The Valley of Unknowing

by Sington, Philip

  Schilling was staring at the book in front of him. After a moment of stillness he deliberately picked up the scalpel and sliced off the back cover. I supposed it was easier to work that way.

  ‘Bruno, I want you to understand something.’ I feared I’d gone too far in my efforts to persuade him, but Schilling wasn’t angry. His voice was calm. ‘I know Paul has his problems, but he’s everything to me. I loved him from the moment he was born and I’m certain I’ll never love anyone that much again. If you had children – and maybe you will some day – you would understand that; you would understand that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to protect them.’ Once again my image found itself sandwiched between Schilling’s finger and thumb. ‘What you’re asking me to do is abandon my son; and that’s the last thing I could ever do.’

  The subject of child abandonment had always been a difficult one for me. I couldn’t hear it mentioned without a conflict of emotions erupting inside me. These feelings had been at their most intense when I was a child, but even forty years later, when the hope of seeing my mother again had dwindled to the status of a pipedream, I still felt the tug of war within. I wanted to believe that I had not been abandoned (even by a young widow traumatised by grief and the privations of war); but I also wanted to believe that my mother was still alive and might one day return. These two hopes were, of course, incompatible: if my mother had never planned to abandon me, I had to assume she had died somewhere in the ruins of the city, at the hands of soldiers or looters or boys with guns; if she had abandoned me out of choice, it meant there was no point in seeking a reunion, because, put in simple, childish terms, she didn’t love me and wouldn’t want me back in any case.

  At my uncle’s house in Halle, and at the orphanage, I kept these equally unwelcome possibilities at bay by inventing others: my mother had been kidnapped (that was a favourite, one that served as the basis for a wealth of variations); my mother had been struck down with amnesia; my mother had been hit on the head by a piece of falling masonry and lay in a coma for many months. That I was later drawn to storytelling of the formal, literary variety, I trace back to those endless imaginings; but with time they had lost their power, their credibility eroding gradually, the way fairy tales do.

  All this is to explain why I didn’t argue further. I resented the way Schilling evoked the sacred bonds of parenthood, as if the subject meant nothing at all to me. Besides, his son was a grown man, demonstrably quite beyond the range of his father’s power or protection. No, Schilling’s declaration was a proxy, I realised, a barbed metaphor: I was supposed to feel about leaving my friends in the East the way he would feel about abandoning his son.

  Schilling pushed my photograph across the desk. ‘Will that do?’

  The quality of the image was, if anything, a little too good, the contrast strong, the definition sharp.

  ‘It’ll have to.’ I tucked it inside my wallet. ‘Better let me have the other two, just in case.’

  Schilling picked up the scalpel again. Silence resumed, a bleak, manly void that I knew should be filled with words. But I could think of none – none that wouldn’t sound flimsy and false. Emotional improvisation was not my strong point. I expect Schilling felt the same way. The written word was his medium, just as it was mine, the empty page his natural intimate.

  ‘Of course you could just emigrate,’ he said out of the blue.

  ‘Emigrate?’

  ‘Yes. Put in a formal request, through the Foreign Ministry. You’re famous enough. They’d probably let you go.’

  ‘What if they didn’t? I’d have only drawn attention to myself, in the worst way possible. I’d never get out then. Besides . . .’

  Besides what? I might have confessed, but didn’t, that I had become attached to the idea of an unannounced departure, of slipping away under an assumed name, leaving others to make sense of my disappearance. It was in keeping with the spirit of the venture: risky but bold. It was what Wolfgang Richter had planned for himself. Theresa would appreciate that, even if nobody else did. She would make the connection.

  ‘Besides?’

  ‘I don’t think I can wait any longer. I told you, I’m in love.’

  Schilling peered at me over his spectacles. ‘Yes, you must be. Only love could turn you into a fool.’ I thought he was joking, but I waited in vain for a smile. ‘My advice remains the same: don’t go, not like this. It’s a risk you don’t have to take.’

