Absolute Friends (24 page)

He stops speaking. It is prayer time. His fine hands have found each other and are clasped beneath his chin. His devout gaze is directed away from the clearing and sightlessly upward.

"Whores," he whispers.

"Frontier guards?"

"Defectors. All of us. While we are fresh, we are handed round and used. When our tricks are known and we are past our prime, we are tossed onto the rubbish heap. For the first weeks after my arrival I was accommodated in a pleasant apartment on the outskirts of Potsdam, and subjected to searching but benign questions about my life, my memories of my childhood in East Germany and the Herr Pastor's return from imprisonment in the Soviet Union."

"By the Professor?"

"And by his underlings. At their request, I composed an impassioned statement designed to cause the maximum consternation among the fascists and conspirators of the Herr Pastor's inner circle. I took great satisfaction in this task. I proclaimed the futility of anarchism in the face of modern realities, and my unbounded joy at returning to the bosom of the GDR. 'Anarchism destroys but communism builds,' I wrote. It was my hope, if not yet my conviction. But I had acted. Faith would follow. I also voiced my contempt for those members of the West German Lutheran movement who, while posing as messengers of Christ, accepted Judas-money from their spy-masters in America. My statement, I was assured, had found wide circulation in the Western media. Professor Wolfgang himself went so far as to declare it a world sensation, though I was shown no evidence to prove this.

"I had been led to believe, before crossing over, that immediately upon my arrival in East Berlin I would be the occasion of an international press conference. Also at the request of my hosts, I posed for a photographer and did my best to appear as happy and reconciled as was possible in the circumstances. Photographs of me were taken on the steps of the apartment house in Leipzig where I had grown up, in order to provide pictorial evidence that the erring son had returned to his socialist roots. But I waited in vain for my press conference, and when I questioned the Professor during one of his rare visits to the apartment, he was evasive. Press conferences were a matter of timing, he said. Perhaps the moment was past and my statement, together with the photographs, had done the job. I asked again: Where has my statement appeared, please? In _Spiegel? Stern? Welt? Tagesspiegel? Berliner Morgenpost?__ He replied curtly that he was not a student of reactionary disinformation and advised me to be more modest. I told him, which was the truth, that I listened daily to West German and West Berlin radio news broadcasts and had heard not a word anywhere of my defection. He replied that if I chose to immerse myself in fascist propaganda, it was unlikely that I would attain a positive understanding of Marxism-Leninism.

"A week later, I was transferred to a secure encampment in remote countryside close to the Polish border. It was a limbo, part refuge for political vagrants, part penitentiary, part interrogation center. Above all it was a place where you are sent in order to be forgotten. We called it the White Hotel. I would not award it many stars for excellence. You have heard of an East German prison called the U-boat, Teddy?"

"Afraid not." He has long ceased to be surprised by Sasha's switches of mood.

"The U-boat is a revered feature of our East German gulag. Three of my fellow guests at the White Hotel spoke enthusiastically of its facilities. Its official title is Hohenschönhausen prison in East Berlin. It was built by the considerate Soviet secret police in 1945. To keep the inmates alert, the architecture provides that they should stand, not lie. To keep them clean the cells are flooded with icy water up to the inmates' chests, and for their entertainment penetrating sounds are played at varying volume through loudspeakers. You have heard of the Red Ox?"

No, Mundy has not heard of the Red Ox either.

"The Red Ox is situated in the ancient town of Halle. It is the U-boat's sister establishment. Its mission is to provide constructive therapy for political malcontents, and to rebuild their Party awareness. Our White Hotel in East Prussia boasted several of its graduates. One, I remember, was a musician. His awareness had been so thoroughly rebuilt that he was unable to pick up his spoon to feed himself. You may say that after a few months of the White Hotel, the last of my misplaced illusions about the nature of the German Democratic Paradise had been forcibly expunged. I was learning to detest its monstrous bureaucracy and thinly disguised fascism with an ardent but secret passion. One day, without explanation, I was ordered to pack my possessions together and present myself at the guardhouse. I will admit that I had not always been a model guest. My unexplained isolation, my horizonless existence, and the horror stories told by other detainees, had not improved my manners. Neither had the wearisome interrogations about my opinions on every stray subject--political, philosophical and sexual. When I asked our distinguished hotel manager where I was being taken, he told me, 'Somewhere that will teach you to keep your fucking mouth shut.' The five-hour drive inside a wire cage fitted into the back of a builder's van did not prepare me for what lay ahead."

