The Man Who Saw Everything

by Deborah Levy

  ‘You’re wearing his jeans,’ she said. ‘They’re too big for you.’

  ‘Yes. I gave him my Wrangler’s.’

  Luna’s green eyes were like mirrors. I could see myself smiling in both her eyes, as if I had become a double self, which in a sense was right. I was learning to not be myself in the GDR.

  ‘Why did you do this exchange? Wrangler for Wrangler?’

  ‘I spilled my coffee over his jeans.’

  She laughed and flung up her arms in a sort of ballet position. Her raised arms made an O shape in the air.

  At the same time, she sucked the sliver of chocolate as it melted under her tongue.

  ‘You should have given them to me. I am thinner than he is and so are you. His jeans are falling off your hips. Did you only bring one pair of jeans with you?’

  I had brought an unlikely suit and two ties with me to East Berlin, as well as two pairs of jeans. I had worn the suit and tie to the library and to give my lecture to the students on the cultural exchange programme. At home in London, I obviously owned many pairs of jeans, but I was enjoying becoming less of the man from the West, which my jeans broadcast to everyone here. Yet Luna’s question about the things I might have brought with me from the well-stocked shops of London made me uneasy.

  It was as if she was waiting for me to give her something. And actually, I was about to.

  ‘Hang on, Luna. I’ve got a gift for you.’

  I rummaged around in my grey canvas sling bag and took out the envelope Jennifer had sent me with the Abbey Road photographs inside it. There were three of them and I paused as I chose the one I wanted Luna to have.

  In the end I passed her the photograph of myself in mid-stride crossing the road barefoot, my hands in the pockets of the white Navy suit from Laurence Corner.

  ‘Sorry it’s not the real Beatles,’ I said.

  She held it carefully in both hands and stared at it for a long time.

  ‘I must get to Liverpool,’ she eventually whispered to the photograph. The ends of her electric hair fell over the black-and-white stripes of the zebra crossing.

  ‘I know I will find work in a hospital. I will earn money to buy my fish dinner in Penny Lane like in the song.’

  She lifted the photograph to her lips and kissed it.

  ‘Thank you, Saul.’ She pointed to my white suit from Laurence Corner.

  ‘What is that?’

  I stood behind her, peering over her shoulder at the photograph.

  She was pointing to three small stains on the pockets of the jacket.

  ‘I think it’s blood.’

  ‘That’s what I thought too,’ she said.

  I told her about nearly getting run over on the day I posed for that photograph, how I fell on to the zebra using my hands to protect myself and how my cut knuckle wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  ‘Who made the photo? It’s great. Yes, it’s a really good photo.’

  ‘My girlfriend took it.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Actually, she’s my ex-girlfriend.’

  ‘But she still has a name.’ Luna’s teeth were crooked and snarled together, except for the gap between the front two.

  ‘Jennifer.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. To be honest I don’t understand what went wrong.’

  ‘Did she not notice your jacket was stained with blood?’

  I shrugged. For some reason I did not want to tell her how Jennifer and I had gone back to her flat and made love and that she hadn’t commented on my white suit because we were more interested in taking off our clothes.

  ‘Are you sad to lose her?’ Luna walked to the other end of the room, the photograph still in her hand.

  It was a question I had not directly asked myself. Not even in English. Now I was required to answer it in German. Was I sad to lose Jennifer? How did I know if I was sad?

  In a way it was a relief. And yet I had asked her to marry me, to leave her friends and pack up her stuff, to change her address and redirect her post and come and live her life with me. I had asked her to consider that plan and three seconds later she had dumped me. So then, I reasoned, if I had wanted her to leave her life with her friends and also the beloved sauna that was the exotic free gift that came with the flat in Hamilton Terrace, to bring her clothes and shoes, her kettle and pots and her cameras and all the apparatus of her work, I must be sad that we had separated.

