by Tom Gabbay
We sat down with a bottle of schnapps and two good-size glasses between us. Josef poured two healthy shots, we saluted each other and tossed the drinks back. He dug a pack of smokes out of his pocket and placed them on the table while I refilled our glasses.
“Why did you change your name?” I began.
“Becher is the name of the man that married our aunt,” he said impassively. “It was a few years after you left. Four or five.” I nodded, left him space to say more if he wanted to. He extracted a cigarette from the pack and gestured for me to help myself, but I decided to hold off for the moment.
“He was the postman,” Josef continued, a cloud of smoke forming between us as he lit up. “At first she wanted nothing to do with him, but he persisted. Each morning he knocked on our door and refused to leave until he put the letters directly into her hand. At first she humored him, but every day he stayed a little longer until one day he didn’t leave at all.”
I wanted to ask what had happened to our aunt—she would’ve been in her late sixties now—but I said something innocuous like I was glad she’d found somebody and I hoped they’d been happy together.
“He treated her well enough,” Josef shrugged. “And he paid for my education. But in the end, he was a Fascist.”
“There was a lot of that going around,” I said, trying to be sensitive for a change, but Josef threw me a look that I took for disdain. My brother was a realist who saw the world as a bitter pill and he wasn’t interested in the sugarcoating.
“I came to hate him,” he said matter-of-factly. “He poisoned her mind. She—” He stopped himself, concentrated on flicking an ash onto the floor. “She was better than that.”
“Do you remember our mother?” I asked. He shifted in his chair and frowned. I wondered if I’d been too abrupt.
“I was young,” he said. “And you? Do you have a clear memory of her?”
I wanted to be able to give him something, maybe a moment that might spark his memory, something he could take away with him. But all I could come up with was: “I don’t go into the past very often.”
There was a beat of uncomfortable silence. I think we both knew that whatever was going to happen, this would be our one night to rake through the past, and we were trying to find a way into it. It was difficult, almost painful. Not so much the memories themselves, but getting at them after they’d been tucked away for so many years.
Josef finally broke the silence. “We lived not too far from here,” he said. “Just a few blocks.”
I shook my head in disbelief. The drink was starting to kick in and I was feeling softer. “What happened to the house?”
“Gone. Part of the rubble.” He tossed his cigarette onto the floor and crushed it with his foot.
“That’s a shame,” I said weakly. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and waved it off. I wondered if that answered my question about our aunt’s fate, but I was still reluctant to ask. In a funny way, it felt like it was none of my business, like it was nothing to do with me. The proprietor approached the table with an ashtray, but beat a hasty retreat when Josef looked up at him. I don’t think he meant to scare the man off—it just came naturally.
“Do you remember the toy soldiers?” I asked, getting a blank look. “The ones I bribed you with?”
“Ah, yes,” he finally said. “They bought my silence. I wonder what happened to them.”
“Lost in the past,” I said as I poured us each another schnapps. “Like so much else.”
I thought about the cold December day when our mother took me to the toy shop and how I fell in love with those painted soldiers. I remembered my feeling of misery as we left the shop, knowing she would never allow war toys into the house, and my delight when I found a package under the Christmas tree that contained two infantrymen, one blue and one red. I thought about telling Josef the story, but there was no point. I raised my glass.
“To my younger brother, the STASI colonel,” I toasted. “I don’t know whether to be proud of you or to shoot you.”
He laughed—I think it was the first unguarded moment I’d seen in him—and we downed our drinks. He lowered his glass to the table, narrowed his eyes, and leaned forward. “Why did you quit?” he asked, his eyes searching mine. “Did you lose your faith?”
I laughed. “I don’t know too many spooks who are motivated by faith.”
“I disagree,” he said, leaning back. “It’s essential to have faith in our business. How else can we justify the things we do? We do them in the name of a future we believe in, to bring about a greater good.” He paused for my reaction, but I didn’t have one, so I avoided his look and bowed to the inevitable by helping myself to one of his cigarettes. I knew about the “greater good” theory, I just didn’t buy it anymore.
He offered me a light. “I still believe that I’m on the right side of history. Do you?”
I took a long, sickening drag off the cigarette. “I’m not on anybody’s side.”
“You used to be,” he persisted. I wanted to get off the subject, poured us a third schnapps.
“How long have you known about me?” I asked.
“Since Teheran.”
“Ten years,” I said, and he shrugged. “Were you saving me for a rainy day?”
He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t expect we would ever meet.” He paused, wanting to expand on the answer. “I thought it best that neither side became aware of our relationship, so I kept it to myself. They would have tried to use it.”
“Like now?”
“I wouldn’t have involved you if there had been another way,” he said, sounding almost sincere enough to believe. I felt my brother was playing me.
“I hope you don’t think that because we’re brothers, you can trust me,” I said.
“I trust only that our interests have converged at this particular moment,” he said, then paused and smiled caustically. “I must confess, though, that I was curious … curious to see who you had become. … Did you never wonder about your brother?”
