“I thought we had created that sort of world for ourselves in Prenzlauer Berg. Our very own Ossie version of Greenwich Village. Unlike all those struggling artists in nineteen-sixties New York we had the one great benefit afforded all citizens of the GDR: we paid nothing in rent, we didn’t have to be serious about our jobs, we could allow the state to fund our bohemian existence as long as we didn’t question the raison d’être of the regime. But that was the problem with Jurgen. He wasn’t satisfied living a relatively easy life. He had to be the eternal provocateur. Even though he wasn’t exactly against the regime, the fact that they banned one of his plays—largely because they thought it so extreme in its anger at everything—sent him into a spiral. I told him repeatedly: write something clever, but performable. If you are subtle and intelligent about it you can say all you want, but not land yourself in further trouble. But he would never listen to me. I even pleaded with what few good friends he had left to talk sense to him. But there was something rather monomaniacal about Jurgen. A jazz pianist we knew—and who had been something akin to Jurgen’s older brother for about ten years—told me he felt my husband had turned into a kamikaze, and was determined to crash and obliterate himself and those closest to him.”
As she paused and reached for her cigarettes, I asked, “And did he do just that?”
“Absolutely. He also took me down with him, even though I was someone who had no interest whatsoever in the crazed political games he played toward the end. It didn’t matter. Guilt by association is a major offense in the GDR, especially if the ‘association’ is someone with whom you share your bed.”
“Was he arrested?”
“What do you think?”
“Were you arrested?”
“That’s another conversation,” she said. “And now I need you to hold me.”
I came over to where she was sitting and picked her up and walked us over to the sofa. We fell onto it and lay there for a very long time, simply holding on to each other, saying nothing. Eventually Petra broke the silence.
“I hate talking about the past.”
“But it’s what shapes us—and anyway I want to know everything about you.”
“And I want to shed everything to do with the last year of my life over there. Eradicate it all from my memory.”
“It was that awful?”
She just shrugged, then said:
“You know that Robert Grave’s book, Goodbye to All That. I keep telling myself to follow the advice of the title. Slam the door on that whole episode of my life and not look back. This is why you are so precious to me. Because for the first time in years I actually see a future that is not tragic.”
Interestingly, after this conversation the subject of her husband, of whatever sad or wrenching things befell her before coming west, was dropped. It wasn’t as if we stayed away from the subject of our lives before we met each other, or that we didn’t touch on difficult things we had weathered. Rather, Petra never seemed to return to that state of bleakness which seemed to envelop her whenever she mentioned her ex-husband or all those things that happened “over there” that she still couldn’t bring herself to discuss. And the reason she was no longer dwelling on desolate memories of the recent bleak past was, I sensed, the fact that she was happy. And because our life together had an ease and a rhythm that were simply matchless.
With a book to write, I spent most of my days loitering with intent around the city. I used a letter from my publishers in New York as a bona fide to talk my way into spending a day with one of the US Army guys who manned the checkpoint on the American Sector side of Checkpoint Charlie. I had a fascinating afternoon with a Swiss architectural historian based in Berlin. He knew everything there was to know about the bricks-and-mortar legacy of Albert Speer and while also revealing that his wife had just run off with an émigré Bulgarian poet who wrote “unreadable modernist East European shit.” Just as the Army guy dropped the fact that he had a wife and child back in some Kentucky hole that he wasn’t planning to see again. Just as I got talking with an elderly black American jazz pianist, Bobby Blakely, who played every night in the bar of the Hotel Kempinski. He’d been living in the same small room near Spandau since coming over in the late 1950s and was one of those rootless expatriates who had no ties that bind, few friends, but had never missed one of his six-night-a-week gigs at the Kempinski since first landing the job in 1962.
