The Moment

by Douglas Kennedy

  As I finally closed the book at three that morning two words kept preoccupying my thoughts:

  Thomas Nesbitt. Thomas Nesbitt. Thomas Nesbitt.

  I don’t deserve him.

  Thomas Nesbitt. Thomas Nesbitt. Thomas Nesbitt.

  I know it’s all the stuff of reverie. And like all such romantic musings, the stuff of imagination, not reality.

  * * *

  I saw him briefly on my way into work. We made eye contact. And, oh God, I think he asked me out to a concert, but I was so nervous I could barely hear anything over the pounding of my heart. And now I’m speaking in clichés. I’m sure I was too distant, too diffident. He just beamed at me. Like a man in love.

  Stop inventing again. It was another of his nice smiles, that’s all. He’s new to Berlin and probably casually asks people out all the time. He probably smiles that way at every woman he sees. And I should have smiled back.

  * * *

  His first essay arrived today! And I was asked to translate it.

  I read it through immediately. It described a day he spent in East Berlin. The first time he’d ever “crossed over.” Of course, I was intrigued by his take on things. I sometimes worried that he stated the obvious a little too often—especially when it came to the fundamental drabness of the place. But I loved his use of snow as a metaphor. The way he described East Berlin in the throes of a blizzard . . . strangely it made me homesick. This is what they don’t get in the West, and what Thomas himself didn’t pick up: the fact that we accepted the gray, concrete realities of the place as a given. The fact that not all of us dreamed of Levi’s jeans and a new Volkswagen. The fact that, despite its limitations, it was our city, our society, our world. We loved so much about its peculiarities. It made us form communities. It made our friendships all that deeper.

  And it made us inform on each other, too.

  Homesick, yes. Heartsick, yes. Full of conflicting emotions about whether I should make a move in Thomas’s direction or stay clear of him altogether and keep everything simpler.

  I had to see Haechen this afternoon. He couldn’t get an erection and made me go down on him with my mouth. Even then, he remained limp, impotent. I took silent pleasure in this.

  “I think you need to do better next time,” he said as he pulled up his Y-fronts. I wanted to scream and shout and tell him that I found him nothing less than revolting.

  But as always, I held my tongue like the subservient creature I must be in his presence. There is nothing worse than knowing someone has you in a place out of which you cannot negotiate, that their power over you is a near-absolute.

  But he couldn’t stop me from having a life out of these biweekly degradations. And he wasn’t—to the best of my knowledge—having me followed.

  Thomas, I decided, would be my escape hatch out of all this horror. Thomas would make this other humiliating part of my life somehow bearable.

  If, that is, Thomas was even interested in me.

  But think about that look he gave you yesterday.

  It was just a look. And it could have been nothing but that.

  You don’t trust others, do you?

  Can you blame me?

  * * *

  I decided to be bold this morning. I picked up the phone at work and called the number Thomas had written on the cover sheet of his essay, only to discover I was speaking to a man with a decidedly non-German accent. When I asked for Thomas Nesbitt he explained that he took messages for Thomas—and that he was probably due in later that morning. I gave him my name and number, thanked him, then hung up, feeling rather stupid about having called. Would Thomas think I was harassing him? Would he even return the call? Maybe I overplayed my hand here. How would I react if he called back and actually asked if we could meet? That was a growing concern of mine, the worry that I couldn’t handle it if he was interested.

  I want him. I fear I can’t have him. I fear everything else will conspire to make me unable to even consider getting to know him.

  And I am building all this up into something that may not happen at all.

  Then, late that afternoon, my phone rang and . . . there he was. All charming and pleasant . . . and did I also hear a certain nervous catch in his voice as well? We bantered a bit. He made a joke about how he didn’t have a phone at home. Then when I said I had a couple of questions about his text, he asked if we could meet for a coffee. Instead of saying an instant “yes,” I had to go all hesitant and strange. It was a good thirty seconds before I got up the courage to say: “All right.” I felt so silly afterward. And so hopeful. And so afraid. Afraid of it happening. Afraid of it not happening.

  * * *

  He agreed to meet me at a café of my choice. I proposed the Ankara, right near my room. I made some lame joke about the place where he picks up his phone messages being called the Istanbul. And how he was now exchanging Istanbul for Ankara.

  God, how I hated myself for that stupidity afterward. And my inane banter, as in asking him if he didn’t mind coming to the wrong side of Kreuzberg. He must now think me idiotic.

  I could hardly sleep last night, wondering, worrying, fretting. The desire for love to be reciprocated is the most quiet sort of agony. I tried to prepare myself for everything from his last-minute cancelation to the discovery that he had a woman back home in the States who was joining him here next month. I couldn’t accept the idea that, somehow, what I felt for him—in all its sudden, ferocious force—could be in any way reciprocated. Who would want to fall in love with me?

