George told the boy. ‘Speak.’
‘Ahoy,’ Serge said eventually.
‘Not Czech,’ George muttered, stooping down behind him. ‘English.’
The boy’s lips worked silently for a moment.
‘Hello,’ he said eventually.
Standing behind George, Radka clapped her hands loudly.
‘Bravo Liebling. Gut. Gut.’
‘Speak English,’ George said quickly, looking round. He stood up. ‘This is Radka.’
Joseph put out his hand to shake hers, but she came past George and grabbed his hands, pulling him towards her and kissing him on both cheeks. As she did this George watched with an ironical smile, as if he could sense Joseph’s unease at being cast in the role of an affectionate brother-in-law. The odd thing, Joseph thought, was that he could already sense the changes in George’s mood, and even work out what he was thinking.
‘You are just like him,’ Radka said, still holding his hands. Her voice had a husky sound, unexpectedly low in pitch. Joseph shrugged. After all, everything that had happened in the last hour had been a shock, and somehow it seemed natural and inevitable that the touch of Radka’s hands should be alive, tingling in his nerves like the aftermath of electricity.
They drank vodka sitting round the table. Serge sat opposite Joseph playing with a long thin glass filled with some kind of fruit juice. He was quiet, his eyes round and fixed on the visitor, and Joseph guessed that his English had been exhausted with the single word. Occasionally he asked his mother a question in German.
‘He wants to know,’ Radka said, ‘if you have seen a lion in Africa. Like the Lion King.’
Her eyes laughed at Joseph. They were a light blue, and against the slight tan of her skin they gave her face an exotic reckless look, as if she was making him a dare.
‘I saw one once in Africa,’ Joseph said. ‘But I live in London where they keep the lions in a zoo.’
Radka translated and the boy gave a sharp, ‘Ah,’ as she said the first bit. His eyes grew wider, glued to Joseph’s face.
‘My mother wanted to come,’ George said suddenly. ‘To see you. But her health is not good, you know.’
‘She lives in Berlin?’ Joseph asked politely.
There were many other questions that he wanted to ask instead, but with Serge’s eyes following his every move he felt constrained about challenging George. Looking across at the boy he wondered whether this was what his brother had intended. In the next instant he realised, with a slight shock, that for nearly an hour this had been how he was thinking about George. As his brother.
The first course was a cold beetroot soup, the earthy flavour heightened by the resin taste of the wine. Joseph’s head was swimming after his second glass, and he remembered that since they had arrived George had been drinking steadily. It didn’t seem to affect his manner, but Joseph could feel his own senses clouding.
‘She refused to leave,’ George said. ‘She lived in the same apartment until the Wall came down. Berlin is her home.’
‘And yours?’
George smiled.
‘For me change and movement is still possible.’
‘Can you come to Berlin?’ Radka asked. She took in Joseph’s look of surprise. ‘Katya was so excited to hear your voice. She wants to meet you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Joseph told her. ‘I’m leaving here in a couple of days.’
‘There is a message,’ she said, as if she had anticipated his reply.
She’d hardly completed the sentence before George broke in, speaking rapidly in German. Immediately Serge slid off his seat and stood next to Radka, reaching out to hold her hand.
‘It is now his bedtime,’ George told Joseph.
The boy seemed surprisingly obedient, walking round the table to shake hands with Joseph and then toddling off serious-faced behind Radka.
‘There is a message,’ George said.
He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and brought out a lilac-coloured envelope. On the front there were only two words, written in an elegant copperplate script. His father’s name – Kofi Coker.
Joseph turned the envelope over in his hands.
‘You’ll give this to him?’ George asked.
Joseph was about to say yes, then it occurred to him that in all the time he had been discussing his father with George he had never once considered the effect that this event might have on the old man. If it was true.
‘He had a heart attack a couple of years ago,’ he told George. As he said this he felt a curious sense, almost of betrayal, at revealing such an intimate matter.
‘He’s okay now?’
‘Yes,’ Joseph replied, ‘except I’m worried about how he’ll take all this. He’s an old man.’
If George understood the hint implicit in his words he ignored it. I’d take no notice too, Joseph thought, if it was my dad whom I’d never seen.
‘You must understand this,’ George said quickly. ‘My mother and father were separated by the authorities. She still loves him. Everyone loved him. He was known to everyone. Even Nikita Khrushchev spoke with him.’ He grinned at Joseph. ‘Maybe he was not such a great hero as she thinks, you know, but that is what she told me. This is forty years ago. She was fighting the rules when I was born.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Regulations. She could have made me never to exist – that would have been easy – or sent me away. But that would have been surrender.’ He looked away from Joseph, gazing through the French windows out into the evening sky. ‘This was not easy. I lived with a German family when I was a small boy, like Serge. I called the mother my mutti. You have two mothers, they told me. What a lucky boy. Then Katya married a German, an important policeman. He wanted to forget me, I think, but my mother insisted.’ He chuckled. ‘I think he hated me. No one would think I was his son, you know. But I was lucky. Only a few years, then he was killed.’ He got up and paced to the window without looking at Joseph. ‘My mother still speaks of Kofi, Kofi, Kofi, as if no time has passed. But I think she had believed that he was dead or lost, that she would never see or hear of him again. Then she hears you and her life begins. If she cannot touch him in some way she will die.’ He paused. ‘She is a woman of great passion.’
He said this last bit with a kind of gloomy pride. In the corner of the room the phone began to ring. George ignored it. The ringing stopped.
‘Maybe wrong number,’ George said carelessly.
‘Could it be your mother?’ Joseph asked. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say her name.
‘No. No. We spoke before. She is waiting for me to call.’
The ringing started again. After a while Radka came into the room
