This Terrible Beauty: A Novel

by Katrin Schumann

  One night, when he and Irmgard had made it into a supine position on the couch after Annaliese had been put to bed and they’d shared their customary rounds of drinks, he felt himself harden under the pressure from her thigh, and he whispered into her ear, “Come live with me, Irmgard. Let’s make a life together. We’ll have a family. What do you think?”

  44

  At the Central Registry of State Judicial Administrations not far from her hotel, Bettina met with two men charged with investigating the expulsion of dissidents from the DDR. When she’d called from Chicago before deciding to come to Berlin herself, they’d opened a file on Peter Brenner. Every now and then they were able to apply some “leverage,” they’d told her. Invariably there was something the East Germans wanted from them, and sometimes the Western government would offer an exchange of goods, money, or documents in return for information.

  “Please sit down,” said one of the investigators, Karl Mannheim. He had a severe side part and was continually laying the flat of his hand over his springy brown hair, inordinately concerned with keeping it in place. “We managed to dig up some information on Peter Brenner.”

  Bettina took a seat, the vinyl cover sticking to the backs of her knees. “You found him?”

  “Frau Nietz,” the other one said. He was standing by the window, backlit, the dark outline of his torso visible inside his illuminated shirt. A young man, he had cushiony flesh and features that melted into one another. “I’m Helmut Kreisgut. Pleased to meet you. Herr Mannheim and I are glad you could make it.”

  “Call me Fräulein Heilstrom, please; I prefer it . . .”

  The two men exchanged glances. “Of course, we can call you whatever you wish,” the chubby one said.

  Her temples throbbed. Kreisgut took a seat at a coffee table near her and opened a file. In his presence she felt old, and it struck her that the past decade had actually sped by, that what had seemed like a slow-moving cargo ship churning through unfamiliar territory had in fact been a speedboat. Soon she would be middle aged, and what would she say about her own agency, the steps she had taken to have the life she wanted? It was hard to believe that she had no idea what those years had been like for Peter—how he had taken the news of her leaving, what kind of life he had been able to build. She wanted so badly for him to have had another chance at love, but sitting here with these men, so stiff and unaccommodating, she feared the worst.

  “This man, Peter Brenner,” Kreisgut said. “Can you tell us a little about your relationship with him?”

  “To give us some context so we can begin thinking about next steps,” the other one said.

  “Next steps?” she asked, placing her hands under her thighs to keep from balling them into fists. “Please tell me where he is. I think I have a right to know. I’ve been in touch with you for the past four weeks, calling you almost daily. You either have an answer for me or not. Just put me out of my misery, will you?”

  “I’m afraid it seems your friend, he’s been arrested for political agitation.”

  Shutting her eyes and holding her breath, she brought her hands together in her lap and clasped them tightly: so it was true. It was true! He was in prison. Her fingers began to swell under the pressure, and she gripped even harder, trying to keep herself tethered to something real, trying not to cry out loud. “When did this happen?”

  “He received a ten-to-fifteen-year sentence.”

  “As far as we can tell, he was held in Hohenschönhausen for eighteen months—”

  “In Berlin. You’re aware of this place? It’s for so-called political agitators.”

  “We believe he could have been sent to a forced-labor camp. That’s why we’ve been having trouble tracking him down,” Mannheim added. “We’ve assigned some investigators on ground to figure out where he might be. There are labor camps in the DDR, you know. People just disappear.”

  She snapped her eyes open and stood up, the blood rushing from her head. “So it’s been two years already?”

  “Fräulein, you should sit.” Mannheim patted down his hair.

  What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to go on? She fell back into her chair. That day when she’d told Peter on the beach in Glowe that it was over, she’d believed she might be able to save them both. Then, leaving Germany, she’d comforted herself that at least she was guaranteeing his safety—he would be able to live a “normal” life, the kind of life he deserved. “We have to get him out,” she said. “As soon as possible!”

