A Small Revolution in Germany
Page 17
The minister came over to us. We stood up. He made a small wave. I could not tell whether this meant ‘Sit down’ or ‘Stay where you are’. With a frown, he took the piece of paper from his pocket. He looked it over. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said finally, in English. We sat down. I felt that this was the second-rank position in the saloon, around an empty card-table. Over there was a tower of cakes. Perhaps tea would come.
Ogden explained that he had come with greetings from Dr Philip Cawston MP, who remembered with great fondness the week he had spent at the conference in – I forget now. I started to translate, but the minister cut me off.
‘Not necessary,’ he said. ‘Mr Cawston, a very distinguished member of his party. I remember meeting him. We had some pleasant evenings in each other’s company.’ He could not help it. As he said this, very charmingly, he cast an eye down to the piece of paper on which his secretary had typed an explanatory paragraph.
‘Mr Cawston sends his best greetings,’ Ogden said again. ‘The party is changing, in some respects, but Mr Cawston represents its future, as well as the past.’
‘I am pleased to hear it,’ the minister said. ‘I myself retired from political life three years ago. I thought I would be much less busy, but—’
Ogden took the opportunity to hand over Philip Cawston’s memoir, or programme for political change, or manifesto, or whatever it was – I had looked at some of it on the train. The minister thanked him with a delightful, boyish, practised smile. He set it down quickly on the card-table.
‘May I ask,’ I said, ‘who was your guest just now? I seemed to recognize her. And she sang so beautifully.’
‘An old friend,’ the minister said. ‘I have known her for many years.’ He showed his teeth. He might have been waiting for the next move in the conversation, but I had none. Ogden, too, was overawed. He leant forward as if to make some comment, but thought better of it. He leant back. The silence was broken by the door to the salon opening. The small woman in brown entered with a sheaf of papers. A glance passed between her and the minister; she nodded; he stood up. We found ourselves saying goodbye with, again, assurances of fraternal greetings.
‘I don’t know what I expected,’ Ogden said, at lunch the next day. We had made a tacit agreement that we would not discuss it until then. ‘It wasn’t what I would have done – what I’ve seen Phil do.’
‘He’s retired, though,’ I said. We were sitting in a beer hall in the central square of Leipzig. A historic building was on one side of the square. On the other, a bold piece of bright blue modernist fantasy from the 1960s bore a mosaic of the triumph of workers. We had two beers in front of us, and two schnitzels. At the bar, two waiters leant against the wall, half attending to the nearly empty room. One was using a beer mat to pick his teeth.
‘Phil always finds times for foreign visitors. Gives them tea.’
‘He needn’t have seen us at all.’
‘He was more interested in flirting with that old opera singer and the little girl. Done up like Violet Elizabeth Bott.’
‘She was his old friend. He had no idea who we were. How often has he ever seen Phil? He must have met thousands of foreign socialists in his life.’
‘People like that – they just don’t care. About what’s going to happen to the world. Retire, and dribble your time away having tea with celebrities. Those people – they’re as bad as English Tories. So long as they’re all right.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘And this food is awful.’
‘Well, yes.’
There is a play by Chekhov called The Cherry Orchard. In it, the characters are gathered and talking when, all at once, in the remote distance, a sound is heard. It is inexplicable, like a great string being plucked. No one can explain it. It changes everything. What happened to us after that lunch was like that. There was no explanation for it. Afterwards my life was never the same.
We left the beer hall. We were walking down a street of shops and offices. We were supposed to go to the police, to register our presence in Leipzig. There were a few people about, but not a crowd. One side of the street was covered with scaffolding. Ogden and I were passing the occasional remark when, five yards in front of us, a small but heavy piece of luggage – a small rucksack, I thought – fell with a thud to the ground. It had fallen from high up. Pieces of glass fell with it, shattering across the pavement. A worker must have dropped it, or had it been thrown through a window? We were lucky not to be struck by it, or by a shard of glass. Immediately afterwards, a much bigger piece of baggage hit the ground. It was an unusual shape. For a moment I thought the bag had split open while falling. The two objects lay there. The larger one had tubes, almost like sleeves, almost like limbs. At my side a human voice made a sound. I understand now it was Ogden’s throat. The sound he made was like a man who has been punched – an outburst of air. Nothing had fallen on him. He had understood a second before I did what had dropped from the sky.
