As chance would have it, another meeting of the swimming pool committee was scheduled for the following week. I made my excuses and stayed away, but Frau Wiegmann was not so easily shaken off. She telephoned the next morning to inform me that a date had finally been set for the commencement of renovations and that there was to be a small ceremony at the site to mark the occasion.
‘It would be a tragedy if you couldn’t be there, Herr Krug,’ she said, ‘after all you’ve given for the project – a tragedy and an injustice.’
I didn’t have the strength to make up another lie, so a few days later I found myself standing outside the mossy ruins of the Blasewitz municipal swimming pool, wielding a massive pair of bolt cutters. To cheers and applause from a crowd of local residents, I broke open the rusty iron chains that had held fast the main gates for forty years, the moment being recorded for posterity by a photographer from the local press. On cue, to even louder cheers, a small convoy of vehicles, bedecked with flags and pennants – a flatbed truck loaded with scaffolding, a mobile excavator, a cement mixer towed by a tractor – swept on to the site, the drivers in their shirtsleeves waving to the crowd like the youthful vanguard of a new Utopia.
By this time my anxieties regarding Theresa were on their upward leg. I had heard nothing for more than ten days. Ten days became two weeks; and two weeks became three. Spring arrived in the valley. On certain days the sky acquired a bluish tint, like galvanised steel, but still there came no word from the West. We had made no firm arrangements in this respect, but Theresa must have known of my concern. She must have wanted to set my mind at rest. I was reminded of her sudden disappearance to Berlin, but this time the wait was longer and more troubling. I worried about Theresa’s incarceration, but also about her freedom and what she might do with it: return or not return, press on with our secret collaboration or abandon it and in the process abandon me. At any other time, in any other place, a phone call would have settled the matter; but it was a phone call I could not make.
After one especially unbearable Sunday I made my way back to the college of music. I knew it was foolish, but I couldn’t help myself. In the night it had occurred to me that Theresa might have contacted one of her friends, especially now that the summer semester had officially begun. If it turned out that was true, if someone had heard from her, it would allay my earlier fears. On the other hand it would also intensify my new ones: because if Theresa could contact a fellow student, she could as easily contact me.
Theresa always had classes on Monday morning, ending at noon. I strolled up the steps at that exact hour, the bell ringing, the hallways slowly filling up with students on their way to the canteen. I searched for a face I knew, but reached the far end of the building without seeing one. I turned round and sauntered back again, maintaining a professorial air, then hung around near the noticeboard opposite the main doors. But my luck was no better. No one I recognised walked by, with the sole exception of an elderly member of the faculty whom I had seen at several student concerts. He gave me a vague smile as he passed.
With the last lecture room empty, there was nothing left but to go home again. I was back on Blochmannstrasse, about to turn on to the main avenue where the tram stop was located, when I saw out of the corner of my eye that someone was following me: a wiry-looking young man in a bomber jacket and jeans, with sunken cheeks and a feeble adolescent moustache. Though I didn’t more than glance at him, I was sure I had seen him before.
Up ahead a tram heaved into view, sparks flickering dimly in the shadow of its belly. It struck me that I had seen the young man outside Theresa’s apartment building one morning. He had been standing on the opposite side of the road, facing the entrance, looking as though he was about to cross. In the event he hadn’t crossed, which had struck me as odd, hence the recollection. He had finished lighting a cigarette, then walked away along his side of the street.
I quickened my pace. The tram was drawing closer. The stop was two hundred yards from me, but no one was waiting there. I tried to wave down the driver, but he showed no sign of slowing down. I resisted the urge to look back, to see if the moustachioed stranger was still behind me. I was running away, but I didn’t want to be seen to be running away; for implicit in such behaviour was the admission that I had something to run away from.
With an electro-mechanical groan and a squeal of brakes the tram pulled up: not to let me on, but to let a passenger off. I leapt aboard just as the pneumatic doors were closing. Looking back through the smeary glass, I saw the stranger come to halt on the other side. He had been running too, running after me – or maybe just running for the tram.
