In Times of Fading Light (30 page)

So that everyone else would know what was going on, Wilhelm now summoned Mählich over, had him open the jar of gherkins, and—ate one. He did even that in his inimitably ostentatious manner; the casual way in which he let the pickle drip its liquid back into the jar, the way he bit into it, the way he rolled the bitten pickle back and forth between his fingers and examined it, while uninhibitedly smacking his lips, all suggested that he was the ultimate authority on assessing the quality of a gherkin.

“
Garosh,”
said Wilhelm once again, and now he finally allowed Kurt to wish him a happy birthday. But when Kurt offered him his hand, overcoming his reluctance to touch Wilhelm’s fingers, wet from the pickle, Wilhelm simply waved him away: Take those vegetables to the graveyard!

Vegetables to the graveyard? Kurt was surprised after all: had the old man really gone so far downhill, as Charlotte put it?

Then he turned to the rest of the company. In the past some very interesting people came to Wilhelm’s birthday party on occasion: Frank Janko, once the youngest divisional commander of the International Brigades, Karl Irrwig, who had at least tried to usher in a German form of socialism, in opposition to Ulbricht. Or there had been Stine Spier, the Brechtian actress, whom Charlotte and Wilhelm knew from the time of their exile in Mexico. But Janko’s name was not mentioned in this house after he was sent to prison six years ago for alleged “machinations” of some kind; after a while Karl Irrwig, who had certainly been excluded from the Politburo but had not entirely fallen out of favor, simply stopped coming here; Stine Spier, who always told amusing but politically disreputable stories about the theater, had finally been shown the door by Charlotte two or three years ago, if with a great show of courtesy, and so gradually all the guests who were in any way interesting had disappeared, until only
this bunch
was left, the company assembled here.

Mählich, of course, Wilhelm’s greatest admirer (a nice guy really, but he suffered from a tragically ponderous mind); Mählich’s wife, a former police officer (blond, and formerly so pretty that, had she not been hopelessly prudish, she would definitely have qualified for his, Kurt’s, collection of scalps); also the neighbors from opposite, a couple like two tubby barrels, Kurt had forgotten their names, as he did every year. The husband had once been janitor in Sasha’s school, and now ran small errands for Charlotte and Wilhelm; Kurt knew nothing about the wife except that she was said to have an artificial anus (artificial anus, what an odd idea). Then there was the community police officer, Comrade Krüger, whom Kurt never saw except from a distance as he rode past on his bike; there was Bunke, of course, high blood pressure, colonel in the Stasi, who always greeted Kurt effusively, asking after Irina, as if they were all close friends, God only knew how that had come about (they’d asked Bunke to tea only once, to discuss the two fir trees in his garden that cast their shade on Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s cucumber bed). Harry Zenk had also turned up: for a change an intelligent man, even a crafty character (although stupid enough to let himself be appointed head of the so-called Neuendorf Academy); and finally there was Gertrud Stiller, who always blushed when they met here once a year. Long ago, Charlotte had tried to palm the woman off on him, and the really shameful aspect of the business was that Kurt had actually considered the possibility, if not, maybe, entirely seriously—it was one of Kurt’s most closely guarded secrets, so secret that he hardly even remembered it himself; and, well, he didn’t know the rest of them at all—assorted saleswomen, Party veterans, and—oh, good God, what did
he
look like?

“Had a shtroke,” said Till, his voice blurred.

Tillbert Wendt, who had been in the Berlin-Britz Communist League of Youth with him: one year his junior. Kurt tried not to look too horrified. “And aside from that?”

Stupid question.

“Ashide from that I’m okay,” said Till.

“Well, we’re still alive, that’s what matters,” said Kurt, clapping him on the shoulder, although he felt sure he’d kill himself if something like that happened to him.

In the past he had never touched rich buttercream cake. But since he’d had the operation to remove two-thirds of his stomach, he could eat even rich buttercream cake with impunity. He had coffee as well, picking up one of the ancient, badly scratched rigid plastic cups brought out every year to supplement the “good china,” never quite enough of it to go around, that was inherited from the Nazi master of the house. In fact, Charlotte and Wilhelm had taken over
everything
along with the house (or to be precise, everything that was left after the Soviet officers who had been quartered here at first moved on). All they had thrown out was the cutlery with the tiny swastika engraved after the owner’s initials, with the result that guests in this house ate their cake off Nazi plates—but with spoons made by nationalized industry.

