Anniversaries

by Uwe Johnson

  Then came the ploy that experience had taught him was sure to draw cheers and applause, prepared beforehand with volume, pacing, and intonation marshaled properly: in words straight from Berlin, from the party’s own mouth, manly opposition to the Soviet foreign minister and his recognition of the Oder-Neisse line: Our position, though, must be defined on the basis of German interests—Molotov is pursuing Russian policy!

  – More than that: cried the evening’s speaker: we need not say! Our party—pursues—German policy!

  And at that point one of the Twins had to take his arm. He hadn’t noticed that some people were crying down on the market square. Someone had fallen down too.

  The rally was concluded by Alfred Bienmüller, as mayor and local chairman of the Socialist Unity Party. The guest speaker from district headquarters didn’t understand everything he said, since he was still somewhat dazed; in addition, Bienmüller’s variety of High German grammar left plenty of room for slipping into Plattdeutsch cadences.

  – You all hadda good laugh at me: Bienmüller said. – We told you, didn we, that a kind and humane great power like the Sooviet Unron wouldn ruin a people just for territorial gain, righ’? Seems to me, seein’ how even our Swede here didn . . . all right, Mr. Duvenspeck! You all laughed at us. Wouldn believe us. Now youve all heard it for yerselves, ya numskulls. And you know who youve heard it from! It wont just be good news for our refugees that theyll be allowed to go home again, lets givem a little good news ourselves. Since we havent given em much a that before. Shut yer trap, you! Now one more thing. Theres some rumors been goin round. We know whos been starting em too, and weve been payin the child support. Theyre not true. Theyre sayin that if a city gets too few SED votes the people therell get less on their ration cards, less coal, and less of everything that isnt there. As true as I’m standing here and reading that from this here piece of paper, that’s how truly I’m going to rip this piece a paper to pieces right in front of you, that’s how truly it isn’t true! Thats not how we wanna win your votes! Look at us, look, an then vote! Im not sayin this from the party, Im sayin it myself, as mayor. Now quiet! No one here . . . . This meeting is adjourned.

  And so the Gneez district councilman lost his election. In Mecklenburg as a whole, his party got 125,583 fewer votes than in the test run in September. He’d have liked to blame it on Bienmüller’s closing speech but couldn’t, on scientific grounds. Because, look, in Jerichow his party got a percentage of the vote equaled only in two, maybe three other Mecklenburg communities—more than seventy percent.

  He never got his revolver back. That was definitely a loss, one his feelings could latch on to. Only it wasn’t the real loss. What was it he’d really been afraid of?

  Nowadays, when a leading member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party gets an anonymous letter in the mail, reviling him as a Jew and threatening that his days are numbered, what does his party’s newspaper—Rudé Právo, “Red Law”—do? It prints the letter in its entirety, and he is allowed to respond to it just as openly. What is he allowed to respond? That anonymous letter writers like this only unmask themselves by adopting the tone of 1952. And what happened in 1952? That’s when Rudolf Slánský was executed in the name of the people. We learned that in school.

  June 25, 1968 Tuesday

  The Czechoslovakian delegation to the national assembly explained to the Soviet Union, clearly and logically,

  “that the conditions under which we began to build our socialist country after February, 1948, have changed and that the qualitative changes that have taken place in the economy as well as the socialist structure of our country called for rectification of mistakes, shortcomings, and deformations of the past and a modernization of the economy that has fallen shamefully behind.

  But the new realities require a great deal more. They require a transition to a democratic, humanitarian and popular concept of socialism not only in the economy but also, and primarily, in public and political life, where socialism must provide new, wide-ranging concepts of rights and freedoms for the individual as well as society as a whole.”

  The Soviet comrades showed considerable tolerance for these explanations, perhaps placated by their choice of words. But it may also be true that one of these words got brought up too often. They listened with a certain lack of enthusiasm. Their leader—and no one denies this—had tears in his eyes.

  The October 20, 1946, Mecklenburg parliamentary elections produced three results.

  I.