These tales interested me, not just because every life is, in its own way, a novel—but also because, little by little, I was beginning to realize that the way to build up an idiosyncratic portrait of Berlin was through the stories of the people into whose path I threw myself. Just as I also knew that I would write about Omar and the Café Istanbul and would probably reinvent Alaistair, turning him into a lifelong Londoner, making Mehmet perhaps Iranian, and setting the scene of the apartment we shared in another corner of Kreuzberg, maybe even in that faceless noman’s-land where Petra lived.
Of course, everything to do with my existence with Petra also went into my notebook. Was I looking upon it as material? I told myself at the time that keeping such a close record was just a way of articulating this most important sea change in my life. But the truth was a little more basic than that. If you write, everything is material. And part of me felt that, by getting it all down, I could also convince myself that, yes, this was real, that, yes, I had met the love of my life.
I would wake up every morning to find Petra beside me and simply stare at her, still asleep, marveling. And then she would stir awake and look at me and smile and touch my face and always whisper, “It’s you.” Once she had finally gone off to work I would spend the balance of the morning writing, then join Fitzsimons-Ross in what became a new ritual for us—an early lunch at the Café Istanbul. The day after he came home from the hospital, he went out and reordered all the necessary brushes and paints, spending hours forcing the man in a nearby artist supply shop (his “paint meister” as he called him) to remix a multiple palette of blues until he achieved the shades of azure, aquamarine, cobalt, and turquoise that Alaistair demanded. Three newly stretched canvases also arrived in his studio space. On his third morning home, I wandered downstairs to see Alaistair, his back to me, headphones on his head, a dripping paintbrush in one hand, circling the canvas like a matador approaching his malevolent prey. Then, in a flash, a streak of cobalt blue was slashed across the canvas. From my hidden vantage point halfway up the stairs I watched as the white of the canvas disappeared under a controlled assault of blue. Watching Alaistair diving headfirst back into the work, all I could think was: he has more courage than most men I know. Resiliency is something you only realize you possess when you demand it of yourself.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m three hundred deutsche marks better off a week, I’d jump back on the smack tomorrow,” he said loudly one lunchtime, in earshot of Omar and his staff at the Istanbul.
“Why don’t you say that a little more loudly so the cop outside can hear you?” I said.
“The last time I looked, you couldn’t get busted for expressing an illicit desire. Anyway, the city fathers in Berlin believe junkies give the place a certain edgy cachet. In fact, they should really pay us to shoot up in picturesque locations. And you are now hearing one of the side effects of methadone: a need to spout rubbish at all times. As in: how does it feel to still be so disgustingly in love?”
“Disgustingly wonderful.”
“So I can see. I’d advise you to be careful. Too much happiness is catastrophic for an artist. No sense of loss, no sense of creative frisson.”
“That’s a bunch of theoretical bullshit, and you know it.”
“How many genuinely happy people do you know who work in the so-called creative professions?”
I thought this one over for a moment.
“None,” I finally said.
“My point exactly.”
“Then again,” I asked, “how many genuinely happy people do you know outside of the so-called cr
eative professions?”
Without hesitating, Alaistair said:
“None. But look at you. You’re actually in the process of becoming happy, even though you still have all that childhood merde shadowing your every move.”
“I’m sure it will recede in time.”
“No, stay angry at it all. It will help you counterbalance all the sunshine that you will have with Fraulein Dussmann. From my very passing acquaintance with her over the past few weeks, I sense that you, sir, are actually doing a great deal of good for her as well. She does have shadows, doesn’t she?”
“We all have shadows.”
“I’ll say no more.”
“Good,” I said—because unless the relationship is disintegrating and you need to talk things out with a good friend, one of the key unspoken rules of love is that you never discuss the anxieties, the distresses, the fears of the person you adore with anyone else. Not only is it a betrayal of trust, it also subverts a key facet of love at its most profound: the fact that the two of you create a rampart against the world’s attendant malignancies. Or, at least, that’s the romantic hope.
