I went out into the living room and was relieved to see him greeting the Hartls just as if nothing had happened, apologising for his lateness and blaming a last-minute automotive failure. I looked for an opportunity to explain myself more fully to him, to apologise for keeping him in the dark, to plead for his discretion (which I never seriously doubted), but that opportunity never came.
At around eleven I heard Schilling’s motorbike outside. I went to the window and watched him ride away down the hill, vanishing behind a funnel of dust. When it was my turn to leave I noticed that he had forgotten to take his raincoat with him.
35
There had always been two choices where Michael Schilling was concerned: tell him everything or tell him nothing. Anything else, any palatable halfway house, would have involved telling lies and I didn’t want to do that.
Of the two choices, full disclosure was the safest. Michael was my friend. He knew what it was to be in love, how it could lead a person to do reckless things. His own marriage was a perfect example. Silence left him free to discover the fraud behind Survivors for himself, which in turn opened up the possibility that he might one day confront Theresa (somehow, somewhere) in the course of which encounter she would learn the truth about who really wrote it. Yet on this occasion I had not taken the safe option. I had pushed the issue to one side, rather than deal with it. Schilling did not have access to Western books. It was perfectly likely he would never hear about Eva Aden and her novel, let alone read it. (Had it not enjoyed instant success, he wouldn’t have done.) But the truth is that I was embarrassed to admit to my deception. My work had apparently inspired Richter’s; but to claim his work as mine – even to one person – there was something cannibalistic about that. Like cannibalism itself, it smacked of desperation, the abandonment of all that was civilised.
Be that as it may, Freizeit-Forum changed the equation. Now I had no choice but to tell Schilling the whole story. I set out for his apartment the following morning, armed with his coat, fully intending to apologise and make a clean breast of everything, but even as I sat waiting at the tram stop, trying to ignore a young couple ravenously kissing and groping each other in the corner of the shelter, I had to acknowledge the uncomfortable duality of my motives: I was acting to preserve a friendship, but I was also acting to prevent the spread of a dangerous secret. It was a duality that would be as obvious to Schilling as it was to me.
My friend lived opposite a disused cemetery in the southern district of Südvorstadt. The origins of the four-storey apartment building were pre-war. In its heyday it would have boasted a stucco façade, modelled to look like stone, but this had been replaced under Actually Existing Socialism with a soot-encrusted pebbledash that was now coming away in chunks, revealing patches of livid pink brickwork, like a leper’s sores. It was a building whose hydrological entrails I knew well. Their age and disposition made them highly susceptible to blockage, and I had made several remedial visits over the years at Schilling’s request, armed with caustic soda and drain rods.
I pressed Schilling’s buzzer, but to no effect. I couldn’t even be sure the buzzer was working. Finding the doorway unlocked, I decided to make my way up to the apartment. I was on the second-floor landing when the door opposite opened.
‘He’s not in.’
It was Schilling’s neighbour, a garrulous and moon-faced widow by the name of Grabel, who smelled permanently of cats, her apartment being home to at least four felines of various ages and degrees of incontinence. As she spoke a tabby slipped between her legs and ran away down the stairs.
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
It was then Frau Grabel recognised me, after a fashion: ‘Herr Klempner, she said, Klempner being German for plumber. ‘What brings you here?’
‘A social call.’
She looked relieved. Blockages in Schilling’s building tended to produce unpredictable and malodorous side effects. No one was immune. ‘He’s gone to Berlin. Quite suddenly.’
‘Berlin?’ It occurred to me that the Ministry of Culture was in Berlin, and all the other ministries to whom a cultural scandal might be of interest. ‘Did he say why?’
Frau Grabel hesitated. ‘Well, it’s not my business . . .’ She sucked her teeth. ‘Anyway, why don’t you come in? Since you’ve come all this way.’
Normally I would have resisted Frau Grabel’s pungent hospitality. I was still haunted by the memory of the banana cake she had served me during my last visit, which turned out to contain – I can still feel it catching on my tonsils – a large fur ball. But at that time any unexpected movement on Schilling’s part was a cause for concern and would be until I knew where we stood.
No sooner was I inside than Frau Grabel began lamenting the state of her washers. Every tap in her apartment dripped, she said. Rust stains were playing havoc with her enamel. It soon became obvious that this was to be the price of her information, doubtless gleaned via the telephone line that she and Schilling were obliged to share. I protested that I did not have my tools, but it turned out that the late Herr Grabel had left his spouse a well-equipped toolbox, which she proudly extracted from under some cat litter. I found a few ancient but serviceable washers in a brown paper bag.
I turned off the water and set to work in the kitchen.
‘So why the disappearing act?’ I said. ‘What’s the big attraction in Berlin?’