  On the night of October 21–22, the Red Army came out from behind its fence and paid some visits in Gneez. They parked large trucks so quietly at various locations around the city that the ensuing events that night went virtually unnoticed. Where the patrols entered a home they hauled off whole families. Accusations of harsh treatment are not appropriate, since the soldiers consistently helped the affected parties pack their bags and carry any item they wanted, from the kerosene lamp to the oak sideboard, down the stairs and loaded them carefully into the trucks. This took place repeatedly in some buildings, on other streets not at all. Toward morning, when the reports from eyewitnesses started overlapping and the relocators themselves were in passenger trains well on their way to the new eastern border, the conjecture was bruited about that this had been just another instance of the Soviet national character—impulsive, arbitrary. On the contrary. Comparing the eliminated addresses revealed that they all, although widely dispersed through the city, had two things in common: first, the departed residents had all had residence rights for at least five years—they were locals, by no means refugees (resettlers); second, the male heads of households had without exception been employed in the Arado factory by Gneez Bridge station. The Arado factory had been in a special category of war industries, because for one thing it had made rocket parts for the Peenemünde army testing site. As for the other thing, the prefabrication of parts for Ar 234 jet bombers, those behemoths with four BMW 003 engines—we’ll keep that to ourselves. Any conclusion to the effect that the plant’s dismantling and the rounding up of its labor force had logically followed from the rules of war must be rejected as rash. There was no way these actions could have been intended as an ethical favor to Great Britain, which had been harmed by the Peenemünde rockets, since the victorious powers had each reserved its own zone of occupation for dismantling and confiscating industries by way of reparations and—we must emphasize—the British had, during their provisional administration of West Mecklenburg, confiscated blueprints of the Arado Works for their own use, as war booty; the capitalist bandits hadn’t even shied away from encouraging scientifically trained workers at that factory from coming with them when they were forced to exchange their Mecklenburg territory for the British Sector of Berlin. Moreover, nothing was dismantled near Gneez Bridge on the night of October 21–22, since, under the SMA’s Order No. 3 of June 25, 1945, the machinery, assembly lines, cooling facilities, etc. of the Arado factory there had already been dismantled and removed to the Soviet Union on July 5, immediately after the Red Army entered Gneez. In this regard, we cannot warn strongly enough that re-hashed horror stories about piles of telephones in the courtyard of the Gneez post office being heaved onto army trucks with pitchforks, and other such tales, are to be avoided. The dismantling of Gneez-Arado took place under the supervision of a diplomaed (engineering science) high-school teacher attached to the Soviet rocket troops with the rank of colonel—that is to say, were carried out with the utmost care. Proof of which is the cataloging of the equipment: after each written entry, every machine was photographed three times: at rest; being operated by its trained worker; and finally from the rear, again attended by its operator, who was required to appear in the photograph visible from hair to toe. In this connection, one should also recall that the city’s carpenters had turned their entire stock of lumber into custom-made crates, and been given orders to spend two whole days making wood chips, not as waste but as the product itself. The Arado factory in Gneez had had its power completely turned off in ear
ly August. Certain bourgeois elements bring up as a counterargument that the remaining workers didn’t abandon the factory at that point and began manufacturing primitive tools from the leftover materials, supplying the population from September on with rakes, spades, stovepipes, pots, pans, metal combs, and rulers, or at least carrying out repairs on such objects. To which we must reply in the sharpest possible terms that in a great many cases the People’s Police were unable to determine the origin of the material used (aluminum sheets for rabbit hutches!), and that the factory, situated in a country town as it was, carried out every imaginable kind of blacksmith work except for horses; that the man in charge of the factory, Dr. Bruchmüller of the CDU, who was elected in an illegal and arbitrary way, has not been cleared of the suspicion of having made off with whatever tools and tradable items were left in the Arado factory before the second dismantling in November of last year; that (here we come to the fourth and fifth points) . . . the greater part of production went to fill private orders; and that the members of the former Arado factory at Gneez Bridge were sabotaging the circulating currency organized by the SMA with contracts stipulating payment in kind. The deportation of former factory employees can be considered just punishment on that account alone, permission for families to move with them as merciful. Since there can be no question that the above is true, not to mention any alleged contempt for the Fascist capitulation terms, the word Osavakim circulating among the population can only be rejected as enemy propaganda seeping over the border from the Western occupation zones. Those who allowed the interpretation of this Soviet word as an acronym for “Special Authority for Carrying Out Dismantlings” to get out should have their heads chopped off. (And anyone blabbing about how it’s really something quite different—Osoaviakhim, “Obshchestvo Sodeystviya Oborone, Aviatsionnomu i Khimicheskomu stroitel'stvu SSSR,”

