The Valley of Unknowing

by Sington, Philip

  He nodded. ‘I expect so. She certainly isn’t the type just to take off without saying goodbye.’

  53

  Claudia Witt was a prisoner of the state security apparatus, undergoing interrogation at the prison in Hohenschönhausen. She was enjoying a stay with friends in East Berlin, having decided to extend her visit for a few days. She had crossed the inner German border using a forged passport, just like the one she had given me, and was now safe in the West. As I hurried home, sweat turning cold on my skin, these were the notions that jostled for traction in my sleep-deprived brain: Claudia at the Christmas market, cheeks aglow; Claudia split-lipped, eyelids purple and swollen like ripe plums; Claudia reunited with Theresa, drinking champagne and toasting freedom – which vision was the true one? Which was the most natural, the most unforced? Which one would you believe, if you read it in a book? I couldn’t tell. Two possibilities gave me no reason to call off my departure; the other gave me every reason. But the ratio was two to one. In the absence of aesthetic or intuitive guidance, I fell back on the laws of probability. By Claudian criteria, my escape route was twice as likely to be secure as not. Were they such very bad odds? Wolfgang Richter wouldn’t have thought so. He would have taken them every time.

  If there had been time for second thoughts, perhaps I would have had them. But there was no time. My train for the capital left at eight the next morning. I managed at most two hours of wretched, fitful dreaming, and rose at half past five. I had been afraid of feeling drowsy, but on waking I found myself strangely alert, as one emerging from an ice-cold swim. I heard everything, saw everything with stark clarity, as if it were being carved into my memory with shards of glass. Methodically I dressed, shaved and gathered my things, knowing as I left each room in turn that I would never see it, or its contents, again. It struck me as an unnatural departure – a disrespectful one, to the past, to my life’s history – to be so final and yet so casual at the same time. It was a struggle to leave the bed unmade, more than I could manage to leave dirty dishes in the sink.

  At seven, I turned off the lights one by one, locked the door of the apartment and went downstairs, carrying a shopping bag, in which I had placed Schilling’s English raincoat, my Italian tie, my best black velvet jacket and a bottle of expensive cologne. It was with these that I planned to manifest my brief insertion into the ranks of Western middle management. By the front door I found one of my elderly neighbours wiping the seat of his bicycle. He must have been surprised at seeing me up so early. It took a small effort of will to say good morning, because what I wanted to say to him, he who at that moment embodied everything I was forsaking, was goodbye.

  The tram came at once. I arrived at the central railway station by the first light of dawn. It was then, as I paced the empty platform, that I became aware of having neglected something. I had not been allowed to say goodbye to anyone. My departure had to appear casual, my absence temporary. But there was one goodbye I could say without risk of betrayal, one goodbye I had to say. I checked my watch. The train wasn’t due to leave for more than half an hour. I hurried out of the station and through the streets, my pace picking up as the minutes ticked by. In the end I was running, the shopping bag clutched to my chest, my shiny shoes slipping on the cobblestones.

  The heaps of masonry looked the same as always. In the grey-blue light they were stubbornly untransformed; the grass a little browner, the brambles on the southern side a little deader. But what a pull they had, those blackened stones, what gravity. The sight of them – I am ashamed to admit this – brought a sob to my throat and for a moment I was a boy again (Thomas in my book, Alex in Richter’s), chest heaving, all at once alone in a place of strangers. There was a difference, though, and it came to me as I traced the site perimeter in my usual way: this time, for the first time, I had somewhere else to go.

  I made it to the train with a minute to spare. Most of the seats were taken, and I was obliged to insert myself between an obese woman who smelled of bacon and the enormous trunk she had parked in the gangway. I wanted to take one last look at the city skyline as it slid away into the distance, but I was afraid the obese woman would think I was staring at her. So I took out a copy of The Orphans of Neustadt – first edition, first impression, the first copy I ever laid eyes on, now obscured behind a plain brown paper cover – and pretended to read it. The one time I did look up, I saw only derelict warehouses sliding by. ‘Fine cookware’ announced an old pre-war advertisement, still faintly visible on the brickwork: ‘Repairs carried out professionally’ boasted another. The one I remember most clearly read ‘Coffins at all prices’.