I would have liked to give him an honest answer, but, in truth, I hadn’t wondered about him in a very long time. “Sure,” I said, “I’ve wondered. … But—”
Nothing came.
“Perhaps you presumed I was dead,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been an unreasonable supposition.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe somewhere along the line I had given him up for dead. Or maybe it’d just been easier to pack him away into that dark vault of childhood memories that was buried in some obscure comer of my brain. Whatever the case, I felt it was better to get off the subject.
“You really want to know why I quit?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“One of the reasons was that I was tired of hearing people justify the evil shit they do by saying it’s for the greater good and it’s okay because they’re on the right side of history.” I stubbed my cigarette out. “Everybody thinks they’re on the right side of history.”
“Not everybody can be wrong. One side or the other will win.”
“Or we could all lose,” I said. “The truth is that you guys need each other more than anybody else needs you. You justify what you do by saying the other guy’s doing it, too. It’s a vicious circle and it’s got nothing to do with the ‘greater good.’”
“What’s the other reason?”
“What?”
“You implied there was another reason you quit. What is it?”
“Why do you care?”
“Curiosity,” he said with half a smile. “That’s all.”
“Okay,” I said, leaning forward. “The other reason I quit is because I believe that one sunny day I’m gonna look up into a clear blue sky and I’m gonna see a big flash of light. The one we’ve all been waiting for. And in the few seconds I’ll have before the wall of fire hits, I’m gonna be pretty damn sure that it was some spook’s demented notion of ‘a good idea’ that took us down. I quit so I’ll be able to say to myself in that fi
nal moment, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me.’”
Josef stared at me and shifted uneasily in his seat. “That would make you feel better?”
“Maybe,” I smiled. “Although I admit it wouldn’t last for very long.”
He shook his head incredulously. “Why don’t you save the world instead?”
“It’s been tried. Never works out.”
Josef glanced over his shoulder, leaned in, and whispered across the table. “What do you think would happen if the world believed the president of the United States had been assassinated by a Soviet agent while visiting Berlin?”
“Are you saying—”
“I’m not saying he would be assassinated by a Soviet agent, I’m saying what if it looked that way to the world? What would be the reaction under those circumstances?”
I didn’t have to think about it.
“It would be seen as an act of war. … There’d be demands for retaliation—air strikes on military targets, possibly an invasion of Cuba. The Soviets would respond by rolling into West Berlin, things would spin out of control… Europe at war … the missiles fly….”
He gave me a long, serious look. “Yes,” he said, locking his hands together. “I think you are right.”
“And if I am,” I said defiantly, “what the hell am I supposed to do about it?”
He leaned back in his chair, lit another cigarette, and eyed me cagily for a long moment, a slow smile creeping across his face.
“’I’m doomed,’ cried the mouse!” Josef sprang to life. “’There is a wall to the left of me and a wall to the right, but if I go forward I’ll run into the trap!’… ‘But you have only to turn around and run in the other direction,’ said the cat that was chasing him.”
“Inspiring,” I said. “Is there a point?”
“The point is that it’s better to be the cat.”
“I guess that makes me the mouse.”
He cocked his head thoughtfully and exhaled smoke through his nose. “No. Not at all. You, my good brother … you are the trap.”
ELEVEN
Hotel Europa was three and a half blocks from my five-star suite at the Kempinski, but it might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Josef had delivered me back into the American sector and dropped me at the flea-bitten dump, the kind of place that rents by the hour, assuring me that I’d be safe there. I needed a spot to lie low since I was pretty sure that by now Powell and Company would’ve trumped up some phony charges and enlisted the local police to help uncover me. Since the management of the Europa didn’t worry themselves too much about details like identity papers, I could disappear for a couple of days, which was all I needed.
I had to laugh when I opened the door, even though the joke was on me. I’d managed to go from the lap of luxury to abject poverty in one easy night. It was a closet-size room with no window and—judging by the smell of stale cigarettes and I hated to think what else—no ventilation. The amenities consisted of a dented double bed, a cold-water sink, and a flimsy wardrobe that held a week’s supply of faded towels. The only lamp provided a dim pinkish light that you might assume was a sorry attempt at atmosphere but whose real purpose was to save you from getting a good look at the person you were screwing, a blessing for anyone who’d sunk low enough to have sex in this hole.
I was too wound up to sleep anyway, even if the sheets hadn’t looked a bit crusty, so I headed back downstairs, past the dozing desk clerk, and out into the fresh night air. It was after one o’clock, and other than the so-called girls hanging around the hotel, the streets were dead. I started walking, in no particular direction, eventually drawn toward the bright lights and shop windows along Kurfürstendamm. It was a welcome relief after the bleakness of the other side.
Seeing my brother had stirred something up. I felt anxious, unsettled somehow, like there was some distant alarm bell going off, but just out of reach. There was no shortage of reasons to feel edgy, of course, what with my brother, the enemy agent, giving me thirty-six hours to save mankind. But believe it or not, that’s not what was getting to me at that moment.