But this hope found reality in the life that Petra and I shared together. Whenever she returned home in the evening—frustrated and bored by the work at Radio Liberty—I would hand her a glass of wine and she would slam the door on that increasingly fraught and contentious workplace. Just as, if I’d had a bad day at the desk or was worried that the book seemed rudderless, the moment she arrived home I would be transformed out of my funk, and by the end of the evening, I’d also be edging back into an optimistic frame of reference about my work, perhaps because, with Petra, I simply was reminded of the fact that life was also about possibilities.
One ongoing topic of conversation was Pawel. Petra had continued to be very insistent about keeping our relationship quiet within the confined little world of Radio Liberty. So on those occasions when I would show my face there—either for a meeting or a taping session with Pawel—we would acknowledge each other with a friendly formality if we happened to run into each other in a corridor or an office.
“People have so little to talk about,” Petra said, “they’d love to spend hours gossiping about how I was involved with a contributor and all that sort of petty stuff.”
“Well, unless someone sees us kissing in the street, who’s to ever know that we are a couple?”
But that’s exactly what happened. One evening we went to see a showing of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment at the Delphi near Zoo Station. Afterward, as we stepped out onto the street, I pulled Petra close to me and we kissed, at which point I heard a voice behind me say:
“How charming.”
Pawel was standing right by us, on his way into the cinema. Immediately we disentangled. At first Petra looked caught out, a deer in the headlights. Then her shock turned into profound discomfort, as Pawel was regarding us with an enormous smirk. He appeared rather drunk.
“How very interesting,” he said. “And here I was thinking that dissidents had no talent for the clandestine.”
“That’s enough,” I said.
“Ah, the macho American defends the sad émigré.”
“We’re out of here,” I said to Petra.
“‘We’re out of here,’” Pawel repeated, imitating my accent. “Thus spake the writer of glossy magazine prose who thinks himself serious.”
“You’re a shit,” Petra said.
“And you are a mediocrity who thinks herself—”
That’s when I hit him. Directly in the stomach. My action stunned me. I’d never hit anyone before. As he doubled over and began to retch up all the booze that he’d been evidently imbibing most of the evening. Petra and I hurried off to the U-Bahn. We said nothing until we were seated on a train, at which point I shook my head and said:
“Jesus Christ, I can’t believe that just happened.”
“You pack a punch,” she said.
“I hope he’s okay.”
“He deserved it.”
“I’m still a little shocked.”
“He’s a petty little despot, and thank you for hitting him on my behalf.”
“Do you think he’ll try to . . .”
“Get me fired? I doubt it. Herr Wellmann knows that Pawel made advances at me and harassed me repeatedly when I wouldn’t sleep with him. Wellmann cautioned him at the time and the harassment stopped. He wouldn’t dare do anything against me. Against you, however . . .”
“I don’t need Radio Liberty to survive.”
“That you don’t, and I’ve never had a man defend me before. So if that bastard Pawel does try to get you dropped as a contributor, I’ll talk to Wellmann. Of course, the fact that we are together will now be the talk of the office.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
“I don’t care who knows now. If anyone asks, I will tell them the truth: you’re the man I love.”
As it turned out, there was no need for Petra to make such proclamations at the office, as Pawel called in sick for several days after this incident. When he did return to his producing duties and did knock on the glass of Petra’s office cubicle, he was all business, handing her a script to be translated, telling her he’d been out with “a bad gastric flu,” asking if she was well, and essentially showing her a professional cordiality that he had never demonstrated before. That same day he left a message for me at the Café Istanbul, asking me to call him back. When I did, he was civility itself, wondering if I could turn around an essay on the von Karajan legacy at the Berlin Philharmonic in three days. The fee he offered was two thousand deutsche marks—almost four times what he usually paid me.
“That’s a most generous sum,” I said.
“Well, I think you merit it,” Pawel said, not a hint of sheepishness or contrition in his voice. “Anyway, you are such a regular and first-rate contributor.”
