I decided to run for it.
A man stepped in front of me. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth; quite a young man, with brown sheepskin gloves. I thought he was going to ask me for a light.
‘Herr Krug?’
There was another man at my shoulder. He wore a raincoat too; a cheap one without belt or buttons. It was a little too short for him.
The first man said. ‘It would be best not to make a scene.’
PART SIX
* * *
54
They took me through a door at the side of the tunnel. We walked along a narrow passage and up an iron staircase. Nobody passed us on our way out of the station; nobody saw us leave. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the back of a Wartburg staring at the pedestrians on Friedrichstrasse that I saw another human being besides my two companions. We drove at speed along Unter den Linden and, within a few minutes, were back on the Karl Marx Allee. I wondered, briefly, if we might be going to the Hauptbahnhof, but we passed the turning and continued east into districts I didn’t know, where dim red lights marked the tops of factory chimneys and the air tasted of sulphur.
My arrival at the facility – I had no name for it then – was equally devoid of potential witnesses. We drove through iron gates into a large bare courtyard and from there into a garage where a line of identical vehicles were parked. We went on foot through more doors, along more empty passageways, sometimes halting for reasons connected with the approach of footsteps and the red lights screwed at intervals into the walls. It seemed a matter of importance that my presence, like my arrest (I assumed I had been arrested, though the word had not been used) should go unobserved. As I shuffled down those endless corridors, the phrase that I could not get out of my head was: Fracture to the left temporal lobe. Instinctively I touched that cranial spot, recalling in the same moment Theresa’s habit of doing the same.
I was shown into a room. It was dark except for an anglepoise light on a desk. On the other side of that desk sat a man in uniform. He was my age, with tidy grey hair and glasses in heavy black frames. He was reading the contents of a file, rubbing his chin with his thumb as if perplexed. There were no blunt instruments in immediate reach, at least none that I could see.
‘Sit down,’ the man said without looking at me. The light from the lamp reflected off his lenses, hiding his eyes.
I sat down. The two men from the station waited for a nod from their superior and left. I never heard their names.
The uniformed man held out his hand. ‘The passport.’
I handed it over. In the back of the Wartburg I had considered throwing it out of the window, but the window wouldn’t open, there being no handle on the inside of the door. My interrogator opened the passport and flicked through it, returning to the photograph at the front.
‘You were younger then,’ he said. ‘When was this, ten years ago?’
‘Eight,’ I said. ‘I was wearing make-up.’
Michael Schilling had made the same observation. Was this what had tripped me up: that sliver of vanity? Of course it wasn’t. They had called me by name, those men in the tunnel. They had been waiting. How had they known to expect me? The simplest answer was that Claudia Witt had told them to, under interrogation. Of the three possible explanations for her disappearance, I felt sure the worst one had befallen her: she had been arrested. Were they still keeping her here? Had she been questioned in this very room, sitting in this very chair? A wave of hopelessness broke over me. All the precautions Anton had employed to guard against discovery and betrayal I had considered theatrical and excessively elaborate. Now it turned out they were not elaborate enough.
My interrogator closed the passport and moved it aside. To my surprise he did not ask me how I had come by it or who had supplied it. This confirmed my fears regarding Claudia. The only possible explanation for not asking such questions was that the answers were already known.
The interrogator stared at me. ‘The normal sentence for Republikflucht is three years’ imprisonment,’ he said. ‘I expect you’re aware of this.’
‘I am now.’
‘It might further be considered appropriate to make an example of a case like yours by extending that sentence, given the elaborate manner of your deception and, more importantly, the many privileges and honours bestowed upon you by the state – honours that apparently mean nothing to you.’
He was right. At that moment they did mean nothing to me, which is not the same as saying they never had.
The interrogator consulted a file that lay in front of him. It was, I noticed, a fat file. ‘Only a year ago you were awarded the title of People’s Hero of Art and Culture.’
‘Champion,’ I said. ‘People’s Champion. The last Hero of Art and Culture was Manfred Dressler, the sculptor.’
A small muscle flexed in the region of my interrogator’s jaw. ‘The Cultural Association should bestow its favours with more care. Two artists honoured for their service to the people, both of whom turn out to be’ – he hesitated before pronouncing sentence – ‘. . . shallow and self-serving.’
I felt a scintilla of relief. I had expected to be called a traitor. Traitors were the lowest of the low. There was no fate they did not deserve. ‘Shallow and self-serving’ was not so bad. It wasn’t so very far from the truth.
‘Why have you turned your back on your country?’ My interrogator seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘For a woman,’ I answered.
As I said those words it came to me that I would never see Theresa again. She would soon learn of my arrest – Anton’s network would see to that. They would tell her it wasn’t safe for her in the East. Even if she ignored them and tried to return, how far would she get? No further than this place, no matter how accommodating or useful her father might be. The inner German border had finally put paid to our affair once and for all.
My interrogator was staring at me through his blank lenses. ‘Is that all there is to it? You fell in love?’
‘I fell in love.’
My interrogator consulted the file. ‘The music student.’
‘I’d hoped she would settle here. But it became clear . . . It became clear . . .’
‘Yes?’
