by Uwe Johnson
It did help, moshno.
What did you think about?
I puzzled over the three boys in Red Army uniforms, one of whom was carrying gonococcus. Burning sensation when urinating, purulent discharge from the urethra—a man notices that, even during a war. So he knew what he was giving me.
And what did you read, Anita?
The kinds of things you read up on at sixteen when you’ve been told you have pyosalpinx, curable and infertility, permanent. That you’ll never be able to have children. Mayakovsky. Nado
vyrvat'
radost'
u gryadushchikh dney.
V etoy zhizni
pomeret'
ne trudno.
Anita stayed alone when she came to terms with the fact that if she went east she might reach the Havel River at best but never the Neman. She spent a school year staying by herself in the 10-A-II classroom while we had gym. If only she’d trusted Aggie Brüshaver. But she saw her as someone whom Christian marriage obliged to tell her husband, a man, everything.
“Anita the Red”: that stayed with her. Because she still went and helped Colonel Jenudkidse with the German language, now in the Barbara Quarter, behind the green fence taller than a man’s height. What were we supposed to think if not that she’d taken the Red Army’s side? While the deputy president of the 10-A-II FDJ group had a terrible time unloading at least three copies of Young World journal among her fellow students, Anita used issues of the Red Army’s Krasnaya Zvezda in Contemporary Studies class, even if it was from a subscription she shared with Triple-J. Her windy aunt now complained that Anita had recently started locking a certain room in the Weidling apartment behind her, both when she left and when she was there, merely because she was worried that the healthily boisterous lads, Gernot and Otfried, might damage her record player, and what was Anita listening to anyway, behind her locked door, allegedly without company? Tchaikovsky, every time. And the Red Army station, Radio Volga—the signal came in weakly from the Potsdam area. Insatiable was her curiosity about the Red Army of the Russian Workers and Farmers.
What she’d have to say to the latest news from the ČSSR would no doubt make sense to me. The Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership has rejected a meeting with their Soviet comrades and their followers in the latter’s territory, accepted one in their own. As though it wasn’t going to be a friendly match.
For the ČCP to make them rearrange their travel plans really is adding insult to injury. Why would they ever forgive that?
And they’re wanting to send troops to the Bohemian border with West Germany.
Do you hear what you’re saying? They want to send troops!
In Poland, three miles north of Czechoslovakia, they’ve driven up half a dozen army trucks with extra-high aerials, secured by two regiments of combat troops.
Gesine, if I were the Red Army I’d station myself in the Olza River valley too. It’s the easiest place, there are mountains all around. And what does an army need when it’s going somewhere?
A communications center.
You’re learning, Gesine.
“Red Anita,” too—this out of ethnographic error and prejudice. For while Anita continued to contribute more than her share to her aunt’s household budget (to keep her aunt in the household and herself with a right to the apartment), she did keep a little something to herself for purposes that were . . . should we say private? Yes, if that means: secret. First of all, she had to pay back Emil Knoop for the cost of her medication, at a rate of six to eight East marks per every last one from the “West” (– only death comes for free: Emil said in his jovial way, not noticing how she started at the word). Finally, acting as a businessman, he gave her work to do helping with his correspondence with the Soviet Armed Forces in Germany, where Jenudkidse’s help failed to reach. Her credit with Knoop she left untouched, even when she had to fool her hunger with oats and sugar roasted together with no fat. Then she would take Madame Helene Rawehn, fine apparel, Gneez Market Square, utterly aback with fabrics of pure wool and raw silk and terrify the young men of Fritz Reuter High School with grown-up tailored suits, with tight skirts a hand’s breadth above the knee, with sweaters of a kind worn this year in France or Denmark and due in Mecklenburg sometime around 1955 if they were lucky. Next to Anita, Habelschwerdt looked shabby and threadbare; but how do you ban a student’s appearance that’s comme il faut, if a little too elegant? It’s to encourage and awaken Dieter Lockenvitz, we thought at first; except he was precisely who she avoided. But she came to the class parties, accepted invitations from twelfth graders and eleventh graders too; she didn’t dance. A gentleman who escorted this lady home would find himself heading home with thanks but no handshake. Anita received requests for much more than her towel; asked if she’d go for a walk at night around Gneez Lake she asked the young men their intentions so openly that they had no choice but to recognize as an imposition what they’d wanted to keep floating in the air above the promenade as a lovely dream. – What for? Anita asked, unmoved, businesslike, and raising her head with a slight jerk, lips pursed, clearly well aware of why and wherefore. She wore her blouses buttoned all the way up, with a thin velvet ribbon in a double bow; “Bitter Rice” was sometimes shouted after her anyway, alluding to another Italian film notorious for very different reasons. The Anita from before had worn knee socks; cured Anita made use of stockings, nylon, seamless.
