The Valley of Unknowing

by Sington, Philip

  Then early one morning I found a small brown parcel waiting for me in my letter box. There were no stamps on the front, only my name and address. These had been written in a childish hand, the letters circular, the ‘i’s dotted with swirls. Round the address a square had been drawn, the perimeter decorated with a succession of semicircles, like the edge of a pelmet or a bedspread. In each of the four corners a flower had been drawn in red ballpoint. It was unmistakably a gift from a juvenile relative, a niece or a very young nephew; except that I had neither. I must have stood for a minute or more with that parcel in my hand, wondering if I was not in fact dreaming, and waiting for the realisation to wake me.

  Inside the parcel I discovered a book, an old edition of a novel I knew well: The Orphans of Neustadt by Bruno Krug. In my sleep-deprived state this did not strike me as strange. Given the nature of my mission, in fact, it seemed quite natural. A glance inside the front cover revealed that this particular copy was the property of the Johannstadt District Library and was due back in two weeks’ time. Attached with masking tape to the inside cover, just to the right of the reinforced jacket flap, was a small note. It read:

  Your photograph here

  (35mm x 45mm)

  Happy Christmas

  Anton

  48

  Unfortunately for me, the coin-operated photographic booth, a commonplace facility in Western railway stations and shopping malls, had yet to arrive in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State. Citizens had their official photographs taken in studios by state-licensed photographers, whose task routinely included seeing to their subjects’ hair, dress and facial blemishes, as well as to lighting and composition. Days later, names and addresses duly recorded (and shared, so it was rumoured, with the police), the resulting prints would be ready for collection, prints in which every citizen was rendered wholesome: sober, tidy, bright-eyed, spotless morally and dermatologically, in accordance with Party ideals. This was in marked contrast to common practice in the West, where citizens procured their own pictures and where an outsider might be forgiven for thinking passports were granted only to vagrants, idiots or carriers of the plague – doubtless as a prelude to exporting them on a permanent basis. The contrast might have provided a shred of ideological comfort to the Actually Existing Socialists who guided our ship of state, but it was of no use to me. I needed convincing passport photographs quickly and, above all, discreetly. But where could I get them? I did not have access to a darkroom. I did not know a reliable photographer. Even if I took the pictures myself – a considerable technical challenge – I might have to wait weeks for the resulting images, which I felt sure would end up being the wrong size. What I needed was Anton’s guidance, but Anton, for the time being, was little better than a name.

  I owned an expensive camera, a largely symbolic purchase made twenty years earlier in the afterglow of my one literary triumph, but I had used it less and less over the years. A brief wave of enthusiasm for urban landscapes had given way to a sporadic flirtation with portraiture and a more enduring (largely prurient) interest in the female nude. Now I took down my boxes and my albums and scrambled through them in search of my own image, my progress dogged by the knowledge that I would soon have to abandon this record of my past, mute and patchy as it was, for ever. Though I was in a hurry, I couldn’t stop myself from pausing now and then to reflect on the image of a friend or a lover, people whose names I could recall only with difficulty, or not at all. How young they all seemed and how different. It struck me as a waste, an emotional inefficiency, that I had squandered so much of my life among people who were destined to become strangers: people to whom I had no ultimate significance, and who were ultimately insignificant to me. Had anything worthwhile come of those ephemeral affairs, those temporary bonds? Had the experience, most of it forgotten, been valuable? Should I have been more productive, more probing in my choice of companions? Should I have been more concerned about the long term? Then I found some pictures of myself, twenty-five years younger, and it struck me that I was just another of those strangers in the frame (with their abundant hair, narrow hips, angular jaws). I knew almost as little about him, the young Bruno Krug, as he knew about me. Our connection was one of common ancestry and not much more than that.

  The boxes yielded nothing usable, the albums a solitary self-portrait: Krug, mid-thirties, leaning against a white wall, arms folded, still discernibly pleased with himself, despite the descent into creative timidity, by then already well under way. I cut the photograph from the page and held it up to the mirror so that I could compare it with my own reflection. After an uncomfortable minute or so, I was forced to acknowledge that there was no real resemblance at all.

  I decided I would have to take my own photograph after all and was on the way to buy film when I hit on a better plan: my publishers kept authorial pictures. I had been photographed on several occasions, the last about seven or eight years earlier. In the shot used most frequently I was pictured with the fingers of one hand curled thoughtfully under my chin – no good at all for a passport – but I recalled adopting other, less pretentious poses during that sweaty half-hour under lights. With any luck, those pictures would still be in the file.

  I changed course and went straight to Ferdinandsplatz. I found Michael Schilling alone in his office, staring out of the window. We hadn’t seen each other for months, but his expression upon seeing me was not one of surprise or pleasure, but of confusion, as if I had just stepped out of his thoughts, as Wolfgang Richter was apt to step out of mine.

  ‘Sorry to show up unannounced,’ I said, closing the door behind me. ‘I hope you’re not busy.’

  Absently Schilling surveyed his desk, presumably to see if he was busy or not. (It was piled high with papers, messier and more overcrowded than usual.) Then, with a shake of the head, he was back to his old self.

