The Berlin train arrived ten minutes late. The wind funnelled down the covered platform, jostling the passengers and tearing at their clothes. A woman’s scarf whipped by overhead, somersaulting as if intoxicated by the sudden taste of freedom. A sheet of newspaper followed. I spotted Theresa and fought my way over, my spirits lifted by the sight of her smile (the smile is what I remember still, her smiling and her tears, her whole being reflected in those fragments). The train must have been full, because it took us several minutes to get clear of the crowd.
Outside, the gale made communication difficult. Theresa said something about my looking exhausted. I thought the same about her: she struck me as paler and thinner than usual, as if recently recovered from an illness. I hung on to her suitcase and Theresa hung on to me, but it was not until we were safely installed at Tutti Frutti that we had a chance to talk.
I remember little of the early conversation, which covered breathlessly Theresa’s arrangements in Berlin, the kind old couple she lodged with and her initial contacts with the Humboldt faculty. I was too wound up to pay attention, intent as I was upon my proposal and the question of how I should frame it. The Eiscafé had been almost empty when we first arrived, which seemed propitious, but no sooner had I embarked upon my declaration than a gang of insolent youths barged their way inside, leapfrogging the stools and upsetting a huddle of pensioners in the far corner.
‘What is it, Bruno? What did you want to ask me?’
We had both put down our coffee cups.
‘Nothing. Nothing much. Have you seen the piece in Stern? The profile?’
Besides the proposal, it was the only thing I could think of.
‘Not yet. I’ve tried to get hold of a copy, but no luck so far, not even at the university.’
This struck me as incredible: not that Stern should be unavailable in East Berlin, but that a young woman profiled in such a magazine wouldn’t make the time for a day trip to the West, where it would be for sale on every street corner – a day trip being all it would have taken.
‘Then I’m ahead of you. They gave you five pages. Quite a spread.’
The first hint of colour returned to Theresa’s cheeks.
‘Five pages? How on earth did they fill five pages?’
‘Photographs mainly. There are a lot of photographs. Klaus’s luxury villa takes up most of them.’
‘I expect they didn’t show the damp patches. The whole place smelled of mould.’
‘He said something about short stories. You were going to write some short stories before tackling another novel. Is that true?’
Theresa shook her head. Her cheeks were pinker than ever.
‘No. I mean, one day maybe. Not now.’ She pushed her fingers through her hair. I caught the comforting, musky scent. ‘It’s something Martin’s been going on about. He says short stories are a good way to build up stamina. He says a second book is always more pressure than a first. Nobody’s waiting for your first book.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’d like to tell him his advice doesn’t actually apply, but how can I?’
‘I thought he wanted a sequel as soon as possible. The one-trick pony issue, remember?’
‘That was before.’
‘Before what?’
‘Before I showed him what you wrote, about the next book.’ On her last visit, I had penned a skeleton plot for her in two paragraphs, as requested. ‘I thought it sounded great, but he said . . .’
‘What? What did he say?’
‘Nothing bad. Just that, on reflection, it was a bit . . . unformed.’
‘That’s what he said? Unformed?’
‘Unformed. Predictable. Don’t get me wrong: the publishers are happy. Everyone’s happy. It’s just that when it comes to Martin, I haven’t been able to fill in the blanks. He asks me things about the next book and I can’t answer. I’ve tried to reassure him that everything’s under control, but I’m sure he thinks I’m hiding something.’
‘You are.’
‘Yes, but he thinks what I’m hiding is writer’s block. That’s why he’s been lavishing so much time on me. He thinks I’m having problems and I’m afraid to tell him. He’s no fool, you know.’
Theresa’s handbag was resting by her feet. A paperback with a black spine was peeping out of the top.
‘You said, one day. How soon did you have in mind?’ Theresa frowned. ‘These short stories you might write.’
‘For God’s sake, Bruno, I told you: all that was just Martin buying time. Managing expectations, he called it.’
