The Man Who Saw Everything

by Deborah Levy

  ‘I know I will find work in a hospital in Liverpool.’

  She told me that more than anything she wanted to be free.

  ‘I am scared of everything’ – she pointed to the clock ticking on the dacha wall – ‘I can’t see an end to it. I am frightened all the time. Morning to night and then it’s morning again. When there is too much to feel, it is better to sing.’ She apologized for making me feel worse about the pineapple. ‘To be honest it is the syrup I crave more than the pineapple, but we are happy living with you here in the East. You have added something sweet to our lives. We are so glad to be your friends and we will miss you when you go. Do you want to see my ballet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I was discovering that Luna liked to escape any way she could find.

  She searched for her ballet shoes, which were lying under the table, their ribbons unlaced, as if she always offered to dance for the dacha guests. This time I was instructed to move three chairs, a basket containing two sticks of wilting rhubarb, a bag full of empty glass jars and to roll up a small rug.

  Luna laced up her dusty ballet shoes with their strange solid toes, and for one hour in the late twentieth century in the German Democratic Republic showed me an art that began in the seventeenth century and was devised for the European courts to display the power and wealth of its rulers. There was longing and tenderness in the way she moved her arms, but her demeanour was reserved. She turned and whirled, two, three, six times, which she told me was her ballet teacher’s special skill because she had trained the male dancers in the Bolshoi Ballet. Her body was ethereal and delicate as she finally plunged into a slow, steady, perfect arabesque en pointe.

  Later, as she lay panting on the floor, I brought her a large glass of water and knelt down to untie the silk ribbons of her ballet shoes. She told me that if only I could dance too, we could try a pas de deux, which means ‘steps for two’. With the support of someone else helping with the lifts and counterbalancing, she would be able to accomplish more than on her own. As the sun set over the dacha and the allotment, I locked the front door and unplugged the electrical devices, while Luna, still out of breath from her massive performance, told me more facts about the Beatles, as told to her by Rainer. She was particularly interested in how Paul and John had hitch-hiked out of Liverpool to Paris where their hair was cut by a barber called Jürgen, which was how their signature hairstyle came into being.

  When I drew the curtains, I could see three iron girders thrusting out of the earth, perhaps left there after the war. The East had not benefited from the money that had been poured into the reconstruction of West Germany by America and its allies. Luna was still sitting on the floor. She grasped the heel of her bare right foot with her hand and turned it in circles as clouds shifted over the girders.

  I was woken by the sound of a dog howling or perhaps a fox calling its cubs. When I sat up on the mattress that I had laid on the floor, I saw someone standing over me. A ghost, a spectre, shrouded in white cloth, its hair the colour of silver trees in a forest. Luna apologized for scaring me but told me it was clear to her that the jaguar was about to crash through the windows and pounce. She was scared it would drag her off somewhere bad, away from her ballet shoes and precious album, Abbey Road, away from her mother and brother, who would never recover; no one would know what had happened to her. And they would be too afraid to ask questions. I offered to turn on the lights and check the windows, but she did not think that would deter the jaguar. If anything the lights would encourage it to come closer. She climbed on to the mattress with me and lay on her side at some distance, as the dog continued to howl, or perhaps it was just whimpering. I felt her trembling. I lightly put my arm around her waist, chastely, careful to keep my body separate from hers. Yet something happened in the night. In our sleep we moved closer, until I was aware that my leg had entwined with hers and that her hand was stroking my arm. When she moved my hand to her breast I moved away from her, but she turned over so that she was facing me. It was she who made the next move, too. I should have resisted, but I did not, and then her white nightdress was lying somewhere on the floor. Nothing could have stopped us. It was easy because she was so turned on, it was all happening in erotic slow motion as if it had nothing to do with our own free will. Luna was all over me all the time, her lips pressed against my pearl necklace. I could see her eyes shining in the dark, and then it was over. The dog was still whimpering.

  ‘Did Jennifer give you the pearls?’

