Sometimes, Nora thought that she really had the calmest life of the three, with Debbie rushing about London’s art world and Janet always being out and about at parties in Bristol, albeit in a servile capacity, but nevertheless in Bristol, the upcoming city of the young! All that while she herself was mostly at home, sitting over her books and her typewriter, soon over her new computer, delving into literary texts from all over Europe, but hardly ever going out these days. Yes, George often urged her to go out with him, but in the end, they rarely went, because their home was so comfortable, their baby so lovely and the TV programme often entertaining enough.
Most of what really mattered in a philosophical way happened in Nora’s mind. In fact, she was so immersed in the dramatic stories about intrigues at Renaissance courts in Italy, about conflicts between men and women in small towns in Germany, or about jealous youths in the heat of Southern France, that she sometimes felt like waking from a dream when the news came on TV and threw her back with brutal force into the politics of the day, where she had to face the ugly images of people like Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, who, in her eyes, were about to destroy some of the best parts of Western culture.
Nora promised herself that she would bring up her own children with a better understanding of what really mattered in the world. She wanted them to learn to see behind all those lies of many politicians. She remembered how her father had taught her to recognize national pride as the seeds for nationalism and racism. She only wondered why not more people could see where things were leading when politicians went on and on about other leaders’ faults, other nations’ evils, merely to entice their people away from their own problems. And then there was corruption. Most African leaders and their entourage were soaked deeply in it. But where had they learnt it? Of course, from their old colonial masters, the English and French slave drivers. Nora had to pull herself away from such ruminations. She had to remind herself of what her father had taught her about the lies all those politicians were telling their people. They were just small lies, necessary lies in order to get re-elected, white lies.
Eleven
“Not before lunch.”
“But you promised I could have an ice cream, didn’t you?”
“In the first place, I never promised anything but only mentioned it as a possibility. In the second place, you know perfectly well that ice cream in the morning will only ruin your lunch.”
“Is it still morning then?”
“Yes, it’s only half-past eleven. We’ll go for lunch in about an hour. So you’ve got another hour to play on the beach. Off you go! There’s your sand bucket and your plastic rake still lying in the sand. Quick, before another child takes your things.”
Although Andrew was only five, his mother talked to him in proper English. Sometimes she even used long and very complicated words, such as “idiosyncrasy”, “perpendicular” or “disingenuous”. Nora just didn’t believe in baby-talk. Even when talking to little Lisa, who was going to be three this autumn, she didn’t use what linguists call Motherese with that silly high-pitched sing-song intonation. Now she looked at Lisa, who was busy ordering and arranging pebbles according to some special secret plan between her pudgy legs spread wide apart in the warm sand. She observed her little daughter in her concentrated activity, wondering at the beauty of her child and taking note of the sand that stuck to her chubby knees and small shins.
While Andrew was a sturdy dark-haired boy with an extremely bright alertness, his baby-sister Lisa was a fair-haired little dreamer whose clear blue eyes struck everyone who took note of her fine face. An outsider wouldn’t have taken them for siblings.
The sun was quite hot on this Saturday in August. Many mothers with little children were enjoying the summer, and Brighton was ideal for a day out on the beach. Nora felt truly happy.
She kept a watchful eye on her children, aware of her responsibility for these wonderful little human beings. She remembered how scared she had been during her pregnancy with Lisa. Andrew was a toddler, and she was expecting her second child when the threat of nuclear radiation hit them as a family. Some of her neighbours played it down, believing what some politicians told them about Chernobyl being too far away to affect their part of the world. But George knew better than the politicians. He explained how the wind could easily carry heavily radiated dust particles from so far in the east well over most of Western Europe. For several weeks, Nora didn’t buy any fresh vegetables that were picked after the reactor catastrophe and no fresh milk but only long-life milk and bottled drinks. She could still feel the panic she’d felt in her heart when the full danger of that catastrophe hit her consciousness. She was pregnant, and her unborn baby might get radiated and be born terribly misshapen, a handicapped child. How relieved she’d been when, just after giving birth a few months later, she was told that Lisa was in perfectly good health. The baby was all there, in her arms, still unable to focus on her mother, sucking her thumb and making wrinkly faces at the world around her. What a relief it had been.
And now here they were: a complete family. A happy family.
They had lunch at a down-to-earth restaurant at beach level, just by the wall below the seafront parade. While Andrew was already well-trained in his eating technique and table manners, Lisa made quite a mess of her lunch, and Nora often had to give her a helping hand. But generally, the lunch went well, and they could return to their spot on the beach, where Andrew continued with the construction of his higgledy-piggledy sandcastle, while Lisa immediately fell asleep with her head in her mother’s lap.
