She can feel how the eyes in the room are all centred on her and the handful of other people who are also up for the prize – they are each like a little sun, attracting attention with a gravitational pull: darted glances, sideways monitoring, unabashed stares. Even the looks that avoid them are doing it in reaction to their glow, and cannot escape their orbit: they are merely turning their backs on the focus of their attention, like the hidden side of the Moon looking outwards into infinity while it floats around the Earth. Eva has covered her fair share of celebs in her time, and she’s starting to understand what makes them so nervy: the energy in this room, it is, well, pretty intense. Occasionally, she steals a glance at Adam, who responds with warm, supportive eyes. Occasionally, she steals a glance at Tom, who leaves her with a cryptic look.
And when they say her name and the eyes in the room all turn towards her, her sun eclipsing all the others, it’s pure instinct: she leaps into Tom’s arms, those magnificent arms which clench around her joyfully, and they both laugh, because he knows how hard she works, and he understands what it took to get here, and they’ve been through the wars together, and when she opens her eyes and meets Adam’s he’s doing his best to give her a congratulatory smile, but oh – how sad he looks, how sad.
HE IS THERE, with you, always.
Even though he is increasingly not there.
In spite of the strength of the novelty of this place, which has made your mind able to focus on other things, the stimulation of a new sight, a new experience, these things that carry you forward and away from him, so that sometimes you can go for several minutes without thinking of him, half an hour even.
Even when he is not there he is there, like background chatter in a café, shut out but not unheard.
Adam is present in his absence.
And on some days you can even convince yourself that there is something gentle and comforting about it, having this ghostly companion always a few inches behind you, with you always, now that he does not have a body to be his own man in – but no sooner have you felt that than you rebel against it, because you do not want him to be reduced to a shackled existence as the product of your mind, you do not want yourself to be condemned to always missing him, you do not want both of you to remain the prisoners of his death.
You would like to see him screaming for joy as he runs through the long grass of a field in springtime, you would like to smell the sweat on him afterwards, you would like to feel the heat of blood pumping through his body again.
But he remains unseen, unsmelled, unfelt, not there, never there, always not there.
‘MAYBE I EXPLAIN to you how me and Adam met? Probably that is the best thing, I think, no?’
‘I don’t – well, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is you have to tell me.’
‘I have nothing to tell you – this is the point. We found out nothing.’
‘Found out?’
‘This is why I maybe should start at the beginning.’
‘Right. Sure.’
‘When Adam first started coming to Berlin, I am finishing my PhD at Humboldt. Adam was very interested in history, he came to some of my classes, and also sometimes I would see him in other seminars. Then some few years ago he asked me if I could help him find out about your grandfather.’
‘About my grandfather?’
‘Your grandfather was called Jochen Krantz, yes?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Adam wanted to find information about him. For you.’
‘But – why?’
‘He wanted to surprise you, I think – like a gift. He thought you should find out about your family, and maybe if he helped you it will be easier. I think also he hoped maybe he could find some people from your family who were still alive, who you could talk to. He never has told you about this?’
‘No. Never. What did he tell you he wanted to find out?’
‘He told me his wife is the granddaughter of Jochen Krantz, a pastor in the Evangelische Kirche. He told me that your mother fled to the UK in the seventies, and that she never saw her parents again. This is correct?’
‘Yes – but I’m surprised … I mean – I never even talked about my grandfather, my mother’s family, that much … My mother barely talks about it.’
‘Yes, he told me this. He found it strange, I think. Maybe also he was doing it because he thought you should be doing it.’
‘Well, I mean – it’s kind of complicated – my mother’s parents died when she was still quite young, it was quite traumatic for her. I guess I always worried about hurting her with that stuff. Besides, it’s my right to choose whether or not to look into my family history, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely. This is what I told him. Since the Wende, a lot of families have had this choice: to look into their family history, or not. Many prefer not to: maybe you find out your neighbour was writing reports about you for the Stasi, maybe your wife, your husband, your child. Not everyone wants to know, and I respect this choice for an individual, even though being a historian I think it is important for a society to examine the past.’
‘But you helped him?’
‘I told him I would try. When Adam discovered I am looking at the Stasi archive for my research, he asked me if I can find out about Jochen Krantz. I did not know the name Jochen Krantz – you know, there were a lot of evangelical pastors, and a lot who said after the Wende, yes, I was involved in the resistance, blah blah … So I was thinking this English guy does not know nothing, probably this Jochen Krantz is nobody.’
‘But my grandfather died way before the Wende.’
‘Yes, I know – but still, often people want to believe their family was involved in something special, you know.’
‘Hm. I can imagine.’
‘But I liked this Adam, and that he was interested in doing more than going out to Berlin nightclubs. That he was trying to understand this city a little bit.’
Eva felt a smile curl up a corner of her lips.
