Quiller Memorandum

1 POL A couple of air-hostesses came in through the glass doors, crisp and pure-looking in Lufthansa uniform. They looked once at the group of pilots who stood at the soft-drinks bar and then swung on their spiked heels to preen themselves in the mirrors. The pilots turned to watch them, all of them tall, all of them blond. Nobody spoke. Another girl came in and touched her reflected hair before she turned away and studied her shining fingertips at arm's length, glancing up just once at the tall blond men, looking down again with her head tilted, admiring her spread fingers as if they were flowers. One of the young men grinned and looked among his friends to see who would join him in an approach toward the girls, but nobody moved. A light flashed rhythmically across and across the window, coming from the airport beacon. The two girls left the mirrors, glanced again at the pilots, and then stood neatly with their feet together and their hands behind them. Everybody seemed to be waiting. The boy who had grinned to his friends seemed to venture a step toward the hostesses, but another blocked his foot and the boy shrugged, folding his arms. Into the silence was rising the sound of a jet airliner starting up outside. This was what they had been waiting for and they all turned toward the center, looking upward, listening, all of them smiling now. The rising sound of the aircraft was not yet very loud, so that I heard the door of the box being opened behind my chair; a wedge of light came against the wall and then went out. Clearly visible through the big window the dorsal lamp of the airliner began winking, and the sound of the jets leveled out to an even pitch. The pilots tensed and the hostesses took a few delicate eager steps toward the doors, with their bodies turned to face the group of boys. I was aware that someone had come into the box and was standing behind me. I did not turn my head. Then the pilots moved in a body toward the center, and the prettiest of the girls flung out her hands and called eagerly: "Who's for the air?" The tallest of the boys responded: "I am!" His friends chorused to the first notes of the music: "We are!" "Who's for the sky?" sang the girls, and they were into the number. Under cover of the music, the man sat down in the chair next to mine, shifting it at an angle so that he could face me obliquely. The glow from the stage defined one side of his head and gleamed along the side piece of his glasses. "Windsor," he introduced himself. "Who's for a wide blue sky-high fling?" "We are! We're on the wing!" "I'm sorry to break into your evening." The man spoke the kind of English that is heard only on the cold war propaganda networks, the accent unplaceable but definitely there. "Don't apologize," I said. "This show had too good a press." I had broken a rule, and didn't care. I had come here because tomorrow I was going home and I wanted to take away a memory, however trivial, of the New Liberal Germany that people talked so much about. The Neukomodietheater was said to be the center of fresh youthful gaiety (Suddeutsche Zeitung) where the new generation was making its breakthrough to a kind of music that had not been heard before (Der Spiegel). No one had mentioned the corn. "What a pity you are disappointed," murmured the man, "on your last night in Berlin." He glanced down at the stage and then moved his chair back quietly. "Perhaps I can interest you by way of conversation." For a momHall, Adam is the author of 'Quiller Memorandum ', published 2004 under ISBN 9780765309686 and ISBN 0765309688.