That’s the reason I didn’t accept Frau Ludwig’s offer of a notebook in which to record my thoughts in the weeks that they were interviewing me. I worried that they might read the notebook when I was away from the apartment. After all, they were the intelligence services—and as I was warned many times before being handed over, they would be both warm and welcoming, while privately wondering if I was “kosher.”
“The fact that your story is so horrible,” Stenhammer told me. “The fact that you can tell them about your wrongful imprisonment, and the way we took your child away from you . . .”
“But you did wrongfully imprison me,” I said. “And you did take my child away from me.”
“Then why did you sign an agreement here yesterday, offering up your child for voluntary adoption?”
I wanted to scream and shout and say: “Because you forced me to, telling me that if I didn’t agree to have Johannes adopted, you would start a criminal proceeding against me as an unfit mother and would make certain the judge at the trial ensured that I was barred permanently from contact with him.”
“At least this way,” he argued, “once you have proven your worthiness to the Republic again—once you have redeemed yourself—the return of Johannes to your custody will be a relatively straightforward business. All going well, he will be back with you within eighteen months. But this will all be based on your effectiveness for us after you are traded. Do understand: you will have to lie to people who will show you kindness, who will treat you as a heroine who was indecently abused by a ‘totalitarian regime,’ which is how they regard our highly egalitarian society where no child wants for hunger, where there is universal health care for all, where a superb standard of education exists, where artists are valued and subsidized, where merit, not money, advances all . . .”
As he spouted these propagandistic banalities, all I could think was: Everything you described—the lack of poverty, the free hospitals, the excellent free schools—can be found in every Scandinavian country. But, unlike our little Republic, they allow their citizens the right to travel freely and they don’t imprison people for daring to voice an opinion against the state. Nor do they take away children from a citizen whose only crime is that her erstwhile husband has gone crazy in public.
But I said nothing, except: “I will do what you ask. And I will trust you when you say that if I fulfill my role, you will return my son to me.”
A large part of me knew this outcome was highly unlikely, that with Johannes having been placed with a couple who I guessed were Stasi and childless, they would be loath to part with him. I also knew that I couldn’t trust Stenhammer—that he was an arch manipulator who knew he held all the cards. That was the hardest part of the equation—the recognition that it was all a game of power for him, and one predicated on the fact that he also held out hope. A favorable resolution if I cooperated. What else did I have but this hope?
I’m not going to write too much about the three weeks of daily “interviews” that I had with Frau Jochum and Herr Ullmann, except to say that theirs was a very polite and civilized form of interrogation. Again there was a Faustian bargain here—a nice cushioned landing in the West, in which I was put up in a luxurious apartment, bought real Levi’s and nice clothes and makeup, given a place to live and a possible job (the interview is in two days’ time), and given enough money to tide me over until I started earning. What they wanted in exchange was information. They quizzed me about everything—from Stenhammer’s interrogation techniques to how many Marlboros he smoked a day. Their interest in detail was extraordinary. They wanted to know the color of the walls in the prison in which I was kept, the type of linoleum on the floors, the height in meters of the cage in which I was allowed to exercise, the sort of recording equipment they used when questioning me, even: Was there a specific brand of coffee that Stenhammer brewed for himself?
Information, they say, is knowledge. But after three weeks of such excruciating attention to detail I wanted to scream: information is ennui. But I couldn’t. I needed these people on my side. Though tedious and pedantic, they were also both so decent, so courteous, so careful never to be officious.
But they also saw me as a conduit of information. I was their entree to a closed world—someone who had been dropped into its vortex, and could now give them a firsthand account of everything I had seen and experienced.
How I wanted to break down in front of Frau Jochum and confess everything. How I wanted to make a clean breast and throw myself at her mercy. But I feared that, perhaps, they would immediately label me “damaged goods” and throw me back—at which point my destiny would be prison. Stenhammer threatened me with this, were I to be returned by “the enemy.” And the end of any hope of Johannes being returned to me. And he did promise me . . .
