Homecoming

by Bernhard Schlink

  I stopped looking and opened the novel I had recently bought now that I did not need every free minute to prepare my lectures. I began reading as the plane started down the runway and lifted into the air, but I was unable to retain anything and kept reading the same sentences over and over.

  I was suddenly terribly tired. Was it from the many trips and the two jobs? The prospect of going back to the publishing house, where since my encounter with history—if only in the waiting room—the work had lost its luster? The fight I had fought for Barbara years ago? Suddenly the hope and despair came back to life as if the years had been mere days.

  The plane had reached its cruising altitude, and the stewardesses were serving drinks. The navigation lights at the tips of the wings were blinking on and off, and now and then the lights of a city twinkled between the clouds. Why do lights on the ground always seem to be twinkling? Why can't they just shine? I closed my eyes. I pictured Barbara making herself comfortable in the seat ten rows up, exchanging a few words with the person next to her perhaps, then opening a book and taking a sip of wine. I saw her face before me: the pale skin, the tiny scar on the upper lip, the dimple at the inner end of the left eyebrow. I had noticed she was wearing black slacks and a pink sweater and was neither fatter nor thinner than she had been, and I conjured up her body so vividly that I felt I could touch it if I held out my hand. It made me jealous of that person next to her: I envied him her closeness and the easy, natural contact between the two of them, superficial though it was.

  Jealousy only made me more tired. But even as I drove it away with thoughts of the joys of those early days—the weekend shopping expeditions, the intimacy of our nights together, and the discovery of tenderness and passion, Barbara dripping wet in the doorway, then sitting in the armchair in my jeans and sweater with her hands around the cup of hot chocolate—I could not shake the fatigue. In fact, the happy memories seemed to be exacerbating it. That frightened me, and I retrieved one icon after the other from my memory: Grandfather picking me up at the station, Lucia holding my head and kissing me, my thoughts on justice in the first years of my work on the dissertation, the California paradise, my successes at work, Barbara sitting up in bed and pulling off her nightgown, the weeks with Max, the trip to Ticino with Mother, the farewell party in East Berlin. I was not disturbed by the fact that the memories made me nostalgic, because I could never bring back the events, or that they made me sad, because they reflected only the positive side of experiences that had their negative side as well. Such is always the case with happy memories. What disturbed me was that they made me more than nostalgic and sad: they made me tired. Deeply, dumbly, blackly tired.

  The strain of preparing regular lectures, the tedium of the work awaiting me, the frustrations of my fight for Barbara—none of this could explain my state. Not the latter, at least, as I had put up virtually no fight: she hurt my feelings; I crawled away. As for my job at the publishing house, I had capitulated without even trying to come up with a better configuration. Nor had I really put much effort into my teaching in the last few months; I had kept my distance, observing the others play out their roles while I kept mine quiet and took my leave before its irregularities came into the open. How could I put real effort into something I was not really involved in?

  I polished off both the small bottles of wine the stewardess had given me. It did not bother me that I did not get involved with Lucia: I had been too young. But I had played the Parsifal with my grandparents when I was old enough to pose questions that would confront them. As for the dissertation, I was too much in love with the play of my ideas to impose a structure on them. I could have made more out of the California experience and had a greater impact on Max's life, and with my mother I gave in early: evasion not involvement was the name of that game. I was not being unfair to her—she deserved it—but it did not do me any good.

  Is existential fatigue then the result of too little commitment rather than too much? Is it taking things too lightly that wears one out or taking them too seriously? Or is the whole thing nothing but hogwash? Is it nothing but my mother's work ethic in another guise? Was I simply more tired than usual because there are times when one is more tired than usual?

  As soon as the plane landed and pulled up to the gate, I jumped up and elbowed my way forward, a terribly boorish thing to do and deeply repellent to me. But I did manage to stand behind Barbara at passport control and ask, “Got any plans for the weekend?”

  8

  THAT WEEKEND ON OUR WAY home I asked her to marry me.

  We had set off on Friday at two, as in the old days. “Where to?” she had responded to my question in the airport without missing a beat or giving a hint of surprise, and nodded when I suggested Konstanz: on our last weekend excursion, the trip to Basel, we had designated Konstanz as our next destination.

  We took the Autobahn then the Black Forest scenic highway. The Black Forest was covered with snow, the slopes with skiers and tobogganers; the pines, otherwise a somber dark green, were resplendent in their white burden. The sky was blue, and at times we could look up over the mist covering the Rhineland plains all the way to the Vosges.

  We talked about what had brought us to Berlin. Shortly after the Wall came down, Barbara's school had formed a partnership with a school in East Berlin. It included a pupil and teacher exchange, and Barbara had taught there for two weeks. She liked the quiet, well-behaved children and most of the teachers, who were more confident of their roles than were Barbara and her fellow teachers. But things were changing: the children were growing wilder and the teachers less sure of themselves and hence more authoritarian. The old principal, a control freak suspected of having collaborated with the Stasi, had just been replaced by a man who favored reform, and he had asked Barbara whether she could come for longer periods, the rest of this school year and all of the next.

