The Moment

by Douglas Kennedy

  “‘That will be enough,’ Stenhammer snapped.

  “‘Because you can’t stand to hear the truth,’ I wailed. ‘How the fuck do you sleep at night, knowing you have denied an innocent mother the child who means more to her . . . ’

  “Stenhammer stubbed out his cigarette, hit a buzzer on his desk, and interrupted my rant by slapping me hard across the face. As he did so, his face was contorted into such a violent and frightening expression that I was immediately covering my head with my hands, screaming and crying and begging him not to hit me.

  “‘Shut up now,” he hissed.

  “I fell silent, trying to suppress the scream that was still lodged in my throat. Stenhammer, clearly shaken by what had just transpired, walked around the office, his breathing indicating that he was trying to steady himself and muffle the fury that had overtaken him. After a moment he grabbed his cigarette case and fished out a Marlboro and lit it up, taking a deep drag off it before speaking again . . . only this time his voice was back to its usual eerie coolness.

  “‘You have just overstepped the boundary of no return, Frau Dussmann. And you are right: given your evident psychological instability, your treasonous behavior, your thoroughly tainted character, there is no way that this very democratic and very humanistic republic could allow one of its children to be raised by such a compromised, contaminated individual. So, yes, you will not be seeing Johannes again. Since you don’t want to tell me the truth about your collaboration with capitalist agents, I am ordering that you remain locked up constantly—except your one hour of exercise per day and your own weekly shower—until you are ready to tell me everything I want to know about your so-called bohemian circle in Prenzlauer Berg. Until you inform one of the guards that you are willing to give me the information on these subversives that I require . . . ’

  “‘That I will not do, because none of them are subversives and because I won’t betray my friends.’

  “‘Then you will simply rot in here.’

  “He hit a button on his desk. Within moments a woman guard was in the room, strong-arming me up out of the chair.

  “‘Why don’t you just take me out and shoot me?’ I hissed. ‘Save the Republic the cost of keeping me locked up here.’

  “‘But that would be far too easy a way out for you,’ he said.

  “That was the last I ever saw of Colonel Stenhammer. I was returned to my cell. Thus began the three longest weeks of my life. Stenhammer remained true to his threat. I was never brought back to his ‘office.’ I was kept locked up twenty-three hours a day. I continued to be deprived of anything that might allow me to escape the inside of my head. I was on constant suicide watch, as the light burned in my cell day and night, and the sliding panel on the solid steel door slid open every half hour as a guard checked that I hadn’t indulged in any form of self-harm.

  “After a few days I fell into a sort of walking catatonia, in which I lost the will to reflect or play the sort of cerebral gymnastics that would keep my faculties intact. Instead I slipped into the sort of malaise that saw me lie motionless on the bare mattress for hours on end. I ate little. I had no appetite for anything. When I was brought to the exercise block, I simply sat slumped against one of the walls—and the morning guard on duty (it was a young man—and less harsh and cruel than his female counterparts) would always slip me a packet of f6 cigarettes and a box of matches, and allow me to smoke. But I didn’t have the will to exercise or even walk back and forth within this cement cage. I just sat there, smoking as many cigarettes as I could during this one hour outside, staring at the sky through the barbed wire overhead, still telling myself that, somehow, I would be reunited with Johannes. How could I kill myself when I knew that my son was out there in the world beyond these walls, and that some sort of general decency and humanity would have to prevail, and he would be restored to me?

  “The weeks went by. My waking catatonia deepened. It got to the point where I had to be physically hauled off the bunk and all but carried outside. I had lost a shocking amount of weight. I didn’t care. I was happy to waste away, as nothing mattered anymore. I had been sentenced to live in this limbo, this nonlife, forever.

  “Then late one evening—or, at least, I thought it was the evening, as I could see nothing but darkness outside the tiny aperture that served as my window—the cell door opened and two men in suits stood outside, accompanied by two women guards.

  “‘Frau Dussmann,’ one of the suits told me. ‘You will get up now.’