‘Adam always liked to understand everything.’
Lena smiled too.
‘Yes, he had a nice mind. A curious mind.’
‘But so – you did look into what my grandfather had done?’
‘I thought, why not, after all? I can try the few obvious places, and then tell him there is nothing to find out. But then, well – there was nothing, but this was strange.’
‘Strange? How?’
‘There was too much nothing, so to say. Nothing in the Stasi files, but OK, they did not have files on everybody, so maybe this could mean that your grandfather was not as important as your mother thought, or was not even a dissident at all. But then, I looked through the records of the Evangelische Kirche, and here too, nothing. There was not your grandfather’s name, anywhere.’
‘…’
‘I checked the city register, also, and I could not find any trace of your mother or your grandparents.’
‘But …’
Her grandfather. Opa. Oma. They had just been an absence in her life, an absence with faint contours made out of a handful of stories repeated enough times to be remembered, and some bare facts. A pastor. A schoolteacher. East Berlin. The Wall. Childhood summers swimming in the lakes, earning Pioneer badges, being taught that you shouldn’t repeat the conversations that you heard at home, gatherings in the living room with music turned up loud to confound anyone listening in. Letters sent on cigarette-thin paper, wondering if there was a code, a hidden meaning, how much the censors were taking out. And now, it seemed, Eva was being told that her grandparents were even more evanescent than that, that there was no trace of them anywhere.
‘Maybe I get us some more coffee, oder?’
‘Oh – er – yes, why not? Thank you.’
Lena picked up the mugs and disappeared.
Adam. Adam trying to find out about her grandfather, a man who had always been a ghost to her. And Adam a ghost too, now. Faces on the edge of her vision: a young man with golden hair who loved her so muc
h, a man in starchy 1950s clothing who would never get to know her, his only granddaughter on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Jochen. A man she would never get to know, because there was nothing left of him.
‘Everything is OK?’
‘Oh – yes. I was just. I mean … this is all very strange.’
‘Yes, I think so too.’
‘What – I mean, what do you think happened?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know. I said to Adam, of course, we cannot be sure, a lot of documents were destroyed just after the Wende, so maybe these papers are just missing.’
‘But – why would they destroy them? Some sort of cover-up or something?’
Lena Bachmann smiled wryly. ‘This is what Adam thought, also. I think he somehow liked the idea that there was some big scandal being hidden, that your grandparents had been murdered by the Stasi … But honestly, I think it is very unlikely. Maybe if it was just a Stasi file missing, that could be the case. But I think no, if it is something like this, then maybe it is just chance.’
‘But that doesn’t seem very likely either, does it?’
‘Well … I’m sorry to say this, but maybe your mother has not told you her true story. Maybe she is not from Berlin, or her father was not a pastor.’
‘…’
‘I’m sorry. I am just making conjectures, of course.’
‘What … what did Adam say about all this?’
‘He seemed troubled. As I said, at first he very much insisted that there must be some scandal to uncover. We continued looking – then at some point, Adam called me and said that he had found out that the pastor of Sankt-Michaelis-Kirche, in Pankow, had been arrested with his wife at around the time of your mother’s story, with a daughter who had died trying to escape to the West in the 1970s. I think he has seen this in an exhibition. He asked me to find out if there were still members of the family we could contact. And it did seem like this could be your mother’s family. We thought maybe she has changed her name, and her parents mistakenly thought she was dead – Adam was very convinced, he said he had a photo of your mother and her parents, that he was sure they were the same people.’
‘He – did he have a copy of the photo?’
‘He said he would get one, that he would show it to me – but then he went to visit the family, and they had nothing to do with you. He saw he has made a mistake.’
‘Who in the family did he visit? They were still alive?’
‘No, the pastor and his wife had died, although not in prison like your mother says. But their son still lives in Pankow.’
‘Well, my mother doesn’t have a brother.’
‘…’
‘As far as I know.’
‘…’
‘So what’s your theory on all of this?’
‘I think maybe it could be that your mother did go to that church, and used their story for herself. It is not that unusual for people to reinvent themselves when they start a new life somewhere. And it can be a good way, if you want to hide, to take on the identity of someone who people think is dead.’
‘But – why would she do that?’
Lena Bachmann shrugged. ‘You would have to ask her that. If you want to.’
‘And did Adam agree with this interpretation?’
‘I think he did, yes. He seemed to lose interest in looking any further after we had come to this dead end. I was surprised, in a way, because he has been so insistent. But it seemed like maybe he felt it was not the right thing to do, after all. After that, he was not contacting me again.’
‘And you didn’t try to get in touch with him?’
‘I just thought, probably he is busy, or not in Berlin so often now, or he has accepted that there is nothing to find out. I did send him an email some time ago, to ask how he was, as we had not been in contact for so long.’
‘Yes – I think I saw that email. He died shortly after you sent it.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes.’
