of course.' A shaved moustachioed head looked us both up and down. 'Are your sure you want to come in?'

  'Of course we are. I'm gagging for a drink.' Doc told him.

  The lights inside reflected off the gatekeeper's pate as he bent to draw back the bolts. Doc gave me a relieved grin and a thumbs up as he barged past on his way to the bar.

  'Have you ordered yet?' I asked him after a hard fight to get alongside him.

  ''course I have. Two beers.' He smiled proudly at me.

  'You weren't asked if you'd prefer a snowball?'

  'What are you on about?'

  'Just look around the bar, Doc. Don't kick off, just take a look.'

  He looked. Then he looked like he'd stepped into a bar on another planet.

  'Its? we're? ' he couldn't even say it.

  I put my hand on his arm.

  'Yeah, that's right. Listen, what we're going to do is?' ' drink our beer, speak when we're spoken to, pay the bill, leave a good tip and go, alright?'

  He nodded slowly, like a serious child.

  It was a small operation. The shaven headed biker-type was doing duty as the only barman. He nodded at me, maybe he was saying I'd handled the situation ok. The clientele was quite subdued; maybe that was our fault. The music was playing at a civilised level for conversation; Erasure, Andy and Vince churning out electro-pop. I felt sorry for Doc: I don't expect there were many places like this in Galashiels, not in 1984 at least.


  Inevitably, someone came up to try their luck. Jacket and tie, fashionably cut he looked like a lawyer or a banker. He spoke immaculate English:

  'Your first time here?' he raised an eyebrow at me.

  'Yep, a mutual friend has played a joke on us?' I gestured at Doc and shrugged.

  'Ah? you won't be staying, then?'

  'We'll finish our beer if that's ok?'

  'Of course, my name is Kurt. I am the owner, please have another drink and then by all means take your leave.'

  He smiled, I expect this wasn't the first time, someone had blundered in by mistake. Kurt held two fingers up to the biker and made his retreat. I was starting to think we would depart with our dignity - and the other customers' - intact. Doc drained the last of his second beer. I winked at Kurt and headed for the exit. I stepped round a tall woman. And Doc didn't. I was half way out the door. Turning, I saw an amicable conversation? until a large meaty hand slapped Doc's face. I went back grabbed his arm and frog-marched him out. The door slammed behind us. We stood under the street light, I was too angry to speak. The door opened, Kurt and the tall woman came out shouting

  'Hey, wait?!

  But we were already running.

  'This way, it's this way. Two left turns and we'll be on the Kanstrasse, in the light and in the traffic, come on.'

  We ran. I was wrong. So we were waiting by overflowing skips, in front of a concrete wall, in a dead-end street.

  'Ready for a kickin' then?' asked Doc.

  'Have to be, won't we?'

  Kurt and the woman appeared at the alley mouth. I could see Doc tense up.

  'You really must be more careful, gentlemen!' said Kurt, as he handed