He stares straight ahead of him, then, like a puppet whose strings are let go, flops to Mundy's side on the grassy mound.

"Teddy, you bastard," he whispers. "Let us for God's sake have some of your whiskey!"

Mundy has forgotten all about the whiskey. Unearthing his father's pewter flask from the recesses of his anorak, he hands it first to Sasha, then takes a pull himself. Sasha resumes his story. His expression is fearful. He seems afraid he will lose a friend's respect.

"Professor Wolfgang has a nice garden," he announces. He has drawn up his spindly knees and is resting his forearms on them. "And Potsdam is a beautiful town. You have seen those old Prussian houses where the Hohenzollerns used to put their officials?"

Mundy may have done, but only on the bus drive from Weimar, when his interest in nineteenth-century architecture was limited.

"So many roses. We sat in his garden. He gave me tea and cake, then a glass of the finest Obstler. He was apologetic for having abandoned me, and complimentary about my behavior in stressful circumstances. I had acquitted myself excellently before my interrogators, he said. They had formed a high opinion of my sincerity. Since I had more than once advised my interrogators to go fuck themselves, you may imagine that I wondered where this was leading. He asked me if I wished to take a bath after my long drive. I replied that since I had been treated like a dog, it might be more appropriate if I jumped into the river. He said I had my father's sense of humor. I answered that this was scarcely a compliment, since the Herr Pastor was an arsehole and I had never in my life seen him laugh.

"'Oh, you have him wrong, Sasha. I believe your father has a famous sense of humor,' he replied. 'He merely keeps it to himself. The best jokes in life are surely those that we can laugh at when we are alone. Don't you think so?'

"I did not. I didn't know what he was talking about, and told him. He then asked me whether I ever considered making up my quarrel with my father, if only for my mother's sake. I replied that at no time in my life had such a thought occurred to me. It was my conviction that the Herr Pastor did not qualify as an object of filial affection. To the contrary, I said, he represented everything that was opportunistic, reactionary and politically amoral in society. I should add that, by this stage, the Professor had ceased to impress me intellectually. When I demanded to know at what point according to his Marxist beliefs he expected the East German state to wither away and a state of true socialism to begin, he replied with Moscow's stock answer that, for as long as the socialist revolution was menaced by the forces of reaction, such a possibility was remote." Sasha passes a hand through his cropped black hair as if to assure himself that the beret is not in place. "It was, however, no longer the subject of our discussion that was interesting me. It was his manner. It was the insinuation--manifested by the favors he was lavishing on me, the Obstler, the garden, and the civilized nature of our conversation--that, in ways I could sense but not define, I belonged to him by right. There was a bond between us, known to him but not to me. It was like a bond of family. In my confusion, I went so far as to speculate whether my host was homosexual, and intended to force his attentions on me. It was in the same light that I interpreted his mysterious tolerance towards the Herr Pastor. By intruding upon my filial feelings, I reasoned, he was by implication offering himself as a father substitute, and ultimately as my protector and lover. My suspicions were misplaced. The explanation for the Professor's intimacy was far more terrible."

He stops. Has he run out of breath--or courage? Mundy ventures not a word, but there must be comfort in his silence, for gradually Sasha rallies.

"It was soon clear to me that the Herr Pastor was to be the only material topic of our conversation in the garden. In the White Hotel I had touched no alcohol, except for one experience of Château Moonshine, which nearly killed me. Now the Professor was plying me with fine Obstler, and simultaneously with insinuating questions about the Herr Pastor. I would go so far as to say respectful. He referred to my father's _little ways.__ Did my father drink? How should I know? I replied, I hadn't seen him for almost twenty years. Did I remember my father talking politics in the home? Here in the GDR before he fled the republic, for example? Or afterwards in West Germany when he came back from his indoctrination course in America? Did my father ever quarrel with my poor mother? Did he have other women, sleep with colleagues' wives? Did my father take drugs, visit brothels, gamble on racehorses? Why was the Professor interrogating me like this about a father I didn't know?"

