Necessary Lies(33)
Quebec Referendum. Before she came to Canada. Of course! These letters were written before she even met William. They are from the time she has no rights to. She reasons with her own uneasiness: William had a love affair when he was married to Marilyn. He didn’t tell her about it. He didn’t want her to think him unfaithful, capable of betrayal. Such reticence is disappointing, but understandable. It may even be thought of as discretion. She didn’t tell him that much about Piotr, either.
October, 1979. Blackness is like poison, a drain of colour, and I succumb slowly. First goes hope, then energy seeps out. I sit and stare at the walls of my room and wait until it goes away. I wait until, by some divine intervention, a new beginning will grab me, and I will rise to start again.
There are magazine articles attached to some of the letters, folded, yellowed at the edges. In German, in English. Anna pushes them aside, impatient. There will be plenty of time to read them later. Now she needs to be reassured. January 1980. No, it wasn’t too bad. Just a skirmish between creativity and despair. You needn’t be concerned. I plunge into such days willingly and emerge fortified. The sky is sapphire-blue and the wind penetrates the skin. I slipped into a small church, round the corner from here, smelled the whiff of camphor from the furs, and listened to the pastor with a golden tooth and a slight lisp. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” Not much hope, then, for change, nicht wahr? Today I woke up full of resolutions. Like a prisoner I may have nothing but a teaspoon to dig a tunnel with, but I will go on. As chance presents itself, I’ll dispose of the soil, sand, and stones.
March 1980. I went to touch the Wall today. The doors and windows of the apartments facing the Wall in the East are sealed. This is a divided city, after all; German metaphors are solid, made of reinforced concrete. The guards on the other side will shoot to kill. Yet the brave ones dig their tunnels, scale the Wall, run for their lives. If they manage to get here, I see them, sometimes, drinking themselves into oblivion in West German bars, throwing their accusations in our faces. To them we are cold, callous, and naive. We don’t understand anything.
It is the dates Anna is checking now. Date stamps, for many of the notes are not dated at all. She remembers that William kept a magnifying glass in one of his drawers. It is still there, in its black leather case. She examines these smudged dates, carefully. 1980, 1977. Some months are missing, or so it seems to her, but then they appear, merely misplaced, overlooked. William has known Ursula for a long time.
“A Berlin photographer I know,” he said to her once. For months there was no name attached to this phrase, and she didn’t ask.
In another conversation, she remembers hearing Ursula’s name. Someone mentioned it, Malcolm perhaps, asked him about his photographer-friend from Berlin. “Ursula?” William said and Anna asked, “Who?” and he said, “Ursula, you know, the German friend I told you about.”
From the tinge in his voice she knew that it gave him pleasure to hear her name spoken.
“Quite mad,” he also said, “doesn’t believe in sparing herself.”
Many of the notes are hand-written and these Anna has to decipher slowly, match the shapes of letters, guess their meaning. Life is too short for pettiness, she reads. You are too impatient, but I do love you. She skims over them waiting for the change of tone. Hopes for the signs of love fading, turning into friendship.
September 1981, What’s wrong with our love, William? It weakens me; it makes me mellow. I walk through the day with a self-satisfied grin on my face and see your smile everywhere. I catch myself whispering your words. I hum, I skip as I walk. Don’t be too pleased with yourself, though, this is a pitiful sight! This is why I’m asking you to stay away. Please don’t be angry, you won’t lose me, ever. You’ll just let me breathe, and for this I will love you even more.
October 1981, It’s our souls, darling; they cannot stand letting go of the other lives they could have led. It scares me to think how much we have to cast off in order to choose.
October 1981, A Polish woman and a refugee, William? Isn’t she another one of your atonements?
Her lip hurts, but it takes a few second before Anna realises that her teeth have sunk deep into it, cutting the skin. There is blood on her finger when she runs it over her lip, and she stares at the red smudge before wiping it off. She has run out of excuses. “Fool,” she says aloud, “fool.” Her mother’s voice is with her now. “What were you expecting, Anna, from a German?”
Each date now is like the lash of the whip. “Until the end,” she murmurs in disbelief, “until the very end.”
May, 1987. I’ve never promised I’ll be faithful, and I don’t ask for your exclusive interest. Oh, I know, you will never admit that you are jealous! You will just sulk and try to punish me with your silly little games. How sordid of me! Sorry! Am I hurting your sensitivity? Poor Willi. I don’t believe in secrecy, and I don’t hide you from anyone else in my life. You are the one who pretends that the past and the present can be kept apart and I let you, so, please spare me your little sermons.
March, 1989. Don’t sulk! I woke up in my darkest mood, today, despairing. I looked at the last shots and they were all wrong. False, contorted, smug. Too light, too clean. What rot! A good photograph is like a prediction, isn’t it? It captures something about the future, but you have to hurry before time turns it into a cliché. So I hurry, rush, follow my hunches.