  for the Promotion

  of the Defense,

  Aviation,

  and Chemistry Industries

  in the USSR,

  deserves to have more chopped off than his head.) Any and all further inquiries from the Free German Trade Union Council shall be met with the response that five-year labor contracts have been concluded with every displaced family and the Soviet trade unions will be looking after their interests henceforth. Copies of these contracts can be forwarded on request. The narrow circle within which this discussion is taking place permits us to subject the tactical discernment of the Soviet Union and the Red Army to a well-meaning appraisal. If our friends had undertaken such a vitally necessary measure during the run-up to the parliamentary election, the results in the Soviet occupation zone would have been comparable to the vote counts in Berlin, where the SPD, under the protection of American and British bayonets, is still capable of opening its maw wide and receiving 63 seats out of 120 in total, whereas we could score only 26. By now the light must have dawned on even Comrade Schumann about why he’s spent the last few weeks scared shitless. Yes, if only! The fact is, the Red Army did not invite these citizens from Gneez to the Soviet Union during the election campaign, or even one day before the vote. No, it was one day after the vote. Comrade District Councilman sure knows how to talk convincingly about a debt of gratitude to the Soviet Union, but when it’s sitting right in front of his face he doesn’t recognize it. In conclusion, since the call to vote placed the securing of peace and friendship with the Soviet Union above all else, it is a fact that the former employees of the factory at Gneez Bridge turned in their ballots and voted as they did.

  II.

  There was a kink in the October 1946 census. Osavakim affected people not only in the city and district of Gneez but also in other Mecklenburg businesses of armament-strategic significance, and still further in the other provinces of the Soviet zone—for instance, Carl Zeiss and the Jena glassworks, the Siebel airplane factory in Halle, Henschel in Stassfurt, the AEG factory in Oberspree, Askania Friedrichshagen in Berlin, etc. The census was to determine who was home on the night of October 29–30, as well as what job they claimed to have. Thus the undertaking failed to detect a type of migration undetectable by statistical means. In addition, the results implied that fewer specialists in heat-resistant glass or electrical measurement equipment (GEMA, Köpenick) resided in the Soviet occupation zone than in the zones of the Western Allies, for natural reasons. Here sciences other than sociology must be summoned to our aid. In the city and district of Gneez, Osavakim had disseminated among the peace-loving population the conviction that the Soviet Union now, at the conclusion of what was after all a whole year, considered the demilitarization of their Germans complete and that their job census had proven that Soviet interest in military specialists was no empty delusion. Local rumor had it that anyone who volunteered for the Red Army as a mercenary in the war against Japan could count on like-new clothing, solid footgear, and regular meals. Here people’s hopes for the future might be summed up with the question that itself indicated a dual result: If I only knew where to sign up!

  III.

  The Gneez district councilman spent one and a half days in a prison cell under Gneez City Hall. The cause was a quarrel initially about a gun that Triple-J’s colleagues in Jerichow had taken from him. As it proceeded, Comrade Schumann unexpectedly, inexplicably even to himself, asked for Slata’s address. (Just to write to her.) J. J. Jenudkidse was generally considered a placid commandant, uninclined to malicious or even impulsive behavior. He had the young man delivered to one such address. Sixteen years later, in spring 1962, he who had been that young man tried to explain to a woman that this had been the end of his education, his final renunciation of private desires, the complete submersion of his self into the party. This listener wouldn’t have been a woman he was married to, but still, he would have mentioned neither Slata’s name nor her whereabouts. He is married. This will have been an evening in the palace gardens in Schwerin, after a concert of serenades. He won’t be going by the same name anymore. His last name would be the same as his father’s, except for two letters, while for his first name he would be called exactly what his mother wanted. Two days after the parliamentary elections of 1946, seven days before the census, he would have been summoned to Schwerin. His name would have been waiting for him there. Personnel Department at the state administrative level, Security Department at the central ministry level. He never returned to Gneez. I never saw him again.