A sheet of glass was being lifted by a crane. The support had failed. It had somehow fallen on a workman. The man’s head had been immediately severed. The smaller object, which I had thought was a small rucksack, was the man’s head hitting the ground. The larger one, which was a stranger shape, harder to understand, was the man’s torso, his trunk and limbs.
We had seen the death of a man. A life had taken place before this moment. What lives contain had run its course.
Around us people were beginning to scream. Ogden’s arms were around me. I could not understand it. But his concerns were for me. He was hustling me away.
I never knew the name of the man who died. There was no reason why I should ever have discovered it. Perhaps, in the old German Democratic Republic, the victims of industrial accidents like that were not made publicly known. There was no connection between me and him – between me and that body divided in two, between trunk and limbs, and sightless head. The only connection that was made was that I was there at the moment of his death. The connection is slight and trivial. The event took place, now, thirty years ago. Nothing about it should have made any change in my life. But those two objects falling heavily to earth are, to me, the same as the sound of the string breaking, far off, in Chekhov’s play. My life divides into two. There is the part of my life that happened before a decapitated man fell from a height, in Leipzig, in the year 1987. And there is everything that happened afterwards.
We were back in the hotel room. I was not quite sure how we got there or what time it was. The curtains had been drawn. I was sitting on the end of the bed, looking at the wall.
‘Everything will be fine,’ my friend was saying to me. ‘Everything is all right.’
I agreed with him in some way.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ he went on. ‘Nobody should have to see something like that.’
‘I thought it was luggage,’ I said. It was a strange remark he had made. He had seen what I had seen, and understood what he was seeing before I had.
He looked at me directly. I found his expression difficult to read.
‘Falling luggage,’ I said. It was as if I had said something that made very little sense to him. I lay back on the bed, looking at the ceiling. It would take me for ever to sleep. Perhaps it was not time to go to sleep. That time called night. I did not think I would ever sleep again. I felt giddy. There was something in my head, something important I wanted to think about. I would forget it. It would never go away. I could not think what it was. A voice in the room was talking, saying words. I thought I would shut my eyes. The voice has come closer. Somebody is taking the shoes from my feet. They are unbuttoning my shirt. I stay as I am. I am not going to sleep.
What
is it
what is it
something there what a
finger hard in my back
no a face bony there on mine
and a mouth a tongue hard sour
no where who no his hand on tugging my balls who a tongue in my mouth pressing down and then dark a weight on me a body bones, a corner, a joint, a stab in the side smell of sweat old beer belch come on don’t don’t come on relax I always wanted he named it who and I’m fighting come on we’re in Berlin no one will know yes it’s Berlin and no it’s not it is it’s Ogden a tongue in my mouth a hand on my dick my balls and there in my side a dick hard and pushing a stab a hand forcing under me and a forearm on me on the chest and I can’t push and something wet something greasy under me and a push and there Ogden is behind me and his forearms around my shoulders somehow and he’s inside and pumping and
I am no longer
there.
I feel nothing.
It occurs to me that Ogden has forgotten where we are, too.
We are actually in Leipzig, not Berlin as he said.
There is a body with a hole somewhere in the German Democratic Republic.
A man puts his thin hard little dick into it.
It hurts.
Nothing matters.
It will go on for a while.
I can think about other things.
I wonder what time it is.
The male orgasm is an act of violence, connected to the erection, which is connected to the collapse of the erection after orgasm, which is connected to impotence, which is connected to failure, and happens once before everything comes to an end
in an instant
and renewable
death.
Think of this interesting proposition.