  Mannheim’s gaze was flat. “He’s been published. Seems he wrote a novel. Someone smuggled it out of East Germany, and it’s garnered quite a large following in Europe. It’s been written up in the papers here, and someone in the East must have put two and two together. He published under a pseudonym, but that sealed the deal for him at home, I’m afraid.”

  “My God,” she said. “Forced labor?”

  “There are hundreds of political prisoners in the East,” Kreisgut said. The folds of his face shifted gently as he spoke. “With the rise of the MfS, we find ourselves increasingly stymied. They’ve got a pretty streamlined system—”

  “It was Werner,” Bettina interrupted, her heart pounding hard in her ears. It felt as though, in the very center of her brain, behind her eyes, a knot was forming, pummeled on all sides by the raging of her blood, and this knot, clenching in on itself, would never unravel as long as she lived. “I know it was him.”

  The bookstore around the corner from her hotel had a stack of Peter’s books on a table in the middle of the main room in front of the registers, and more on a shelf labeled BESTSELLERS. Under the pseudonym Paul Edward—a reference, she was sure, to the socialist poet Paul Éluard—Peter had written a novel called When Eyes Are Watching. The manuscript had been published by the West German imprint Rütten und Loening. It had lingered on the bestseller list for almost three years already. The hardcover showed a young man’s back as he walked toward an indistinct horizon, the colors faded as though day had barely broken. On the back cover was a series of quotes from reviewers at the major newspapers as well as a few writers, but there was no author photo. The bio claimed that “Edward” was an East German socialist and teacher living in a town on the border of Poland.

  Written in an extraordinarily modern, experimental voice that is as rhythmic and approachable as the best from the old canon, When Eyes Are Watching dares to argue that when guided by our hearts, we can transcend petty politics, wrote Der Spiegel.

  On the inside page there was a dedication: Für meine geliebte Bettina.

  With both hands on the table, she steadied herself and waited till the roaring in her head quieted down. He had not forgotten her.

  It took her almost all night to read, and when she was done, she closed the book and laid it against the skin of her chest, under her nightshirt, and shut her eyes to conjure up his image. She saw him as he had been that day at the church, Aldo at his feet and a stalk of grass between his teeth. She saw him in the youth center, scribbling in his notebook, immersed in another reality. In his narrow bed, his gaze blurry with desire. At the beginning of his story, she’d thought Peter was espousing the philosophy of the absurd—his protagonist was senselessly, relentlessly faced with one profound loss after another—and with ever-increasing panic she’d read on, filled with dread at the idea that he had become a fatalist, that he’d stopped believing in man’s power to affect his own fate. But as the story progressed, as the hero faced down his tragedies and lost the woman he loved, she came to see that Peter was in fact celebrating man’s agency, revealing not that the individual was powerless but that he was powerful. That no matter what befell him, his spirit could not be crushed if he refused to let it be. It was magical, astounding; the narrator stands at the edge of a cliff, staring down into the roiling waters, and his heart soars with joy: like a gull gliding on the currents of the wind. Joy at having loved and having been loved. At having lost. Joy at the very fact of his existence.

  It was a message for h
er. Peter was speaking directly to her, and he was telling her that she must no longer accept a life lived in this in-between state, half here and half there.

  She must take every opportunity that presented itself to her, accept the uncertainties. Bitterness against Werner, the desire to cause him pain: these feelings would eat her up if she let them—and she didn’t have to let them. This was her choice. She had to fight to keep her soul intact. This was what Peter had done, wherever it was that he now found himself.

  She could not wait until morning. Bettina got dressed and went downstairs to call her boss, George, collect from the hotel lobby. It was early afternoon in Chicago, and though he initially seemed distracted, eventually he settled in to listen to the whole story. She told him about Annaliese, about Peter being in prison somewhere in the East. He had written a book, she explained, a book that Americans should read. At the very least, the Tribune could consider running a story on this. She asked him to go on the wire services and look for stories in the International Herald Tribune on Paul Edward. “It could be important. This could become part of your cultural conversation,” she insisted, tripping over her words. “Part of our cultural conversation.”