“
Da zdravstvuyet,”
said Bunke, raising his aluminum goblet.

It, too, was a product of the GDR, like the stuff in it, and although for thirty-three years Kurt had refused to drink cognac or, even worse, GDR-distilled brandy out of those aluminum goblets, these days he could bring himself to do it.

“To Gorbachev,” said Bunke. “To perestroika in the GDR!”

When someone handed Till a goblet he refused it. The community police officer acted as if he hadn’t heard Bunke’s remark. The two tubby barrels had sipped their cognac at the words
“Da zdravstvuyet.”
Only Mählich, glancing cautiously around, raised his goblet, but he lowered it again when Harry Zenk raised an objection.

“To Gorbachev—yes. To perestroika in the GDR—no.”

And Mählich’s wife—Kurt remembered her name now: Anita—was actually silly enough to contribute the maxim pronounced recently by the other Kurt, Kurt of the Politburo (Kurt Hager, whom Kurt secretly thought of as
Kurt the asshole
) in an interview with a West German magazine that was also printed in
ND:

“If our neighbor hangs new wallpaper, we don’t necessarily have to hang new wallpaper ourselves.”

A Neuendorf Party veteran agreed, and Bunke suddenly turned to him, Kurt:

“Say something, Kurt, why don’t you?”

Suddenly they were all looking at him: Anita with her sharp nose; Mählich was beginning to nod before Kurt had so much as taken a deep breath; the tubby barrels with their heads bent at exactly the same angle ... only Till, unmoved by any of this, was persistently trying to stuff a piece of cake into his half-paralyzed face.

“
Prost,”
said Kurt.

“Yes,
prost,
” said Bunke.

Kurt tipped back the contents of his goblet. The spirit burned his throat, slowly running down his gullet. Gradually burned its way through until it reached the spot where a pulling sensation had set in several hours ago. Not his stomach; something lower down ... what kind of organ in the body reacted when your son fled from the Republic?

A Party organ, thought Kurt, but he was not in a mood to find that funny, and so as not to be drawn any further into the Gorbachev discussion he turned all his attention to his cake. Useless, he thought, to try conveying his opinion of Gorbachev to these people: that he thought Gorbachev didn’t go far enough ... was haphazard, illogical ... that his book about perestroika had no trace of any grounding in theory...

He was still eating his cake when someone whom he couldn’t place at first entered the room: a woman who was much too young and indeed much too attractive for this company. He didn’t recognize her until he saw the lanky twelve-year-old whom she was propelling in Wilhelm’s direction. She’d really been putting on the glitz, who’d have thought it? High heels, even. What did that mean?

Kurt watched the two of them station themselves in front of Wilhelm’s armchair, saw Melitta lean down to Wilhelm in her amazingly short skirt, Markus handed Wilhelm a picture, and Kurt remembered that Markus had once given him a picture for his own birthday. An animal of some kind, damn it, he ought to hang it on the wall sometime, thought Kurt, watching Markus going the rounds of the room, delicate and pale and slightly awkward, just like Sasha at his age, he thought, and suddenly he felt an urge to give Markus a hug. Merely shaking hands with him, like everyone else, didn’t seem enough. And all of a sudden he even had an urge to give Melitta a hug, although of course he didn’t, but after greeting her he moved pointedly slightly aside so that a chair could be fitted in for her next to him.

She was wearing patterned stockings. Unfortunately Kurt was sitting in a chair that was slightly lower than hers, so that as he was wondering what friendly remark he could make to her, his mind was taken off it by the sight of those patterned stockings. Any compliment that entered his head suddenly sounded as if he were trying to revise a previous prejudice, and it took him some time to get one out.

“You’re looking good.”

“So are you,” said Melitta, looking at him with big green eyes.

“Oh, well,” said Kurt, playing it down—although, to be honest, he wasn’t entirely averse to believing her.

“Where’s Irina?” asked Melitta.

“Irina isn’t feeling well,” said Kurt, expecting Melitta to ask after Sasha next.