It became clear that my hopes were unrealistic; that the love I had inspired in Theresa was not the kind that overcomes all obstacles, regardless of cost. It was not, for instance, like Thomas’s love for Sonja, or Sonja’s love for Thomas. It was a judicious, circumspect love, the kind that authors of fiction do not traditionally concern themselves with.
‘It became clear that she was not prepared to sever her ties in the West.’
The interrogator shook his head, expressed neither scepticism nor scorn, only a bottomless disappointment.
‘You want me to believe that your attempted desertion wasn’t motivated in any way by ideological considerations.’
‘Desertion’ was a more menacing description. Deserters in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State could, in certain circumstances, be shot.
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Then you’ll have no difficulty in cooperating on certain points of information of interest to the authorities.’
I shook my head. Whatever treatment Wolfgang Richter had stood up to before he died, I knew it would be too much for me. I would surrender everything in the end: every who, where and when. Besides, I wasn’t sure if I had anything to tell the authorities that they didn’t already know: because Claudia Witt knew much more than I did.
‘You would be advised to answer my questions fully and honestly.’
I said I would do my best.
My interrogator picked up a pen. ‘Name your contacts in Switzerland.’
‘In Switzerland?’ The question struck me as bizarre. ‘I don’t have any. None that I know of.’
‘In particular Zürich. Who do you know in Zürich?’
‘No one.’
‘In the administrative district of’ – my interrogator consulted his fil
e again – ‘Erlenbach. Was that where you were planning to go?’
Erlenbach. It took me a moment to place the name.
‘I had in mind to go to Munich,’ I said.
The interrogator adjusted his glasses. ‘Is this your idea of cooperation? If so –’
‘I don’t know anyone in Switzerland,’ I insisted. ‘I know of someone. That’s the best I can do.’
‘Name?’
‘Martin Klaus.’
‘Spelled?’
‘K – L – A – U – S. He’s an agent.’
My interrogator looked up from his writing. ‘An intelligence agent?’
‘A literary agent. He’s quite famous in artistic circles.’
‘Western artistic circles.’
‘Yes. He was in Stern magazine a few months ago – his house too, in Erlenbach.’
What had prompted this line of questioning? How had Klaus’s home town been connected to me? Some fragment of information regarding Theresa’s arrangements in the West had reached my captors, but they didn’t know what to make of it. That, at least, was my impression.
I waited for the questions that would lead us to the issue of Richter’s book. I had already decided to tell the whole truth, humiliating though it was: in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State a deception in the cause of love (in telling Theresa that the book was mine) was less reprehensible and less dangerous than a deception in the cause of freedom.
‘Did this’ – my interrogator read the name from his notes – ‘Martin Klaus know of your plans to cross the border?’
‘No.’
‘Who did you tell? Specifically who in the West?’
‘I told no one in the West.’
The interrogator sighed. ‘I will ask you again. Who did you contact in the West concerning your defection? The truth, this time.’
I wasn’t trying to be evasive. I wanted my interrogator to know that, abject as it may seem. I had decided entirely against a futile act of defiance.
‘I made one attempt,’ I said, remembering my letter to Theresa. ‘I wrote to my . . . to the music student. About a week ago. But I’m sure the letter never arrived.’
‘Because?’
‘Because the person I gave it to was arrested a few days ago, this side of the border.’
‘Arrested for what reason?’
‘For the same reason as me.’ My interrogator looked unimpressed. ‘For Republikflucht.’
The interrogator sighed as if this were a diversionary tactic, one that, under the circumstances, was beneath us both. ‘Name?’
Fracture to the right temporal lobe. How exactly had it happened? Had Richter seen the blow coming? Had it come as a complete shock? Had there been time to flinch? Maybe they had deliberately made him wait for it, just to prolong the terror. These questions, I realised, would never leave me. Once, when I was a boy, after a raid I saw a man’s head lying in the gutter with his hat still on. For years afterwards I wondered what he had been doing when the bomb fell and where the rest of him was. I wonder still.
‘Name?’
‘Claudia Witt.’
I had the impression, even through the fog of dread, that my interrogator knew this name, but that he had not expected to hear it from me.
‘Claudia Witt,’ he said. ‘Another musician.’
‘Yes. Recently graduated from the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music. She plays the . . .’
‘Who told you she’d been arrested?’
‘I just assumed . . . Why else am I here? How else did you know to expect me?’
The interrogator took off his glasses and looked at me. He had pale, sad eyes. ‘We have reason to believe Claudia Witt crossed the border illegally seven days ago, using forged papers. Unfortunately she was not apprehended.’ He reached under his desk. I heard a faint buzz in the corridor. ‘Perhaps that will teach you not to make assumptions.’
A guard entered the room and led me out by the arm. I preferred not to think where he was taking me. It was all I could do not to volunteer more details about my escape plans in the hope of prolonging what might turn out to be my last conversation this side of the grave.
