I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to believe.
‘I’m sorry to shatter your illusions, Bruno. I’m sorry to speak ill of the dead, but that’s the truth.’
‘He came back here because of you,’ I said. ‘If you two hadn’t been an item, he’d still be in Berlin.’
‘Did he tell you that?’ Theresa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Or was it his mother?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘In a way, yes. But not in the way you think.’
‘I saw you together. I saw you kiss him, outside the Kulturpalast – the night of the Christmas concert. I went looking for you.’
‘Wolfgang might have kissed me. He was like that. I never kissed him back.’
‘So he was in love with you, but not the other way round.’
‘He wasn’t in love with me. He tried it on with every girl he met.’
Jealousy, I thought. Now it made sense: she had loved him, but he had been unfaithful. Her anger was born of humiliation. That I could understand.
‘What’s the point of pretending? It’s over now.’
‘What makes you think I’m pretending? He wasn’t irresistible, you know.’
‘Then why did you keep his photograph? Why did you have his photograph? I found it in a copy of my book. Admit it: you were smitten.’
The rain had stopped. Theresa picked up her suitcase, stepped out from under the awning and walked stiffly across the terrace. At the top of some steps she stopped to steady herself against the railings. I hurried to her side. For a moment I thought she was going to faint.
‘Why didn’t you say something? All this time, Bruno . . . You actually thought I was in love with someone else.’
‘Were in love. Had been. Pluperfect tense.’ I reached for her shoulder, but she pushed my hand away. ‘An infatuation. I didn’t think –’
‘You thought I lied to you. I was pretending to have feelings I didn’t really have.’
As if there was anything unusual about that.
‘No.’
‘You were jealous.’
‘How could I be jealous of a dead man?’
‘I don’t know. It seems you found a way.’
Theresa kept her face from me, and that was how I knew she was crying. They were tears for Wolfgang Richter, tears that could no longer be hidden.
‘You dreamed about him,’ I said gently. ‘You talked to him in your sleep.’
Theresa didn’t respond. Why did she keep these feelings a secret? She and Wolfgang had been ideally suited and unattached. What was there to hide?
‘Why would you dream about him, if you never liked him? Why would you go to his funeral?’
Theresa sighed. It was the sound of a burden being put down, a pretence abandoned. ‘I expect it was guilt,’ she said.
PART FIVE
* * *
42
This is the story she told me as we walked back across the Volkspark. In spite of what happened later I have always believed it to be true. Fictional stories, if they are to be consistent and credible, need advance preparation; and I had not given Theresa time for that. In any case I wanted to believe her. I had always sensed that she kept things from me. I sensed it in her reticence and in those moments of stillness when I would catch her staring out of the window or at the ceiling as we lay in bed. I would ask her what she was thinking about and the reply was always ‘nothing’. On these occasions her thoughts were her own and I could never prise them out of her.
A few weeks before she first came to study in the East she had been approached by a stranger. Theresa was doing a summer job at the time, waitressing at a café in Linz, and it was there that the stranger appeared. After eating a sandwich he had followed Theresa out at the end of her lunchtime shift. On the street he addressed her by name, said he had heard about her from some mutual acquaintances and asked if they could have a chat about her upcoming trip. He said it was important.
‘I think I had a good idea what he wanted me to do,’ Theresa said. ‘Because when he asked me, I wasn’t really surprised.’
The stranger started by asking Theresa if she thought people in the East should enjoy the same freedoms as people in the West. Theresa said yes, they should. Then the stranger asked what she thought about the travel restrictions in the East, and if people should be forced to stay there if they didn’t want to. Theresa agreed that they shouldn’t. Perhaps she didn’t agree forcefully enough, because the stranger then produced a small stack of photographs. They were mostly of young people, men and women posing for studio portraits or official documents. The stranger said what they had in common was that they had all been killed trying to cross the inner German border, blown up by landmines or booby-traps, or shot by the guards. Then there were more photographs, grainy, blurred photographs: bodies left hanging on barbed wire, being dragged out of the water by men in uniform, or simply lying out in the open with the blood spilling out of them. The stranger knew the place and date of every picture; the names and histories of every victim, information he recited without hesitation or emotion until he came to the last picture. This was of a pretty young woman from Leipzig, apparently; a student of medicine and a keen amateur musician. She had been shot through the neck before she even reached the border and had bled to death where she lay. She had been twenty-four years old, the same age as Theresa.
When the stranger was finished with the photographs, he asked if Theresa would be willing to help a few young people get across the border without being killed, if she could do it with very little risk to herself. Theresa had said she was.
‘He wanted me to take photographs out of the country, passport photographs. Somebody at the college would contact me and I’d get the prints from them. I’d never come into contact with the escapees. I’d never even know their names, because it was safer that way. All I had to do was take their photographs to the West when I left for the holidays, or for any other reason. He said it was easy to conceal something that small if you knew what you were doing. He showed me some techniques. He said in many ways it was easier for women.’
Theresa visibly tensed at the recollection.
‘And these passport photographs, they were for . . .’
‘Passports, I would think. What else? West German passports.’