  “I shook my head slowly, and whispered one word: ‘No.’ One of the suits nodded to the guards and they approached me. But when they began to manhandle me off the bunk in their usual rough style, he shouted at them to be ‘gentle.’

  “The next thing I knew I was being escorted down the corridor to the showers. The suits waited outside as the guards helped me off with my clothes and handed me a bar of soap and a bottle of Western shampoo. I was so weak that I found it difficult to even work the shampoo through my hair. But I somehow managed to finish the shower. The guards then brought me the street clothes I had been wearing when arrested. All freshly laundered and pressed, but now—given all the weight I’d lost—far too big for me. The skirt was so large one of the guards disappeared with my belt and returned a few minutes later with three new holes punched in it. As I dressed, one thought kept hitting me: What is happening? Is some justice minister showing up for an inspection and they want me to look relatively normal? I asked one of the guards if she could tell me what was going on. She just shook her head and told me—politely, I should add—to hurry up. Then I was brought down a few more empty corridors and up a flight of stairs to a small dining area. I was told to sit down at one of the tables. I could hear the noise of pots and pans close by. A door swung open and a woman in a white chef’s tunic emerged with a plate, on which were an omelette and some brown bread. The eggs tasted real—so often, we had to make do with powdered eggs in the GDR—and the bread was fresh. She brought a pot of good coffee, and one of the guards put a packet of f6 cigarettes by me and said I could smoke.

  “The food was the first solid meal I’d had in weeks—and, again, the question What does all this mean? was haunting my every thought. After I’d wolfed down the omelette and bread and lit up the cigarette, the door swung open and one of the suits was there.

  “‘It’s time,’ he said.

  “‘Time for what?’ I asked.

  “‘You’ll see.’

  “One of the guards tapped me on the shoulder, indicating I should stand up. Five minutes later I found myself in a garage, being placed in the same sort of van in which I had been brought here. They put me in the same interior cell as before, locking it shut. Then the back door closed, I heard the hum of machinery as, I presumed, a garage door opened. The van backed up. With a distinctive change of gears, we headed off.

  “We must have driven for an hour. The van came to a halt. I could hear another few vehicles pulling up to meet us. The van sat there for the better part of another hour. I could hear several different voices outside, but there was a wind blowing and I couldn’t discern a word of what they were saying. Then, suddenly, I heard a bolt being thrown and the rear door opening and the headlights of a vehicle facing our own filled the interior of the van. One of the suits climbed up and crouched down as he walked the few steps to the cell in which I was being kept. He undid the padlock and said two words—‘We’re here’—and escorted me outside.

  “A sharp blast of cold air hit me as I climbed down off the van. Snow was falling. I could tell that we were in the middle of a bridge. Next to the beaming headlights of the vehicle facing us were several men and women in plainclothes and uniforms. One of the suits took me by my arm and led me toward these waiting figures. A woman came forward. The suit literally handed me over to her. I was so blinded by the headlights, the snow, the confusion of everything that was happening to me, that I couldn’t discern who she was, what she looked like. My steps were tentative. I felt so desperately we
ak. Immediately she put a protective arm around me and said:

  “‘Petra Dussmann, I am Marta Jochum of the Bundesnachrichtendienst,’ the West German intelligence services. ‘Welcome to the Bundesrepublik.’

  “‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  “‘Let’s get you out of the cold,’ she said.

  “She escorted me into a very large car. There was a policeman standing by the door. As he opened it for me, he touched my shoulder with his gloved hand and said one word: ‘Willkommen.’

  “I sat in the back of this huge car with Frau Jochum. There was another policeman behind the wheel. A man in a very fine overcoat got in beside him. He turned around. He was around thirty and very good looking. He smiled at me.

  “‘This is Herr Ullmann. He is from the American mission here in West Berlin.’

  “‘It is wonderful to see you here, Frau Dussmann,” he said in fluent German. ‘We’ve been following your case for many weeks now.’

  “‘You have?’ I said.