  If anyone followed me on to the train I did not see them.

  *

  In Berlin, the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall ran along the banks of the River Spree not two hundred yards from the Hauptbahnhof. For this reason I did not take the shortest route to my first destination, but instead went north for a few hundred yards towards the Karl Marx Allee, before once again heading west towards the city centre. According to Anton’s instructions I was to arrive outside the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint between half past four and a quarter to five. With some hours to go, I had decided to approach my point of exit by degrees, my first stop being the Pergamon Museum, home to the Pergamon Altar and a range of archaeological treasures too large for the victorious Russians to loot. It was there that Wolfgang Richter had first set eyes on Theresa, but it was not out of any desire to visualise the encounter (an encounter that led Wolfgang back to the valley and to his death) that I was going there.

  I bought a guide pamphlet and wandered around the exhibits – the altar, the Ishtar Gate, the Aleppo Room, the exhibition of Old Berlin – accompanied by a steady stream of tourists, some of whom appeared to be Western, judging from their superior photographic equipment and superior teeth. I was accosted by a young Asian couple wearing jeans and ski jackets that appeared to be cut from a duvet. They asked me to take a picture of them hugging each other beside a martial Greek frieze, which I did with trepidation, being unsure whether or not photography was permitted. The sights duly seen, I then wandered into the men’s lavatories, found a spare cubicle and locked myself in. From a previous visit, years earlier, I remembered that the sanitary facilities at the Pergamon were unusually private and secure. I was relieved to discover that nothing had changed.

  A few minutes later I emerged in the cologne-soaked guise of Werner Kleinschmidt, my old coat, along with the shopping bag, now hidden on top of the cistern. Finding myself alone, I risked a hasty check in the mirror. The raincoat looked expensive, but needlessly dressy; the tie expensive but effeminate. It crossed my mind that I might be taken for a homosexual. I was about to remove the tie when it occurred to me that this might be a good thing. In state-sponsored critiques, the decadence of the Western lifestyle had often been illustrated with reference (oblique or otherwise) to homosexuality and the feminisation of manhood. To a well-indoctrinated border guard a Western male was quite likely to have homosexual leanings. If I appeared homosexual, therefore, I was more likely to be perceived as a Westerner.

  At four o’clock, by which time it was getting dark, I left. I crossed over the canal and walked a few hundred metres along a dark, narrow road, following the brick arches of the Stadtbahn towards the west until I came out beside the mainline station on Friedrichstrasse. It was a busy thoroughfare, cars and taxis queuing as they passed beneath the railway bridge, streams of East Berliners heading for the S-Bahn, silhouetted against brightly lit shopfronts. I went into a store, paid over the odds for three bottles of Russian vodka and continued on my way, carrying the bottles in a reinforced paper bag. As I advanced towards the checkpoint I felt my confidence slowly ebbing away. Were the Grenztruppen supposed to be deceived by an Aquascutum raincoat and a floral tie? I tried to pick out returning Westerners in the crowd, men in particular. How did they walk? Did they look around? What did they do with their hands? I needed to observe their manner, their style. But it was hard in the deepening gloom to tell t
he transient Westerners from the Actually Existing Socialists.

  On the north side of the railway, beside the river, stood a modern building with three glass walls and a sloping concrete roof. The authorities called it a border control pavilion; ordinary Berliners, who had always tended towards theatricality where their own city was concerned, called it the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears). It was there that people heading into the West queued to have their documents checked; there that they said goodbye to friends and relatives who could not follow. According to Anton’s briefing, my passport would be inspected three times, the third inspection being the most thorough. The queue outside was fat and long. It snaked for a hundred metres through the sparse landscaping of the square. Christmas was coming: the season for delivering gifts from the West, the season for picking up Cuban cigars and liquor from the East. It made sense for me to cross now. There had to be greater safety in numbers, pressure on verification procedures. In a cross-border rush hour my odds were better: but better than what? On that point Anton had offered no guidance.

