by S J Naudé
Now that they are sitting opposite each other, she isn’t saying anything. He repeats the story that he recounted over the intercom. He is becoming well-practised at this. She looks through the window at the wide, deserted street. ‘Where do you come from?’ she wants to know.
‘Finland,’ he says without hesitation. ‘I’m an exchange student at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam.’ He can feel her tension. He tells her where he is living, lies about how good the film school supposedly is, and about how fascinating he is finding East Berlin. She suddenly sits forward, takes his glass of Riesling, empties it in one draught. She interrupts him bluntly. She explains, without taking a breath, as if in one long sentence, that she has an uncle who was in the film industry in the 1930s, who, insofar as she knows, was a cameraman, that she doesn’t know where he lives, but that she has her uncle’s daughter’s address. And, although she doesn’t have contact with her cousin either, she probably has contact with her father.
She gets up agitatedly. Etienne too. ‘Your cousin’s address? Please, it’s important.’ She looks intently at him, as if she cannot believe that she has allowed herself to be drawn into this. He takes a pen from his pocket, holds it out towards her together with a napkin. The waiter looks on cynically. She hesitates, then writes something on the napkin. She walks out of the bar without looking at Etienne again.
He has no idea why she was willing to talk to him. He looks at her crossing Frankfurter Allee, with little steps, head bowed. He wonders whether she is so lonely that she would exchange information for a few minutes’ engagement, irrespective of the risk. The first rule here is to distrust strangers. The second rule is to distrust those you know. Information is dangerous, however trivial it might seem. And traitors come in many guises.
But if she is hungry for company, why would she rush out? Was he a disappointment? Did the waiter look like an informant? Perhaps, he thinks, she is slightly nuts. She would hardly be the first. Thus one learns: next time he will rather try to extract information before imparting too much.
Etienne sits down again, beckons the waiter for more of the Riesling. This isn’t the first time he has noticed East German waiters’ habit of withholding wine. They pour a little, then immerse the bottle in a bucket of lukewarm water some distance away. They wait until you beg for it, then come and pour another dash, take it away again. A kind of stand-off: there stands the waiter, guarding the bottle. And here he sits, craving the crisp flavours of Hungarian vineyards.
At last the waiter approaches to pour him half a glass. Does Frau Bösel with the green dress have a sinister agenda? Etienne wonders, as the wine washes against his palate. He doesn’t have the vaguest idea, he realises, of how anything here actually works.
The next afternoon Etienne walks to the planetarium again. He buys a ticket, stretches out in one of the reclining chairs. He is vigilant, keeping an eye on the sparse audience of men. Then he concentrates on the ceiling. It is the only place, this theatre of catastrophe, where Etienne can tolerate his own tears. It is here – with heavenly bodies crashing and exploding above him – that Axel comes to him. The bureaucrat’s voice unravels the secrets of the universe: dark matter, black holes, brown dwarfs, wormholes. Axel is sucked in and spat out by a wormhole, devoured by colossal forces. Just a cloudlet of molecules remains. Only Etienne’s yearning can patch him together again: a new Axel appears, shining brightly in the splintered light of stars.
He must urgently return to West Berlin. A post-mortem image of Axel in the stars is not enough. He must go and search in the real world, in the streets. And he has to return to the triplets with their industrial instruments. He has been walking around with their address and telephone number on a scrap of paper in his pocket for over a month now. It has been through the washing machine already, battered by Frau Drechsler’s cheap industrial washing powder, but he can still decipher it. The three West Berliners were so generous, receiving him into their midst so unconditionally. The beginning of something was flickering: a movement, a revolution, a band to surpass all others. Despite his promises, he hasn’t contacted them again. The unreliability of phone connections to West Berlin is no excuse.
Etienne notices movement: men shifting towards each other, fidgeting, fussing. And there you have it: he has discovered the local pick-up joint! Was the man with the Stasi shoes indeed just looking for a kiss? For a mouth like a tunnel in the dark? What Etienne is seeking out is the velvety darkness. The fiery tracks of meteors. Forces that give human form to the energy of desire. The groaning and sucking in the back rows bring his séance to a swift end.