As it was getting a little cooler on the beach in the afternoon, Nora decided to head for home. She got her children safely back to the multi-storey car-park behind the Churchill Square shopping centre, buckled them up in her car, paid her fee at the machine and carefully drove out of the narrow car-park. Although the traffic was already building up, she got out of Brighton swiftly enough and reached home before five.
She was busy getting the children ready for bed while George was watching the six o’clock news on TV.
“Quick, my darling! Come and watch this,” he suddenly shouted from the living-room.
It took her a moment before she could join him, so what he’d wanted her to watch had already disappeared from the screen. So she gave him a questioning look.
“It’s a surprising development in Eastern Europe,” he explained. “The Hungarians are letting the East German tourists out of the country, so they can escape to Western Europe. That’s spectacular!”
“Why do you think that’s so spectacular? Hungary has always been a half-hearted Communist country in the last few years. At least that’s what my Dad told me. They seem to have abandoned some of the strict principles of the Communist system as it’s being practised in the other countries behind the Iron Curtain.”
“Right you are, Nora dear. But this is new. Now practically everybody from the GDR can escape to the West. All they have to do is to travel to Hungary, which they’re allowed to. This is practically a hole in the Berlin Wall.”
“Do you really think that’s possible? They’re bound to stop the leak as soon as possible.”
“I don’t think that’s likely. You see, there have been weekly demonstrations in many cities of the GDR lately. I think they started in Leipzig. The Church seems to be behind them. Every Monday evening, thousands of people peacefully walk through the streets. In Leipzig they’ve started to chant a slogan. I don’t speak German, but on TV they said the slogan goes something like: ‘We are the people!’ What’s it in German?”
“It’s Wir sind das Volk! I think that’s very clever of them. It’s passive resistance, almost like Gandhi in India.”
“Yes. The only danger is the uncertainty of the government’s reaction. Nobody knows how long they’re going to tolerate it. But then, the general mood has changed so much in favour of more freedom and democracy that it’s probab
ly going to be nearly impossible for the government to send out the army and shoot at their own people.”
“Oh, these are very dangerous times.”
“Yes. What’s your dad’s opinion on this?”
“I haven’t spoken to him for a while. I’ll meet him again soon. I’ll ask him then. But right now, I’ve got to rush upstairs to make sure Andrew is going to sleep. He wants me to read another story to him. Thank God Lisa is fast asleep.” And she left him with a smile. The love between them was still as fresh as on their first day together.
When Nora met her father a few days later, it was in London. Nora had been shopping in Chelsea High Street for most of the morning before they met at a nice restaurant in Sloane Square. After talking at length about the family, Andrew’s progress and Lisa’s health, while ordering their food in-between, they eventually arrived at the topic that she wanted to talk to him about, the developments in East Germany. She wanted to know what her father knew about the whole matter and what his opinion was.
“I fear the Volkspolizei will soon have to shoot at the crowds in the streets unless the government accepts a radical change,” he said. “And I don’t think they can accept a peaceful revolution. There’s bound to be violence sooner or later.”
“Are you going to Germany again soon?”
“Yes, quite soon, but not to the GDR, only to Frankfurt and Hamburg.”
“Are you going to meet that fellow Wolfgang? You know, the man you told me about?”
“Of course not. Besides, he’s still in East Germany.” He hesitated. He took up his glass, took a long sip and shook his head slightly before he answered. “He’s awful. He wants to ruin me. But I will find a way to get rid of him, I can assure you.”
“Can’t you tell me more about the whole business between you and Wolfgang?”
“Not now, maybe another time.”
After this, their conversation turned to other things. They discussed Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan. This brought them to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.
“He’s the GDR’s only hope for a peaceful solution,” the father judged.
“So, you think the Soviets will just stand by and watch while one of their colonies is being dismantled?” Nora wondered. “After what you told me a while ago, you know, after ’56 in Hungary and ’68 in Czechoslovakia?”
“This time they can’t afford to interfere with tanks. Their system is nearly bankrupt. The arms race of the past decades has left them with very few options. They might try to threaten the West, but those threats would be empty words, and from what I have heard and read about Mr Gorbachev, his strategy is characterized by careful appeasement rather than confrontation. Ever since ’86 he’s been following his policies of perestroika and glasnost, which mean ‘restructuring’ and ‘openness’, and since then he has been working hard to restructure the Soviet Union and the Communist leadership of his country, and he’s been offering the West a new relationship between the two super powers. You might remember his summit with Reagan in Washington. My hopes rest on Mr Gorbachev, I can tell you.”
In the weeks that followed, Nora remembered her father’s wise assessment of the political situation in Eastern Europe, because through September and October all the news programmes were full of comments and similar assessments dealing with the probability of a peaceful change in the GDR.