Josef looked exactly like the photo of our father. That’s what was occupying my thoughts. It was no surprise that I hadn’t noticed it before—my father probably hadn’t entered my mind in years. I tried to conjure up a memory of him, but it was elusive, like a cluster of faint stars that disappears when you try to look directly at it. I was only four when he was killed, in the last month of the Great War.
It was a sunny morning in October, one of the last warm days before a long cold winter set in, when my mother entered my room and suggested we walk in the park before lunch. It was something we did as often as the weather allowed and I always enjoyed getting out of the house, seeing what the world was up to. I must have sensed that something was wrong because she would usually chat away about the trees, the flowers, people, birds, whatever crossed our path, but on that morning she was quiet and I wondered why.
She sat on a bench while I chased pigeons and threw rocks into the pond. I don’t know how long we stayed, but I remember thinking that it was unusual not to be hurried along. She would usually say, “Come now, Jakob, let’s see what’s waiting for us around the corner!” or something to that effect. When I finally returned to the bench, wondering about lunch, I could see that she’d been crying. An attempted smile didn’t fool me.
“Why are you crying, Mama?” I asked plainly.
She pulled me toward her, holding me to her breast while she steeled herself for what she had to say. After a moment she pulled back, but kept hold of my arm, probably unaware of how tight her grip was on me. She looked directly into my eyes as she spoke.
“Papa has been killed,” she said softly, with no prologue. Her lip quivered slightly, betraying her resolve, but only for a moment. “He died bravely,” she said. “And we must be very proud of him.”
I knew what it meant, even at that tender age. There were boys and girls in my school and in our neighborhood whose fathers and uncles wouldn’t return from the war, either. But I never for an instant imagined that it could happen to my father. It didn’t seem possible. He was too strong, too smart, too spirited to fall to the enemy.
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“I don’t know, my darling,” she said. “He was killed in a battle.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know….” She struggled with it. “The enemy.”
“I’ll get a gun and kill the enemy when I grow up,” I said defiantly, tears welling up inside me.
She grabbed my arm tighter and pulled me closer. “No, Jakob,” she said firmly. “There will be no more wars after this. Papa has died so that you will never have to fight.”
I realized that I was crying. It was a strange sensation, something I wasn’t used to, and it took me by surprise. I’d left the lights of Kurfürstendamm behind and was standing on some dark bridge over a fast-running river, with no idea where I was, how I got there, or how long I’d been walking. Thankfully, I was alone and could wipe the tears away without feeling foolish. But I felt foolish anyway. So many years had passed since that morning in the park. Could I really feel his loss so poignantly after all that time?
Then, out of nowhere, a lost moment came to me and I could see him as clearly as if it had been yesterday. He was in uniform. A bright, pristine uniform with polished boots and a wide belt that smelled of new leather. He towered over me, arms held aloft, as if he expected me to jump into them. Then his voice came through, clear and distinct, like he was standing next to me on the bridge.
“Are you too big to kiss your papa good-bye?”
He laughed and leaned over to scoop me up in his arms. “You have to be strong now, little man,” he whispered in my ear. “You take care of everything.”
What would a small boy feel at that moment? Could he know that the man who had thrown him over his shoulder and chased him around the house until he collapsed in helpless laughter had strapped a gun on in order to fight, kill, and mayb
e die for his country? How would a child comprehend any of that? But I must have understood something about the significance of the moment to have stored it away for so long. I thought I felt my father’s presence, there beside me, and tears started to come again.
For Christ’s sake, get a hold of yourself, I thought. Not a good time for a breakdown. I tried to regain control, but some barrier had been broken and there was no holding back the tide of memories that rose from somewhere deep in my subconscious. I took a shaky breath and crossed the bridge, feeling better once I was moving, invigorated even. It was as if, now that the wall had burst, I’d been released from the burden of supporting it. I picked up my pace and let the images wash over me.
I thought about the day I left home, the last time I’d seen Josef. I’d looked back just once, and saw his face in the window of the attic room we shared. Neither of us made any gesture to mark my departure, but I thought I saw a smile on his face, probably the result of the newly acquired armies he held under his arm. Then, when I turned away, I left it all behind. My parents, who I loved dearly, were both gone, but I felt no overpowering grief or sadness—just an unrelenting emptiness that I interpreted as resolve. The world would never betray me like that again.
I thought about the disparate paths Josef and I had taken since that day and wondered what he had been like as a young man. He would’ve been just fourteen when Hitler came to power, the same year that the Nazis fed “Marxist” books to a bonfire at Berlin University. He could have easily joined the mob, like most of his generation, but he chose instead to read the books. When he was fifteen the first Jews were shipped off to concentration camps, along with forty-five thousand socialists. Perhaps he had already joined the Communist Party by then and had to hide from the police, or maybe his sympathies were still forming. He had fallen out with his adopted father over his beliefs. Had the Fascist postman betrayed him, maybe even reported him to the authorities? Life in Nazi Germany in the late thirties would have been hell for a young Marxist. He must have been thrilled to arrive in Spain and find an international brigade of young idealists like himself, ready to change the world. They probably thought they could do it, too.