At last I understood: the best and safest way for a citizen of the East to cross the inner German border was to become a citizen of the West, at least temporarily. He would need a day visa too, but that was just a pair of rubber stamps, relatively easy to forge.
‘But you’d have to take the passports back again, back here. Did you do that too?’
‘No. I don’t know how they arranged that. Some other way. I was more useful on the outbound leg and that’s all I did. Except once, about a year ago. They gave me a passport to bring in.’
‘Why that time?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m curious.’
Theresa stared at the ground. It was getting a little late to be discreet. ‘I think he was important. I recognised him from his picture. Famous people were a priority. They never said that, but it was obvious.’
‘And this man was famous?’
‘He was an artist.’
Mentally I flipped through my record of significant defections. When it came to the previous autumn only one sprang to mind: that of the sculptor Manfred Dressler, the last People’s Hero of Art and Culture, he whose unsanctioned bunk from Yugoslavia had sent shock waves through the local state security apparatus and (incidentally) reduced my own status to that of People’s Champion. The thought that Theresa had played a role in the affair made me shudder. I had set out to change her life, but it seemed she had changed mine before we even met.
‘What about Wolfgang. Where did he come into it?’
On a stretch of open ground a flock of black-and-white birds had appeared from nowhere, grounded by the gusting wind. Some huddled together, others scurried about in confusion, as if caught out by the early on
set of winter. For the first time that day I felt cold.
‘Wolfgang was my idea,’ Theresa said. ‘I proposed him. It was the one time I did that.’
‘So you really did meet him in Berlin, at the Pergamon Altar?’
‘I didn’t lie to you, Bruno.’
I didn’t reply. I was running through my memories, trying to work out if that was true.
‘I got to know him,’ Theresa went on, ‘and some of his friends. He told me he planned to leave here one day, if he got the chance, if he could make a name for himself.’
‘I would have thought being able to make a name for yourself was a reason to stay.’
‘Not for him. He said he knew . . .’ Theresa bit her lip.
‘Knew what?’
She sighed. ‘He said he knew what would happen to him, as a writer, if he stayed. He said he’d end up –’
‘Like me?’
‘I think he only meant . . .’
‘Don’t worry.’ I shrugged with all the nonchalance I could muster, which, in all likelihood, wasn’t much. ‘I’ve always known he wasn’t a fan. He made that very plain.’
‘But he was a fan.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like his mother.’
‘It’s true. Why do you think I was reading your book when we met?’
‘I assumed it was a coincidence.’
‘Because he gave it to me. He said I had to read it. In fact, he said he found it impossible to have a conversation with anyone who hadn’t.’ Theresa shook her head. ‘Typical Wolfgang.’
I suppose I should have felt flattered. Strangely, I didn’t. ‘So what happened?’
‘I went to my contact here and I asked if we could help him. That’s why I had Wolfgang’s photographs, Bruno: they were for a passport. He gave them to me the night of the Christmas concert. They were inside a copy of a book.’
I recalled the moment outside the Kulturpalast: the swirling snow, Richter handing something over, the spontaneous embrace.
‘What book was it?’
Theresa looked at me. ‘You have to ask? The same book you found them in: your book. Like I said, Wolfgang was a fan.’
A clammy, distasteful irony occurred me. If I had unwittingly identified Wolfgang Richter as a likely defector, my tip would have turned out to be spot on. I would have given Herr Andrich and Herr Zoch exactly what they were looking for. And they would have been grateful: grateful enough for a truckload of cement, at least.
‘I took his photographs home at Christmas,’ Theresa said, ‘but when I went to hand them over, they told me it was too late. Wolfgang was already dead.’
I felt faint: too many nerves, not enough food. I sat down on a bench. Theresa sat down beside me. I reminded myself that there was still an innocent explanation for what had happened. The evidence of a crime was circumstantial and inconclusive: bureaucratic inconsistencies, administrative corner-cutting, gossip.
‘Guilty. You said you felt guilty. Why?’ I asked.
‘Because at first he wasn’t keen. He had something in the works, he said, something he’d written – another screenplay, I suppose. He had high hopes for it, whatever it was.’
‘But you persuaded him . . .’
‘I told him if he passed up the chance to go now, there might not be another. I was due to leave, you see, and Anton – I mean, my contact – he took a bit of persuading. I don’t know why, but they had doubts about Wolfgang. Maybe they thought he was indiscreet.’
The moment Theresa said the word ‘Anton’, I was reminded of the skinny young man in the bomber jacket who had followed me from the school of music the day I went there hoping for word of Theresa. From his shifty demeanour I had taken him for a secret policeman, but it was he who had delivered her letter, he who had been trusted where the state postal service was not.
‘So you pushed Wolfgang into leaving, before he was ready.’
‘Yes.’
‘But he didn’t leave.’
‘He never got the chance.’
‘Exactly. He never left.’
‘So?’
‘So there was no harm done, no risks taken. Why should you feel guilty when the plan came to nothing?’
‘You haven’t heard the rumours, then,’ Theresa said. ‘Wolfgang was arrested before he . . . before he died.’
‘You shouldn’t listen to rumours.’
‘There were witnesses.’
‘To what? Wolfgang getting into a car.’