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Pull up a chair. How have you been, Bruno? How’s the work going?’

  To these rhetorical questions I responded with equally rhetorical replies. We both sat down again. Schilling laced his fingers together and smiled at me jovially, the intention, no doubt, being to reassure me that all was well; the effect being exactly the opposite. Schilling had never been a jovial man.

  I came straight to the point: I needed my photographs. Were they still on the premises?

  ‘I expect so,’ Schilling said. ‘Technically they belong to the company. We’d have to have them back.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the occasion? Why the sudden attack of vanity?’ Schilling frowned. ‘You look awful, by the way. Have you been ill?’

  ‘It’s for a present,’ I said, ignoring the observation. ‘I promised my girlfriend. Her birthday’s coming up and I forgot about it. You know how women are with these things. One little oversight and it’s as if you don’t care.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like our pictures. You said they made you look . . .’

  ‘Pretentious. I know. But it doesn’t matter. I just need a mugshot for her purse. Can we take a look?’

  Schilling was looking at me, lips pursed. ‘Bruno, what’s going on? What do you really want the pictures for?’

  I’m not sure why, but faced with this simple question, my powers of deception, like my powers of narrative invention, evaporated. Self-camouflage, instinctive to the point of second nature, was suddenly beyond me. Perhaps at the back of my mind was the thought that this might be the last time Schilling and I ever saw each other, that we were destined to join the ranks of barely identifiable strangers in each other’s yellowing albums. How sad, how hopeless it would be to conclude twenty years of friendship with a lie.

  ‘Michael, I’m leaving.’

  An awful stillness came over him, presaging, I felt sure, an outburst of some kind. But when the stillness was over, all Schilling did was nod to himself, as if my abandoning the valley was something he had long anticipated. Not for the first time I had the sensation of living
down to expectations.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Some time around Christmas, I think.’

  ‘It’s all arranged?’

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘You do know what you’re doing? You’re not just heading for the border with forged papers?’

  ‘I expect the papers will be genuine, except for the photograph.’

  ‘Your photograph?’ Schilling frowned. ‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll be recognised?’

  ‘No one recognises me any more, Michael. Twenty years of mediocrity turns out to have compensations.’

  Schilling folded his arms. He’d worked on the Factory Gate Fables too. I tended to forget that.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell me why?’

  ‘My reasons are the same as everyone’s. I make no claims to originality.’

  ‘Why now?’

  This question was harder. I could have explained the business with Richter, my suspicions regarding his death – suspicions Schilling had once shared – that I would not be silent or complicit in the murder of a fellow artist, that I needed to leave in order to tell the world what had happened. But when the moment came I said none of this. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my friend. Nor was I concerned to shield him from knowledge that might bring him harm. The fact is I didn’t think he would believe me.

  ‘It’s Theresa. I thought she might come and settle here with me. But that isn’t going to happen. So I’ve no choice but to settle over there.’

  ‘You two . . . it’s really that serious?’

  I shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’

  Schilling’s expression betrayed neither affirmation nor denial. Yes, he knew how it was; and he knew how it ended too.

  ‘So, when you’re over there,’ he said, ‘are you going to tell everyone the truth?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Wolfgang’s book.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That your girlfriend didn’t write it?’

  ‘Why not? What’d be the point of keeping up the pretence?’

  Schilling shrugged. ‘I’m not sure why you pretended in the first place. You said something about protecting everybody, making sure they didn’t get into trouble.’

  I’d forgotten about that.

  ‘It’ll be different once I’m on the other side. I’ll tell everyone that Richter gave his manuscript to me. No one else was involved.’

  ‘So not the whole truth, then?’

  ‘Almost the whole truth.’

  ‘What about Richter’s parents? They could suffer too.’

  I hadn’t considered this. I hadn’t considered anything very much. I just knew I had to get out and that this might be my only chance.

  ‘I’m sure they’d want their son to get the recognition he deserves, even posthumously, whatever the cost. They were very proud of him. He meant the world to them.’

  Schilling’s bespectacled eyes remained fixed on me for a moment, then he pushed back from the desk. ‘I expect you’re right. I’d probably feel the same way. Still . . .’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Are you sure she’ll go along with it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your girlfriend, Eva.’

  ‘Theresa. Eva’s a nom de plume.’

  ‘Was that your idea?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘And she’s happy for you to spoil the party?’

  ‘It’s not a party, Michael. It’s been an exercise in literary preservation, necessarily disguised.’

  ‘You’ve told her. She knows what you’re planning?’

  ‘In principle.’

  ‘What about in practice?’

  ‘She will soon. Very soon.’

  ‘And she’ll be happy to bow out?’

  ‘More than happy. You’ve got it all wrong, Michael. She was doing it all for me, not for herself.’

  Said out loud, this contention sounded somehow less convincing.

  Schilling sucked his greying incisors. Magdalena, his one great love, had betrayed and abandoned him. The experience had made him cynical.

  ‘Anyway, there’s not much she could do to stop me, is there?’ I said. ‘Even if she wanted to.’