She didn’t, but maybe only because Charlotte came into the room at this moment, clapping her hands energetically like a kindergarten teacher, trying to get her guests, whose voices were growing louder and louder, to calm down. Jühn’s deputy was here. Time for the presentation of the order!

Kurt put his cake fork down again and leaned back. The speaker began reading out the speech of commendation in a dry voice, adopting a monotonous tone remarkable even for a
functionairry.
With a few almost imperceptible deviations, it was of course the same speech of commendation that was always read when Wilhelm was presented with an order (which recently had been almost every year, obviously because he always gave the impression that this birthday might be his last—even in that he had developed a certain skill). The story of Wilhelm’s life as a socialist warrior, from which everything that might have been in the least interesting had disappeared over the years, was a fine specimen of unparalleled tedium. At least it had the advantage, now that Melitta had turned to the speaker, of allowing Kurt to look without any inhibitions at her patterned stockings. Or to be more precise, they were patterned pantyhose, and to narrow it down even further, he could look at the place just under the hem of her dress, he didn’t know the proper term for it, where the pattern met the smooth part of the pantyhose, and the fact that Melitta readjusted her skirt only made it more interesting, because the skirt immediately began slipping out of place again, while her thighs moved against each other with a barely audible rustling sound.

Kurt felt something move in his lower body, and he wondered whether he ought to feel bad about it, in view of the fact that this was his former daughter-in-law ... no, you couldn’t call her a really
beautiful
woman, thought Kurt, as the speaker was telling them how Wilhelm had found his way to the party of the working class, but when he looked at her, to be honest, that was just what he liked. Looks that are less than beautiful, thought Kurt, also had their charm in a woman. Difficult to explain. Maybe you had to reach a certain age to understand it.

His gaze wandered over the excitingly coarse texture of her skirt, over the blouse that was almost see-through, moved over her muscular forearms, and while the speaker called to mind, as always, the injury that Wilhelm had suffered in the Kapp Putsch, lingered on the delicate structure of black straps crisscrossing Melitta’s broad back, checked the effect of her lipstick on her face, registered the carefully plucked eyebrows (and the slight pinkness left by the plucking), and—it made him sad. Suddenly the sight of the young woman moved him, suddenly he saw her as a woman spurned, the symbol of all that Sasha had rejected, abandoned, destroyed in his life, and from which now—typically!—he was simply walking away. Yet at the same time—and Kurt was surprised to find both reactions coexisting simultaneously in a single body—at the same time the sight of her also excited him, and it seemed to him that the very fact of her rejection and abandonment was what excited him, the spurned wish of this less than beautiful young woman to desire and be desired, which showed all the more plainly for being spurned—that in itself was what excited Kurt and even, because he perceived the risk this woman was taking by getting herself up like that, made him scent a point of departure for a little
Theory of the Eroticism of the Less Than Beautiful,
although he postponed working it out any further for now.

For a while it all balanced out: sadness and attraction, the tugging sensation within him and the excitement lower down, the
Party Organ
and the
Opposition,
thought Kurt, but when, in a long, clunky sentence (really imparting only the information that Wilhelm had been second in command of the Berlin Red Front Fighters’ League), the speaker ran through the 1920s, with logical consistency leaving out the league’s crushing defeat in the year 1933, the Opposition in Kurt’s pants gradually gained the ascendancy, and while the assembled company sat in rigid solemnity, while the two tubby barrels tilted their heads reverently to one side, while Till slept (unless he was rehearsing for his death mask), while Harry Zenk tried to yawn without opening his mouth, in his thoughts Kurt was down in Wilhelm’s Party cellar and had been there for some time.
Anti-Fascist resistance,
said the speaker, while Kurt engaged in some hasty activity in which the long table for meetings played a certain part; the images were blurred, he saw nothing really distinctly but the pattern of the pantyhose, or more precisely the smooth part above the pattern, he didn’t know its name.
Illegality,
said the speaker, and when, a little later, Kurt’s mind was back with the company sitting there stiff as a set of posts, the Opposition in his pants was so
heroically,
as the speaker was just saying, so
heroically
reinforced that he began to feel the folds of his underwear were too tight and pinching him.