‘…’
‘…’
‘I think Adam was very in love with you, Eva. You should not worry.’
‘I don’t – Well, I don’t worry he didn’t love me, I know that, I just – I don’t know. Sometimes I worry I didn’t know him enough – I feel now, I wish I had paid more attention to him. That must sound so crazy. I mean, of course I knew him so well, and we talked about so much, but … But now sometimes I’ll be thinking about him and I’m like, who was this guy? Who was he really? Do I even know that?’
‘Maybe you are suffering because we cannot always know people completely. You do not know Adam like he was when he was with me, or with his mother, or with another of his friends. But he did not know those other parts of you either.’
‘No, but – I’m still alive to have all those different parts.’
‘It is very sad that Adam is dead. It is terrible.’
‘…’
‘Eva, I’m very sorry, but I will have to leave – I have to go and pick up my son from his school.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘But I am happy to meet again, if you like – I can show you the documents that I collected for Adam, maybe there is something there that will make sense to you? I don’t have the file here, but I can bring it in.’
‘Yes, that would be fantastic – I’d like to see what he found out, at least. What you found out.’
‘Good.’
‘…’
‘I think Adam wanted to give this gift to you – to tell you more about your family, about who you are.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you must decide for yourself if you want this gift or not.’
THEY HAVE TO rush for the train because they’re late as usual, because Adam insisted on stopping to buy a paper even though it was already clear they were cutting it fine, and they only just make it, air hacking through Eva and an unpleasant film of sweat coating her body. Adam bumps into her as he pounces on a free pair of seats.
‘Ow!’
‘Oh, sorry … You OK?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.’
It didn’t actually hurt at all, but Eva is so annoyed with Adam at the moment. He’s been in such a weird mood for the past couple of weeks – ever since he got back from his last trip to Berlin, really – and she can’t seem to do anything to draw him out of it, and now they have just got to the point where she’s irritated too and their respective moodinesses feed into each other in a bilious, vicious circle.
Adam fumbles around in his seat, heaps of paper and paraphernalia everywhere, while Eva takes the one opposite him. He doesn’t even pay any attention to her, just stares out of the window and thinks about whatever it is that has been so playing on his mind. London zips past outside, terraced houses and terraced houses and terraced houses, miles and miles of people and city and lives, and Eva wishes it could all just pause for a moment, this constant activity and movement, this constant sharing your life with someone, day after day after day, whatever mood they are in. She looks at Adam and she still feels the pull of her love for him, the physical need she has to be close to him, but there is a force field of stress around him right now that is too much effort to break through, and she wishes she could just take some time out from her whole life, not have to deal with these constant negotiations any more.
Her dad picks them up from the station, as always. Eva feels a surge of tenderness when she sees him standing by the car: age has started its slow work on him in recent years, pushing out his bald patch, turning brown hairs grey, weighing down on his shoulders so that, if you know him well, you notice that he stoops ever so slightly now. Small marks of time that hint at a terrifying future of weakness and decay – Eva wants to protect him against it, like he protected her from the world when she was a little girl. Eva feels the thickness of blood. And into this wades Adam, glum and monosyllabic in response to her father’s nervous cheeriness, and as they sit in the car driving down familiar suburban lanes, the way home that Eva has known by heart since c
hildhood, her father happily giving her the news on the latest small developments in their town, and Adam far away, mute on the back seat, she thinks this is my family. I love you but this is my blood, and you are behaving like an intruder right now.
‘Oh, we’ve finished redoing your room, by the way, did Mum tell you?’
‘Yes, she did – she seemed to think the colours all work well together?’
‘Looks good to me, anyway. You can judge for yourself shortly …’
Kurt Cobain is gone. The horses are gone. The desk covered in doodles and Panini stickers is gone; the poster her friends made her for her eighteenth birthday is gone. Her room is hers and not hers. It is simple, clean, the new paint on the walls elegant and immaculately applied. One wall is a light blue, the other three are white.
‘It works OK, doesn’t it? Having the one wall in colour.’
‘Uh-huh. Yeah, it’s nice.’
There is a new bed, a double, purchased to give her and Adam more room when they come to stay. Her childhood and adolescence have been picked up, filed away: they no longer hang on the walls in exuberant tastelessness, but sit in ring binders on her bookshelves and in boxes under the bed. The bed, which Adam sprawls himself out on.
‘Aaah. It’s going to be so nice to have enough space to sleep in at night …’
Eva lies down next to him, cuddles into his side.
‘I don’t know – there was something I quite liked about sharing a single bed …’
‘Well, yes, it had a certain romanticness to it, but, you know, it’ll be all right to not have you whacking my funny bone in the middle of the night, too.’
‘I’ve never whacked your funny bone in the middle of the night!’
‘You so definitely have.’
‘Hmph.’
How I Lose You Page 27