In the evening of the 7th of October, the news, both in the papers and on TV, were full of the Soviet leader’s visit to East Berlin on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the GDR. There were pictures of military parades, of flags all over East Berlin, of crowds cheering, of speeches being made and of critical voices against the Communist system. Journalists around the world had been speculating about Mr Gorbachev’s comments on the most recent developments. And now the big surprise! He was reported as having said, “Those who are late will be punished by Life itself.”
Three days later, Nora called her father. He answered the phone immediately. She asked him about his reaction to Mr Gorbachev’s warning. His answer surprised her.
“You know, I do speak some Russian as well, don’t you?”
“Yes, but do you mean you understood Mr Gorbachev as he made this declaration? He practically warned Mr Honecker to heed the people’s voice and to change things in the GDR for the better.”
“No, I didn’t actually hear him, but I got a Russian paper that carried his exact wording. And I can tell you the world got him wrong. What everyone understood from the English translation - and from the respective German translation as well - is not accurate. You see, actually what he said was, ‘If we are too late we will be punished by Life,’ and ‘Danger only awaits those who won’t react to what Life dictates.’ That’s quite a different angle. His words weren’t directed at Honecker and the GDR, but at his own country. He said ‘we’, didn’t he, after all?”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I am. He could have said something like, ‘If you’re late you’ll be punished by Life,’ but he didn’t. To me it’s clear.”
“Well, Dad, if you say so.”
In the following weeks things suddenly took on new dynamics in the cities of the GDR, particularly in East Berlin. The people’s protests in the streets reached a dimension where the government had to do something unless civil war was to break out. Lots of soldiers stood along the pavements of the streets that were full of protest marches. More and more soldiers joined the marchers, which was a thing that surprised everyone who saw it on TV in the West. Also, the news coverage in the West about such riotous activities in the East had been unheard of until now. Nora and George were glued to the TV screen every night. It was more exciting than the best who-done-it film on TV.
Then, on the 9th of November, the dam burst open. Nora and George couldn’t believe their eyes and ears as they were watching the row of old men behind that long desk on the stage of the big press conference with the flag of the GDR on the back wall. Günter Schabowski, the man with the downturned lips and the sour face who had made most of the important announcements recently, was reading out the latest decisions of the Politbüro from a bunch of papers he was shuffling in his hands. He told the surprised journalists that private trips abroad could now be applied for “without proof of eligibility, reasons for travel, or family ties.” Permission would be granted on short notice, he said. A journalist asked him when this new regulation was going to take effect. He hesitated and shuffled his papers, looking for some specific date in them, then turned to the waiting audience and announced, “As far as I know, immediately.” That hit the journalists and the world at large like a bomb.
Nora and George looked at each other. They could hardly believe this. The English news reader explained the importance of this announcement to the TV audience. Of course, Nora realized much better what it meant than most people in England because she had all that background information about Germany from her father and from her own experience.
“What a pity we can’t get German TV here,” George said.
“Let’s watch the news programmes on BBC, and there’ll be commentaries and political discussions later.”
They had a light supper and put the children to bed before they returned to the TV screen later in the evening. What they saw then was very moving. Ordinary people were crowding across the borders in Berlin, cheering and smiling, while some puzzled border guards were watching in disbelief and uncertainty. Some families crossed the borders to West Berlin in their little Trabant cars, others were marching, many were cheering, some had tears in their eyes. The news even showed West Berliners welcoming the people streaming in from the East.
On TV and in the papers over the following days, Nora and George saw pictures of people climbing the infamous Berlin Wall. And later the people began to hack at the Wall with pickaxes and other sharp tools. At long last, after 28 years, the hateful Wall was coming down. During the
se days, Nora often wondered how this would affect her father and his relationship with his old home country.
“Will you travel to Germany more often now?” she asked him when they met the next time. They were sitting in George’s and Nora’s large living-room at their house in Horsham, her parents being on a visit to see their grandchildren. The mother was spending a few days with them, while the father had business in London and was only down in Sussex for the week-end. It was Sunday afternoon, and they were all relaxing after lunch. Andrew was playing with his Lego set in the corner, Lisa was sitting on her grandmother’s lap and enjoying the warmth and protection of her arms around her. Grandmother and granddaughter quietly cooed to each other, and the grandmother made funny faces. To Nora’s annoyance, her mother was using baby-language whenever she spoke to little Lisa.
“I’ll probably have to go there more often now,” the father said. Nora detected a strange look that her parents exchanged. It was only the fraction of a second, but she realized there had to be something between them that concerned his trips to Germany.
“And will you visit East Germany more often, too? Will you visit your old home town?”
White Lies Page 18