  “And what did you say?”

  “I'd be only too glad to, but I've got to see what my school says. And the school board.”

  “You're not one of those adventurer types I'm sure you've met, and you feel no sense of duty, so it must be for the pleasure. What do you get out of it?”

  “It's the combination of the familiar and the strange. I can be somebody else when I'm in Africa or America, but I have to cut myself off from my home; here I can be somebody else in my own country, with my own people, in my own language.”

  “How do you picture it?”

  “A life as a teacher in the German Democratic Republic: the endless rules, the scant freedoms, the contact with other teachers and the children and their parents, keeping an eye out for unofficial Stasi informers, spending summer holidays in Bulgaria, Romania, or at the dacha, making quality time for family and friends, tracking down things in short supply, and experiencing the joy of a book or record from the West.”

  “Isn't that just the kind of life you said you hated?”

  “It would be exotic in the East. It's worth a try.”

  “In a few months—a few weeks, even—that life will lose its exoticism and be just like the local variety, only uglier. It will have all the same chains, and your kids will be wearing Gap clothes and eating Big Macs.”

  She shrugged. Was she listening with only one ear? Was she as unsure as I was, afraid that our meeting on the plane had been a prank of fate and our weekend jaunt a mistake? Would we feel what strangers we were once we embraced and tried to make love? Not the kind of strangers you are at first, when you meet and are curious; no, the kind of strangers you are at the end, when it's over. Could something that had worked before work again? Could we again be the miracle we had once been for each other? Had we betrayed each other by taking pleasure in the arms of others? Would putting our arms around each other again prove an embarrassment?

  We took a room at the Insel-Hotel in Konstanz. I was standing on the balcony looking out over the lake when Barbara came up behind me, wrapped her arms around my stomach, and laid her head on my back. After a while she slid into my arms an
d we simply stood there holding each other, not kissing, not talking, just gazing out over the lake, the shore, the sky, or closing our eyes. It was a mild evening; spring was in the air. We did not go back inside until it got dark. We turned on the light, unpacked, and changed for dinner, bustling about in high spirits. We might still have issues, but at least our bodies had recognized each other. I had touched Barbara's shoulders, arms, back, and thighs; I had felt her breasts and stomach; I had smelled her skin and hair, heard her breath.

  That first night and the night following we only held each other. On Sunday we had planned to circle the lake and then set off for home, but there was rain coming down in thin gray strings, the way it does in Chinese pen-and-ink drawings, and after breakfast we went back to the room, pulled the balcony door open wide, and made love to the accompaniment of the rain. We had ordered food and champagne from room service and asked to be awoken at three thirty on Monday morning. At five we were on the Autobahn, at six thirty we got caught in the Stuttgart morning rush hour. It was then I popped the question.

  9

  SILENCE. I looked at her from the side, waiting for her to turn to me and answer, but she looked straight ahead at the cars. Hadn't she heard? I was about to ask when she did turn and say, “Is it important to you that we be married? It makes no difference to me.”

  “Well, it does to me.”

  “Are you afraid we'd lose each other the way we did the last time?”

  “Let's say I learned then how strong the bonds of matrimony can be. I think you really loved me, yet you stood by your husband.”

  “Not because he was my husband. He fought for me; you sulked.” The dimple over her left eyebrow had come out, and her voice was hard. “Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that I called you, called you again and again? That I stood in front of your door and knocked and shouted? That I wrote to you? But you preferred to make a victim of yourself, the poor man ill used by the evil woman.”

  “I'm afraid . . .”

  “ ‘I'm afraid . . . ,’ ” she said, imitating me. “Afraid of what? What are you trying to put over on me? You know what the Americans would call you? A ‘sweet-talker.’ No, I don't want to hear about your fears. I don't want to hear what a fearful, sensitive guy you are. I—”

  “Stop it, Barbara, please,” I pleaded, but that just made it worse. The only way I could get her to listen to me was to yell. “You're right. I did sulk, I did play the victim and turn you into the victimizer. I'm sorry I didn't fight, I'm sorry I hurt you, sorry we wasted years. I'm sorry, Barbara.”

  She shook her head. “You're only now catching on, aren't you. And only because I flew off the handle. If we hadn't taken the same plane, I'd never have seen you again. Did you expect me to take the first step and go back to knocking on your door and shouting?” She had lowered her voice, but her soft, tired delivery frightened me even more. “No, you didn't expect a thing from me—or for us. I don't get you, Peter Debauer. I don't get why you never called. I don't get why you want to be married.”

  The cars had finally started moving again. I turned the engine back on and drove slowly out from under the bridge we'd been stuck at.

  “It wasn't till I saw you on the plane that I realized what a false life I was living, refusing to get involved, either standing off to the side or, when the going got rough, beating a quick retreat. Just seeing you made it suddenly clear. I want you. If you don't want me, I'll fight for you. I don't yet know how, but I'll learn.”