“Red Pigtails.” She’d had her hair cut while still in the hospital. A short, close-fitting plumage, crisscrossing her forehead in well-judged fashion, was all that remained of her braids. Fiete Semmelweis Jr. had left two tiny stray strands at the nape of her neck that stuck out startlingly red under the outer brown, shifting against and over each other every time Anita turned her head even a little.
July 24, 1968 Wednesday
On Sunday we watched an old man being taken from the bus stop bench across from our windows into a Knickerbocker ambulance—a bum in rags and a long beard, recognizable from the two shopping bags that contain his worldly possessions. He seemed to be about to cause trouble so two boys in blue made him get a move on. Since yesterday he’s been back on the bench; he may live there. In return for giving back to society, needless to say, he entertains the waiting passengers: Eh, ma’am: he says: it was just that I ran into a syringe (points to his calf). So I had the police call me an ambulance.
His next sentence betrays the fact that he thinks he’s in Alabama, and he wishes us a pleasant river voyage on the Manhattan and Bronx Transit Authority bus. They’ve shaved him a little, by force it looks like; he’s a little cleaned up. He could use a shepherd and keeper besides the police department.
Anita, as a godmother.
Jakob’s mother gave the baby Alexander Brüshaver a sterling silver food pusher; – from Cresspahl an is daughter: she said, for completeness sake. Anita would’ve given a lot for the matching spoon; she stood by the cradle empty-handed, clenched her teeth, looked furious. Brüshaver thanked them both for their prayers; Anita didn’t yet venture to see any of her prayers as producing a result.
Easter 1950 was looming and with it a first birthday; Anita put a Scandinavian bicycle up for sale, 600 km on the tires but well cared for, in good-as-new condition. Pius offered her eight hundred marks, cash in hand; the next day she asked him to a parley, in private, as if it were a matter of life and death. Lockenvitz had bid up the price: Pius told us, and we looked at each other in disbelief, from under furrowed brows. Lockenvitz may have an A in Latin and another in English, but he didn’t have any money. Anita put down on the Brüshavers’ table, as if it were nothing, a silver napkin ring with DEUT4:40 – A. B. engraved on it. Mayest thou prolong thy days upon the earth.
1951. Anita had turned into the kind of person who needed to learn to knit for this child. A two-meter-long scarf.
In 1952 was our Abitur; Anita made a wall hanging for Alex, without paying much attention, because while tying the knots she also had to memorize that force causes a change in a body�
��s momentum m over time, following the equation F = dm/dt (according to Isaac Newton). Until he was ten Alex fell asleep to a color rendition of IL FAUT travailler – TOUJOURS TRAVAILLER. The only formula she trusted, at that point.
In West Berlin Anita lived in a grimy building two blocks from Karl Marx Street in Neukölln, on a rear courtyard, with Mrs. Machate. Look at that, Anita has learned how to hug. The room was so cramped that there was just enough space between the bed and the wardrobe to prop up an ironing board for the guest to sleep on. First we confessed that each of us had done all right in the past four years. Once it occurred to me that the Brüshavers might have named their last child in memory of a former neighbor, I had to spend until morning telling Anita about Alexander Paepcke, in death a comfortingly good man. (Because Anita wanted to trade and sleep on the ironing board, and I refused, we woke up midmorning and lay in the one bed.)