  When sleep finally came it was five in the morning, and I had spent the last three hours going through Thomas’s essay several times, outlining the points I felt needed addressing. Then I woke with my alarm at nine. I showered and dressed, wondering if the brown cardigan and the green corduroy skirt I chose made me look like I was trying too hard to play the Kreuzberg bohemian. I somehow got through the working day—and made certain I arrived five minutes later than agreed at the Café Ankara. He was already sitting there, at work in his notebook, so engrossed that he initially didn’t see me enter. I was pleased about that, because at the sight of him I felt that exact same surge, that sense of accelerated pulsation, of absolute certainty, which hit me a few days ago. If I wanted confirmation, here it was.

  I approached his table.

  “So viele Wörter,” I said. So many words.

  He looked up at me and smiled. God, how I wanted to throw myself in his arms at that instant.

  “So viele Wörter,” he repeated to me—and reached out to take my hand, covering mine with both of his. The first time he touched me. He sat down and we started to talk about his essay, but he also wanted to know so much about my life in Prenzlauer Berg. He was so interested in me—and I found out some things about his life as well, like the fact that his father was a man who didn’t live the life he wanted to lead. And he made the most beautiful comment about my work as a translator, saying that all translation was putting morning words into evening words. Far too poetic in terms of the dreariness of my métier, but I loved the fact that he wanted to tell me he saw value in what I did.

  And then . . . then . . . out of nowhere he told me I was wonderful. I was so thrown by this—so privately overwhelmed—that I did a stupid, coy thing. When he asked me to have dinner with him tonight, I made up some absurd excuse about having other plans. Why did I make that up? What was I thinking? I know the answer to that question. His praise—a near-declaration of love—so disconcerted me that my first reaction was to create a diversion, an excuse, anything to mess it up. Once that stupidity about being otherwise engaged was out of my mouth, I wanted to take it all back, to tell him that, yes, I was free but so scared he might now think me emotionally unpredictable. But—oh, God, what a relief—he asked if I was free tomorrow night. I tried to keep my cool as I said yes.

  Once we were outside in the street I did something wildly impulsive. I pulled him toward me and kissed him right on the lips. But then, again, I pulled back before I went crazy. I so
wanted him right there and then. Still he took my hand as I pulled back and said:

  “Until tomorrow.”

  And I could see in his gaze that he was as smitten as I am.

  * * *

  Shit, shit, shit.

  After saying good-bye to Thomas I went home and ate a sad omelette by myself, thinking all the time how I could be with him. I was still furious with myself for having pushed him away this evening, still wondering whether—in the wake of that kiss—he might find me the worst sort of tease.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I keep seeing his face in front of me. Keep remembering how bright and knowledgeable he is. How he knows his East German writers. How curious and engaged he was. And how I saw again that vulnerability and solitariness in his eyes. How I so wanted to tell him I loved him; that I would, if I could, make him feel less alone in the world; how he could trust me.

  Which he could. Utterly. Until it came to the issue of . . .

  I knew I had to go to Der Schlüssel this evening to find out my next rendezvous with Haechen. I dropped by the place. Ordered my usual beer and vodka from Otto—the big, heavily tattooed bar man with a shaved head and two enormous circular earrings expanding each ear lobe. Then, after a few minutes, I went to the bathroom and . . .

  Shit, shit, shit.

  The card he left gave the address of a hotel way up in Wedding, and he wanted me there tomorrow night at ten.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I have to see Thomas. And if I don’t show up for my rendezvous with Haechen . . .

  * * *

  I didn’t sleep again. I phoned in sick. I fretted all day. The restaurant was the Italian place near me: a little hole in the wall where I had eaten twice before. We arranged to meet there at eight, which gave me just seventy-five minutes with him before I had to meet Haechen.

  Say I didn’t show up in whatever horrible hotel Haechen was now perching. Say I skipped this rendezvous. What could he do to me? What vengeance would he actually wreak?

  I knew the answer to that question. He would, as he always promised, be merciless. I had to work out some sort of way to escape from Thomas in a little while but do it in such a way that . . .

  I can’t lose him. I won’t lose him.

  I walked into the restaurant, and there he was. Seated with his notebook open in front of him, the same fountain pen he always has snug in his hand, his head lowered, his concentration total. The longing I had for him at that moment was overwhelming. He looked up at me with such a big welcoming smile, but I could see that he noticed my tiredness, the dark circles under my eyes that I unsuccessfully tried to mask with makeup. He attempted to kiss me on the lips, but I turned and gave him my cheek, again hating myself for deliberately playing distant. I mean, what could he be thinking now after me kissing him so passionately yesterday? As I sat down I suddenly felt so desperately tired, all the sleeplessness finally catching up with me, terrified that I would somehow show all the contradiction raging inside me. But then we started to talk. For the next two hours we couldn’t stop. I got him speaking about his Egypt book—and was able to drag out details from him about his parents’ marriage and the reasons he was so reluctant to reveal too much about himself in print, preferring the stories of others. Everything I had sensed about him—the lonely childhood, the self-protective need to hide away, the parents who were unhappy and therefore couldn’t appreciate their interesting, different son—was also hinted at by Thomas. It was so fascinating to see how we were both drawing each other out, both more eager to hear the other person’s story than tell our own. There was a real kinship there—and an unspoken understanding that we both had firsthand knowledge of life’s larger disappointments . . . whether it be a mother and a father who took such little pleasure in you, or a husband with whom there was none of the shared destiny that should be such an essential component of a marriage. But mine with Jurgen was never a real marriage—and I see that so desperately clearly now. I even went so far as to admit something I never mentioned to anyone in my life—the way that the parents of my friend Marguerite were (I was so sure) shopped to the Stasi after I mentioned to my own parents that we watched Western television at their little cottage near the border with the Bundesrepublik . . . and how I felt so profoundly guilty about this after Marguerite’s mother and father got into such terrible trouble. Thomas could not have been more understanding, more sympathetic. When he covered my hand with his I didn’t pull away, even though I got cross at him for being so reasonable. But instead of being offended, he took my other hand and said the same thing he told me yesterday: that I was wonderful. No one’s ever said that to me. Not a parent. Not a lover. Not even a friend. And we drank another half-liter of wine at my insistence because I was so unsettled by his decency. Because everything he was saying—his incredible empathy, the way he seemed to be hanging on to every word I spoke, the way he looked at me—made me realize he was in love with me. The panic within me was growing wilder by the minute—the sense that if I gave myself to Thomas, I would never forgive myself for then having to betray him with the man who currently controlled my life. I didn’t want to live a lie, but I also knew that Thomas was now everything to me.