Frau Grabel needed no further encouragement. The story of Schilling’s recent past came tumbling out, sugared with phoney sympathy and spiced with anecdote. Chronology was largely lost in this outpouring, likewise any distinction between fact and supposition. Certain essentials were nonetheless discernible. In the early hours of the morning Schilling had received a phone call from his ex-wife, Magdalena, in Berlin. She was in what Frau Grabel described as ‘a frightful state’. It seemed their son Paul had been taken into custody by the police – whether arrested or merely questioned was unclear. Magdalena seemed to think drugs were involved (at this point, I imagine, Frau Grabel had been obliged to hang up and was tiptoeing across the landing in her nylon fur slippers), although whether these directly prompted the police action was also unclear. Privately I suspected the worst. The last time I had seen Paul Schilling, I had been struck by his unhealthy appearance: the drawn cheeks, the lank hair, the bad skin. Of course, heroin addiction did not officially exist in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, being a Western malaise arising from bourgeois capitalism and its constant need to subvert proletarian class consciousness. Under Actually Existing Socialism such addicts as existed were deemed to be mentally ill and locked up indefinitely in psychiatric hospitals. This, I imagined, was what had prompted Magdalena’s desperate phone call.
Frau Grabel took a seat at the kitchen table, her back to the old tiled Kachelofen that kept the frost at bay. ‘That boy’s been nothing but a source of grief,’ she said, manoeuvring an obese Persian on to her lap. ‘And so unlike his father. It makes you wonder . . . well, that Magdalena, she was never what you’d call a good girl. Not in the least.’
I ignored these insinuations regarding Schilling’s paternity, which I felt sure were unfounded. Either way, I preferred not to imagine what Paul’s incarceration would do to my friend, the maelstrom of dread and guilt that was sure to engulf him. At the same time I couldn’t help feeling relieved that the small matter of Wolfgang Richter’s novel had nothing to do with his sudden dash to Berlin and that the former was unlikely, given his urgent family concerns, to occupy more than a fleeting place in his mind.
‘I hope I can rely on you not to repeat what I’ve said, Herr Klempner,’ Frau Grabel said, as I struggled with a heavily corroded headgear nut. ‘It’s just that I know how concerned you are about your friend.’
It dawned on me that the old woman thought Klempner was really my name. Herr Tailor, Herr Baker, Herr Plumber. She had no idea that I was also Herr Krug, the author of The Orphans of Neustadt and People’s Champion of Art and Culture. A year earlier I would have enlightened her,
but those days were already long gone.
I returned to Schilling’s scabrous residence the next evening, likewise unannounced, but again he was not home. It was not until the Monday night that I saw the lights on in his apartment. I walked up and banged on the door, but no one answered.
‘Michael, it’s me,’ I said. ‘Open up.’
From at least two places at once I heard a faint shuffling and a creaking of floorboards, as if the whole building were slowly coming alive.
‘Michael, I’ve got your coat.’
Stillness descended again. I knocked one more time, but with the same result. There was nothing I could do but leave, taking the raincoat with me.
Reluctantly I resorted to the telephone, calling Schilling’s office first thing Tuesday morning. I caught him just as he was arriving.
‘Michael, I owe you an explanation. Can we meet somewhere?’
‘You don’t owe me anything, Bruno.’ Schilling’s tone was reassuringly breezy. ‘If it’s that book you’re referring to, as far as I’m concerned it’s history.’
‘You seemed quite upset on Friday.’
‘I was just surprised. Caught off guard. Seeing you there in the bedroom, hunched over that television. I’ve never seen you look so hunted.’
‘Hunted?’ I explained that, for all manner of reasons, I’d preferred to watch Freizeit-Forum unobserved.
‘Anyway,’ Schilling said, ‘I’m sure you did the right thing, given the circumstances.’
‘It was better than the alternative. Better than what we planned to do.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Better than burning it. At least this way –’
‘Nothing important is lost. I couldn’t agree more.’
‘But I should have told you. You were his editor, or would have been. I should have explained.’
Schilling’s breath pushed against the mouthpiece. Maybe he was sighing, or maybe he thought what I’d just said was humorous. ‘No, we agreed, didn’t we? I never saw the book and I never read it. Better that way for everyone.’
‘Well, in a way, yes.’
‘The less you know, the less you’re implicated.’
‘So you’re not unhappy?’
‘Why should I be?’
This was going very well. I hadn’t expected such an effortless absolution. But my friend had been so excited about his literary discovery; so horrified at the thought of losing it. Wasn’t it unnatural that he should already feel divorced from its future, having no stake and no entitlement? On the other hand the mere possibility that handling Richter’s work might incur official displeasure had sent him scurrying for cover. ‘Safety First’, in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, was not a bad motto. I had lived by it myself very happily for as long as I could remember.
And then there was Paul. What were the needs of a dead writer – or, for that matter, a living one – next to those of your own flesh and blood?
‘I heard you went up to Berlin,’ I said. ‘Is everything all right?’
Schilling took a moment to answer. If we hadn’t been on the telephone I might have had some inkling as to why.
‘Who told you?’
‘Frau Grabel. Her cats are spying on you.’
Schilling didn’t laugh.
‘Everything’s fine. Paul’s got a new job. Right up in the north. He won’t be visiting so much for a while. I wanted to see him before he left.’
There was a tightness in Schilling’s delivery that told me this was not a matter he was keen to talk over.
‘So what kind of job is it?’
‘On the docks.’
‘The docks? Are you kidding?’