  Why had she insisted it was over between us? It was as if Jennifer had punished me for an unconscious crime she knew I wanted to commit and had ended our relationship because it was going to end anyway. She had already dumped me once, before my offer of marriage. On that occasion her fingers were covered in oil paint. We had agreed to meet in Foyles bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, which was next door to her art school. As I lifted my arms to embrace her, she had lunged at my chest and thumped her hands on my white T-shirt so that it was stained with orange paint. ‘Not orange,’ she said, ‘it’s called Permanent Yellow Deep.’ I had only known her for three months at that time. The queasy thing about Jennifer Moreau was that she was only in her early twenties but she possessed a sense of purpose that I myself did not possess. It gave her confidence even when she did not know what she was doing. She had told me with tremendous certainty that she was going to wash her paintbrushes for the last time and take up a camera instead. What had I done that was really so bad? Was I supposed to mourn the loss of her paintbrushes? The night before I had danced at a club with one of her friends. Nothing had happened between us, except that I had placed my hands on Claudia’s hips. ‘No,’ Jennifer had said, ‘your hands were under her shirt on her hips.’ I wondered if I was not supposed to notice that Claudia had a body when we danced together. I did notice that plenty of male art students were interested in Jennifer, but how could they not be enchanted by her beauty? When I told her she looked like Lee Miller, the American photographer, Jennifer replied, ‘That doesn’t mean anything.’

  Luna was still waiting for my reply. She was peering at the photograph, holding it close to her face and then moving it further away.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sad.’

  I intuited that Luna would have a better opinion of me if I was sad. I touched the ends of my hair and closed my eyes.

  ‘Are you okay, Saul?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Was I okay?

  What would the truthful reply to that question be? Yes and No. The Yes and the No existing in parallel, like the black-and-white stripes of the zebra crossing on Abbey Road. But what if the No was bigger than the Yes? A lot bigger. And then I crossed the road?

  I opened my eyes.

  I had not yet told Luna about forgetting to bring the tin of pineapple and I was dreading the moment I would have to confess. And I was missing Walter. For the first time I wondered if he had a lover. Why wouldn’t he have a lover? Ursula had told me that Walter would be coming to the apartment that evening. He had promised to fix a leak in the neighbour’s flat above hers and had complained that he would have to move a heavy table to position it under the leak. The ladder was broken so he would have to stand on the table to reach the ceiling. I missed Walter. I missed Jennifer. I was also missing writing the paper I had begun in London on the psychology of male tyrants, starting with the way Stalin flirted by throwing balls of bread at the woman he desired. I knew I must not even think about this paper here, that would be a thought crime, though I reckoned I could talk to Rainer about it. I was desperate not to be left alone with Luna, mostly because of the tin of pineapple. Where was Ursula? She was later than usual coming home from work.

  Luna was still interested in how many pairs of jeans I had brought with me to East Berlin. She was so persistent I eventually grabbed the one pair of Levi’s I had brought with me and carried them from my bedroom like a trophy back to her.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Saul!’ She was pleased and excited.

  I would have to spend the rest of my time in the GDR dresse
d in the unlikely suit or Walter’s stained Wrangler’s.

  ‘I’ll try them on,’ she said, unzipping her skirt. As she stood in front of me in her pants and stepped into the jeans, I turned my back on her and sat at the small table next to the lamp. I opened my book and started to make notes in the margin.

  ‘Do you have a belt, Saul?’

  I told her I had only brought one belt with me.

  ‘Do you have another pair in a smaller size?’

  I told her I did not.

  When her mother returned from work they started whispering to each other. Someone else must have come in with her because I could hear pots being banged about in the kitchen. Ursula was being asked to give an opinion on the jeans. After a while I noticed a blue dress hanging on a hook on the wall, and also, draped on the hook, a stethoscope. Ursula pointed to the tiny wooden train that Walter had been trying to mend. It was perched on top of her bag.

  ‘It’s well made, no?’

  I was bored and irritated as I tried to read at the table.

  ‘You are working now, Saul?’

  I nodded and turned back to my book.

  ‘What are you writing on the pages?’

  ‘I’m making notes on the economic and social conditions that led to the second Russian revolution of October 1917.’