  George agreed to try to get her a press pass through which she could secure a day visa to enter East Berlin. “As soon as possible, before this guy has a chance to block entry,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s too late for that. But I’m going to find a way.”

  George thought he could get a friend from the AP wire services to give her one of their passes, at least temporarily. They had a variety of personal identification papers that might work for her—they needed to find a woman with her approximate height and coloring. It could work, but he didn’t sound sure.

  If she got across, he said, it was critical to be discreet yet to shoot as much film as possible. He couldn’t guarantee the Tribune would run a spread in the paper, but if she came back with some great images, he’d see what he could do. Maybe publicity would do the trick for her friend Peter. Though the building of the wall had already been well documented, maybe she could catch some good shots from the other side to run alongside a story about her daughter being trapped in a Communist regime.

  “The media’s got more clout in these cases than those functionary types or the lawyers,” George said. “Public opinion counts. But we need good pictures, really good ones.”

  Now that she’d won the Smithsonian prize, any media outlet would clamor to get their hands on photos that revealed the source of her inspiration: her homeland, her lingering sense of disenfranchisement, he said. Could she possibly track Annaliese down? A picture of her would make all the difference. Something that showed how circumscribed, how small and controlled, life was in the East. Also, there were rumors that the German government had bought the freedom of a handful of political prisoners with West German currency. Perhaps that would work for her friend? And could Bettina get anywhere near that East Berlin prison to take some pictures? Rumors about the secret police were rife among journalists, but the American public had no inkling of what was going on. They could draw parallels with what was happening in the US, George said, getting excited now—this essential struggle for control, the inevitable chaos of change. The universality of man’s desire to impose his political will on others.

  Bettina was done with the political rhetoric—it meant nothing to her—but maybe this would make it possible to turn the tables, and she was willing to try.

  45

  George connected her with a Berlin-based journalist named Frederika Gurlinsky who worked for the Associated Press. At five feet, seven inches tall, she was an inch shorter than Bettina, and her hair was cut into a sharp black bob over which she wore a gray beret, tilted at an angle. They met at a grocery store around the corner from the AP offices and walked to a nearby park. At some point during their walk, she slipped the press pass and an ID into Bettina’s bag.

  “The guards rarely stop me, especially if you go through at Bornholmer Straße. That’s where I’d go if I were you,” Gurlinsky said, looking straight ahead. “But whatever you do, don’t draw attention to yourself. God knows, if they confiscate this pass, it’s worth its weight in gold . . .” She hesitated. “My supervisor would kill me if he knew what I was doing. This had better be important.”

  “It is, I promise,” Bettina said.

  The reporter cast her a quick sideways glance. “You’ll have to do something about your hair. And take this—” She took off her beret and walked over to the edge of the path, where there was a large iron trash bin. She dropped a wad of paper into the bin and let her beret fall onto the ground. “Pick it up on your way back.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bettina said, feeling foolish, as they continued along the path. “What are you doing?”

  “You can’t be too safe. Just, it’s smart to be careful.” Gurlinsky buttoned up her coat to the top and fiddled with the button. “So listen. There’s a driver we trust; he’s never taken me, but some of our guys like him. He can ferry you around for a day or two. There’s counterintelligence; you’ve got to be careful, all right? You could be followed; I mean, it’s likely. Just expect the unexpected, okay—they might suddenly eject you. Be prepared, ja?”

  Later at the hotel, after having picked up the beret on her way back and bought a pair of scissors and hair dye, Bettina stared at herself in the bathroom mirror in her hotel room. She would try to cross the border tomorrow; she had everything she needed. Raising the scissors, she stared at her reflection and began cutting.