  The other two pictures were ready. I got to my feet and offered Schilling my hand. ‘We’ll talk again,’ I said. ‘There’ll be time enough yet.’

  As it turned out, there wasn’t.

  49

  Instructions were superfluous. I knew what Anton wanted me to do. My photograph was to be concealed inside the jacket flap of the book he had sent me (The Orphans of Neustadt, my means of salvation, now as before). The book was then to be taken back to the Johannstadt District Library, I assumed before the due date of return. Less clear was what happened after that. Would Anton be at the library to meet me? Would I have to wait to be contacted? If so, for how long? A week? A month? A year? All the while Theresa was in Berlin, oblivious to my plans – plans I had no way of safely sharing with her.

  Concealing the photographs was easy. The sticky tape securing the jacket flap had come away near the bottom. It was a simple matter to slip the pictures inside (I used two, keeping one back for emergencies) and reseal the gap. This task completed, I rode the tram to Johannstadt, only to find the library shut. I returned the next morning and joined a queue of people handing in their books at the front desk. I lingered a while among the book stacks to see what became of mine, expecting it would swiftly and silently disappear, finding its way to Anton via secret means. I was wrong. Like all the other itinerant literature, it was logged in by means of an index card and placed on a trolley. Half an hour later an adenoidal young woman with a pudding-basin haircut began wheeling the trolley around the shelves, replacing books one at a time. I watched her from a distance, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. The Orphans of Neustadt was duly returned to Fiction J–L, where it nestled between an older, more battered edition and a novel by Siegfried Lenz.

  Spy fiction, a staple of Western literature, was almost unknown inside the Workers’ and Peasants’ State. This explains my unfamiliarity with the world of covert operations. Had I been exposed to a wider range of popular fiction, I might have understood that the Fiction J–L section of the Johannstadt public library was serving on this occasion as a ‘dead letter box’, one of the principal requirements of a dead letter box being that it should attract as little attention as possible. As it was, I couldn’t help feeling the whole library procedure was lackadaisical. My book, with its precious and incriminating cargo, could now be taken out by anyone. They might borrow it for six weeks, or even longer. What if they found the photographs? What if they recognised my face? What would happen then?

  To forestall this alarming possibility, I decided to occupy the vicinity of Fiction J–L, deterring potential readers by whatever means I could (unaccountable smiling in the first instance, lechery in the second). But how long could I keep that up? How long before someone complained? Only when the best part of an hour had gone by, during which nobody had shown the slightest interest in The Orphans of Neustadt, the favoured titles being children’s fiction, romances and books about sport, did I muster the courage to leave the building.

  Three long weeks went by. Christmas drew near. I received two letters from Theresa via the regular post – pleasant, cheerful letters full of details about her life in Berlin and enquiries as to my creative productivity – but even these did not make the waiting more bearable. I was forced to reply in the same vein, the difference being that while her words were incomplete and rigorously self-censored, mine were wholly fictitious. My daily life consisted of waiting for a sign from Anton and nothing more. My creative productivity was non-existent. I planned to write again; I planned to live again – Wolfgang had given me my subject and my p
urpose – but there was no prospect of those plans being realised until I was free.

  In her second letter Theresa told me she wanted to go home early for Christmas, on the 14th, but would return early too, giving us the chance to spend the rest of the holidays together. Maybe we can go somewhere, she said, a suggestion I thought dangerously open to misinterpretation. I replied in haste that I had an old school friend we could visit in Weimar, a pretty town of great cultural significance, unequivocally my side of the inner German border. As an additional precaution I wrote to the friend in question, a man I hadn’t seen for at least a decade, and told him I planned to renew our acquaintance. It was not until some time later that I learned from his widow that he had died of lung disease some seven years earlier. I had no idea you and Arno were friends, she wrote. We have all your books, but to my knowledge, he never mentioned you once.