  “‘I know this is all very confusing,’ Frau Jochum said. ‘But all will be explained tomorrow after you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a decent breakfast.’

  “‘But why am I here? I’m nobody.’

  “‘Don’t say that,’ Ullmann said. ‘You’re exactly the sort of person we’ve been working to get out.’

  “‘But I’m not a dissident, not a politico. I never did a political thing in my life.’

  “‘We know all that, Petra,’ Frau Jochum said.

  “‘Just as we know how ruthless those bastards have been, vis-à-vis your son,’ Ullmann said. ‘And excuse the bad language, but having followed your case . . . being deprived of your child like that . . . well, it beggars belief.’

  “‘Not only have I been denied him access, but they have put him with another family. And my psychotic husband informed the Stasi that we were American spies.’

  “‘We need to talk to you about your husband,’ Ullmann said.

  “‘But it can wait until tomorrow morning,’ Frau Jochum added quickly.

  “‘Has something happened to Jurgen?’ I asked.

  “‘There is a great deal to discuss, Petra,’ Frau Jochum said. ‘And as it’s now three in the morning . . . ’

  “‘If something has happened to Jurgen, I want to know now.’

  “‘We have a very nice place for you to stay,’ Frau Jochum said. ‘A most modern apartment which is yours for the next month or so, as you adjust to . . . ’

  “‘Tell me what happened to my husband,’ I said. ‘I want to know now, please.’

  “Ullmann and Frau Jochum exchanged a nervous glance. Then Ullmann gravely nodded his assent. That’s when I knew. Frau Jochum reached over and took my hand.

  “‘Your husband hanged himself in his cell several days ago,’ Frau Jochum said.

  “The news didn’t blindside me. On the contrary, it made terrible sense. Jurgen was, at best, a fragile man—and one who would not have withstood the horrors of isolation and lack of stimuli visited upon him in a Stasi jail. But though I wasn’t overwhelmed with grief, I still felt a profound despair—because I also knew that, with his father dead and his mother ejected from the Republic, Johannes would now become a ward of the state and the child of whatever family they had placed him in.

  “‘Was Jurgen’s death the reason I was expelled from the GDR?’ I asked.

  “‘Jurgen was never working for us,’ Ullmann said, ‘though he did make contact with several people we have on the ground in East Berlin. To be blunt about it, we didn’t consider him psychologically reliable enough to use as an intelligence contact. But we were aware of his false implication of you.’

  “‘How were you aware of that?’

  “‘We have our sources of information within the Stasi. In essence, the Stasi knew you had nothing to do with us. But they were using you as leverage against Jurgen. Just as we know that they were using your son as leverage against you.’

  “For a moment a wild thought came to me: could it be that Colonel Stenhammer was their mole inside the Stasi? Was he interrogating me and Jurgen and was he then reporting back, via some clandestine route, to Ullmann? Though I had never loved Jurgen—nor he me—the fact that he was now dead . . . that his death was such a lonely and terrible way out of the nightmare into which he had dropped all of us . . . oh God, I was so angry at Jurgen for having ruined our lives and so desperately sad at the thought that he was no more. That madly talented, furious, brilliant, far too complex, so self-destructive, so crazed, so unhappy man . . . who also happened to be the father of my son. The son who had been taken away from me. The son who would now grow up as the child of other parents. The son who would be told that this false mother and father were his own, and would never have any knowledge of my existence. The son who was now lost to me forever.

  “I lowered my head as my eyes filled up with tears. I could feel Frau Jochum’s hand pressing harder against mine.

  “‘I know how difficult this news must be. That’s why I wanted to wait until morning.’

  “‘You got me out,’ I said. ‘Now you have to please get my son out.’

  “I could see an anxious glance pass between Ullmann and Frau Jochum.

  “‘We’ll discuss all that tomorrow, Petra,’ Frau Jochum said once more.

  “‘In other words, it’s hopeless,’ I said.

  “‘We will explore every avenue possible,’ Ullmann said. ‘Of that I can assure you.’