There are moments when I just feel like dying. Literally walking out of this room and heading to the U-Bahn station and throwing myself in front of the first oncoming train. I rationalize this decision by simply telling myself it will be the end of all pain, that it is the only way to silence the agony. For that is what I feel, hour after hour. The agony of being forced into living this double life. The agony of knowing that I am now completely alone in the world. Most of all, the wrenching agony of losing my son—and having him dangled in front of me as the prize I will receive if I give them what they want.
But what stops me from making that journey off the U-Bahn platform is Johannes. I tell myself that as long as there is even the slightest possibility of him being returned to me, I must somehow keep myself afloat.
I cannot give up hope. Because it’s all I have. Because he is all I have. There is nothing else in my life but my son. Nothing.
* * *
This room. I didn’t want to move here. I wanted to stay in the plush, cosseting world of that intelligence compound, where somebody made the bed every day and picked up the towels and did my laundry and cooked wonderful food (the vegetables alone were incredible—I had never had any access to such fresh foodstuffs), and kept a basket of fruit topped up for me every day. Apples, peaches, bananas, strawberries—all exotica back across The Wall, but so evidently abundant here. I kept wondering if, being in a special compound, I was also being granted privileged access to special delicacies, like the senior party apparatchiks back home who, rumor always had it, were allowed into special shops where hard-to-get items—like fresh fruits and Marlboro cigarettes—were accessible. What an extraordinary system. “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” as Lenin put it, in which an elite—the people who administered the dictatorship in the name of social egalitarianism—insisted that everyone accept material deprivation and profound restriction on personal liberties, while they themselves acted like a feudal ruling class and granted themselves privileges denied to all those they kept enslaved and imprisoned. No wonder poor Jurgen went mad. He actually thought his creative brilliance would be a bulwark against the system’s implacability. Those people hated artists—even the ones who paid lip service to the Republic. Because they knew that a streak of subversion always clouded their hearts. Anyway, who trusts a writer? Not only do they “sponge off life and those close to them” (a Jurgen quote), but they so often articulate the things we’re all thinking but don’t want to be made public.
This train of thought started with a comment about fruit, and how I was certain that the sweet, ripe, wildly red strawberries I was eating every morning were only being provided to me because I was a special status “guest” with information to impart. But then, one afternoon, Frau Ludwig suggested we take a walk in the area near the compound. I discovered we were a little out of town, near Spandau Prison. But the area was residential and green, with fine houses and well-maintained apartment blocks. Frau Ludwig said the area was largely working class—but the shops were still stocked with the most extraordinary range of things to buy. Just rereading that sentence I know how naïve, how Communist provincial, I sound. But the truth is, my eyes went wide at the sight of huge clumps of broccoli, the
tomatoes the size of a clenched fist, the twenty types of chocolate on sale just by the cash register. All this choice, all this plenty, and accessible even in a small corner shop. I wanted to be thrilled by all the options that now awaited me. But all I could think was: I may have crossed over, but I am in no way free. Because they have me beholden to them if I want to see Johannes again.
But, God, the apartment in that compound, it was so lavish, so comforting. And so outside of the world—which is what I loved most about it. I was still safe here. Once beyond its secure walls, I would be back in a world I knew would close in on me shortly thereafter. Because the call would one day come from their “contact” in West Berlin. And then . . .
So I really did talk up my fear of the world beyond theirs. But it wasn’t playacting. It was an absolute terror of what lay in store for me. Frau Ludwig and Frau Jochum together did their best to reassure me that what I was feeling was profoundly normal, given the number of political prisoners they had welcomed here and shepherded toward integration in Western society. Frau Jochum said:
“I’ve often seen people who, like you, have been released from the most psychologically damaging detention—and then simply cannot cope with the sense of choice, the sheer liberty, that life over here provides. You must learn that you can have a conversation with somebody and make a sardonic comment about Chancellor Kohl—and you will not lose your career on account of it.”
Unless you happen to work for Chancellor Kohl’s party.
“You are just going to have to be patient with yourself,” Frau Ludwig told me. “It’s a steep learning curve, I know. But, in time . . .”