  50

  Late one night, unable to stand the silence any longer, I rose from the twisted ruin of my bed and sat down to write. What took form upon the page – the original impulse was unfocused – was a letter to Theresa. I can’t recall the exact contents of that early draft. I’m sure it was rambling and emotionally incontinent. I know it described my deception in detail, the jealousy and weakness that gave birth to it; the pain it had engendered for all its outward success. It talked about Richter and his death, and what would have become of him had he lived, and how it fell to me to make what reparation I could. It asked – perhaps begged – Theresa to forgive me, or at least not to hate me. Because, if nothing else, it could be said that had I not been drawn to her from the moment I set eyes on her, nothing untoward would have happened and I would have had nothing to confess. I even talked about my childhood at some point in the letter, my misadventures among the ruins, my great-uncle’s death, my years of searching with nothing but bitterness to show for it, although it is beyond me now to explain the relevance of those particular digressions. Finally it set out my hopes for the future, for a fresh start, for a new life of clarity and openness, for a life without secrets.

  It was a letter that could never be sent, at least not by conventional means. It gave voice to thoughts and feelings that demanded expression, that I could no longer stand to keep inside. I did not even read it through. As soon as it was done, I tore it up and burned it in the ashtray. As I watched my words blister and blacken in the flames, I knew I still had to write something. I had to write enough that by the time I arrived in the West, Theresa would know I was a changed man, a better man.

  So I began a new draft. I knew by now how it would be delivered: the same way Theresa had sometimes communicated with me, via Anton. This draft I remember more clearly. It was shorter and less explicit, and in its own way equally unwise.

  Dearest Theresa,

  I am hoping this letter reaches you before you return to East Berlin – because that’s something you must not do. I know that it must sound crazy, but a lot has changed since your last visit. You see, I am likely to forgo the favour of the authorities here very soon, having at last decided to leave. Those authorities may assume you are the cause of my treachery and the nature of their retribution could take almost any form. That is why you must stay away. I am very sorry for ruining your studies – studies which you undertook, in part, I know, to be near me and to carry on your role as my literary champion in the West. But there is nothing that can be done. I will find a way to make it up to you.

  During your time away things have come to a head. I have learned that your suspicions regarding a certain young writer (of whom we spoke last time) were well founded. I should have listened to you. His is a story that must be told and only I can tell it, from the safety of another country. This is the reason for my coming – or, at least, my reason for my coming now. To keep silent would be to join in a lie and I have put too many of those into the world already, as I will make plain to you very soon.

  I have asked a lot of you this past year: not only to change your plans and your career, but to play-act and to lie, not once but a hundred times. This cannot have been as easy for you, or as amusing as you said. Now that the whole world is watching, I can only imagine what a burden it has become. It is my failing that I did not foresee any of this, but whatever the future holds, you will not have to carry that burden much longer. This I can promise. Though there will be a price to pay, my leaving here means nothing if I do not speak out.

  My feelings for you are the same as ever. My love is as strong. If it is the same with you, and remains the same even after the truth is told, I will count myself far luckier than I deserve to be.

  I will contact you as soon as I can.

  With love always,

  Bruno

  *

  A few days before Theresa’s scheduled departure, in the early evening, my doorbell rang. I buzzed open the front door, but nobody came up. After a minute or so I went out on to the landing and looked over the banisters. Below me the lights in the hallway cut out with their habitual clunk. Everything was quiet. I went downstairs and there, in my letter box, I found a copy of Die Union.

  I knew at once that it had come from Anton. I was not a subscriber to that newspaper (or any newspaper, for that matter, except Neues Deutschland, which I took for the sake of appearances) and this edition was a day old.

  Near the back, a small item in the Events section had been circled in blue ink. It announced a chamber concert by a group calling itself The Florian Quintet. The event was to take place at the Lutheran church in Weisser Hirsch about two miles away. The programme comprised works by Dvořák and Shostakovich, and started that evening at eight o’clock.

