Good People

by Nir Baram

  One night, when they were drunk, he confided in Weller, who asked: Why don’t you write to her?

  He was silent, then explained that, when they parted, they decided Clarissa could live in his apartment if she wished, but since there was no knowing how long he would be gone, maybe a year or more, there would be no obligations between them, and she could see other men, with one reservation: she could not bring any men back to the apartment. The separation wasn’t coincidental. He didn’t want to make things difficult for her, especially if she had already given her heart to another man, and in fact he expected her to write to him about her feelings. Weller scoffed at this. How could Thomas display such faintness of heart in love?

  ‘The first letter must come from you. You’re the one who left Berlin, and your honour requires you to write to her. If you don’t want to know about other men, don’t ask. From my acquaintance with women, she will tell you.’

  All that weekend Weller urged him to sit down and write, and told Thomas stories about how he courted his wife. He seemed to be intoxicated with their new intimacy and began to give Thomas advice about becoming more aware of the little pleasures of life. He would like to find Thomas’s office empty once in a while, to hear that his friend had gone for a stroll along the river, to a fine restaurant, to spend time with a woman. Encouraged by Thomas’s nods, he peppered him with other questions. Why hadn’t he told him that he had been married? He never mentioned his wife’s name. Even more than that, Weller was interested in his mother: there was some little thing that wouldn’t let him rest, and he hoped he wasn’t going too far by raising the subject. He understood, of course, the tragedy that had struck Thomas with Frau Heiselberg’s death, but the few times he had mentioned his mother he had not said at all that she was no longer living. Thomas was sure, he said, that he had mentioned the terrible illness that had led to her death, and in any event Weller had attended her funeral. So it wasn’t as if he were concealing anything.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that you were hiding her death,’ Weller said, apparently taken aback by Thomas’s answer. He wanted only to remind Thomas that he regarded him as a close friend, and hoped that Thomas also trusted him, since true friends can help one another in situations like this. Silence fell, before Thomas announced that he had decided to write to Clarissa. ‘I wish to thank you, Weller, my friend, for your good advice and heartfelt generosity.’

  For two days he shut himself up in his room and wrote. He tried to be witty and imaginative and not too wordy. He polished the style and chose the most beautiful quotations.

  Clarissa’s answer arrived two weeks later. The letter wasn’t short, about six pages of dense handwriting, but the main point was in the last two pages:

  Thomas, dear, I think you are clinging to me because now, in horrible Warsaw, far from here, I’m a safe haven. (Father is shouting at Karlchen. He swore at the history teacher again. Father says that Karlchen is probably deranged. I’m getting out of here right away and going up to your apartment.) And to hold on to me, you’re taking a leap, maybe a leap of faith, like the one that some of the German people made in recent years, but yours is in the personal sense. It’s fine to leap, but some people fall, don’t they?

  I read your letter and didn’t understand it. Does it sound strange that things aren’t clear to the object of all the love you poured into your letter? They’re clear to you, and that’s exactly the point. I think you had a rush of blood, that your heart suddenly filled up. You love me so much now (Mother is shouting to Father to leave Karlchen alone. If Father doesn’t give in, I’ll have to intervene. Recently he’s been afraid of little Clarissa, no longer the girl they wouldn’t allow to read any novel that Mother hadn’t read first), but it’s a love that’s shut up inside itself. Maybe I’m the hollow one who doesn’t understand and can’t join in your leap of faith, but in my opinion, I’m right: your love is hollow. Maybe your Bildung will eventually lead you to love, truly, not in polished words from Warsaw.

  Only cowards love from a distance.

  I’m prepared for this journey. I’ll stand by your side. You are so dear to me. Sometimes at night I feel faint with longing for you, and all the men who run after me seem like children, remind me of Karlchen. I told one of them, ‘I’m talking to you, but it’s like you haven’t even been born yet.’ He called me a Hamburg peacock, and I answered that I’m proud of my pride. You know me, I can’t let anyone else have the last word.