Not the Herr Pastor anymore, Mundy records. My father. Sasha has no defenses left. He must face his father as a man, no longer as a concept.

"Dusk fell and we went indoors. The furnishings were not exactly proletarian: imperial-style furniture, fine paintings, everything of the best. 'Any fool can be uncomfortable,' he said. 'There is nothing in the _Communist Manifesto__ that forbids a little luxury to those who have deserved it. Why should the devil wear all the best suits?' In a dining room with an ornate ceiling we were served roast chicken and Western wines by docile orderlies. When the orderlies retired, the Professor took me to the drawing room and beckoned me to sit beside him on the sofa, thus immediately reviving my fears regarding his sexuality. He explained that what he had to say to me was extremely secret, and that while his house was regularly swept for microphones, no word of our conversation must be overheard by the staff. He told me also that I should listen to him in complete silence, and reserve whatever comment I might have until he had finished. I can give you his exact words, since they are branded on my memory."

Sasha closes his eyes for a moment, as if preparing himself for a leap into the blue. Then begins again, speaking as the Professor.

"'As you may have gathered for yourself, my colleagues in state security are divided as to how we should regard you, which explains the regrettable inconsistencies in your treatment. You have been the football between two opposing teams and for this I offer you my personal apologies. But be assured that from now on, you are in safe hands. I shall now put to you a certain question but it is a rhetorical one. Which would you prefer to have for a father? A _Wendehals,__ a false priest, a corrupt hypocrite who consorts with counterrevolutionary agitators, or a man so dedicated to an ideal, so committed to the great cause of the revolution and the highest principles of Leninism, that he is prepared to endure the contempt of his only son? The answer, Sasha, is obvious, so you need not provide it. Now I shall put a second question to you. If such a man, from the day of his providential incarceration in the Soviet Union, had been selected by the Party organs for a life of supreme self-sacrifice--and was now lying on his deathbed far behind the enemy's lines--would you wish, as his only beloved son, to give him comfort in his last hours, or would you leave him to the mercy of those whose conspiratorial actions he has devoted his life to frustrating?' It was as well that he had forbidden me to speak, because I was struck mute. I sat. I stared at him. I listened in a trance when he told me that he had known and loved my father for forty years, that it was always my father's greatest wish that I should return to the GDR and take up his sword when it fell from his hand."

He breaks off. His eyes widen in entreaty. "_Forty years,__" he repeats incredulously. "You know what that means, Teddy? _They knew each other when they were both good Nazis together.__" His voice recovers its strength. "I did not point out to the Professor that I had come to the GDR in the expectation of destroying my father, and that it was therefore a surprise to be asked to adulate him. Perhaps, after my intransigence in the White Hotel, I was learning to conceal my emotions. Nor did I say anything when the Professor explained to me that, though my father had long dreamed of dying in the Democratic Republic, the imperatives of his mission required him to remain in exile till the bitter end." He assumes the Professor's voice again. "'The greatest joy of your beloved father's life was your statement renouncing anarchism and embracing the party of social renewal and justice.'" Sasha seems to go to sleep for a moment, then starts awake, and becomes once more the Professor. "'His delight at the photograph of his beloved son standing on the doorstep of his old apartment is not to be described. When it was shown to him by our trusted intermediary, your father was deeply moved. It was your father's wish and also mine that there would be an occasion when we might smuggle you to his bedside so that you could clasp his hand, but this has been reluctantly overruled by the highest authority on security grounds. As a compromise it has been agreed that you will be informed of the truth concerning his life before it ends, and write him an appropriate letter from the heart. You will adopt a conciliatory and humble tone, begging his forgiveness and assuring him of your respect and admiration for his ideological integrity. Nothing less will lighten his passing.'