  I checked my watch: Anton had given me just an hour to get there.

  51

  It was drizzling as I made way across the river, following the dim lights of the Loschwitz Bridge, the letter for Theresa hidden inside my coat. The traffic was sparse and I soon found myself alone on the gangway, the Elbe moving slowly beneath me, silent and black. As I turned up my collar I was struck by an unnerving coincidence: Weisser Hirsch (the name means ‘White Hart’) was a part of Loschwitz, that once salubrious district that proved to be Wolfgang Richter’s final destination. He had gone to a party there on the evening of his arrest, almost exactly one year earlier – had perhaps crossed on this very bridge. I pictured him now, a figure in a long coat, drifting in and out of the mist. I pictured the distinctive Richter swagger, the young artist striding out into the night, his head full of dreams about the new life to come, already looking at the valley as a place that belonged to his past – the inescapable past that forever haunts the vision of the writer-in-exile.

  In my mind I travelled back a year. I was racing to catch up with him. He couldn’t miss the pounding of my footsteps. Sure enough, he slowed, turned, looked back along the bridge: a handsome man, young, overconfident, vulnerable. I opened my mouth to speak, to warn him of what lay ahead. But he couldn’t hear or see me. Even in my imaginings the gap between the living and the dead, the spectral and the actual, was unbridgeable. Richter frowned and continued on his way, his story already written, if as yet untold.

  Theresa had thought Richter arrogant and unfeeling. He wasn’t nice, she’d said. But she was an outsider. She didn’t understand what it took for a man of his talent to survive in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State; to refuse, as he had done, to live in fear. Richter’s arrogance masked courage. He had shown it from the beginning: courage in his attacks on me, courage in his work, courage when they dragged him away for interrogation, courage when they tortured him and broke his skull. That Anton and his network were still at liberty was the proof of that courage. Wolfgang had not betrayed them. He had died with his lips sealed – his silence more eloquent than a lifetime of literature.

  Now I was following in Richter’s footsteps, just as he had followed in mine. He had wanted to be my heir. Now I was his. It did occur to me, as I passed by the sooty, half-timbered houses on the far side of the bridge, that the fate awaiting me might also mirror his. I was tak
ing the same chances on the same people. Anton hadn’t completely trusted Richter, or so Theresa had told me, but perhaps it was Anton who could not be trusted. Who was he? Whom did he answer to? What was he part of? As I began the long climb up the hill, the dark slopes of Oberloschwitz towering above me, I was forced to admit the possibility that the network Richter had trusted with his future, and which I was now trusting with mine, was an illusion, its sole purpose to smoke out unreliable elements among the artistic elite, citizens whose unscheduled departures so embarrassed the state. But if that were the case, it meant Theresa was part of the scheme, knowingly or unknowingly. She was camouflage, or, in my case, bait. And I was not ready to believe that, even for a moment. Such elaborate schemes and deceptions might have appealed to fantasists and authors of unserious fiction (they had a certain appeal to me), but they had no place in real life.

  This conviction, bolstered by hope, had just enough force to keep my feet moving along the steep cobbled streets towards the place where Anton was waiting.

  I recognised the church on Luboldtstrasse from some of my longer summer walks. A Gothic fantasy in slate, lead and stone, it served as an occasional reminder of a vanished age when fantasy still had a place. A cone of light shone down from the porch. Beneath it a procession of people was making its way inside. I fell in behind them, struck by the smell of stale wax and damp. I took a seat near the back of the church. By my watch it was five minutes to eight o’clock.

  In front of me, in the sepulchral gloom, sat an audience of about fifty. It was safe to assume that Anton was among them. At some point he would look over his shoulder, spot me, make eye contact. Then he would get up and exit, ostensibly for a cigarette (one between his lips, lest there should be any doubt), leaving me to follow after a suitable interval. It was sure to go something like that.