  At that moment the telephone rang. Schilling picked up, promised someone he’d call back in ten minutes, then hung up again. Looking back, I suppose the ensuing pause was the ideal moment to express our feelings at what was almost certain to be a final parting, to set down for the record what it meant to us and what we had meant to each other. I suppose I owed him that. But all I could think of was getting my photograph to Anton. Only when that was done could my life begin again.

  ‘All right, Bruno,’ Schilling said, finally. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?’

  In an annexe to the main office, where several people were at work, was a storage room, home to a meagre stock of stationery, a pair of overcrowded bookshelves and various items of redundant office equipment. A filing cabinet stood in the far corner. The top drawer sported a torn label that read: AUTHORS A – .

  Schilling opened the drawer beneath it. ‘Should be in here somewhere.’

  I stood watching while his bony fingers riffled through the contents. I knew what he must be thinking: that I had planned to go without saying goodbye, that I was only here, now, because I needed a favour. I wanted to explain myself further, to offer some appropriate valedictory sentiments, but we were in too much danger of being overheard. I was relieved when he pulled out a fat file with the word KRUG on the flap.

  Among the papers were contact prints, negatives and enlargements in various shapes and sizes. In all of them I appeared unnaturally fit and virile, which was not what I thought at the time they were taken. But none of that mattered now.

  ‘What are you looking for exactly?’ Schilling asked.

  From the main office came a regular tap-tap-tap of inexpert typing.

  ‘White background, full face, thirty-five by forty-five millimetres.’

  Schilling turned to one of the bookshelves and extracted a volume. ‘Something like this?’

  It was an English paperback edition of The Orphans of Neustadt, a recent one, judging from the deconstructionist artwork and the Modern Classics label. On the back cover there was not one photograph of me, but three, arranged as on a roll of thirty-five-millimetre film, complete with sprocket holes and frame numbers down the sides. In keeping with the no-frills design, the chosen images had me staring at the camera, my face registering a numbness normally characteristic of the recently arrested.

  ‘These are perfect,’ I said.

  ‘You look younger. Not so grey for one thing.’

  ‘So? I could say I dyed my hair. People do. Have you another copy?’

  ‘That’s the only one they sent.’

  ‘I guess I need a sharp knife.’

  ‘I keep a scalpel in my office, for cut-and-paste purposes.’

  We went back there and closed the door behind us. Schilling cleared a space on his desk and we got busy surgically extracting my image from the back of the British edition. In the end I let my friend use the blade. When I rested the scalpel against the metal ruler, it made a faint rattling sound, like a tiny telegraph machine. I couldn’t afford a slip.

  Schilling worked in silence. I had never thought of him as remotely dextrous, but hunched over the book, the desk lamp pulled down low, each of his blue eyes enormous behind its Cyclopean lens, he resembled a watchmaker, the intricacy of his craft commanding absolute concentration. Had he laboured over my texts, and the texts of others, with the same heroic attention? Of course he had. And the excitement he exhibited at each new literary discovery, Richter’s being one, the way it electrified him; it moved me to be reminded of it. Nobody else in my experience was capable of such unselfish devotion to the written word. Was love too strong a term for it? If so, it was the purest kind of love, unacknowledged and unrequited. This, I saw, was the reason I felt so disloyal: my sudden departure was the embodim
ent, the epitome of that tragic asymmetry.

  Four cuts made a rectangle around the uppermost of my three disconsolate visages. Schilling placed a finger inside the book’s back cover and prepared to ease the picture free.

  ‘Listen, Michael,’ I said, ‘why don’t you come with me?’

  Schilling didn’t look at me, but my image remained in place.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘If I can arrange it. And I think I can. You’re my editor. We’re a team.’

  ‘Don’t these things cost money?’

  ‘Not this time. Anyway, I’ve got money. It’s all waiting for me on the other side.’

  ‘Western money?’ Schilling looked up at that point. ‘How come?’

  ‘From the book, of course,’ I whispered. ‘Richter’s book. You wouldn’t believe how much.’

  ‘You mean, she has the money. Your girlfriend. Are you sure that’s the same thing?’

  ‘I told you, Michael: we have an agreement. She’ll do what she’s told. So, what do you say? Are you going to come with me?’

  Schilling went back to work, pushing at the back of my picture with his thumb. The cardboard buckled but refused to separate.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why? What’s keeping you here?’

  ‘You have to ask? My son.’

  ‘Paul? You know, I think he’d understand. In fact, he’d probably urge you to go while you can. It doesn’t sound like he’s exactly an enthusiast for the system.’

  Schilling shook his head. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you ask him? Let him speak for himself. You might be surprised.’ Hearing no response to this suggestion, I pressed home my advantage, in the process casting sincerity to the winds. ‘You know, Michael, maybe you’ve underestimated him. Maybe Paul’s got more maturity than you give him credit for. People can change.’ I put my elbows on the desk and leaned closer. ‘We’d probably cross the border in Berlin. You could arrange to meet him there beforehand. You wouldn’t have to leave without saying goodbye.’