  After a few minutes of negligible progress I noticed that the queue was getting longer. If half past four was busy, half past five would have been busier. But my instructions had been specific as to the time of my arrival: it was to be no later than a quarter to five. What happened, I wondered, after that? Did a particular guard go off duty, a guard who had to be on duty? Claudia had told me: make sure you stand in the right line. These thoughts provoked a new anxiety: that Anton had failed to anticipate the length of the queue. Was I going to reach the third passport check too late? Was I about to present my forged documents to the wrong guard?

  These conjectures, I learned later, were wide of the mark. In the queue, about forty-five minutes behind me, stood the real Werner Kleinschmidt, medical supplies executive from Frankfurt, who had just returned from one of his regular meetings at the Ministry of Health. When contacted by a conscientious Dutch reporter years after the event, Herr Kleinschmidt said he was unaware of having played any role in my flight, but that his passport had gone missing from his office a few months beforehand, obliging him to apply for a new one. He also reported that, upon reaching the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint forty-five minutes after I did, he was taken in for questioning and held for several hours, which had never happened before.

  Time shuffled by, one nervous step at a time. At five o’clock I stood on the threshold of the Tränenpalast. At a guard post they were checking passports. Farewells were taking place outside: hugs, handshakes, audible sobbing. Many of the people in the queue had only been there to say goodbye, prolonging contact with their loved ones for as long as possible, squeezing every last second out of the precious day. Up ahead I saw grown men with tears in their eyes, though they tried their best to hide them, hastily reaching into their pockets for handkerchiefs and scraps of tissue. I envied the simplicity of their predicament, the purity and force of their feelings. It was something I wished I still knew.

  I had entertained vague hopes that Theresa might come to meet me outside the Tränenpalast. Two Westerners crossing together, I thought, might have been less conspicuous than one Westerner crossing alone. On the other hand Herr Kleinschmidt was a married man with two children. A young female companion might have complicated the story. But that didn’t mean Theresa couldn’t be at the station. Several of the lines and half the platforms were for Western passengers only, being securely fenced off from the rest. At that very moment she might be waiting a few yards away on the westbound S-Bahn platform. The more I thought about it, the more likely this seemed. Why wouldn’t Theresa come to meet me, now that I had proven my love by giving up everything to be with her? The border had divided us. The border had held us back, posing questions about the future that we weren’t yet ready to answer. If there had been equivocation and concealment, this was the reason. Without a border between us, everything would be out in the open. Everything would be different.

  Even as I reassured myself with these candied visions of the life to come, I was uncomfortably aware of following in the footsteps of young Thomas Schwitzer, the protagonist of The Orphans of Neustadt. My ideological direction of travel was the reverse of his, but in other respects the parallels were striking. Thomas too gave up a comfortable, narrow, morally agnostic existence for the dream of a better world – and did it for love (or, as some feminist critics would have it, for lust). At the end of the story his happiness, like his devotion to the cause, is hanging by a heartstring. So it was with me. Over the years, many commentators have asked if Sonja, the object of Schwitzer’s desire, is naive in thinking the young leopard has really changed his spots, that the black marketeer will go on loving her once the going gets tough. The question few have ever thought to ask is whether she will go on loving him.

  The first inspection was cursory: no questions, no searches. The queue divided before descending a flight of steps. The interior of the building was brightly lit. Cameras looked down from fixed points on every side. A chemical taint cut through the ambient fug of sweat and damp footwear. Ahead were the customs checks, officials in short jackets lined up behind tables. I could spot the Westerners now: they had a preference for natural fibres and the men had layered haircuts that gave them an appearance of vigour. I needed to look like them, to pass unnoticed beneath the lens. A man my age in a smart green overcoat was reading a paperback book, frowning between audible yawns. I took out my book and copied him in a pantomime of distaste. What a dull and dated fiction was The Orphans of Neustadt (modern classic or not), how overrated was its author. Wolfgang Richter would have enjoyed the spectacle, the involuntary self-criticism. It would have appealed to his satirical sense of humour.