Chapter 24
It is Etienne’s second visit to West Berlin, and his fourth time in Friedrichstrasse station’s oppressive labyrinth. It is easier to navigate the corridors and platforms and counters this time round. He is nevertheless aware of his heartbeat when he enters the passport official’s little cubicle. It is long and narrow, clad in fake wood. The entry door closes automatically behind him; there is a stuffy intimacy between him and the expressionless man in his dull brown uniform. When the ritual of the phone call regarding his travel document is over, an invisible button is pressed. There is a buzzing sound; the second door opens with a loud clack.
He is feeling less strange in the West this time, doesn’t immediately miss East Berlin’s sour air. When he closes his eyes, he can see the shape of the West Berlin u- and s-Bahn on the back of his lids.
He called Frederick last night – Frau Drechsler at the ready with her stopwatch – and arranged for them to meet again. Frederick was simultaneously happy and dejected. ‘I thought we were never going to hear from you again.’
‘Sorry. Life here in the East isn’t always simple. But I’m coming! Tomorrow.’
They arranged to meet at the old Oranienstrasse factory, but when Etienne exits Kottbusser Tor u-Bahn station, Frederick waves at him from across the street, fringe hanging over his eyes. He gives Etienne a long hug, with greater force than one would expect from his size. He is more muscular than Etienne remembers, and on the verge of developing a belly.
In the factory space, the other two are lying on an old sofa, smoking. They jump up to welcome Etienne back, without any trace of annoyance about his long absence. What has he done to deserve such seamless inclusion in their ranks? Such warmth and unconditionality?
They make him sit down, inform him that the classified advertisement in Berliner Morgenpost has not yielded any clues. Nor their notes on noticeboards or enquiries in bars, cafés and clubs. They try to convince Etienne again to lend them the photo to show around. ‘No,’ Etienne says, ‘that I cannot let go of.’ Christof tells him that they prodded the blond waiter at Anderes Ufer again. He doesn’t know anything else, Frederick says and wipes his long fringe from his eyes. A few people in Tom’s Bar still remember Axel, but no one has encountered him over the last two years.
Matthias’s dense eyebrows twist asymmetrically. He clears his throat, empties a glass of water in long swigs. His Adam’s apple beats like a heart as he swallows. ‘Are you sure he is here?’ he enquiries cautiously, putting down the glass.
Christof adds: ‘He might’ve said he was coming to Berlin, but did he . . . ?’
‘Who knows?’ Frederick sighs before Etienne can respond. As if the loss is his own, and the mystery impenetrable. He holds out the advertisement that he has torn from the paper. Etienne takes it between two fingertips, like a piece of skin.
Etienne wants to place the advertisement a second time. ‘And a new one. About Berliner Chronik.’ They nod. Etienne then dictates the same kind of request for information as in his previous notices in London community papers.
Matthias gets up, stretches his tall body. ‘We will find Axel and the film, but let’s first make some music now.’
Etienne, Christof and Frederick take place at their instruments, Matthias in front of the microphone. They start haltingly. Then they catch each other’s e
yes, probing the noise. Etienne waits, holding his drumsticks at shoulder height until his arms ache. The sticks sweep down, bashing a steel pipe. Over and over again. The other three grin determinedly. They react; momentum is building.
The mutual glances become increasingly tense; the violence is growing. He underestimated them before, Etienne thinks. Their noise now seems to swallow the city: the trains, the black night sky, the bullet holes. The death strip with its landmines, barbed wire and mutilated cemeteries. The dead factories and hostile lakes, the steaming bodies of men like ploughed winter soil. It is as if the four of them are tied up with dirty ropes. The more wildly they try to wriggle loose, the blacker and denser the sound becomes.
When they are done, and the energy in the air discharges, they light cigarettes. There are dents in the steel pipes next to Etienne. ‘The reason,’ Matthias says distractedly, pulling on his cigarette, ‘why, at any given moment, you can tear an inferno from your guts in this city, is that you’re constantly aware of being in a fucking cage. Whichever direction you start walking, you’ll always ultimately come up against a wall.’