As we pulled away, I watched him through the back window, standing by the kerb, watching me.
25
I was afraid I would find someone waiting for me when I got home and so it proved. I turned the corner at the end of the street and there they were: two of them, standing opposite the front door – on the exact same spot where I had first seen my moustachioed pursuer a few weeks earlier. It had been stupid to run away. There was no hope of escape. All I had gained was a ten-minute tram ride with a knotted stomach. But again, I couldn’t help myself. I spun on my heels and headed back the way I had come. I wasn’t ready. I needed time to get my story straight. I needed time to shake off the clinging demeanour of guilt.
The street was full of noise. The youngest of the children from the local school were always in the playground at that hour, shrieking and squealing as if in full flight from a hilarious tornado. Perhaps it was just a routine enquiry, I told myself. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Theresa, or with Richter’s book. I was not going to be arrested or interrogated. I was not going to disappear. What lay in store for me was probably no more than a harmless request for information, just like the last. As I walked slowly round the block, the children’s innocent clamour made an unsettling counterpoint to these efforts at self-reassurance.
I approached the house again from the other direction, eyes on the ground, still turning over various forms of confession in my mind, my footsteps making no audible sound. I had my front door key in my hand when I heard them call my name. Reluctantly I turned. But the two people now hurrying across the road did not look like agents of the state security apparatus: the man was small and bald, the woman large and florid.
‘Herr Krug, we were so hoping to catch you.’
Richter’s parents. Having not seen them since the funeral, I’d failed to recognise them, although they seemed to be wearing the same clothes: the same pale blue trouser suit (she), the same ill-fitting jacket (he). The only thing that had changed was Frau Richter’s home perm, which had been allowed partially to grow out, so that her hair was straight near the roots and curly at the ends, the unfortunate effect accentuated by the fact that the straight hair was grey and the curls a chemical yellow.
‘We tried to call,’ Herr Richter said. ‘But I don’t think we have the right number.’
‘We were told you’d be here.’
I was greatly relieved at not being taken in for questioning, but my relief was short-lived.
‘Is there something I can do for you?’
Frau Richter put her hand on my arm. I was struck by a smell of sweat and cheap perfume.
‘We’ve had such difficulties, Herr Krug. Really it’s awful.’
‘Frieda, not here,’ Herr Richter said, though with the noise from the playground we were in no danger of being overheard.
‘We need your help,’ his wife said. ‘It’s about Wolfgang.’
I tried to seem surprised. ‘Your son?’
‘I know what he meant to you. I felt sure we could count on you.’
Herr Richter gave me an apologetic look. ‘We can come back another time. Any time that’s convenient. We know how busy you are.’
I glanced up and down the street. A grey van was parked about forty yards away, opposite the kindergarten gates. Apart from that, everything was as normal.
‘You’d better come in,’ I said.
They refused coffee, tea and vodka, in spite of my repeated offers and their obvious fatigue. Eventually Frau Richter was persuaded to accept a glass of tap water, which she held on to with both hands, apparently terrified of spillage.
‘I knew you’d help us, Herr Krug,’ she said. ‘You recognised our little Wolfgang’s talent. You were his mentor.’
I insisted that I was no such thing. I had no experience of working in cinema. I had simply admired her son’s work.
‘And you should have heard how he idolised you. He wanted more than anything to follow in your footsteps. He told us he was going to write a novel, you know.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘I’d no idea.’
‘Of course, he wouldn’t give us any details. He didn’t like to talk about his projects until they were finished. But he said he had it all worked out.’
‘Your publisher and your editor, those were the ones he wanted,’ Herr Richter said. ‘I think that was the reason he came back here.’
‘Yes, and that girl,’ his wife said. ‘Don’t forget about her.’
This got my particular attention. ‘A girl? What girl was that?’
‘The student, the musician. She came to the funeral. What a cheek!’