  It took twenty minutes to reach the customs check: twenty minutes under bright lights, being watched on monitors, studied for telltale signs of fear; twenty minutes’ worth of adrenaline building in my system. My memories of the customs inspection are fleeting. I recall a fat man in a wool coat counting out tins of caviar and cartons of cigarettes; a guard with a burn scar on his face in the shape of Lake Balaton; a child pulling at his mother’s arm and shouting urgently ‘Pee-pee! Pee-pee!’; my bottles of vodka clanking like fractured bells as I placed them on the counter. I can picture the guard examining the bag, picking it up and carefully handing it back to me. I may have wished him a happy Christmas.

  ‘Passport!’

  Another guard was sitting behind a desk between the two queues. I’d walked right past him without stopping.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  He looked at me, looked at my picture in the passport, looked at me again, turned to the page with the visa. He was the oldest official so far. On his uniform were several discreet emblems of rank.

  He handed my passport back. I said thank you, hardly able to hear the words over the thumping of my heart.

  The two queues divided again: one line each for foreigners, East German citizens, West German citizens and residents of West Berlin. I followed Herr Caviar into the West German line. A train rumbled into the station, shaking the floor.

  One more inspection: the most thorough.

  The queue was down to single file. It wound slowly one way, then another, no sight of the end. I heard doors open and close, the sound repeating in cavernous, invisible spaces. Minutes went by. The line shuffled forward. I took out my book again then put it away, took it out, put it away. How much longer? How much further? I was sweating inside my English raincoat and my writerly velvet jacket. Then Herr Caviar was striding away, hefting his holdall of booty. My turn now, sooner than I thought. I stepped across the white line on the floor.

  Two officers occupied a booth; a young one seated, an older one standing behind him. I said good evening. I slid my passport under the glass: Werner Kleinschmidt, sales executive, forty-nine years old, residing at 25 Im Kirschenwäldchen, Kalbach, Frankfurt; married, two children: Klara fourteen, Sebastian eleven. The mantra went round and round inside my head. The seated officer stared at me, picked up the passport, turned over
the pages. In all, there were eleven old visas, with their accompanying entry and exit stamps. Herr Kleinschmidt had been a regular visitor to the Workers’ and Peasants’ State. The officer looked at me again. I smiled wearily, feigning incipient impatience.

  ‘Reason for visit?’

  ‘Death,’ I said.

  ‘A funeral?’

  I simultaneously nodded and shrugged, as if that was close enough. The officer looked squarely at my floral tie.

  ‘Relation?’

  ‘A cousin.’

  ‘Where’s your cousin buried?’

  ‘She was cremated. At Baumschulenweg. I wasn’t there, but . . .’ I shrugged again. Shrugging seemed the best available camouflage. Terror and shrugging were unlikely bedfellows.

  The older guard was looking at a clipboard. He leaned over the other’s shoulder, closed my passport and handed it back. ‘Good evening,’ he said.

  And that was that. The interrogation was over. Four questions. Four. I could hardly believe my luck. I said good evening as evenly as I could manage and walked on. All I had to do was find my way to the platform, get on the first S-Bahn train for Westkreuz and it was done.

  A tunnel led below ground, cement-lined and echoing. Travellers from all the other queues were heading in the same direction, East Germans, West Germans, Berliners and foreigners, walking out of the Workers’ and Peasants’ State without ceremony or celebration – as if this privilege of crossing borders were no more unusual than the daily journey to work. I inserted myself into the stream, my every step marked by the vodka bottles clanking at my side.

  I walked down a flight of steps, turned a corner. The air smelled of scorched soot and bubble gum. The ground was shaking. Another train was rolling in, brakes squealing, wheels clattering – an S-Bahn train, heading into West Berlin. I kept walking, barely glancing at the signs. Herr Kleinschmidt wouldn’t need them. He already knew the way. Up ahead was the platform, yellow carriage windows sliding by, people waiting, silhouetted against them. There was no ticket barrier, no barrier of any sort. The train pulled up. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. Curious faces peered out: eager for a glimpse of the other side.