55
In the prisons at Hohenschönhausen and Lichtenberg most of the cells were bare, freezing and unsanitary, with hardly enough space to lie down. I have seen them since in books and magazines. Some have been preserved in their original state and opened to the public. The flavour of dictatorship is now on the tourists’ menu, along with the zoo and the pressure-sprayed glories of Hohenzollern architecture. But the cell I was taken to – I am still not clear as to its location – has not featured in any magazine or tourist guide. The colour scheme might have elicited the odd pang of nostalgia among former citizens whose memories of the Workers’ and Peasants’ State are still clouded with affection. But it would never have provoked the frisson of pity or horror that the tourist is looking for. It was the size of a modestly priced hotel room and furnished in much the same way: a single bed with a wooden headboard, beige carpeting, a corner sofa, an upholstered upright chair, a coffee table upon which sat a carafe of water and a glass. A large window with lace curtains looked out over the yard some thirty feet below. There was even a small television with a pot plant resting on the top of it, and a shelf of books: a smattering of the classics, texts on Marxism and revolutionary theory, several modern novels, including works by Christa Wolf and Johannes R. Becher, and finally a complete set of the Factory Gate Fables in paperback. Most unexpected of all, I found a small bathroom, equipped with a lavatory, sink and shower, and a single towel in chemical pink.
I did not find these luxuries reassuring. Traditionally it is a condemned man who is given a hearty meal and it seemed obvious to me that my accommodation had been arranged on a similar principle. Looking out at the empty street, at flurries of snow caught in the downcast glow of a solitary street light (the window was not barred; but neither would it open), I became convinced that this was the case. They were not keeping me in an ordinary prison because ordinary prisons were populated with prisoners and guards who might recognise me. That would never do. My disappearance was to be unexplained, my final resting place unmarked and unrecorded – exactly like my mother’s.
I don’t know how long I spent in that commodious condemned cell: my watch had been taken away upon arrival, along with the vodka and my English raincoat. It was a long time before I was calm enough to make use of the bed. It was only then, as I lay staring at the white textured ceiling (reminiscent of a holiday boarding house, like the floral pattern on the lampshade) that I began at last to assemble the pieces of my exploded plan, to ask myself where I had gone wrong. The most striking scrap of information was that Claudia Witt had not been arrested, but had made good her escape to the West. This was good news not just for her, but for me: because it meant I could not betray her. I could not, in fact, betray anyone – anyone except Theresa and she was out of reach. I had never been fully trusted by Anton’s network, which had irked me at the time, but a clear conscience was the result.
This, however, left a troubling question: if Claudia had not betrayed me, who had? Who had made contact with the authorities and told them of my plans? Someone else in the network, perhaps – that was possible – someone I had never met or seen or heard of. My face was recognisable. Anyone involved in the preparation or delivery of my passport could have been responsible: a back-room traitor, a mole. But then, why was I the one singled out for betrayal? Why me and not Manfred Dressler, or, for that matter Claudia Witt?
Mentally I reran my truncated interrogation. From the start the man behind the desk had focused on my supposed contacts in the West. Whom did I know in Switzerland? With whom had I shared my plans? The secret police had made a connection to Martin Klaus’s home town, the location of his lakeside villa, but not to Klaus himself. How could they have known about the location, but not about the location’s significance? Wasn’t that the wrong way round? And what made my melancholy examiner so certain I had failed to keep
my intentions a secret? How could he be sure of that?
Answers – plausible and implausible – crowded into my head. It was a question of arranging the evidence in a credible sequence, like the scattered pages of a story. This was the metaphor I clung to. If I could correctly order those pages, I might be able to discern the narrative as a whole; its shape, its direction, its message. Stories were my business, my lifelong preoccupation. I sat up. I drank some water – at least, I recall having a glass of water in my hand. (Have I given the impression that I was calm in those first hours of captivity? If so, the impression is misleading.) When I put the glass to my lips, it rattled against my teeth. It was fear, naturally, but something else too: a gradually unfolding horror. Because already a story was taking shape, the fragments coalescing of their own accord into a sequence. And the logic of that sequence was undeniable – irresistible, in fact, though I tried to resist it. One by one the fragments became pictures, the pictures became scenes; plot points in a dark and squalid tale, one which I, in my innocence, could never have dreamed up: a story of the modern world.
I can still see it played out, as if on the big screen. First scene, final act: Claudia slipping through the border control in a suit of Western clothes, concealed in her pocket a letter for a friend. Then the surprise arrival in Austria; embraces and celebrations. Her friend is no longer the impoverished student, living off casual work and pocket money. Her friend has her own car, her own flat. Her Western clothes look a lot more expensive than Claudia’s Western clothes; and she has a wardrobe full of them. It’s all the money from her book, which is enjoying its fourth month on the Spiegel bestseller list in Germany.
Claudia doesn’t hand over the letter straight away. The letter will shift attention away from her, to the lover still waiting on the other side. She wants Theresa to herself for a little while. What about the musical career, she asks? Has Theresa anything lined up for the coming year? Any auditions? Her friend says no. Things have slipped a little on the viola front. Since the summer, the book – the signings, the interviews, the promotional tour – has taken up almost all her free time. She may be going to America soon. Besides, the money even in Western orchestras is terrible. You practise like a slave for thirteen years and you end up with the pay of a postman.
The Valley of Unknowing Page 32