Of course, I did the von Karajan essay. Petra translated it. When I came up to record it at Radio Liberty with Pawel, I just happened to pass Petra in the corridor. We all exchanged pleasantries. That night, back home, she said:
“I think you hitting him was the best thing that ever happened to Pawel. Even though no one at the office knows what happened, everyone is still saying the same thing: the man has become civilized, for the moment anyway.”
“Well, when that two thousand deutsche marks comes through, why don’t we blow it all on a trip to Paris?”
“You mean that?” she asked, sounding amazed.
“Of course, I mean it,” I said. “We’re together three months today. It’s an anniversary of sorts. And we should do something extravagant and special. So tell me when.”
“It would be great to do four or five days there. So maybe I could take a few days off.”
“Just let me know and I will get it all in motion.”
“Paris. I can’t believe it.”
The next morning—it was a Saturday—Petra was up early. When I awoke the entire apartment had been cleaned thoroughly—a task we usually shared together—and she was back from the laundromat with the clothes I had dropped off yesterday, now ironing our spare set of sheets.
“There was no need to do all this,” I said as I stirred awake and was handed a demitasse of espresso.
“I just couldn’t sleep and needed to keep busy.”
Now I was wide awake, reaching for her.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, taking her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed but didn’t seem able to look at me.
“Just worried about work, that’s all,” she said, digging out a cigarette in the pocket of her work shirt and simultaneously biting down on her lip.
I sat up and reached for her.
“This isn’t about work.”
“It’s something that I should have told you weeks, months ago, but was too afraid to discuss.”
“But why?”
“Because I was scared that, if you knew . . .”
“Scared if I knew what?”
Now she sto
od up and walked to the other side of the room, sitting down in an armchair, her eyes welling up, shaking her head as she tried to forestall the sobs that were welling up within her. Immediately I raced over to her, taking her in my arms, rocking her back and forth.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered through the tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
“The reason it’s all so hard this morning . . . it’s because . . .”
“Yes?”
“It’s his birthday.”
“Whose birthday?”
She pulled back from my embrace, looking away from me.
“It’s the birthday of my son, Johannes. He’s three years old today.”
SEVEN
FOR THE NEXT hour Petra spoke nonstop—the entire story coming out in a long and terrible cascade.
“I need to first tell you about me and Jurgen. Yes, he was my husband. Yes, we lived together for five years. I was very young when I met him. I had been in a relationship for two years prior to this with a man named Kurt, who was twenty years my senior and produced classical music programs for the state radio station. Kurt was very quiet, very cultured, very married. I had just finished university. I had just been awarded the post of translator at the state publishing house. I was living in a tiny room in Mitte. My room was no more than nine meters. One minuscule window. An alcove with a hot plate, a sink, and a very small fridge. A bathroom the size of a narrow closet. No natural light. A single bed. A table and a chair. I had a radio and some books and little else. But it was my first place. I found someone who got me a few small pots of paint and some brushes—never easy to find—and painted my very own mural—very Alice in Wonderland—on one wall. But even with this dash of color, the place was drab, sad, a cell, and only enlivened when Kurt came by three days a week from six to eight. Kurt was hugely intelligent—a near concert-grade pianist who should have gone on to great things, but always seemed to come up short in life. He was sent to the big music conservatory in Moscow, but his teachers there considered him just ‘moderately gifted’ and not destined for the great concert halls. So when he returned to the DDR he got a job in the state broadcasting system and occasionally played recitals and concertos in small provincial halls. He also met a rather overbearing woman named Hildegarde. They had three children. They all lived in three rooms way up near Pankow. He felt trapped. Then he was introduced to me when he had to come to the state publishing house one day to consult on a book of musicology by a Canadian academic. Over a cup of tea in a café on Unter den Linden, I remember Kurt telling me he was brought in to make certain that the book’s ‘interpretative analyses were ideologically acceptable.’ I remember laughing and being rather amazed at such blunt sarcasm. I was just twenty-two and didn’t have a boyfriend.
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