On Anita’s shelf in Mrs. Machate’s kitchen I saw artificial honey and margarine; she gave me good butter and expensive smoked fish to take with me back to Alex. She rode the streetcar with me to Baumschulenweg, as if she still had papers for the East; friendship was one thing, intrusive questions another. One of her errands in the “democratic” sector must have been to get the messenger through the pocket search of democratic customs officers. So that Alex would get his needs met.
Anita was relentless with the child. Until he was eleven he got an orange from her every fourth day—never candy or chocolate. An electric toothbrush when he was six.
In 1955 other children in Jerichow might have a schoolbag; Alex Brüshaver was equipped for his educational institution with a solid fountain pen. – Ballpoint pens have ruined all our handwriting: Anita said in her forthright way.
In the fall, Anita began her letters to Alex Your father Brüshaver is dead. In the letters she had to avoid causing any trouble with the officials who opened and read and wrote reports to the authorities on them; even so, I wished they’d been kept.
Anita had worked out a basic diet for Alex’s monthly packages, but she always thought of something she’d forgotten, something like band-aids. – Boys like to run around and they get scrapes!: she said, disgusted and angry at her prior forgetfulness.
And, inevitably with Anita, a children’s illustrated Bible. Since what Alex was learning via the printed word were texts from the people-owned People’s Knowledge Textbook Publishers:
Today the Young Pioneers are all on the meadow.
All are wearing the blue scarf.
“Be prepared!” some shout.
“Always prepared!” the others answer.
She owned a tasteful frame with a removable back for photographs of Alex. In 1956 she was definitely strapped for cash, with just enough to move near the university, but expensive enlargements of the Jerichow snapshots were a necessity. Once I noticed that there was no recent picture. Anita turned away. The photo showed Alex making the Young Pioneers greeting, with the famous triangle of scarf around the neck, hand to forehead, palm out, fingers clawed heavenward, promising his support to the oppressed of all the continents of the earth. How I had to beg to be allowed to see that one!
When Jakob had died and the funeral had happened, Anita the godmother treated me harshly. She thought my presence at the cemetery would have helped me. Since she was talking over an open phone line from West Berlin to Düsseldorf, she spoke vaguely. As if a doctoral student in Slavic Studies knew ways to sneak into Mecklenburg.
– There are factions in the Red Army too: she said.
Anita connected to a Soviet military mission? Carrying messages? She didn’t invite any questions.
In 1956 Anita already possessed a passport from the Republic of France, and it finally occurred to her: A boy needs a pocketknife with thirty-two attachments.
What a boy of eight could really use is a bicycle. So it was a good thing that the Gift Service GmbH, Genex, headquartered in Switzerland, was founded in 1957. Payment in Western currencies, deliveries in East German goods, but punctually, within the space of a month. Anita could even decide whether Alex should ride to the Baltic on a blue or silver painted frame, with or without a gearshift. (She avoided giving him unambiguously Western devices. Alex should grow up without the envy of other children, without warnings from schoolteachers.)
She suppressed any missionary impulses. She worked hard to forgive her classmate Cresspahl for leaving the Evangelical Church almost as soon as she’d found a paying job “in the West”; she even forgave her her argument that the Church has it so good uncontested under capitalism that it doesn’t need a tax to help it out. Anita confidently expected that the child Marie would be given a Christian baptism; if she was upset and disappointed, it was for our sake.
In 1959 Alex Brüshaver was safely doing the right thing in school. He came in first in an essay contest and won a toy: a battery-operated tank, in olive battle color, that could roll on its treads and swing its cannon to face the class enemy at the same time. To strengthen Alex’s will to defend the homeland. You’d think a child would love such items of mechanical art. Anita wasn’t sure, and asked. He sent her a postcard with a picture of the East German custodian on one side, and on the other he’d dedicated the following to her:
What use is it to dream of peace?
Who defends the young state?
The doves themselves need armor,
That’s why I am a soldier.
In his next mailing the thing itself arrived, in wrapping paper and olive-green ribbons. For years to come, Alex stood up every morning in school to hoist the flag and recite the slogans, the Song of Rebuilding included. “Youth, awake and rise up! Build up, build up, build up!”
