Necessary Lies(75)
The stories keep flowing. Berlin is getting ready for the trials of the guards who shot at the last two escapees from East Germany; one of them, Chris Gueffroy, newspaper headlines remind, was the last man killed at the Wall. They say they were following orders, Anna has read in the International Herald Tribune, in the chilling echo of the Nuremberg trials.
Among the pictures that Ursula had sent William there was a whole package of the shots of the Wall. These I have taken specially for you, she scribbled on the back of one of the pictures. The grass on the Death Strip is no longer pristine! Weeds and rubble have overrun it, as they have taken over the marble steps of the Zeppelin Field tribune in Nuremberg. By the Reichstag only a lone watchtower, its roof discarded, has survived. The lamps that since 1961 have lit the concrete belt have vanished; empty light poles point into the sky Did you know, darling, that kilometres of this concrete have been crushed into gravel that now paves East German roads?
The uniforms and insignia of the guards, their medals, badges and lapels are sold at wooden stalls at Checkpoint Charlie. For a few dollars Anna can have an East German party badge, a Soviet star, a medal for the conquest of Berlin. The young man who sells these treasures is American, a hippie type with long blond hair, a jean vest. He stoops a bit as he approaches her with a big smile.
“Ain’t it something?” he says. Among the uniforms displayed in the back Anna spots full regalia of a Soviet general, a green coat, stars on epaulets, a stiff cap.
“Where have you got: it from?” she asks, pointing at the uniform.
“From the General himself,” the man smiles. “A bit hard on cash these days. Nice guy, though. Would sell me his nuclear missile if I had enough dough.”
“Oh, come on,” he says when Anna hesitates. “Buy some of this shit. Anything you want.” Pieces of the wall are encased in plastic and have a certificate of authenticity attached. Anna buys a chunk of the wall with a piece of graffiti on it, red, yellow and black lines, mangled, crossing.
“American?” he asks her.
“No,” she says, “Canadian.”
“Visiting, eh?” He laughs softly as he says it.
“Sure,” she smiles, and puts the piece of the Wall into her purse.
As Anna walks slowly toward the Brandenburg Gate, she tries to make out the shapes of the stone sculptures on the top, a horse rushing forward, a robed figure in a chariot. The Gate, her guidebook informs, was designed by a Breslau architect, Carl Gotthard Langhans. It may no longer seem imposing, yet as Anna walks between the stone columns she is moved. For a long while, there is nothing else she wants to do. She just walks underneath the Gate back and forth, unsure if these few steps signify a triumph or just an act of belated defiance.
The thought of Frau Strauss, K?the’s old friend, comes at the last moment; Anna has nothing but a telephone number and a name. But when she calls the apartment, and introduces herself, Frau Strauss’s daughter insists that she is delighted and that Anna must come over to visit. “Just for tea,” she says, “nothing elaborate. We would so very much like to meet you.”
The woman who opens the white door on the fourth floor of Wildestrasse 24, is slim and petite. She must be in her early fifties, the wrinkles around her mouth cut deep into the skin, but she is still attractive. There is a halo of warmth around her, the warmth of pastel colours and red, parted lips. Her long curly hair is kept in place with two wooden combs.
“Come in, come in. Bitte, bitte,” Monika waves off Anna’s attempt to take off her sandals.
“Doesn’t matter. Please. I’m Monika Schneider. Mutti has been waiting for you all afternoon.”
This is an old Berlin apartment house, with high ceilings, stuccoes, and stoves that are no longer in use but that have never been removed. There is no shortage of space in these rooms. The furniture is old and respectable, a heavy credenza with carved fruit and flowers on the crest, a set of chairs with soft brown cushions, a big leather armchair with head-rests. The dark mahogany table is covered by a lace tablecloth the colour of ivory.
Frau Strauss’s apartment is filled with knickknacks. A pair of milky glass doves kisses on the shelf, a marionette — Pierrot holding a birthday cake with five candles on it — hangs in the entrance to the kitchen. Strings of tiny brass bells decorate the walls. Photographs are everywhere, on the walls, on the bookshelves, on the little rosewood table by the window. In one of them, a woman in a white dress is just about to bury her face in a bouquet of white lilies, in another a young man is squatting next to a small aeroplane. There is a set of playing cards pushed aside to the left of the rosewood table. Frau Strauss must have been playing solitaire.
Anna unfolds her gift, a bouquet of pale yellow roses, tied with a green bow, wrapped in cellophane.
“They are lovely, thank you,” says Monika, who spoke so warmly to her on the phone, and puts the flowers in the middle of the table next to the old photographs of William and K?the. “But you shouldn’t have bothered.”
Frau Strauss is in her late seventies, and she apologizes that her English is not too good. Her daughter, she says, will help to translate if she is short of words. It was lucky that Moni was visiting her right when Anna called, for she lives a few streets away from here.
“Sit down,” Frau Strauss says. “Please.” A welcoming smile on her broad, wrinkled face.
There is something twinlike about the mother and daughter that goes beyond their kinship, a sense of lightness and the grace of a ballerina. The mother’s hair is braided and twined around the back of her head and she moves fast, with surprising agility for her age. Both women wear dresses, not identical, but differing not so much in design as in the colours of the fabric. The mother’s dress is dark grey, and has a lace collar around the neck, the daughter prefers light blue.