  ‘Feel free to smoke. We have three ashtrays in this apartment. By the way, I think the October revolution took place in November.’

  She grabbed Luna’s hand and both of them disappeared into the bathroom. I could hear them discussing the Levi’s and how best to alter them to fit tiny Luna so she could wear them in every month of the year.

  Every now and again I glanced at the pin-up calendar, the colour photograph of the woman in a gold bikini. Her presence was a strange interruption in this room, what with her gold fingernails and false eyelashes, her impersonation of a smile and fake erotic allure. She looked tired and strained. I couldn’t understand the appeal of this calendar to the two women who lived here, a mother and daughter. It occurred to me that if there was a listening device in this room, it would be hidden under that calendar and not the mirror, as I had first thought. I could still hear pots being banged about in the kitchen. At the same time, Ursula and Luna were talking loudly in the bathroom.

  A man was standing in the kitchen. He seemed to be reaching for something on the top shelf. His T-shirt had parted from the belt of his jeans. I saw his naked back and I knew he was Walter. At that moment Luna and Ursula walked back into the living room. Luna started to parade up and down the carpet in my jeans, which had been taken in at the waist with safety pins. I shivered. The same sort of shiver as when a cold stethoscope is placed on warm skin. I heard the sound of matches being struck in the kitchen and the man, who was definitely Walter, mutter, ‘Oh shit.’ Ursula’s dyed red hair had been curled and she was wearing a flared polka-dot skirt. When she saw me looking at her, she smiled.

  ‘You have only seen me in my work clothes.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘You have not asked me where I work.’

  ‘Where do you work, Ursula?’

  ‘In a factory. I make fish hooks. It’s Luna’s birthday today. She’s twenty-six.’

  Ursula put two fingers in her mouth and let out a loud whistle. Walter walked out of the kitchen, holding a birthday cake in his hands. It was crowded with pale pink candles, a multitude of tiny flames. He started to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and Ursula joined in.

  They had worked out a harmony for the very last ‘happy birthday to you’, after which Luna blew out the candles and began to tear them from the cake. She was acting like someone much younger than her new twenty-six years, dropping each candle on the floor as she reached for another one. Her mother and brother laughed indulgently. Now that the cake was shorn of its candles, she peered at it from all angles. The cake was circled with peaches. Tinned peaches. She took the knife from Walter’s hand and with feral energy cut into it, dropping the knife on the floor as she scooped up a wedge of cake and stuffed it into her mouth. Her face was smeared with cream and slivers of peach and then she opened her mouth and spat out the cake. Maybe she even howled.

  I heard her shout the word ananas, which is German for pineapple. She burst into tears.

  ‘Peaches taste like soap.’

  Luna did not so much run out of the room as balletically run out of the room, still crying, and then she banged the door. Walter was left stranded with the peach cake in his hands. Ursula bent down to pick the candles off the floor. I did not know what to do with myself. There was nowhere to escape because my bedroom was right next to Luna’s room. Walter was looking at me. Deep into my eyes. He was always looking at me and I think he could see everything that was good and bad and sad in me. Jennifer was always looking at me too, but I don’t know what she saw because there was always the lens of her camera between us. Walter was laughing, as usual. When Ursula stood up she was laughing too.

  ‘That’s our Luna.’ She gazed at me slightly flirtatiously while she lit a cigarette.

  ‘Luna is short for Lunatic.’

  This time I laughed.

  ‘Do you want a beer, Saul?’ Walter put the evil cake down on the table and rested his arm across his mother’s shoulders.

  ‘Yes,’ Ursula said, ‘I think we all need a beer.’

  We could hear Luna crying in her bedroom.

  Later that night, after Walter had left, I saw Luna standing mournfully in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror above the basin.

  ‘I’m sorry. Did I ruin your birthday, Luna?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ She turned on the tap and nudged the door shut with her foot. Two seconds later she opened it again.

  ‘I’m not crying about pineapple. I’m crying because Rainer has been given a passport that allows him to travel to the West four days a year. I want to see Penny Lane in Liverpool. And I am stuck here.’