The scar on Christof’s neck has swollen into an angry red welt. He keeps scratching it ferociously, interrupting Matthias: ‘And also because everyone knows: as soon as world politics fuck up, we’ll be the first to ascend to the heavens in a cloud of fire.’
Frederick draws smoke deep into his lungs, lifts his t-shirt and rubs his swarthy stomach. ‘When you turn towards the wind, you can already smell the ash,’ he says.
Etienne looks at his friends with fresh eyes. The four of them are going to make a kind of music that no one has ever heard. They walk out into the courtyard – in file, as Stunde Null – and look up at the square of sky above them. Etienne feels so emptied of desire that he loses all interest in his cigarette. The others’ cigarettes also burn down to the filter, forgotten. One by one the butts fall from their fingers.
When they say goodbye at the u-Bahn station, they make Etienne promise that he won’t stay away so long again. In return, they promise to keep searching for Axel until they find him. Frederick decides at the last moment to accompany him to Friedrichstrasse. Before Etienne enters the border station, Frederick takes his hand. Over the summer months, on the shore of some Berlin lake, the sun has darkened Frederick’s wrists. Small black hairs sprout from his knuckles. He is breathing right by Etienne’s ear, as if blowing into a horse’s velvety nostrils.
The first film that Etienne requests from the Filmarchiv is Die Mörder sind unter uns, a 1946 production. He’d found a summary of it in a film textbook. A Jewish woman returns from the concentration camp to find a traumatised military surgeon living in her flat. She lets him stay on. One day, the surgeon encounters his former captain, who mowed down civilians in cold blood during the war. The captain is now manufacturing steel pots from old war helmets. The surgeon wants to kill him. His Jewish friend convinces him to hand the brute over to the authorities instead, after which she and the surgeon start a new life together.
Once more, Etienne is the only visitor to the archive. He is sitting in the projection room – next to the catalogue room, and not much bigger. He ordered the film from Frau Keller the day before, as required, in her little office in the corridor leading to the storerooms. He offered her the forms through an opening in the wall. ‘Just leave it there,’ Frau Keller said with a lisp, her face in the shadows.
Frau Fuchs has set up the projector and cautioned Etienne not to interfere with it. While the film is whirring through the projector’s gears, Etienne pushes aside a little black nylon curtain. Outside, the trees are dripping. A distance away there is another building, identical to this one. Beyond that, a dark tower.
Before, Etienne had pictured this archive as a formidable old building rather than asbestos structures in a young forest – a musty stone colossus, he’d imagined, with subterranean storeys and stacks of films on endless shelves. He would recognise the vinegary smell with his eyes closed: silver nitrate eating away at steel cases, films working their way towards the light . . . But however dull this archive might be, he would like to search the storerooms himself, without the mediation of Fraue Fuchs and Keller and their forms in triplicate. Alas, access is strictly limited to staff.
He looks at his watch. Just after one. The film is still running. He gets up, opens the door a little. Frau Fuchs isn’t behind her desk. He walks quietly across the reception area’s linoleum and into the corridor, peers through the hatch into Frau Keller’s office: an empty chair. Both of them are apparently on their lunch break.
He stands still, listens: just his own breath. He looks back at the reception area. There is no movement anywhere. He walks further down the corridor, tests the first door. It is open; fluorescent lights click on automatically inside. He quietly pulls the door shut behind him, opens his nostrils wide. A narrow room with banks of shelves along one wall, tight against each other. Each shelf has a crank. He turns one. The shelves to his right glide away without a sound, opening up a little corridor between them. And there they are: weathered steel containers in neat piles. Dozens of them.
Etienne feels a cool draught on the back of his neck. He swivels around, his scalp tightening. The door is open. Frau Fuchs is standing there, hands on her hips. She slowly shakes her head, her fish eyes bulging. ‘You’re not allowed in here, Herr Nieuwenhuis. Surely you know that.’