‘Now, Frieda, I’m sure Herr Krug doesn’t want to hear about this. Herr Krug is a busy man.’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m in no hurry. You were saying . . .’
‘Theresa her name was. She played the violin. He said she was just a friend. He knew we’d worry, her being from the other side. Such liaisons aren’t wise. You know what I mean, Herr Krug, don’t you?’
I said I did.
‘But then he said he was moving back here from Berlin, and we put two and two together. She’d obviously got her claws into him.’
‘Frieda, I really think . . .’
‘So I asked him straight: where’s this going, Wolfgang? What’ll happen in the end? You can’t carry on for long with a border between you. In the end something’s got to give.’
Herr Richter tapped his wife affectionately on the knee. If the idea was to silence her it didn’t work.
‘Of course, he didn’t like it. He’s always been very independent-minded. But do you know what he said? He said: maybe there won’t always be a border between us, Mama. When people are in love they’re prepared to make sacrifices. But he was kidding himself where she was concerned.’
‘Sacrifices? You mean he thought Theresa would come and live here permanently? In the East?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Frau Richter said. ‘That’s what he thought. But look what happened. He came to her, he walked away from the Babelsberg studio to be near her. Not the other way round. If she hadn’t turned his head he’d still be up there in Berlin and he’d still be . . .’
She fought back a sob. Touching though the spectacle was, I felt at that moment only disappointment, yawning and bleak. Theresa had been prepared to give up her life in the West for Wolfgang Richter, it seemed, but not for me. My mere mention of the possibility had been dismissed out of hand. But of course it had. How had I allowed myself to expect anything else? Theresa was from a different world and a different time. She was fond of me, no doubt. I was her comforter, her companion, her friend. But a partner for life? No objective observer would be foolish enough to bet money on that, let alone their heart.
‘They promised us information, Herr Krug,’ Frau Richter was saying. ‘They promised to explain.’
I had lost the thread of the conversation. ‘To explain . . . ?’
‘The exact cause of death,’ her husband said. ‘Wolfgang’s death.’
‘Of course. I understood it was a type of meningitis.’
Herr Richter nodded. ‘That’s what they told us, on the telephone. I mean me. I was at work.’
He squeezed his hands together between his knees. Beneath his fingernails the flesh turned pink.
‘He didn’t get a name,’ Frau Richter said.
‘I didn’t get a name. I was too . . . I’m not sure if they even gave me one.’
‘A name?’
‘The person who called. I tried to call back, for more information. Later. But I didn’t know who to ask for.’
‘No one would tell us anything,’ Frau Richter said. ‘They kept saying we would have to fill in a form. Even when we went to the hospital in Loschwitz, they wouldn’t help us. We went back every day for a week.’
‘We were hoping . . .’ Herr Richter glanced at his wife. ‘We were hoping to see him, before they . . . One last time, but the coffin was sealed, they said.’
‘Sealed,’ Frau Richter said, dabbing at her eye. ‘We never saw him.’
‘I’m sure that’s standard procedure,’ I said. ‘One can’t be too careful where infectious diseases are concerned. It would have been awful if . . .’
Outside, an electric bell summoned the children from their play. Slowly the squeals and shrieks died away. What I was left with was a picture, a picture Michael Schilling had drawn for me a few weeks earlier: of Wolfgang Richter being bundled into the back of an unmarked car.
But that was just a rumour.
Herr Richter reached into his jacket and took out an envelope. ‘In the end they gave us this, as a special concession, they said.’
He took out a single sheet of paper from the envelope, and handed it to me. Beneath the heading PRELIMINARY REPORT OF DEATH were a few printed headings with information typed in: Richter’s name, date and place of birth, and then the stark details of his demise, stamped and signed off by an ‘attending clinician’ by the name of V. H. Gatz. I supposed this was the information that would have been supplied to the state register office, where the beginning and end of each and every citizen was duly recorded.