  The driver was a slim man of about fifty, with excess skin in his jowls and below his ears. His shoulders were bony, caving inward toward his chest, over which a zipped-up leather jacket stretched. He wore a black wool cap not unlike the fisherman caps they used to wear in Rügen, which afforded Bettina the opportunity to open up a conversation. He’d been given it by his father, he explained, who moved the family to Berlin in the 1930s. “The heyday, though that didn’t last too long. But it was better than staying up there on the Baltic,” he said. “Our choice would’ve been get bombed or go on a long trek south—neither very good options.”

  The silence between them acknowledged the complicated fact that he was of the age to have served Germany in the war.

  “I’m Andreas,” he said, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

  She smiled tightly at him. He’d be with her all day today, and tomorrow, too, if she was allowed back in. “Frederika Gurlinsky,” she said. She was self-conscious with her strange black hair, her pretend name. In her head she kept repeating: Act normal. There’s no reason for him to suspect a thing. Just act normal.

  “So what’s your interest in the East?” They were driving in an old Mercedes with a boxy shape and stiff shock absorbers. Her driver took a left and then a right before stopping at a light bordered on either side by soaring new buildings dotted with balconies. The cooing of city pigeons entered the open car window like a somber melody. She rested the Rollei on the car door, snapped a picture, and rotated the crank before turning back to Andreas.

  “Spent some time here as a child,” she said. “May I be frank with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think this country is badly misunderstood,” she said. “I want to show people what it’s really like here—normal life in the East. We’re all just people, aren’t we?”

  The previous night as she waited for the black hair dye to take, Bettina had studied a detailed map of Berlin and found the Lichtenberg district, where Hohenschönhausen was supposedly located, and also Magdalenenstraße and Normannenstraße, where Werner’s office was. While she hadn’t caught the name of the street, he’d mentioned that he lived within walking distance of Stasi headquarters. But most important, the photo he’d shown her had revealed the name of Annaliese’s school: Lenin-Schule. He hadn’t realized that in showing off to her like that, he’d inadvertently led her right to the girl.

  It wouldn’t be prudent to tell the driver to take her t
here directly, but she could work her way toward that neighborhood. School would be out in a few hours, and all she had to do was drive around haphazardly, snapping pictures—and find a way to end up at Lenin-Schule when the closing bell rang at one o’clock.

  At first glance these neighborhoods did not seem so very different from the West. Women in head scarves pushed unwieldy baby carriages, and men carried briefcases; workers wore their heavy boots and hard hats. But once she started turning the crank on the Rollei, the differences became as sharp and noticeable as an image coming into focus in a tray of photographic chemicals. For one thing, apart from some residential structures along the bigger thoroughfares that seemed to be new, it quickly became apparent that many of the grand old buildings were heavily scarred with bullet holes, their facades pockmarked like teenagers with devastating acne. Around every corner lay immense piles of bricks and building debris that hadn’t yet been cleaned up. The city was on hold; it had barely moved forward in time. In a few streets private homes had their roofs torn off, the neglected rooms exposed to the elements, the various intimate artifacts of family life long ago pilfered. Rooms where once people had loved one another were now simply shadowed boxes, emptied of meaning and of life.

  The stores carried signs with the same old-fashioned lettering that had been common on the island in the old days. In the windows, artfully arranged tableaux revealed cans of preserved ham and cookware, mannequins in crisp uniforms. Andreas drove her down Suermondtstraße, past the palace (really just a small manor house) and then down Gehrenseestraße; she had no sense for how close they might be to the prison, and he did not venture down the side roads. Street after street there were run-down apartment blocks and rows of dingy stores; there was no wall indicating something ominous hidden behind it, no barbed wire or watchtower that she could spot. Could she ask him outright about Hohenschönhausen? she wondered. Both George and the woman, the AP journalist, had warned her not to trust anyone, but she was dying to know how it could be possible to hide a prison in a city like this. They drove and drove as she pretended to be looking for a particular kind of window frame to photograph.