He lets go of the crank; the shelf glides a few centimetres back on the track. He blinks his eyes against the sharp light. Her bottom lip pushes forward, wet and shiny. ‘And your permission can be withdrawn. That, I am sure, you know too.’ The peroxided spikes of her hair are as stiff as thorns. Her voice rises by an octave: ‘What is it you are really looking for? What do you think we won’t be able to find for you?’
He doesn’t respond, just walks sheepishly past her to the reception area and into the projection room. She follows him, stops in the doorway. ‘I suppose you are done with that?’ She points at the projector, the turning reels. On the screen the surgeon is on the verge of killing the heartless captain. Just before the Jewish woman can intervene, Frau Fuchs switches off the projector. For a few moments it is pitch dark. Then she flicks on the light.
Outside the train window, Schrebergärten are flitting past – little slivers of garden on the outskirts of the city where Berliners grow vegetables or sit on garden chairs in the summer. Even though the film storeroom in Potsdam was far removed from the mouldy Berlin cellars of Etienne’s imagination, the smell of vinegar rose unmistakeably when the shelves slid open like gates. The smell of promise, of discovery. In the very moment that Frau Fuchs discovered Etienne, something else caught his eye: rows of files, on a low shelf, of the gdr censors. What he is looking for is similar material from the Third Reich. But would there be much of it? The control of the means of production, and the pre-emptive judging of film projects, would have made censors’ cuts during the Nazi era all but superfluous. Surviving degenerate art from the Reichsarchiv would be of greater value, or at least lists of films from the 1930s that were banned or burnt.
The catalogue to which Etienne has access is of no use. There are catalogues and catalogues, Frau Fuchs has indicated – always more categories and subcategories, more shelves. Materials out of reach. In the twilight or pitch dark. Rooms beyond rooms. Further doors, with more complex locks. At Etienne’s level, one isn’t even allowed to know what is being kept secret: ghost categories keep hovering just beyond one’s vision. He doesn’t have the right letterhead, the right stamp, the right forms.
He sits back in the train seat. Somewhere amid all the thousands of reels – those that melted in firestorms, were unspooled in the war rubble or have remained preserved in the most unlikely places – must be the one film that is haunting him. It is in this archive that he stands the best chance of finding Berliner Chronik’s lost reels, or catching the scent of their tracks. It is better than looking up surnames in a telephone directory.
If he had free access, he would surely be able to comb through the asbestos building on Kohlhasenbrücker Strasse in a few days. That he has to be at the mercy of such petty obstructions! Having been caught red-handed in the storeroom will make his search trickier, may even have brought an end to it. Information is flowing behind the scenes, that much he knows. Notes are made, and phone calls. Reports are written, privileges revoked. At some point he may well find out that a display of anti-fascist sentiment can only take one so far.
Etienne visits Frau Bösel’s cousin. Her flat is in Alt-Hohenschönhausen. She is surly on the intercom. When he mentions Frau Bösel’s name, the speaker cuts out. He presses the button again. Nothing. A green-grey van drives past, a delivery vehicle with the name of a butcher on the sides. (Are carcasses swinging behind the panels?) Ringing the intercom with increasing urgency, he thinks of the city’s blind spots. Buildings – even entire street blocks – that don’t appear on maps.
Nils had told him of the Stasi head offices on Ruschestrasse, near the hotel bar where he and Frau Bösel met. Light-footed and fortified by Hungarian wine, he walked to the massive complex afterwards. He stood in front of the buildings, unfolded his city map. Nothing. A blank space. The contrast between the weight of the buildings in front of him and their absence on the map made his skin crawl. He folded his map, walked briskly away.
He presses the intercom one last time. He should give up, but he is tired of everything being so impenetrable, of all the suspicion and mistrust. Of secrets behind hostile façades. He will wait right here. For days, if that is what it takes. At some point she will have to leave the building. He sits down on the threshold step. After a while he has to get up to let a young man exit. Shortly afterwards, for an old lady. He is on the verge of leaving when the door opens for a third time. A middle-aged woman with loose grey-streaked hair and a bag for buying groceries.