In 1960, Mrs. Brüshaver was kicked out of the Jerichow pastorage but was given two rooms near the Rose Garden in Gneez. Anita took two weeks off to travel to Mecklenburg with paint, to help set up a widow’s apartment, to spend fourteen days with Alex. (Whenever Anita considered a legal regulation unreasonable, she got around it without a second thought. Anarchism? Stubbornness? Mischief?)
Before we moved to New York there was a vacation Anita invited us to spend in West Berlin. For self-interested reasons, she insisted. She’d been going out with an émigré from the lands of Karelia for years, and now he wanted it in writing that they belonged to each other, and she wanted another woman to check him out first. Sometimes a godmother needs a godmother of her own. I had to swear to her twice before she entrusted me too with the explanation of why she would never in her life have a child besides Mrs. Brüshaver’s in Mecklenburg. She’d told her boyfriend—he wants to be known as “the old man,” nothing else—in their first year; she still wasn’t sure if he was truly willing to forgo reproduction. The old man and I—he passed the test, we came back from a daylong walk through the Berlin woods near Schulzendorf, Anita was sitting with Marie in the Old Tavern garden in Dahlem. Marie was startled, the wind or she had knocked over a full glass. Anita was explaining the course of events to her. – Le vent: she said: vous comprenez? – Le vent: Marie said: vous . . .
The other matron of honor was Mrs. Brüshaver, – because I’m closest to hand now: the gallant lady felt. But the truly closest was Alex, twelve years old, in his confirmation suit and tie. So Anita had two children at her wedding. Protestant, of course, what else.
Anita watched the children, who were bored by the ceremonial meal, passing the time with pen-and-paper games. Anita wrestled down her prejudice and cried out: They’re both good children!
For many years Marie thought of Berlin as a city flooded with breezes and sunlight, where you go to get married.
After the authorities in East Berlin built a wall through Berlin to keep their citizens from continuing to vote with their feet, Anita is said to have used a bar on Henriettaplatz as a travel agency that helped people cross the borders of the other Germany. She denies it. The bartender on Henriettaplatz had a different name, she says; that bartender was just twenty-four, had problems with her relatives . . .When Anita wants to she can easil
y look four years younger, even today. And she doesn’t care much about names when they’re printed on official paper, we know that.
Whoever it might have been, I took trips for Anita after I lost my job in New York. I tried out passports in transit from Prague to Warnemünde, from Trelleborg to Vienna. During these trips my name was often that of the people about to take these trips, and I pleaded an age that wasn’t my real age too, just as Anita requested.
By 1962 the East Berlin philosophers had convinced themselves that cybernetics was a science and a tool, not an instrument of capitalist exploitation; Alex had long since been the owner of a beginner’s computer-science handbook. Likewise books that state who actually invented the telephone. For reference.
At fourteen Alex was conceited. Couldn’t pass a shop window in Gneez without checking his reflection. Making sure the dark lock was curled on the right corner of his brow. Anita was worried. – Who’d he get that from?: she asked (in letters to New York).
She sent him the American gold miners’ pants with the studded pockets when he asked for them. Then, since she happened to know his size, she had a khaki-colored linen suit made for him. Anita won that round.
At sixteen Alex started smoking. After 1962 a citizen of the GDR could purchase Western tobacco products at domestic stores, the Intershops, assuming he or she could put West German marks or American dollars on the counter in such establishments. Anita sent her godchild no cash. Cf. Gneez Lake, “Lucky Strikes” from Bulgaria or was it Dresden?
In 1966 Alex was seventeen and signed his name “Alexander.” He sent a photo from a trip to Poland, from which a round-headed Mecklenburger looked out at us from under curly tousled hair, with soft lips, but somber. His broad shoulders, wet from swimming, were like Anita’s. Still, it bothered her that this photo might have been taken by a girl. – He’s still just a child!: she cried.
The next year he was eighteen, of age under East German law, and for his birthday he was informed of two things. First, that as the son of a pastor he would not be permitted to study at the university (mathematics). Second, that he was invited to fulfill his military service requirement in the defense and protection of his Socialist fatherland. Anita had predicted the first; she was prepared for the second.