‘So you have heard the rumours.’
‘Even if they’re true, they don’t mean anything. If the police knew enough to question him they’d have arrested you too, sooner or later.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he’d have given you away. Why wouldn’t he? You’d only be deported, whereas he . . . For all you know, they might have picked him up for pissing in the street.’
‘Is that what you think happened?’
‘I don’t know what happened. I just don’t automatically assume the worst.’
‘Except where I’m concerned. Then you do.’
I told her that was nonsense. In the past, I had sensed that she was keeping things back about Wolfgang Richter. It turned out I was correct.
‘You’re quite the secret agent,’ I said, trying to put things on a less confrontational footing.
‘I was never that. Anyway, I’ve quit now.’ Theresa’s hands gripped the far edge of her suitcase. She looked glum. ‘A secret agent keeps her secrets. I’ve told you mine.’
‘You could have told me before.’
‘There was no need to tell you before.’
‘You wouldn’t have had to lie.’
‘I didn’t lie, Bruno. I kept quiet. It isn’t the same thing. If it were the same thing, you’d be the biggest liar on earth.’
I didn’t reply to this. I didn’t try to defend myself. I needed to know if Theresa’s words arose from momentary anger or something more deep-seated.
‘I’m sorry, Bruno,’ she said at last. ‘That wasn’t fair. I know you do what you can. Your book’s out there after all, isn’t it?’
I took her hand. In the ensuing silence it occurred to me that in describing her covert activities it was possible she wasn’t simply dispelling my jealousy. She might also be telling me that if I felt the need to abandon the East, as Manfred Dressler had done, as Wolfgang Richter had planned to, the means were there. And if she had asked me, there and then, to take that step, to come and live with her in the West, openly and without the need for secrets, then I would have said yes. I would have abandoned the safety and familiarity of the shadows and braved the harsh light of a new world, however exposed it might leave me. All I needed was to be sure of my welcome.
Theresa got to her feet. It would soon be getting dark.
‘I promised to visit Claudia,’ she said. ‘If it’s all right, I think I’ll do that now.’
‘You aren’t coming back with me?’
‘Later. I’ll come later.’ She dragged me to my feet. In the greying light she looked older: not quite young. ‘You’ll have to be a little patient with me, Bruno. What with everything that’s been going on, I’m not really myself.’
43
The rest of Theresa’s visit passed in an opiate fog of reassurance and hope. We talked no more about marriage or about our future together. Those issues, we had agreed, could wait a while. In the meantime I would remain in place, working on the sequel to Survivors, the book that would establish Eva Aden as a durable presence on the global cultural scene; not a passing sensation, but a writer of intensity and depth. Theresa’s mood lightened. She hadn’t explicitly accepted my proposal of marriage, but the fact that it was now on the record seemed to make her happy, and this made me happy in turn. At least there was no awkwardness about the matter. I was not obliged to pretend it had never happened, like some embarrassing indiscretion. By the evening of the second day – a Saturday – we were able to joke about it (more accurately, Theresa joked; I laughed oblig
ingly). This reassured me that our eventual union, though still unscheduled, was a likely prospect in both our minds. At certain moments it even took on the tentative aspect of a plan.
I detected no insincerity in Theresa’s warmth, no hidden motive. I wanted to believe more than anything that she still loved me. With each hour that passed in her company, each smile, each caress, with the scent of her hair and the taste of her skin (sensual pleasures I had missed more than I knew) my doubts faded. The West grew distant in my mind, its powers of seduction weaker. I worried less about Martin Klaus and about Eva Aden, a being I had glimpsed only in a magazine and on a screen. She was a fiction, after all, an act. Theresa Aden was real and she was here. Nor was she so very different from the girl I had first met a year before.
In my more serene moments, when tipsy and amorous, I was tempted to confess everything. Theresa had made a confession of sorts and I felt an urge to reciprocate. If I was ever to make a clean breast of the Richter affair – by which I mean his authorship of Survivors – this was surely a good time to do it. Theresa would have to forgive my deception, since I had already forgiven hers. What held me back was a nagging sense of moral asymmetry. It wasn’t that Theresa’s deception had involved only silence, as she maintained; for so had mine, technically. The difference lay in motivation. Theresa’s deception was undertaken for what she considered a noble cause. She herself stood to gain nothing. I, on the other hand, had been concerned exclusively with my own interests, specifically Theresa’s interest in me. She emerged looking courageous and selfless from her confession; I would emerge looking selfish and cowardly from mine. My love for Theresa herself had inspired this ethical abasement, but was that excuse enough? Were my creative powers irrelevant to her feelings? Would she see me in the same light, knowing that I had not, in fact, written the book that she loved even more than she loved The Orphans of Neustadt?
In the end I decided that openness on such questions of character was a luxury I could not yet afford. When Theresa and I were together for good, when the manoeuvrings of our courtship had faded into distant memory, when our love for each other had been cemented in place by shared circumstance and habit, when Wolfgang Richter had been quite forgotten, that would be the time. Theresa would know who I was by then, through and through; and no amount of skeletons unearthed would have the power to undermine her confidence in that knowledge.
The Valley of Unknowing Page 25