  But I’ve strayed from the point: there’s something that comes before fulfilment. (Father told Mother that the teacher declared that Karlchen is backward, and in the end they’ll transfer him to an institution for children like that. Mother, the coward, is trembling: the same as they did to the Somers’ boy? They sterilised him. Father says that they wouldn’t dare touch his son, but in any case he has already spoken with a lawyer and a doctor who would represent Karlchen in court if something bad happens. But it would be better if Karlchen watched his behaviour.) You quoted Rilke to impress me, and that’s fine. Everyone here is quoting things all the time. But I didn’t understand that choice either. Those lines are beautiful, but according to you, we have evidence of our love: days flooded with sun, brass-plated bullets that disappeared, nights that we slept in the same house, and we shouldn’t ignore the splendid bouquet of crocuses you bought for my birthday. But what question are you actually asking? Are you asking me or yourself? Or maybe you’re asking the clever love that tricked you during all those marvellous, sun-drenched days in Berlin, when you were unemployed and we had plenty of free time—and which suddenly swept over you in faraway Warsaw (in my opinion Father is exaggerating to frighten Mother and encourage her to be strict with Karlchen).

  Thomas, my dear, maybe you should be strict with me?

  And at the end she wrote:

  On Wednesday a schoolmate of yours visited the apartment, Hermann Kreizinger. With his suntan and thrilling black uniform he looks like an American movie star. He’s funny. He imitates your laugh very well. He claims that it’s never exactly a laugh. I told him that you’re in Poland. He seemed pleased and said that it was quite a coincidence, since he had come to say goodbye. He’s been stationed in Poland. I told him that I wanted you two to meet, because you’re alone there, and he promised to make an effort to see you. That’s not enough, I scolded him. The man most dear to me in the world is feeling lonely in that horrible Warsaw. Give me your word of honour as an SS officer that you’ll spend some time with him. And he gave it!

  I couldn’t resist. I hope you won’t hate me. I asked him what kind of boy you were. Handsome? Sad? Popular with girls? He said you were good-looking, sometimes sad, and that you weren’t interested in your studies, you only cared about money and languages. How come you never told me you’re talented at languages? Since when have you been so modest? Hermann told me that your ability to imitate a foreign language is truly rare. In fact, he called it ‘a rare talent for imitation’. But I scolded him again: it isn’t nice to envy a friend. He apologised and admitted that maybe his way of putting it had soured his admiration. Then he boasted that you had trouble with the humanities, and that he helped you prepare for examinations. Is it true that in history and literature he was one of the three best students in the class? When we drank tea he told me how you used to sneak into hotels, you would be a Russian prince and he would be your personal servant. My dear! Where did you hide your playful side? When you come back to Berlin, we’ll do it together. I’ll be Princess Yeketrina! He told me that Frau Heiselberg objected to your friendship with him and accused him of corrupting her dear son, and he was very insulted. At first he seemed like someone who keeps a grudge just from habit, but afterwards I felt that the insult must have been really severe. Poor fellow.

  LENINGRAD–SOCHI

  WINTER 1939–1940

  Glowing trails of the city’s last lights swirled in orange and gold on the train windows. Why was she pressing her face to the cold glass like a peasant woman whose world ended where the potato fields
end? Perhaps because she hadn’t left the city in more than two years. Throughout her childhood she had sworn that by her twenty-first birthday she would be skipping through the streets of Paris and Berlin. At least Paris. Sasha looked up at the surprisingly starry sky, where gigantic columns of smoke and dust rose between her and the city. Far off in the fields she could just see a wagon driver, with two flaming torches fastened to the sides of his wagon. He was whipping a pair of black oxen. Next to him sat a boy, or perhaps a sack of potatoes.

  While her eyes groped in the darkness, her mind cast a light over the snowy shores of those tiny islands whose names she had loved to roll on her tongue: Aptekarsky, Krestovsky. Her grandfather had owned a dacha on Krestovsky. ‘It wasn’t luxurious,’ her mother admitted, ‘but very useful.’ That dacha was stolen from them in 1912, when her grandfather quit the Okhranka. ‘We were lucky that when the Bolsheviks took Petrograd we didn’t own anything except our house,’ her grandfather explained.