  She picked up a bar of soap and threw it at me and slammed the door again.

  Then she opened the door.

  ‘Give me back the soap.’

  Her waist was tiny but her voice was huge.

  I spent all night thinking about Walter. When I left East Berlin and made my way to West Berlin, we would be divided by a wall. Yet, if Luna was to be believed, Rainer could walk through that wall four times a year. I was missing Walter. It was a physical longing to be close to his body. I did not want to sleep in this small chaste bed, I wanted to sleep by his side. I felt I knew him better with his eyes closed. His thoughts could move freely between the sky and the horizon, he could roam the earth with no restrictions, our legs entwined in the darkness of the night.

  I lay in my cold single bed and wrote Walter a letter in which I declared my deepest feelings for him. In high emotion I searched for words, lying on the hip that was not bruised, propped up on my elbow. I described how I wanted to touch him and how I had always wanted to see the Baltic Sea in winter. My letter was an invitation for him to accompany me on that journey. At the same time, I heard my father’s voice speak to me in the GDR. His Master’s Voice was loud and harsh. That night, I knocked him to the ground and sat astride his chest, my hands around his throat. I keep pressing until he stopped breathing and his regime was over.

  11

  Not all lakes are equal. Walter explained this concept to me as we walked through the forest towards the shore of the lake that was reserved for VIPs.

  ‘We have permission to swim here because you are our bridge between East and West and will write a report about our economic miracle.’

  We walked in step, side by side through a cloud of mosquitoes. Walter had been given a yellow slip of paper to hand to the guard who had been standing outside a security hut halfway between the train station and the forest. I was not paying attention because of what had happened when we were waiting for the train. Walter had said something to me of great importance. It was not exactly a whisper. He had spoken quietly near my ear. A whisper suggests a secret is being transmitted and enco
urages the curiosity of others. He had told me that he loved me. He said it very simply. As if he were carrying a bag of brown coal up from the cellar.

  Now he was being a tour guide. Apparently, Erich Honecker swam in this lake, under the protection of his personal guards. The summer villas in the surrounding area belonged to the party’s most important officials. As we walked through the forest I glimpsed a small island of trees in the middle of the lake. Walter confessed it was sometimes hard to speak in English, so he hoped he made sense when he spoke to me. I assumed he wanted me to know that he had meant the words he had quietly spoken in English on the platform of the train station.

  ‘I have to speak English in a way that does not give it my personality,’ he replied. ‘All translation is like that. The personality of the translator has to hide.’

  ‘Are you saying you hide inside all the languages you translate? Like hiding in a forest?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not so simple.’ And then he laughed.

  ‘You are a lightweight, Saul. I received your letter. Thank you.’

  He flicked a cigarette out of its pack. I lit it for him with my Zippo. My fingers fleetingly touched his hands, which were cupped around the cigarette.

  Walter looked smarter than usual. His hair was washed and he had shaved.

  I wondered if he had made the effort for me, because that morning I had also shaved with extra care. My hair had grown longer while I was in the East. It now reached beyond my shoulders. Luna had given me an elastic band to make a ponytail. ‘You look like a girl with your hair down.’ She was biting her lip as she watched me experiment with a ponytail, but after a while I gave up. Actually, it hurt to touch my head. I had a headache most days. When I had washed my hair that morning, a memory of my mother suddenly flashed into my head. She had been given two bottles of a shampoo called Prell. It was thick and green, like washing-up liquid. There was an advertisement for this shampoo that she had learned off by heart.

  ‘Touch your hair. Close your eyes. What does it make you think?’ The idea was that if you touched your hair after washing it with Prell, it would make you think of silk. Any time my brother and I were upset, she would say, ‘Touch your hair. Close your eyes. What does it make you think?’ In the GDR it was not necessarily wise to say what you thought. Yet I believed that Walter had said what he thought on the platform of that train station and that it was my letter declaring my deepest feelings that had prompted him to speak of his own feelings.