Theresa picked up her bag and began unpacking it.
‘So one day actually means never.’
She pulled out a tissue, shaking her head in despair. ‘Probably. Yes, never. I’m a musician. I can’t write short stories. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘With reading some maybe?’
Theresa’s gaze followed mine, coming to rest on the book that now lay on the table between us. On the cover was printed: Anton Chekhov – Short Stories.
The noisy youths had gone and the pensioners in the corner had returned to their usual discourse of complaint. Once again the coast was clear for a proposal, but my line of questioning had spoiled the mood. I decided, all things considered, that it would be better to make my declarations outdoors.
‘Anyway, something we have to talk about is the money,’ Theresa said. She was definitely blushing. ‘It’s started coming in. You’re going to have to tell me what to do with it.’
We left the Eiscafé and headed east towards the Volkspark, the wind shoving us along as if impatient for the matrimonial question to be settled one way or the other. Theresa seemed in no hurry to adjourn to my flat and I wasn’t in my usual hurry to take her there. I knew it would look mean and tatty after the modernist grandeur of Klaus’s lakeside palace. Nature, on the other hand, was not so easily upstaged. The valley might lack a mountain backdrop. Its waters might be muddy and poisonous, but it had trees in abundance – stately, ancient trees whose foliage of russet and muted gold spoke to me of patience, steadfastness and forbearance. How different from Klaus’s realm, where the only gold that mattered lay hidden in vaults.
Except for a few dog walkers, slaves to canine bowels for whom being caught in a gale was a minor inconvenience, the park was empty. Along the avenues we found some shelter, though the air was still full of spinning leaves. I was glad to be where no one could overhear us, though it was hard restarting the conversation. A proposal of marriage requires a context, a gloss of spontaneity. I had to do better than: Theresa, you know I’ve been thinking . . .
‘You’re not happy, are you?’ she said. ‘You think I’ve done this all wrong.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Is it the pen name? Eva Aden? Is that what’s bothering you?’
‘No. That was thoughtful of you, a nice thing.’
‘Well, it wasn’t completely selfless.’
‘No?’
She dug her hands into her pockets. ‘I wanted to be able to disappear again once it was all over. You can understand that, can’t you? I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being the woman who didn’t write Survivors.’
‘I was touched all the same.’
‘Then it must be Martin. You think I shouldn’t have signed with him.’ Before I could deny this she went on, ‘Honestly, I don’t know how I’d have managed without him. I’d probably have given myself away and I’m sure we wouldn’t have got anything like as much money.’
I told her I thought Klaus was an excellent choice. ‘Why have an agent when you can have a super-agent?’
‘So, what is it? You just don’t like his villa?’
A bullish insistence coloured these questions, as if Theresa was determined to bury the issue of Klaus’s suitability once and for all.
‘I described the place as luxurious. You were the one who said it smelled of mould.’
Theresa looked at me closely, then laughed and took my arm. ‘Well, it did a little, here and th
ere. And it is a bit like a museum, or an art gallery. Not what you’d call homely.’
‘Lacks a woman’s touch, perhaps.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘So where’s Frau Klaus in all this?’
‘Didn’t it say in the article?’
‘Why should it? It was supposed to be a profile of you.’
Theresa looked at the ground. ‘Martin was married for five years, then divorced. That was ages ago. Now he’s married to his work, he says.’ She gave me a little nudge, though I hadn’t said a word. ‘You needn’t look so dubious. It’s not as if you’re anyone to talk. There’s no Frau Krug, is there?’
This was the moment: the mood light, the topic of conversation matrimonial, my sense of urgency reignited by the thought of Martin Klaus making the natural (even logical) transition from marrying his work to marrying his client.
‘I’ve just been waiting, that’s all,’ I said.
‘For the right woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘What made you think there’d ever be one?’