The orgasm of the active partner, of the top, is death.
The orgasm of the passive partner, of me, is of the willed pleasure or the withholding of it.
There in that bed too narrow too hard too borrowed the men are put together and one rapes the other. But I can stop Ogden raping me so easily. I can stop him in a second. I can stop him by saying fuck me and wanting to be fucked and then I have consented. And then he is not raping me. Instead we are having sex together. The thought might make me laugh, in a parallel universe.
Or I could stop caring, or never start caring, whether Ogden in his misery and secrecy fucks me or not.
It will not take long.
There is no doubt in my mind that Ogden does not love me. I am quite certain that the man he loves is Joaquin. This is a fuck of punishment, a fuck of frustration.
It will not take long, Ogden’s fucking.
In the city outside a torso with splayed limbs like a broken spider lies by the side of a head. I am to blame for it and I am being punished for it.
It does not take long, Ogden’s fucking.
He has his orgasm and falls back onto the bed. Lord, Ogden is going to have a miserable day tomorrow and my day will be just fine. It is four thirty-seven in the morning. It is too narrow a bed to lie on, the both of us, and after four seconds I get up and go to lie in Ogden’s bed. Four seconds is not very long; I mean it to be rather rude. His bed smells of him. It is not very long before Ogden starts crying, quite loudly. It is a disturbing noise and it takes me longer than I would have liked to go back to sleep. The noise of Ogden crying is the noise of a thin whining voice asking please and sorry and I never meant to over and over again. Outside the streets are silent. Only once in this aria of grieving self-pity do I hear a thin whining noise outside. A German Democratic Republic car on some early errand. It actually interests me, the consonance between the thin whining voice inside, trying to say words, and the thin whining engine outside,
meaningless, purposeful, filling the empty street
with its music. After a while I
fall into a harmless what a
harmless dark and quiet
and silence and
sleep and
nothing.
In the morning I woke up to find that Ogden was staring at me. He was in my bed. I was in his. I yawned in a performing way, arms upright.
‘Have you had a shower?’ I said.
‘No, not yet,’ Ogden said. ‘Do you want to go first?’
‘I’ll only take a minute,’ I said pleasantly.
‘I thought we might go to Weimar today,’ Ogden said. ‘I think we were supposed to go tomorrow. But we’re done with Leipzig, don’t you think?’
‘The hotel was booked from tomorrow. But I suppose we can say we made a mistake, got a day wrong.’
Through breakfast, we talked about travel arrangements. We paid the bill in hard currency. We discovered there was a train to Weimar in an hour’s time. We walked to the station. We bought tickets. We had plenty of time still. I reminded Ogden that we had not yet changed our daily twenty-five marks, as required by the law. We could do so at an office by the ticket counter.
‘This is getting too much,’ Ogden said. ‘I shouldn’t have changed anything with our friend in Berlin. We’re only spending ten or twelve marks a day. I’ve got hundreds of Ostmarks. This is really a terrible situation.’
‘The state requires it,’ I said. ‘There’s no point in complaining about it. You shouldn’t have gone above requirements like that.’
‘Do you think our friend would change them back?’ Ogden said. I didn’t think it was worth answering.
We took our seats in the train, both facing forward. I thought of saying to Ogden, ‘You raped me,’ but decided against it. The carriage was half full. I was submerged in a rich, almost soup-like boredom. I carried out an experiment of discovering exactly what I could see without moving my head in any way. To the extreme left was a stretch of empty platform out of the window. To my right was a sliver of Ogden and the table on the other side of the aisle. There was a smell of old clothes and the pungent, inescapable brown-coal atmosphere. Probably people who lived here were quite unaware of it.
A man, a handsome, alert-looking man in a pale grey suit, asked if the seat opposite was taken. He sat down.
‘This train is late,’ Ogden said, looking at his watch. ‘This is the right train, isn’t it? Can you ask?’
‘I’m sure it is,’ I said, but asked the man opposite if this was the train to Weimar.