  Her hair tickled her nape. She gathered it in her right hand and in the same movement fastened it into a bun. Now her neck felt strange, naked. Her husband’s fingers, still greasy from the pirozhki he had gobbled down before falling asleep, touched the tips of hers. A whisper fled from his dream. He touched the white bandage. Every time he came near that bandage, she was stricken with a rage he couldn’t comprehend. He liked to find little things to be stubborn about, where he could refuse to compromise—possibly to show his strength and possibly, as in this instance, because he was convinced that the bandage was like a sacred thing for her. Once she had even hit him with her right hand and shouted that he must never dare to touch that bandage again.

  It was odd to have to do everything more or less one-handed, and even the simplest thing had to pass the test: getting dressed or undressed, picking something up, writing, leafing through a book, any action involving water. When she first came out of hospital, she refused to go near water, and it did no good to implore or explain. Helpless, Maxim swallowed his pride and invited Stepan Kristoforovich to their apartment to speak heart to heart with her, and remind her how anxious the department was for her to return to work. After that he amused her with stories about the new orders from the Kremlin regarding morning exercises. Concern for the workers’ bodies was now official, and even comrades on the verge of retirement were required to keep fit; he, for example, had been signed up for a course in jujitsu. The new boss of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, liked it. After Styopa’s visit, she allowed Maxim to wash her in cold water, having wrapped her hand in several layers of cloth. She wouldn’t go near the samovar, and every time she saw steam rising, even someone drinking tea, her mind seethed with images of the water bubbling furiously onto her body. There were days when she imagined that the rain was boiling.

  His fingers were stroking the bandage, that was clear. She removed her hand and pressed it against her belly. The train slowed; the smell of makhorka tobacco and heavy cigarette smoke descended on her. She got up and stepped over the sleeping passengers wrapped in their furs, looking for fresh air. Two girls sat at the back of the coach and chatted. Their legs, in tight white stockings, rested on the seats in front of them. They whispered, laughed and gave her a cheeky glance. She was tempted to sit and chat with them, to bridge, if only for a moment, the chasm that had formed with bewildering speed between girls like them and herself, a married woman employed by the NKVD. Just a year ago she had sat with Zhenya in a tram, wearing her thin beaded dress, as happy as those girls were and even more insolent.

  Two soldiers complained that the toilet was locked. They offered her a cigarette and asked where she worked. She refused the cigarette and asked where they were stationed. They were both army doctors. One of them had fought in Khalkhin Gol during the summer, on the Japanese front, and his arm had been wounded.

  ‘He was hit two hours into the war,’ his friend laughed. ‘Then he lay in the hospital for a month, sitting in a sauna and having the time of his life.’

  She congratulated them on the brilliant victory and stood near the window, which was covered in frost. Cold air blew on her face through the unsealed edges.

  All that day images of her first trip to Moscow raced through her memory, shattering into fragments, gathering together again, then scattering into atoms and striking her like a sandstorm. How many times a day could the same memory assail her?

  She is sixteen, it’s late at night, she walks hand in hand with Father. They approach the platform. She has goosebumps in anticipation of the great moment—her first trip on the Red Arrow, the greatest train in the world. In school they had devoted an entire lesson to the achievements of the engineers and planners, followed by stupid mathematical riddles: Sasha rides on the Red Arrow. Ulla Kleiss travels on a new German train, the Flying Hamburger. Because of friction on the tracks, the German train decreases speed by four per cent, while the Russian train slows down by two per cent, and there are all sorts of other variables too. (In the end she plays the smart aleck and submits a calculation that has the German kid arriving first, and at recess the boys threaten to beat her up. The truth is that her father told her that the Flying Hamburger leaves us far behind.)