By this time we were close to the willowy oasis of the Carolasee. A flight of mallards took off from the water, furious wing beats battling the wind.
‘It was a risky strategy, I admit. But I know there’s a right woman now.’
‘Really? How?’
‘Because I’m looking at her. Unfortunately the strategy won’t be vindicated unless she agrees to marry me.’ I took her hand. ‘What do you think, Theresa? Will she?’
Just at that moment a violent gust bore down on the willow tree above us. Instinctively we ducked to avoid its flailing limbs.
‘I think we should go home,’ Theresa said, once we’d hurried to safety. ‘It’s starting to rain.’
The nearest available shelter was the Carolaschlösschen, a grand, boxy villa on the near side of the lake that served as a café and occasional wedding venue during the summer months. Unfortunately the season was already over and there were no signs of life. Had Theresa heard my question? If so, she was taking an ominously long time to frame a reply. Beneath the shadow of a partially retracted awning, I turned to her again.
‘Theresa, what I was trying to ask you was –’
‘I know, Bruno, I know.’
She put an arm round my neck and buried her head beneath my chin. I held her close with my one free hand (the other held her suitcase), aware, even as the warmth of affection flowed through me, that this was the one position in which it was impossible to see her face.
‘The answer is . . . one day.’
‘One day? You mean, yes one day?’
‘I think so. When it’s . . . So much has been going on, Bruno. You don’t know . . . You don’t know all of it.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘I need to think, Bruno. I need to think. I’ve just got here and suddenly you’re all . . .’
Desperate was the word she was probably trying to avoid.
‘I missed you,’ I said. ‘I always miss you.’
‘I missed you too.’ This would have been a good moment for her to look at me. She didn’t. She was silent for a few moments, then I felt her sigh, as if facing a truth she didn’t want to face. ‘I know why you’re asking me, Bruno.’
‘Why am I asking you?’
‘Because you think it’s what I need to hear. A proof of love.’ She looked up at me then. ‘You think otherwise I’ll leave.’
She was right. Still, I was startled by her insight. ‘It’s what I want,’ I managed to say. ‘It’s as simple as that.’
She shook her head. ‘But it isn’t simple, is it? Because of your work.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If I’m over here, permanently, I can’t help you over there. You’d need someone else. Besides, nobody knows about us in the West, not now. But they would know if I became your wife. There’d be stories in all the newspapers – about who really wrote the book and how it was smuggled out – and then everyone here would know too. The fact is you need me exactly where I am.’
From a practical point of view this was also true. One consequence of the splashy, publicity-soaked publication that Martin Klaus had engineered for Survivors was that its fate and history were potentially newsworthy, something I had never anticipated. The obvious solution to the problem – a solution Theresa was reluctant to propose – was that I should leave the valley for ever, leave the faulty plumbing and the bad air, the uncritical readers and everything I had ever known, and go to live in her world; in a museum, perhaps, beside a Swiss lake, assuming I could afford one. This was, of course, easier said than done. The very act of applying for a travel permit was likely to invite scrutiny and arouse suspicion. As Herr Andrich and Herr Zoch had made clear, artistic defections had, in recent months, become a matter of the utmost sensitivity.
And there was the other difficulty, the one Theresa didn’t know about: once outside the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, I would have no justification in maintaining the Eva Aden front. Full disclosure would have been unavoidable and that would mean revealing Wolfgang Richter as the author of Survivors. Certainly I could not claim the book as mine. That would change a discreet, interpersonal lie that was all about love into a monumental public lie that was all about profit. Whatever else might be said of me, I was not yet ready to go down in literary history as an out-and-out thief.
Theresa was watching me closely. Perhaps if I had told her to forget the books, that they didn’t matter to me, that I had no plans to write anything because I had nothing to say – if I had told her all that she might have offered no further resistance. But instead I said nothing. I was still afraid to let her see what I had become.