I was able to stay in the compound for more than four weeks. As tedious as I found the interviews, I cooperated fully. Because I knew that as long as I was proving useful to them, they would let me stay. Around the end of the third week Herr Ullmann informed me that, as I had been a translator back east, he had found an opening for me at Radio Liberty.
“It will allow you to keep in contact with the land of your birth by doing something positive for your compatriots. And it will also allow you to meet an entire group of fellow refugees in West Berlin.”
Is that supposed to please me? To be tossed in with the other lost souls from the Eastern Bloc, all harboring sadness and resentment and all the psychic scars that come with the territory. The thing is—and I explained this to Stenhammer so many damn times—I never wanted to be a dissident. I didn’t have extensive grievances against the state. I didn’t long for a life in the West. I never once took part in a political activity that compromised my loyalty to the German Democratic Republic. Yes, I wanted a nicer apartment. Yes, I would have liked the opportunity to go to Paris in my lifetime. But I accepted the limitations, and I loved the community we made for ourselves in Prenzlauer Berg. When Johannes arrived, it didn’t matter that his father virtually ignored him. It didn’t matter that he was going off the rails. All that mattered was this new life, this child whom, if I had been in any way religious, I would have called a gift from God. Because his presence in my life changed it utterly. I had never felt such unconditional love before toward anyone. Whatever about the drabness of our material lives. Whatever about the tedium of my job. Whatever about Jurgen’s increasing withdrawal from our lives—to the point where we stopped sharing a bed and I didn’t really care if he went off whoring for days at a time—I had my son there. He was the center of my existence, my future, our future. He made everything else that was dismal and joyless in my life seem less significant. He gave me an Existenzberechtigung—a reason to be. A reason to live.
And without it I have nothing. I am nothing.
* * *
I moved in here last week. Five days ago to be exact. Frau Ludwig went apartment hunting with me. Or, rather, she told me she’d found a nice Einzimmerwohnung—a bedsitting room, or what is called in French a chambre de bonne—in the area I had requested. She’d even gone ahead and put a deposit down on it, and was getting the landlord to repaint it and retile the shower. When we visited it, I was impressed by the fact that it smelled new. White walls. Brown painted floorboards. A plain single bed with a wooden headboard. A desk in matching dark wood with a bentwood chair. A small kitchen table with two chairs. A galley kitchen with a new fridge, a cooker, a hot plate. A tiny shower in a far corner of this fifteen-meter room. One window, with a simple but new white blind, that looked out on a rather grubby alley—but at least was away from the main road, down which traffic rumbled day and night. After the sumptuousness of the compound, this was a return to reality. Still this reality was still more comfortable and well equipped and airy (despite its small size) than anywhere I had ever lived before. What’s more, two days before I moved in here, Frau Ludwig took me shopping. They’d already supplied me with several pairs of Levi’s and T-shirts and underwear, a double-breasted dark blue military overcoat, even a leather jacket. Now she brought me to this extraordinary department store on the Ku’damm called KaDeWe which we had, of course, heard about back in the GDR—but which surpassed my expectations. I had never seen a place so opulent, so crammed with goods. And the choice, the choice, was overwhelming. We went to buy plain white sheets. But Frau Ludwig stated that I would probably not want to have to iron them all the time, so she suggested we buy two pairs of a style called “easy care.” She also told me about a duvet that was “good for all seasons.” And she insisted on buying me a small set of pots and pans that, she said, you never had to clean too thoroughly as they all had something called “a nonstick surface.”
We also bought a set of white crockery, a box of cutlery, a wooden chopping board and a few kitchen knives, a coffee press, and (because it was the one appliance I had always craved) a toaster. She even brought me to the hi-fi department to buy me a radio and a little record player with two speakers. I felt like a child being spoiled by a rich aunt—and both loved it and felt profound guilt, as I knew I would be called upon to betray such generosity and had done so already. Because I’d not had the courage to come clean with them about . . .
Enough. You know why you have to follow their command. You know it’s the only possible way back to Johannes. Stop the soul searching. The sooner you give them what they want the sooner this waking nightmare will be over.