  When the conversation edged into this—when we both admitted that, indeed, this was now everything—I suddenly found myself telling Thomas that he had to go, that he should leave now and spare himself so much grief. He was looking incredulously at me as I kept repeating that it just couldn’t be. But then I blurted out what I wanted to say to him from the first moment he came into my life: Ich liebe dich.

  And I fled.

  I raced up the street to the main thoroughfare and got lucky. An empty taxi was coming by. I hailed it and jumped in, just as I could see Thomas dashing into the street. I gave the driver the address in Wedding—and fell back against the rear seat, sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t stop until the taxi reached the grubby façade of the hotel. I was in a terrible place. I sat in the back of the taxi for many minutes, not moving. To the driver’s credit, he didn’t ask me to get a move on and get out. He just turned off the meter and waited until I was ready to leave. But I wasn’t ready to leave. I simply had no choice but to go upstairs and deal with that monster again. When I reached for my bag and asked the driver what I owed him, he simply said: “No charge.” When I found myself sobbing again at this spontaneous act of kindness, he said:

  “Just say yes and I will drive you away from this. Drive you to wherever you want to go.”

  “You are too kind,” I whispered, then got out and staggered into the reception area, where a sad-looking man sat behind the desk (in none of the hotels in which I was forced to meet Haechen did I ever see a desk clerk who looked even vaguely happy—and who could blame them?). When I mentioned Haechen’s name he tonelessly said: “Room 316.”

  Business as usual. Haechen in his dirty T-shirt and stained Y-fronts. I asked him why we had to meet so late. “Because I couldn’t meet you earlier” was his reply. He motioned for me to take off my clothes. “You messed up my evening with friends,” I said. He just shrugged and said, “The faster you get out of your clothes, the faster you can go back to them.”

  Tonight was, by far, a new low point—as he insisted on kissing me, and I tasted his acrid breath, the cheap beer I sensed he drank all day, the four decades of cigarettes he inhaled, the diet of grease on which I was certain he subsisted, and, most of all, his supreme vileness. He shoved his tongue into my mouth the way he shoved his pathetic penis into me—like the malevolent yet profoundly insecure bully that he was. A man who, I sensed, knew he was anything but a man—but was willing to use whatever pitiable power he had to force this woman to be an unwilling receptacle for his wretchedness. Did he privately know this, or was he one of those profoundly amoral creatures who had developed the sort of innate, animal mechanisms that allowed them to sidestep any self-reflection whatsoever?

  Fortunately, he had no erection problems tonight—which meant that it was all over in a few minutes. I got dre
ssed. I tossed him four new tiny canisters of film, thinking guiltily that among the many documents contained within, were photos of the translation I made of Thomas’s piece about crossing over to East Berlin for the first time. Might they stop him at the border the next time he tried to visit, all because of me? Why did I include this? Because Haechen informed me that they listened to Radio Liberty all the time. They had day and night monitors. They were aware that I had become the chief translator. Which meant that anything written by a non-German that was broadcast on the station I had probably translated. And Haechen was very menacing about the fact that “they will be most displeased if they hear things being broadcast about which they weren’t already aware.” In other words: you give us everything you work on.

  Still, Haechen seemed pleased with double the usual quota of film. Handing me a few fresh rolls he said what he always said at the end of our “sessions.”

  “Now go.”

  It was sleeting when I hit the street. I didn’t care. I went home. I stood under a shower for half an hour, trying to wash away all traces of Haechen. The idea of climbing into bed now was impossible. So I hurriedly dressed and fled into the night. I walked for hours. Winding my way down from the north of the city all the way to Kreuzberg. It must have taken three hours or so, as I stopped at four cafés along the way to smoke cigarettes and drink vodka, while all the time ordering myself to go home and slam the door on the world and quietly mourn all that could have been with Thomas and reason with myself that it was all for the best.