‘Are you visiting?’ he said politely, once that had been cleared up.
‘On holiday,’ I said. ‘We are from England.’
‘How interesting,’ he said. ‘I read many English novels when I was younger. I had a teacher who had an enthusiasm for your writer Dickens.’
‘Your English must be good,’ I said.
‘No, I hardly speak one word,’ he said. ‘I read everything in German translation. Of course my teacher read the originals.’
‘What is he saying?’ Ogden said.
I ignored him. ‘We’re travelling to Weimar, and after that to Dresden,’ I said. ‘Do you live in Leipzig?’
‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘I was born in Leipzig.’
‘What would you advise us to do in Weimar?’ I said. ‘We’re first-time visitors.’
‘There are many historical sites to visit in Weimar,’ he said. ‘I do not think you will be at a loss for something to do.’
I felt very happy. This man was alluding in the most friendly and delicate way – historical sites – to the thing that lay at the base of his country, and of his whole existence, the establishment of a liberal political system, seventy years ago, that was always called the Weimar Republic. It was pleasant to meet a kindred spirit on a train journey in this way. ‘It helps to understand history when you travel to the places where it was made,’ I said. Something came innocently into my head. It was the possibility of action, like going to the restaurant car – if there was one – for a cup of coffee. Out of the window I could see another pair of tracks, for trains going in the opposite direction. I could get up now. I could go to the end of the carriage. I could open the door to the sideways hurtling air.
I could step out into nothing. I would fall at great speed to the inert tracks opposite. I could lie on the tracks bloodied and groaning for some time, until a train in the opposite direction came along and severed my body in two or three. I could commit suicide. The thought was a peaceful one, and very detailed.
‘I have travelled very little,’ I said to the man. ‘I know that travel abroad is difficult and limited for citizens of the German Democratic Republic. But I have travelled so little that coming here seems like a large adventure. I went on holiday with my parents when I was a child, and we went half a dozen times to Austria and Germany, the other Germany over there, as well as to France and once to Portugal, but I was young and therefore self-centred and I think I now understand that when you travel with children your gaze must be constantly focused on them, rather than on what you are travelling through. Does that make sense? I know I said that citizens of the German Democratic Republic can’t travel, but that isn’t quite correct, is it? You can travel to other Warsaw Pact countries, and I believe that you can go even on Mediterranean holidays in Bulgaria, as well as spa breaks in Czechoslovakia and bracing hiking holidays in southern Poland, these must be very enjoyable, so I suppose that you quite understand what I mean when I say that to holiday with a child in tow is not the same as to holiday. Or perhaps you do not have children, as indeed we do not. I have also travelled to Australia, once, but that was not really a holiday, that was to visit my mother, and it hardly seemed like travelling at all, apart from the discomfort of the twenty-four hours in an aeroplane. This is by far my most adventurous holiday, this fortnight in the German Democratic Republic, and we are finding it very interesting and exciting. It is very interesting to meet citizens of a different system, who live according to quite different philosophies, and to hear their experiences of life, and I think it is interesting for them, too, to meet people like us who are open to experience and who indeed find a good deal to admire in the German Democratic Republic and its culture. I would be very interested to hear about your experiences of life, because the reason we travel here is not so much to understand the past of Germany, the beauties of the countryside and the interest of the historical towns, but to form links with other human beings and to understand the ways in which those other human beings look out onto the world and try to organize it. That, I feel, is the purpose of travel, not to go to a beach in Portugal and lie looking at the sea for a fortnight, and after all, even there, the waiter who brings you your drinks, if he is over thirty years old, has memories of a savage dictatorship impinging on his hopes and his possibilities, which the casual traveller has an obligation to explore in conversation, and not just to say please bring me another piña colada, would you not agree? Europe is full of recent memories of savage dictatorships. Some very recent, like Portugal’s. And this is very much not a piña colada sort of holiday that I and my friend Ogden are undertaking. It is very good to meet someone and talk like this.’