  “‘I’m never getting him back, am I?’ I said.

  “Another nervous glance between Ullmann and Jochum.

  “‘We’ll do our best, Petra,’ Ullmann said. ‘But we are up against certain realities here. The biggest reality is that those people do not play by the same rules as we do.’

  “They brought me to a compound, located in the far west of the city. Frau Jochum was right. The apartment into which they ushered me was, by the standards of what I had known until now, the most luxurious imaginable. There was a woman there named Frau Ludwig, in her mid-forties. She informed me that she was going to look after me in the weeks ahead. Frau Jochum turned me over to her and said that, after a medical appointment I was to have tomorrow morning, she would be back with Herr Ullmann in the late afternoon to have an extended chat with me.

  “Once she was gone, Frau Ludwig informed me that, in the coming weeks, I was to call on her for anything—and that right now I probably needed a shower and a good night’s sleep. There was a living area with a sofa and a big reading chair and a television—all very modern, very much like a deluxe hotel. There was a bedroom with a massive bed, made up with the most wonderful sheets and the softest duvet imaginable. She asked if she could run me a bath—and I spent almost an hour soaking in this deep tub filled with scented bath salts. She had fresh pajamas awaiting me. Once I changed into these, she insisted on using a tape measure to take some basic measurements so she could order me some new clothes, as the ones I had on not only were too big for me, but were, of course, the only set I now had in the world. She wished me a good night, I climbed into that massive bed and couldn’t sleep for more than an hour. All this cocooned luxury. I was also still so traumatized by the last three weeks of isolation and sensory deprivation that it was hard to cope with such changed circumstances. Then there was the overwhelming sadness and strange guilt that I felt about Jurgen’s death, coupled with the deepening horror at the realization that Johannes was lost to me forever. Staring at the ceiling, trying to still fathom why I had been released so suddenly, and how I would never be free of the longing I had for my lost son. It was all just too confusing, too wounding.

  “But I finally did surrender to sleep. When I awoke the next morning it was just after noon and Frau Ludwig presented me with two pairs of jeans—actual real Levi’s—and a corduroy skirt and a very nice double-breasted dark blue military-style overcoat and assorted underwear. I remember all this not just because I was overwhelmed by the quality of the clothes and the generosity of my benefac
tors, but also because, again, I couldn’t understand why all this goodwill was being visited upon me.

  “After breakfast I was walked across a spacious courtyard—so beautifully landscaped—to a medical facility where a very efficient but kind doctor ran all sorts of tests on me. He said that the now-fading red welts on my body—which happened during that alleged ‘photographic session’—were, in fact, radiation burns, and that I wasn’t the first person he’d examined upon release from a Stasi prison who had suffered such burns.

  “‘But why would they expose me to radiation?’

  “He hesitated for a moment, then said:

  “‘Our theory is that they use radiation as a way of marking certain dissidents, in order to be able to trace them in the future.’

  “‘Or to make them deathly ill.’

  “‘There is that,” the doctor said. ‘But it all depends on the level of radiation with which they hit you.’

  “‘If it caused such burns on my body . . . ’

  “‘Yes, it is a great worry. But the lasting damage to your health—if, that is, there is any—will only be discerned many years from now. And there is the good possibility that you will be spared any illness.’

  “‘Just as there is the possibility I will get very sick from what they did to me.’

  “‘Yes, that is a potential outcome. But the physical scars—the welts—should fully disappear within weeks.’

  “That afternoon. Herr Ullmann and Frau Jochum both interviewed me. I learned that the reason they wanted me ‘out’ of the GDR—and the way they traded me for two GDR spies who had been imprisoned in the Bundesrepublik for many months—was twofold. I had been interrogated by Colonel Stenhammer, a ‘gentleman’ who interested this pair intensely. They had targeted me as a potential bargaining chip because the GDR authorities knew that I was essentially blameless—and therefore, as such, had nothing to share with agents of ‘the other side.’