Necessary Lies(74)
Everything was recorded, Anna reads, the size of your shoes, the smell of your underwear, invaluable in sniffing out the author of a pamphlet found in the street. In your file, if you have one, you might find the exact words you whispered to your lover, the colour of the socks you had on when you last took the garbage out. Every graffiti was photographed, every rumour or joke written down.
Soon, she reads, the files will be opened to public scrutiny. Every German citizen will be able to ask for a copy. A hard decision, the commentator writes since, from what is known already, these files contain bitter revelations. A prominent German dissident has just discovered that among a thousand people who informed on her, the most thorough and damaging were the reports of her own husband who had transcribed their daily conversations. Even the most mundane ones, about the kids, the cat, the laundry.
Marie admitted to her once how she thought life behind the Iron Curtain made people’s lives richer. “At least you had bonds that didn’t easily break,” she said. What would she say now?
Germany will have to brace herself for such revelations, Anna reads. Fathers, sons, lovers, no one is above suspicion. All over East Germany with its scaffolding and construction cranes, wives, husbands, and lovers will have to confront each other, asking the same old question. “How could you have done it?”
“They’ve won the war. I’ve told you.” An insistent whisper from another table catches her attention. A middle-aged American couple talks of the fortunes being made in construction here. The man is wearing an impeccable grey suit, the woman has shoulder-length grey hair. “Shhhh ...” the woman says. “Someone might hear you.”
Anna folds the newspaper and takes a sip of coffee. It has grown cold and she pushes it away.
There is a note for her at the Pension. The waiter, the one with a short dark moustache, delivers it to her room, on a tray, when she is changing. He smiles at Anna as he extends his hand; she has drawn the attention of the staff and they all fuss over her as if she were not an ordinary guest. It all started with the first of Ursula’s messages. With Herr Müller’s bow and a telling look.
Ursula’s handwriting hasn’t changed; it is still hard to decipher. I’ve tried to call you, but you were out. I’ll come by in the afternoon. I really want to talk to you.
Anna doesn’t wait. She has transformed herself into a tourist, in beige pants and a T-shirt. She slips her guidebook into a canvas bag and leaves.
In 1991 East Berlin looks like a deserted city, its wide streets empty; the giant, pompous buildings along Unter den Linden seem abandoned. Grey walls are covered with graffiti: Stasi murderers. Ausl?nder raus. German workplaces were taken by foreign workers.
With the Wall gone, the subway trains criss-cross the city freely. The eastern ones are grey and shabby, with wide plastic-covered seats. The western ones arrive like rare birds, with their red exteriors and seats that are black and sleek. When she leaves the subway station, Anna rushes past the wide stretches of streets, past empty spaces awaiting construction.
She slows down at the sight of the Brandenburg Gate, with its six rows of columns and a stone chariot perched on top. This is no time to hurry. In the past when she came here from the other, Eastern side, she craned her neck for a glimpse of the West. Through the columns she saw some vast, empty space and a few blurry trees in the distance. Nowhere else was the West so close, so tantalisingly close, so very much within reach, but the Wall, crowned with coils of barbed wire, with pieces of broken glass lining its concrete edge, looked unmoveable. On her side there was none of the jazzy graffiti, the defiant blues, reds, and yellows, no curses or signs of peace. The Wall was guarded by ramrod straight men, their hands resting on polished guns. It was a line that separated all that was ugly from all that was beautiful. On her side there was nothing she wanted to keep, and beyond it, everything was worth having. How she longed to cross this line! How overwhelming the thought was, how it surfaced when she would least expect it!
Frantic surges of hope and envy erupted in her every time she heard of someone who scaled the Wall or got smuggled in a car trunk. “They made it,” she heard. “Escaped.” There was never an official confirmation of success, but all the failed attempts to cross the border were described in the most minute details. For days, the Polish papers glowed over secrets betrayed by best friends, the slip of a hand clinging to a rope, a child’s frightened whimper coming from a car trunk. Now, the graves of those who tried and failed are covered with fresh flowers. Murdered by the Guards, the inscriptions say.
Anna wishes she were here when the Wall fell, hacking the concrete to pieces and then rolling these pieces in her hands, releasing even the smallest of pebbles inside. Instead she saw it on television, the jubilant crowds, the tears and flowers. “Quick,” she called to William, “Hurry up,” and they stood in the living room, leaning over the screen, to see better. He took her hand in his, and handed her a Kleenex for she was crying from joy, tears gathering against the rims of her glasses. It was William who drew her attention to the cello player, his chair propped against the Wall, his eyes closed, the hand holding the bow raising and falling gently, like a crest of a wave.
Ursula was here, then. I know that it won’t last, this jubilation, she wrote to William, in the letter that Anna remembers only too well. I know that we will soon get tired and cynical about it, shrug our shoulders and ask each other if this, indeed, was such a big deal. That we will throw our hands up in despair at the people from there, in their jean shirts, jackets, caps, people from these dark, shabby, lethargic lands. But tonight there is dancing on the rubble, there are tears. No one is talking about the bills that will start coming in. What will we unearth now? What new stories of greed, deception, and blind obedience?