‘Under cause of death,’ Herr Richter said. ‘You see what it says?’
I read aloud the words: ‘Cerebral atrophy’.
‘That’s not what they told us. They told us it was meningitis, an infection of the cerebral membrane.’
‘Why would they change their mind, Herr Krug?’ Frau Richter said. ‘Why would they lie?’
‘Frieda, please –’
‘Do they take us for fools?’
Herr Richter put a restraining hand on his wife’s arm.
‘Are you by any chance a doctor, Herr Richter?’ I asked.
My guest shook his head, his elfin ears turning a brighter shade of red. ‘I work for the Post Office savings bank in Pirna. In the back office. I looked up meningitis in the library.’
‘Well, isn’t it possible that meningitis was the cause and this . . .’
‘Cerebral atrophy.’
‘Yes, this atrophy was the effect. An issue of terminology.’
Herr Richter put his head on one side. Neither he nor his wife said anything.
‘Why don’t you telephone this V. H. Gatz and ask him to explain?’
‘I’ve tried many times,’ Herr Richter said. ‘He never takes my call. I’ve left messages, but he never responds.’
‘That’s a shame. Well, it’s really the autopsy report one should rely on. Initial diagnoses are often mistaken.’
The Richters glanced at each other.
‘Herr Krug,’ Herr Richter said, almost apologetically, ‘there has been no autopsy.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t glib or disingenuous. A healthy young man collapses and dies in forty-eight hours and the authorities don’t hold a post mortem? I’d never heard of such a thing. But then, it was an unusual case. Perhaps the potential for infection was too great to risk an autopsy. Perhaps the morticians refused to hold one.
‘We thought it was peculiar,’ Frau Richter said. ‘Don’t you think there should have been an autopsy, Herr Krug? I don’t understand it. Although the thought of . . .’
The thought of her son’s body being cut open and systematically disembowelled on a mortician’s table, the internal organs weighed on the scales one by one, as if to ascertain their retail value – yes, I could see how that
would give rise to mixed feelings in a parent.
Frau Richter handed the glass of water to her husband and hastily pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, the tears coming freely now, cascading down her pink cheeks.
For some reason I was starting to feel faint and a little nauseous.
‘All we’re asking for’, Herr Richter said, ‘is for someone to explain. But no one will talk to us. It’s as if it’s none of our business. As if we’re being a nuisance.’
Frau Richter’s voice was cracking. ‘I just want to know what happened to my son.’
I managed to utter some soothing words, while her husband patted her on the arm. I had often wondered if, at some time or other, my mother had asked this exact same question.
‘You’re a man of influence,’ Frau Richter said as she fretted at her wrinkled and snotty handkerchief. ‘Would you put your name to a request, to an Eingabe? They couldn’t ignore you, Herr Krug. They couldn’t. You’re a decorated author.’
The Richters had an inflated opinion of titular adornment and the influence it implied, but I could hardly refuse their request. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said. By now I wanted the interview to be over. I had enquiries to make on my own behalf. ‘The regional office of the Ministry of Health, I’ll start there. I’m sure I can identify the relevant official.’
Frau Richter greeted this suggestion with an audible sob and a further seepage of tears. Then the thanks began – an insistent, pathetic chorus of thanks, that left me in no doubt that I had given her and her husband all they could have wished for. Not that it was going to do them much good. Wolfgang was gone and his body burned. Whatever the authorities settled upon as the final version of events, there was now no way it could be proven or disproven. Over the years I had been given several perfectly reasonable (and equally sickening) explanations for my mother’s disappearance, but none of them had blunted my need to know. Only time had done that, and not convincingly.
Herr Richter got to his feet and helped his tearful wife to hers. He clearly regretted her indiscretions, which, as far as he was concerned, had no bearing on their current predicament. He handed me a piece of paper with their address and phone number on it, and, refusing all offers of further hospitality, escorted her to the door.
The Valley of Unknowing Page 15