‘It’s a clerical position. Magdalena pulled some strings.’
I said I was pleased. ‘Let’s hope he sticks with it this time.’
‘I’m sure he will.’
I didn’t interrogate Schilling further. I didn’t ask about the heroin or the arrest, or if his ex-wife would really call him in the middle of the night to inform him of a filial change in career direction. After all Frau Grabel, from whom I had heard all this, was a mad old woman who smelled of cats’ urine and who had nothing better to do all day but eavesdrop on her neighbours. Out of loyalty I would have relayed her shameless gossip to my friend, had I not felt instinctively that of the two accounts relating to his recent comings and goings, hers was the one that rang true.
36
It never occurred to me that the birth of Eva Aden, novelist and visionary, was the birth of what Westerners call a ‘brand’. Brands in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State were blotchy trade names, stamped on to canned goods, bottles of alcohol and cameras manufactured for export. Their purpose was identification. They had no value of their own. For the same reason it didn’t occur to me that there might be other parties involved in the shaping of this brand, other voices in Theresa’s ear, instructing her on how to exploit her potential to the full. I was happy to witness the effects of her new-found freedom because I saw myself as its author. Seen in this way, the original deception regarding Richter’s novel, though born out of fear, had worked out far better than I’d planned. Theresa was enjoying herself, finding new confidence, a new voice. Her talent as a musician had been real but inhibited, just as Claudia Witt had said; her talent as a writer was counterfeit, but natural and unconstrained. It was a puzzle, but one I thought I understood. The key to it, I reassured myself, was love.
If I had been cynical by nature, or perhaps familiar with Western ways, I might have worried more about the other side effects of our artistic collaboration: the money, for instance. I felt certain Theresa was not corruptible in that way, though she was susceptible to the occasional item of jewellery, the occasional French dress. Viola-playing was surely not a career of choice for those of a materialistic outlook. And then there was fame: a phenomenon notorious for its narcotic effect, especially on the young and the insecure. It engendered euphoria and, in many cases, the sensation of being loved. It could lead to dependence: fame as fix. Only now and again did I find myself imagining the secret dreams that might now be within Theresa’s reach and asking myself if there was really a place in them for me.
I might not have worried at all if Theresa’s plans had been settled, if the arrangements had been in place for another year of study in Berlin. But they were not in place, though months had gone by since the plan had been hatched. Approvals were awaited, payments were pending. That was all I knew. Was Theresa dragging her feet? Was she having second thoughts? Was it possible there was now someone else in her life?
Eva Aden, novelist and visionary, might not want me, but at least she still needed me. She needed someone, at any rate, capable of writing a sequel to Survivors (how I hated – on Richter’s behalf – that popcorn-chasing sell-out of a title) and I was the obvious candidate. One night, lying sleepless in my still solitary bed, suddenly convinced of my imminent abandonment, I decided to remind her of this fact by writing a letter. I did it there and then, longhand. Then I went and posted it, so as to be sure of making the first collection. The relevant paragraph went something like this:
I have been working on the new book. As you know, I hate to discuss my work before it’s finished – I am not too happy discussing it even then – but I cannot stop myself from telling you how well it’s going. For really the first time in my life I feel I have hit my stride. In the past I have often felt I was feeling my way through a fog. That anything clear or cogent came out of it seems miraculous. But now at last I see things clearly. The visions are so sharp they almost hurt, the passions so powerful they make me shake. How can I account for this sudden clarity? Maybe there comes a time in life when the mirror turns, when a writer can see the world other than through the prism of his own ambitions and his own fears. Or maybe I am happy because you are coming back to me. Either way, as long as my mind remains in its present hopeful state, I am certain that the new book will eclipse the last. It is a story of secrets within secrets and lies within lies, a story
where the truth is no more than an idea in the mind of a child – but, for all that, a story about love. I feel certain that it will confound the publisher’s expectations. Have a little patience and you will see for yourself.
As soon as I woke the next morning I regretted what I had done. It was madness to raise such extravagant expectations. Worse, I had given way to my suspicions, which were based not on fact but on pessimism and self-doubt. Theresa loved me. If she was putting her heart and soul into the role of Eva Aden, that was for my benefit, not hers. She was doing it for me. My letter would make no difference. It certainly wouldn’t bring her running to my side, like an obedient wolfhound.
Two weeks later I received a reply. In it Theresa told me that everything in Berlin was arranged, the fees paid, the visa granted, and that she had found lodgings with a retired professor and his wife in Prenzlauer Berg. I could expect to see her again before the end of the month.
37
One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death. Having little hope of completing the task I had set myself, having despaired of my powers and my vision, having thought myself to a standstill and walked myself to exhaustion, I sat down to write. It was the only thing left to do.
I wrote many openings, taking the end of Survivors as my cue. Some of them were promising, many were bold. For days at a time things went better than expected, better than they had done for years. I began to sense that the clarity I had boasted of in my letter might not be so far away. I do not believe in Muses. Theresa was not my Muse, but she was my spur, she gave me back my appetite. I wanted to succeed for her as much as for myself, our interests being, so I believed, synonymous.
The Valley of Unknowing Page 21