* * *
I left the room today for the first time in three days. After moving in here on Monday I went to the local store—it’s a small supermarket—and bought enough food to last me several days. They’d opened a bank account for me in the local Sparkasse—two thousand marks. So much money. Enough to cushion me until I receive my first month’s salary from the job that I don’t want to start. Herr Ullmann told me that the director of Radio Liberty, Herr Wellmann, would be expecting a call from me this week. But I decided that “this week” could also mean Friday. Once I arrived here on Monday—and found everything that Frau Ludwig had bought for me at KaDeWe already delivered here and piled on the bed and kitchen table—I just ventured out the one time to shop. I bought the food and carted it home. Then I spent the balance of the first day and night organizing the apartment. Once it was set up, I made one last trip outside, as I had seen a used record and book shop on a side street near mine. I bought a record by Wolf Biermann. Chauseestrasse 131. Jurgen had a copy of this album. It was a prized possession, as it had been banned and Biermann stripped of his citizenship while on a tour of the West in 1976. The great irony of this action by the state was that Biermann himself had been born in the West and emigrated to the GDR because he was a socialist idealist. And then, when he became far too critical of his adopted land, they threw him out. Like the son rejected by the father whose love he always craved.
I also bought Sgt. Pepper, letting out a little excited yelp when I saw it in one of the bins, as this too was so hard to find at home. Judit had a copy, and we listened to it together on several occasions, drinking vodka, smoking, trying to imagine what London must be like, wondering out loud if we would ever see the world beyond the sealed borders within which we lived
.
Back in my room I played the Biermann and the Beatles over and over again. I found myself crying several times. Biermann’s sarcastic, sardonic lyrics bringing me back to Prenzlauer Berg and twenty friends crammed into a tiny apartment. A few candles burning. Bad Romanian wine and cheap vodka. Biermann on the record player. Everybody talking, talking. A real sense of animation, of engagement. Me still feeling out of my depth around so many proper writers and artists. Me going into the alcove every fifteen minutes to make certain Johannes wasn’t crying amidst all the music and talk and laughter. Judit joining me there once, looking down at my sleeping son and starting to sob that she knew it was now too late to have children, and how I was the only real friend she could count on in the world.
Judit.
When Frau Jochum revealed that it was Judit who had been reporting on me to the Stasi for months, maybe years . . . no, I didn’t feel hatred. Just desperate shock, then the most crippling sort of sadness. Whom could you trust? Who wasn’t in their pocket? Who wouldn’t betray their closest friend to maintain some sort of détente with those bastards?
But she told me repeatedly that she valued our friendship more than anything. “We are sisters—and we will always look after each other.” And I believed her and told her everything. Now it turns out she was meeting her Stasi man and telling him everything I told her. It was all taken down and used against me—even though I can’t remember a truly subversive comment I made in front of her. But Stenhammer was able to quote to me things that I had allegedly said—but they were all passing sarcasms about life in our little Republic, and all very Berlin in their sardonicism. The sorts of things we all said all the time during those long, alcohol-driven evenings in somebody’s apartment up off Kollwitzplatz. When I heard them quoted back to me during my daily interrogations, I realized that somebody among our group had been the Stasi’s eyes and ears into our little bohemian circle. But Stenhammer was clever. He never quoted me anything I said that was so specific, so intimate, as to make me realize it was Judit who had been their mole. So when Frau Jochum told me, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. And still don’t. Even finally writing it down doesn’t lessen the blow, doesn’t make me feel any less alone. Which I am. That’s why I haven’t been able to go outside. Seeing people on the street just emphasizes my feeling of total sequestration. I have no family. I have no friends. I am living a lie in the hope of undoing a monstrous wrong. And this room—it’s clean and well heated and nicer than anywhere I’ve ever lived, albeit tiny. Much of the time I envisage a crib next to my bed and my son sleeping in it. I worry that the people he has been placed with will not give him the love that he needs, that they will be formal and distant with him. He loves to be cuddled. And I could never stop holding him, touching him.
The Moment Page 47