  I noticed that my hands were resting on my neck, as if protecting my pearls from her fingers. Most of all, I felt sad.

  I had come to think that anything I might say about the pearls was an unfinished, endless conversation.

  ‘Walter says your Jewish mother was born in Heidelberg and her father was a professor at the university.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it now.’

  ‘But you must,’ she said firmly. ‘You are history.’

  I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

  It is possible the pearls were given to my mother by her mother when it became clear that at least the children must be helped to escape. Why would a child of eight own a pearl necklace when she arrived in Britain with her one suitcase? After she died, my father would give the pearls to his son because he did not have a daughter. And then how long would it take to explain that he did not expect his son to wear the pearls? They were supposed to be kept in a velvet-lined box and hidden in a drawer. I wore the pearls and they whispered non-stop, in German, every morning while my father and Matt ate their cornflakes.

  I had been told by my friend Jack that Heidelberg was now home to a wild population of African rose-ringed parakeets. Both male and female parakeets are able to mimic human speech. That night in the dacha, I wondered what kinds of words they would have been mimicking after the pogrom called Kristallnacht.

  The sun was rising over Walter’s garden. I must have slept after all, because when I woke up I discovered more consciously that Luna and I were naked and tangled up in bed together.

  ‘Let me see how long your hair is today, Saul.’

  Her hands were in my hair, scooping it up and pulling it down, measuring its length in relation to my shoulders.

  ‘Your hair is so black. Like the birds in the fields.’

  I wanted her to go away. To leave me alone. To vanish.

  ‘Luna, it’s best to tell Walter we are just friends – is that all right with you?’

  I felt her body stiffen.

  ‘For breakfast I will cook us the mushrooms that you and Walter harvested.’

  She was happy and affectionate while she set about frying the mushrooms.

  It was odd to be sharing them with her and not with Walter. It was cold, and when I put on my jacket I remembered the matchbox of ashes I had placed in its pocket the night before. I asked Luna if she would mind if I buried my father’s ashes in the garden. I showed her the matchbox. She was not shocked, if anything her expression was kind. She instantly agreed, slung on some trousers and a coat, which she wore over her white nightdress, and accompanied me to their family allotment.

  I dug a small hole in the GDR with my hands, placed the matchbox of ashes into the hole and covered it with the soil that was my historical subject and torment. I felt bad that it was Luna’s kind brother who’d had to fend off my questions.

  Would you still have been my friend?

  Luna stood by my side, bemused by this small personal ritual.

  ‘I think you must have really loved your father.’

  She walked back to the kitchen and left me alone with a sorrow so much bigger than the grave itself. I felt raw, as if I had just been disembowelled by a jaguar. A light breeze blew into the GDR, but I knew it came from America. A wind from another time. It brought with it the salt scent of seaweed and oysters. And wool. A child’s knitted blanket. Folded over the back of a chair. Time and place all mixed up. Now. Then. There. Here.

  I must have remained outside for a whi
le, because when I returned, Luna was dressed and was now sawing through a loaf of heavy bread to take to the sick neighbour. I noticed she had embroidered the hems of her trousers.

  ‘Do you make your own clothes, Luna?’

  ‘Of course. All the trousers are ugly and when nice ones arrive in the shops they sell out in one afternoon.’

  Even the dark bread seemed to be connected to the Beatles in Luna’s mind.

  ‘Rainer told me that John Lennon made his own bread when he got together with Yoko.’

  She cut the loaf in half and then held the two halves against each other, to measure if they were equal. In her view, one half was not equal. She sawed through the loaf again, and then flinched. She had nicked the second finger of her right hand with the knife. Blood dripped on to the bread as she sucked her finger and then waved it in the air, above her head.

  ‘I am a nurse,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you told me.’

  ‘But you didn’t ask. I passed my exams with the best marks in my class. I want to take my studies further in the West and learn better English.’

  ‘Walter can teach you English.’ I moved the bread away from her bloody finger and suggested she rinse it in cold water.