  She smiled her crooked smile at me, looked back at the cars, and said nothing. We got back just in time for her to get to school and me to work. When I dropped her off in front of her house, she said, “Yes. Let's get married.”

  But no sooner did I get to the office than the phone rang and she said, “It won't work. Or, rather, it will work only if you and I don't make the mistake the Germans are making.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In both East and West people think that the other side has made the same changes they have or that the other side is the same as it was before the breakup or that they are the only ones who can comprehend what they remember and think. Know what I mean?”

  I did not answer immediately: I was thinking it over.

  “Are you still with me?”

  “Yes, yes. I am. And I know what you mean.”

  She sighed. “If so, would you like to come to dinner this evening?”

  10

  THUS BEGAN OUR fourth phase. The others had lasted only a few weeks: the weeks of the furniture search, the weeks of tenderness, and the weeks of apprehension that followed the announcement that she was married. I hoped it would take only a few weeks until we entered our next and final phase, the period of a common place of residence, of a life shared, and of marriage, possibly in East Berlin, if the school and school board allowed Barbara to go and I could find a publishing house—because my new idea was to take over a publishing house that had been privatized.

  We went back to the office and set things in motion. I thought the young official a bit overzealous in his perusal of my documents.

  “I see your parents married in Neurade and you were born in Breslau,” he said, “and that your mother did not gather the necessary documentation until September 1961.” He gave me a questioning look. “She couldn't have chosen a worse time. Do you happen to know why she did it then?”

  I shrugged.

  “Could she have been thinking of remarrying? Was there an inheritance?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The official reached for the telephone, dialed a number, asked for some information from my mother's file, and acknowledged receipt of same with a mumble and a nod. Then he turned to us proudly. “Just as I thought. Your mother lost the original documents during her flight from Breslau. When she applied for replacements, we contacted the central register office in East Berlin since it had taken over the records from areas ceded to Poland and Russia after the war. The office failed to respond, either because it did not have the documents in question or because once the Wall was up it simply left inquiries from West Germany unanswered. Then your mother showed us a copy of a letter your father had written to his parents mentioning the marriage. She brought along a friend who stated under oath that what your mother claimed corresponded to the truth.”

  “What was her name?”

  “That is not important at this point. What is important is that we have developed good relations with Poland in the interim and have access to documents we could not possibly have dreamed of seeing a few years ago. We are writing to Neurade and Breslau, so before long you will finally have a valid marriage certificate and birth certificate.” He was beaming.

  “But I don't want a birth certificate. I want to get married.”

  “I understand, but you must understand our position. We set great store by good relations with Poland and our partnership with the Polish authorities, and it is our duty to reestablish normal bureaucratic relations now that the end of the Cold War has finally made them possible. It will only take a few weeks.”

  “If there is no evidence to impugn the veracity of the 1961 document, it should be sufficient.” I knew nothing of the relevant branch of law, but it could hardly be otherwise.

  He gave me a look that seemed to say, I've been kind to you until now, but I can change. “You are free to take legal action if you feel it will expedite matters.”

  Barbara looked from me to him and back to me. “What's he saying?”

  “That Mother's documents aren't enough and he wants to have more sent from Poland. He says we can't do anything—”

  “No, I didn't say that. I said—”

  “. . . we can't do anything to get married in a timely fashion. The court will need more than the time it takes the mail to get to Poland and back.”

  Barbara, who could not understand the legal error the man had committed with such self-assurance, gave him a big smile and said, “Would you be so kind as to do everything in your power to speed things u
p? And could you give us a ring when documents arrive from Poland?”

  It was five weeks before he phoned to give me an appointment. They felt longer to me than to Barbara, who told me with her smile, “The difference between being married and being single is not so big as you think. Take it from one who knows.”

  I knew I would not love Barbara the more for being married to her, but I was constantly waking up next to her at night with the anxiety that had kept me awake before her husband returned. I wanted to be rid of that anxiety.

  The official greeted me with a patronizing smile. “Take a seat. Take a seat. Your fiancée isn't with you? Well, no matter. In fact, it's a good thing.” He reached for a file. “You weren't too optimistic about our relations with the Poles”—he was reveling in his triumph—“but our Polish friends have done a good job, a good job indeed. We now know that no couple by the name of Debauer was married in Neurade in September 1944 and that no child by the name of Peter Debauer was born in Breslau in April 1945. But there was a child by the name of Peter Graf born there and then to a woman by the name of Ella Graf. Graf is your mother's maiden name, is it not?” He did not wait for me to answer. “There can be little doubt that your real name is Peter Graf, not Peter Debauer. If you wish to marry, you must naturally do so under your real name.”

  “My real name? I'm not about to change names at my age.”

  The official gave me another patronizing smile. “That is not within my jurisdiction, but allow me to suggest that you consider having your name officially changed to the one you have been using up to now. I can give you an idea of what the procedure would—”

  “Change my name to my name?”

  “If that is how you wish to look at it. I see it as changing your real name to the name you have been using mistakenly.” He shut the file and ended the conversation by saying, “It was just a suggestion. After all, most women change the names they've had all their lives.”