  Father places the suitcase on the platform and wiggles his fingers, which have turned red from the effort of carrying it. She looks at his hand, amazed at how small it is. His fingers and hers are the same size. Her mind is still wearing itself out with dreadful scenarios in which something goes wrong at the last moment—her mother gets sick, there’s a crisis at the institute, she vomits on the platform. Meanwhile Father is impressed by the train: seventy kilometres per hour, one of the fastest on the continent! It looks gigantic and splendid to her. You could fit the entire city into its coaches. Father boasts again about Soviet industry, which is catching up to the West at an astonishing pace: ‘We’ve paid a high price, no doubt, but the achievements are enormous.’

  Soldiers in tunics, with raspberry-coloured squares on their lapels, ask for their travel documents, and Father shows them. Now it’s happening, Sasha is panicked. They’ll send us back home. But the soldiers are actually nice and wish them a pleasant journey.

  When they start checking other people, Sasha says to her father, ‘I want a beer,’ expecting he will be shocked, get angry and lecture her: little girls don’t drink beer. But he’ll have to acknowledge that she has drunk beer in the past, and she’s still here, and everything is fine. She’s not such a little girl anymore.

  ‘Beer?’ he answers distractedly. ‘There’s no time for that now.’

  She gets annoyed, and as if by accident she digs her fingernails into his hand. He loosens his grip. An aggressive thought provokes her: Okay, Father, that doesn’t seem to have been enough for you, maybe beer is a trivial thing, and she’s almost tempted to tell him about that morning, or actually about the day before, when she and Maxim Podolsky lay naked in his parents’ bedroom. A warm breeze blew through the window, and the sun gilded his muscular body. And she would immediately explain, listen, Father, we didn’t mean to cause a scandal, we just wanted to feel the breeze, and you can’t see the bed from the neighbouring apartments, Maxim checked. Aside from that, true, we were naked, but I only let him lick the upper part of my body, and I only kissed him on the lips. Mother taught me to be careful with boys: you have to refuse as soon as they ask, otherwise you’re swept along. It was so nice when Maxim licked my belly and my hips and my back. You always said those Chekists were thorough guys, so look, their sons are too.

  But she doesn’t have the courage to speak up, and says something under her breath about being in Maxim’s parents’ bed, until he scolds her, ‘Stop mumbling!’

  ‘Okay, Father, I didn’t mean to,’ she says softly, and they board the train.

  She went back to her seat. One of the girls had fallen asleep, and the other was playing with a piece of string, looking bored. That was what being young was like: after high spirits comes tedium, and all the mood swings make you dizzy. You can’t get off the roller-coaster,
and the only thing that ever changes is how much you doubt your sadness and joy. She didn’t envy their youthful lack of self-consciousness. How much time was left for them? She sat down next to Podolsky, who was snoring lightly. He buried his cheek in the hollow between her shoulder and her neck. He smelled her body in his sleep.

  She pushed him a little. He breathed hot air onto her neck, woke up, rubbed his eyes and complained that the coach wasn’t heated. ‘Stepan Kristoforovich should have reserved seats for us in the international coach. There you sit four to a compartment, the seats are upholstered in plush, and waiters serve you wine and cake.’ She didn’t answer, and he fell asleep again. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth.

  On the right, the platforms of Novgorod station shone, and their light fell into the coach. It disturbed some of the dozing passengers: arms were stretched, there was coughing and nose-blowing, faces numb with sleep turned to the right and left, people groped in valises. Her husband slept on.

  The train stopped. The two girls got off without any bags, and the soldiers followed them. From the platform passengers bundled up in coats stormed the train, carrying heavy suitcases, pursued by whistling gusts of wind. A short man in stained overalls held the hands of two young girls wearing hats whose ribbed edges hid their eyes. Tattered wool blankets were wrapped tightly around their bodies. They tried to push through the dozens of people mobbing the train and were shoved back again and again. What scrawny girls! She was alarmed for them, wanted to shelter them from the wind, sit them down at a table in a warm room and fill their plates. Maxim! She remembered him greedily eating that pirozhki while tens of thousands of children went hungry in this country. The cold pierced her; she knew the deceptively drowsy pace of the cold cruising through you, from toe to temple, till suddenly you couldn’t move.