  ‘I want to train to be a doctor in Liverpool.’

  ‘You can get good training here.’

  She stamped her foot and turned to face me, her green eyes bright and clear.

  ‘No. I need you to help me leave. I want to be free to travel and to study what I want. I am your girlfriend now.’

  She moved towards me and kissed my left wrist, as if we were lovers, which I suppose we were.

  ‘Listen, Luna.’ I felt as if I were floating out of my body as I spoke. ‘In September 1989, the Hungarian government will open the border for East German refugees wanting to flee to the West. Then the tide of people will be unstoppable. By November 1989, the borders will be open and within a year your two Germanys will become one.’

  ‘You are lying to me.’ She made her two fingers into a revolver and shot herself in the head.

  ‘Bang. I love you. Rock and roll. You are my boyfriend.’

  When she smiled with her snarled teeth, I truly felt that I was her prey.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I will make an emigration application to marry you and to live in the West.’

  I knew that I must depart from the GDR as soon as possible. I would have to cancel my last two appointments with the librarian who had so reluctantly been helping me with the archives, and I would change my exit visa.

  I began to think Luna was more dangerous than the jaguar she most feared. When she slipped her bloody finger under my pearl necklace and pulled it so the string was at breaking point, I lost my temper.

  ‘I am in love with your brother.’

  I felt her shock and rage. Luna picked up one of the pieces of sawn-off bread and threw it at me. It fell near my feet with a thump. I had betrayed her dream of leaving and I had betrayed her body because it was not the body I truly longed for. Yet it was she who had apparently offered her body to me freely. It was not free at all.

  ‘Walter is married,’ she said coldly. ‘He has a wife and baby daughter.’

  ‘Walter has a daughter?’

  ‘Yes. Who do you think the little wooden train belongs to? My mother and I don’t play with toys.’

  She picked up the bread and wrapped it in a cloth.

  ‘If I make an emigration application to marry you, then we can make an application for Walter to visit us because I am his sister.’

  Two men were making a bonfire in a small field near the allotments. One of them was pouring a bag of leaves on to the flames. The other man poked the flames with a stick and then threw the stick into the fire.

  ‘Do you want to live away from your friends and family?’

  ‘Emigration is like that,’ Luna said. ‘Everyone knows this. Rainer knows this. He organizes transit vans with compartments under the seats. They are not stopped. If you don’t want me to make an application you will have to pay him money to get me out.’

  I told her I would think about it. She seemed to believe me and left the dacha to deliver the bread to her neighbour.

  My head was throbbing. I closed my eyes and touched the ends of my hair. I was enraged to have been used in such a callous, cunning way. I walked over to the bashed-up record player held together with tape and lifted up the record that Luna had not put back in the drawer the night before. I threw Abbey Road to the floor and stamped with all my strength on the vinyl with my boots. It cracked and then shattered into four pieces, none of them equal.

  I resolved to leave the GDR immediately. I would go back to the West, alone, without Luna, but I had to say goodbye to Walter first. Like a serious man would say goodbye to someone he cares for. No. I would not live apart from Walter. Not at all. I would discreetly speak to Rainer in the pub and ask him how much he charged for whenever Walter needed to leave. It was Walter’s escape and not Luna’s that was on my mind. I would free him from his life in hiding with his pretend wife.

  14

  There were at least nine women wheeling prams around the fountain in Alexanderplatz when I finally said goodbye to Walter Müller. Everywhere I looked there were women steering babies through the pigeons. It had been a sad and tense walk, but this time I carried my own bag. It seemed that Walter had suddenly stepped into his job as translator, just as I was leaving East Berlin. A copper relief sculpture on a tall building called the House of Travelling had caught my eye in Alexanderplatz. It was of an astronaut in a helmet setting off on his journey into the unknown, surrounded by various planets and birds and the sun. Walter translated its title for me.