‘Besides, it’s a big step, becoming a citizen.’ That was what she said next. ‘I’d be leaving my family. How often would I get to see them?’
‘Trips to the West aren’t unknown. And your family could visit here.’
‘Maybe. If the authorities allow it. If they grant permission.’
‘You’re here by permission right now.’
‘It’s not the same. I want to be here by right.’
‘As Frau Krug, you would be.’
Theresa shook her head. Across the empty terrace puddles were forming among the wet sand. My heart was already sinking. I could see yes, one day slowly but surely evolving into no, never, the former being no more than a panacea of temporary worth.
‘People say things will get better here,’ Theresa said. ‘It’ll get better. My father says that. It’s a transitional phase. But it doesn’t change. Everything stays the same.’
She was wrong. In recent years things had actually been getting steadily worse: the cities more decayed, the shortages more widespread, the Party rhetoric more belligerent. Fortunately, as a recent visitor, Theresa lacked a basis for comparison.
She shook her head. ‘It’s different where I come from. I wish I could make you understand.’
‘Don’t worry. The Stern piece was most illuminating. Erlenbach looks charming.’
‘I’m not from Erlenbach. I’m from Linz. Industrial Linz. They’re very different.’
‘That’s a shame. I’ve heard Erlenbach’s quite exclusive.’
‘You’re not being fair.’ She pushed back, hanging on to me by my lapels, but her eyes remained fixed on my chest, as if addressing an intelligence located somewhere behind my sternum. ‘All I’m saying is what’s the rush? I’m here, aren’t I? I’ll be here for another year, maybe more. And you have a book to write. Your best book ever.’
There were tears in my eyes, but Theresa’s grip on my coat made it impossible to turn away. It struck me that I was being kept in place, metaphorically as well as literally. Why was this so hard to bear? I had been in the same place most of my life. Why did the prospect of being there a little longer fill me with despair? Because, in that moment, I could not rid myself of the notion that the main beneficiary of the status quo was Eva Aden, novelist, feminist visionary and cash cow. And if this was no accident,
it meant that everything we had, Theresa and I, even her presence that very day, was all for Eva, for Martin Klaus, for Bernheim Media. It meant that Theresa had already left me and was never coming back. It would mean, in effect, that she was dead – if indeed she had ever really lived. For as my hopes faded of a happy ever after, I began to wonder if the girl I thought I knew (modest, loving, loyal) was anything more than a character in a story I had told myself.
Despair is a dangerous state of mind. Anger is much safer. Anger is outward-looking. It conjures up enemies, identifies the blameworthy and holds out the invigorating prospect of revenge. Despair turns to anger out of nothing more than an instinct for self-preservation.
‘So why have you changed your mind?’ I said. ‘Barely a year ago you were ready to settle here.’
Finally Theresa looked me in the face. ‘I never said that.’
‘Not to me, no. You said it to Wolfgang Richter. I have it on very good authority.’
‘What authority?’
‘He was in love with you. And you loved him back. I can’t blame you. Lots of women loved him. He was talented, dashing and handsome. What more could you wish for?’
Theresa’s frown turned to nervous laughter. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Deadly.’
She let go of me. ‘Well, your good authority stinks. For your information, Wolfgang wasn’t my type.’ Her blushes gave the lie to her words – unless she was angry too.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
Theresa did an impression of someone who can’t believe what she is hearing. ‘Look, Wolfgang was handsome, yes. And witty. And he had a lot of confidence.’
‘Don’t forget talent.’
‘But he was also arrogant and unfeeling and, if you really want my opinion, selfish.’ Theresa took a couple of paces, then turned round again. ‘Do you know what I really didn’t like about him? He thought everyone was a bit of a joke – everyone except himself. He made fun of people and the worst of it was he was good at it. He enjoyed it.’ Theresa’s voice hardened. ‘He was fun to be with. I will say that. But he wasn’t nice. He wasn’t kind.’
The Valley of Unknowing Page 24
