Necessary Lies(73)

Anna has seen such notebooks before. There are a few of them in William’s study. Some black, some navy-blue. Imported from California. William used to buy them in the small stationery store on St. Catherine Street whose limping owner addressed him as Professor Herzman, accenting the second syllable, making it float. William’s favourite kind for jotting down compositions, notes that mean nothing to her. She can’t read music.

The notebook Ursula has brought with her is almost filled, and Anna leafs through it. There are no words in it, apart from a few titles: Another Dimension, Lament, Sonata for Solo Violin, Foray. Abstract, enigmatic titles William favoured. She puts the notebook back into the envelope and presses her fingers to her cheeks. The fingers are cool, soothing.

“Are you all right?” Ursula asks, leaning toward her.

“Yes,” Anna says, backing away. “I’m fine, perfectly fine,” but she doesn’t like the sound of her own voice, the plaintive note, the quiver. In the silence that follows, she waits for the time until the heaviness of her body lifts, allowing her to take a fuller breath.

“Why can’t you forgive him, Anna?”

This is really too much, Anna thinks. She doesn’t have to sit here and take Ursula’s fatuous comments. She doesn’t need to be preached at.

“And what makes you think I haven’t forgiven him?” Anna says.

It must be the abruptness of Anna’s movements that gives her away, for Ursula extends her hand as if she wanted to stop Anna from leaving. “Because you haven’t,” she says. “That’s not hard to see.”

But Anna has already dug into her purse extracting the plastic bag with Ursula’s letters. She is so clumsy. Her wallet and a packet of tissues fall out. She bends to pick them up from the floor.

“Here, take them,” she says standing up and puts the letters on the table, next to the empty tray. “They are yours.”

She puts a ten-mark note on the table to pay for the wine and rushes out of the café into the street.

“No! Wait,... Anna!” She can hear Ursula’s voice, trailing after her. “Don’t run away like that!”

Only when she is around the corner, Anna slows down and takes a deep breath. She does not go back to the hotel, but walks along the Berlin streets watching her reflection in the shop windows, transparent, ethereal, disappearing when the window ends, reappearing in another one. The walk calms her down, the cool wind soothes her cheeks. It’s done, she tells herself. It’s over. I can go home, now. I have seen her, and now I can go home.

Back in her hotel room she takes a long, warm shower and runs her hands over her naked body. Her skin is still smooth, still supple, and she no longer wants to be alone. She wants to be stroked, kissed. She wants to feel a man’s hot tongue on her thighs, making its way up, leaving a wet trail on her skin. A man, she thinks, crouched in the cooling bathtub, her arms over her breasts, and the word soothes her with its vagueness.

“You are not the whole world, William,” she murmurs. “You can be replaced.”

When the phone rings, she does not move. The phone keeps ringing again and again until it stops at half-ring, like a choke.


Next morning, Anna is out of breath when she reaches the American Express office. The woman behind the counter is trying to help. “Tomorrow is not possible. But I can get you on the one-thirty flight on Saturday. Unless there is a cancellation. Would you like me to call you if there is?”

“Yes,” Anna says. “Please.”

She has already packed all her things, folded her dresses and skirts, cleared her things out of the bathroom.

“Is it an emergency? Are you all right?” The travel agent has a smudge of lipstick on her teeth, and she is truly concerned. “Do you need any help?”

“I’m fine,” Anna says, suddenly embarrassed by the desperation in her voice for which she really has no reason. “No, please, I can wait a few more days. It’s not a problem.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

She does leave the name and the phone number of her hotel, just in case there is a cancellation, and walks back there to change. All she needs is some loose clothes and a pair of walking shoes. In a small kiosk she buys an English language guidebook to Berlin’s sights and a newspaper.

“Too fast,” she thinks, forcing herself to slow down. This agitated rush is irrational, she is trying to convince herself. She can stay in Berlin for a few days. It won’t change anything, for God’s sake. Stop. Take a deep breath, calm down. Another one, she orders herself. The city air carries the whiff of exhaust fumes. She has read somewhere that the first smell here after the Wall came down was the stink of the cheap, leaded gas of East German Trabbis.

In a small, outdoor café round the corner from the hotel, Anna sits down to read the morning paper. The International Herald Tribune speculates on the content of the Stasi files. Only a year ago the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin were stormed by protesters and rumours abound. The secret police files are so thick that if they were all stacked up they would reach well over a hundred miles. What experts they were! How busy! The Stasi kept an eye on trash dumps and lending libraries; they tapped the booths of Catholic confessionals and monitored public toilets. For years the army of handlers, with their courses in human psychology and their Marxist-Leninist training, was spying on six million East Germans, half the adult population.