  ‘Man Overcomes Space and Time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, linking my arm with his, ‘that’s what I have been struggling with while I have been in the GDR. Space and time. But no way have I conquered it. In fact, it has conquered me.’

  He squeezed my arm. ‘No. You’re just crazy. We look forward to your report on our economic miracle.’ He threw back his head and laughed like a hound.

  ‘No, Walter,’ I said, ‘you and I will soon meet for a beer in Kreuzberg.’

  ‘When will that be, my English friend?’

  ‘Whenever you decide.’

  ‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘I would prefer to meet in Paris.’

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’

  Walter stretched out his hand and messed up my hair. Although I was laughing, I was unhappy and scared, which made me wonder about Walter laughing all the time. Perhaps he was unhappy and scared, too.

  The TV tower with its steel sphere and striped antenna was never out of view. Walter explained that it was designed to celebrate the Soviet obsession with space travel in the 1960s. ‘Look at our World Clock,’ he said in English. ‘You will see on top of it a metal sculpture of the solar system.’

  ‘Ah, asteroids and comets,’ I said.

  We were doing everything we could to avoid the moment we would both go our separate ways.

  ‘Goodbye, Walter.’ I said it very quickly with my eyes shut, and then I opened my eyes and saw all the women wheeling their children in prams. Perhaps the young woman in a yellow dress and white stilettos was his wife?

  Walter stepped over my bag and held me fleetingly in his arms. I could smell the brown coal in his hair. He told me that while I was on the train heading back to the West, he would be helping out his friend who worked in a small kiosk at the end of his street. She sold sweets, drinks, cigarettes and newspapers. In the afternoon he was scheduled to teach English to men and women who had good careers but who were going to build socialism elsewhere, including Ethiopia. He seemed to want me to know what he would be doing while I was on the train to the West. And I did want to know. I wanted to know everything about Walter Müller. The fact that he had kept the details of his real domestic life hidden from me only made me love him more. He and I had both been very lonely in our teenage years in East Berlin and East London. I had suf
fered in the care of my authoritarian father and he had suffered in the care of his authoritarian fatherland.

  ‘Please thank your mother for her hospitality.’

  ‘I will do that,’ he said. ‘And thank you, Saul, for our conversations and for your company.’ He shook my hand. ‘Take care, Saul.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to take care of you.’ And I meant it.

  I leaned forward and whispered the information that Rainer had told me to relay to him. Walter flinched and stepped away from me. His face was pale.

  ‘I grew up here. I would never leave for the West. I just want to see my aunt and cousins now and again.’

  It began to rain on the World Clock and its metal solar system. The women wheeling prams were now running for cover. Everyone was running for cover.

  Walter and I stood in the rain by the fountain with the pigeons while he told me in a low monotone that no one speaks their mind to Rainer. No one says anything to Rainer except good morning or goodnight. Why did I think Rainer had a brand-new three-roomed apartment? Why did he have a brand-new car when everyone else had to wait fifteen years? Why did I think Rainer was allowed to visit the West four times a year? Everyone knows not to talk to Rainer.

  ‘Go back to your world,’ he said sadly. And then he walked away from me and did not turn back. What he could not see when he stepped on to the road was that a van with the name of a furniture company written on its side had ignored the red traffic light. It pulled over and mounted the pavement to exactly where Walter stood waiting to cross the road. It was likely that he was going to be punished for attempting to flee from the republic and that it was my fault.

  1

  Abbey Road, London, June 2016

  I stepped on to the crossing on Abbey Road, the famous zebra stripes, black and white, at which all vehicles must stop to make way for pedestrians. The Beatles crossed this same road in single file on 8 August 1969 for the record cover of Abbey Road. John Lennon leading in a white suit, George Harrison last in the line wearing blue denim, Ringo and Paul between them. A car was coming towards me but it did not stop. I fell on my hip, using my hands to protect myself from the fall. The car stalled and the driver rolled down the window. He was in his sixties, his eyelids quivering at the corners. He asked if I was injured. When I did not answer, he finally stepped out of his car.