  – But I, if I was coming along to Prague, I’d see him: Marie says. She’d see him. I’ll recognize him.

  All day long we’ve been waiting for the black rain that is finally hanging above the Hudson. At lunchtime the air was thick with humidity. Bonedry people acquired a second skin of sweat as soon as they set foot outside an air-conditioned building. It was impossible to calculate in your head anymore: 89 degrees Fahrenheit minus 32 times five over nine makes something or other in Celsius. The upper edges of the buildings shimmered. After ten blocks, Lexington Avenue itself was blurry; whether the whole thing would have melted away after twenty blocks remained an open question. Now, at nine p.m., rain has come down from the north with two short lightning flashes in its midst, which stab into your eye, short-circuit something in your brain.

  – The New York rain, I’d miss that: Marie says. (Children bring the rain with them when they travel.)

  June 26, 1968 Wednesday

  The Czechoslovak National Assembly has unanimously voted to rehabilitate those who were unjustly persecuted, jailed, and tortured since the Communist takeover in 1948. The sentences may be voided or reduced if the legal rights of the defendants were violated. Survivors are to receive monetary compensation, maybe a new party book for the dead victim. There are also provisions for compensation for physical harm suffered during imprisonment, for court costs, and for material loss. The responsible judges, policemen, prosecutors, investigators, prison wardens, and Interior Ministry employees face the loss of their posts and/or possible further legal punishment, it all depends. The party functionaries, or so-called political leaders, who ordered the
purges and persecutions are exempt from the new law. Nothing is going to happen to Antonín Novotný, who was there in the Central Committee of the ČCP since 1946. That’s good news for authorities of other nationalities as well.

  Every last representative of that National Assembly is the same as in Novotný’s days.

  Bad news for Karsch. In Palermo seventeen Sicilians and Italian Americans have been acquitted of having juggled with currencies and transported narcotics to the local Mafia or the American Mafia. Terrible news for Karsch. Now there’s at least half a chapter in his book he’ll have to plow over. The index is toast. No way he’ll finish by the end of July. Oh well. We won’t be like that about it.

  Today Mrs. Cresspahl laughed about Mrs. Carpenter.

  Mrs. Carpenter doesn’t know that. She can’t imagine anyone would, since she’d never do it herself. And there’s no way she could prove it.

  Mrs. Carpenter (“Call me Ginny”) is a young person of thirty-one, five foot four, size 4, shoe size 7 1/4, all estimated in American measurements. In appearance a tall, attractive girl with broad shoulders, pear-size breasts, narrow hips, regular features to the point where each half of her face is a mirror image of the other, framed by harmoniously wavy hair that used to be straight but was always as white-blond as it is now. What’s known on the Upper West Side as a Scandinavian type. She is rarely to be seen like this since she’s always in motion. When she’s driving she plays with the steering wheel, if only with her little finger; in any kind of conversation she moves a foot back and forth, stretches an arm, runs her fingers through her hair; when she walks, any onlooker is faced with a whirlwind of rapid attacks—jerking of neck, clutching of pearls, twisting of or rummaging through handbag, down to legs unheedingly hammering the pavement. On the tennis court this all seems connected to some kind of performance and so becomes enjoyable. Even when she’s reading the paper she’ll widen the whites around her narrow gray eyes to a surprising extent, as a display of attention, of presence of mind. When she isn’t paying attention to herself—when she’s observing some child’s nonsense, for instance, or when a first raindrop falls from a blue sky—the pretty monotony of her mask slips, revealing displeasure, what you might go so far as to call weariness of life; even that would seem only right, if not for the fact that her symmetrical features went crooked. Then the smile promptly returns. She thinks of herself as beautiful, desirable, ideal—others tell her so. Her calves might be judged flabby by a female observer; a European woman would be more likely to wrongly assume aftereffects from college hockey in Michigan. Anselm Kristlein spent half the length of a cocktail party unable to tear himself away from her long willowy neck, her deep alto voice, the earnest drollery she uses for verbal flirting; she is faithful to Mr. Carpenter in submissive fashion, almost as if incapable of doing otherwise. Once she brushes him with a smile, with girlish sympathy, with a delighted cry from across the room, it’s hard for him to imagine she has any secrets.