by Uwe Johnson
Once we can touch the telephone again, the young lady from the phone company tries to make a fuss about our disavowal of any long-distance calls that might have been placed from this number since this morning, whether to Eugene, Oregon, or Yokohama, Japan. What’s that, you want official confirmation? Please remain on the line. Ne quittez pas! Here’s a representative of the Twenty-Third Precinct.
It was still light out, we’d cleaned up the broken things and shard-filled sludge, laid out the mistreated books on spread nets like wounded birds; in came Jason, looking somber. He had pulled himself together, out of the shame of this having happened to us under his watch, above his very head! for he’d been in the building all day. With him came Eagle-Eye Robinson, bashfully feeling the crispy furrows of his hair with his fingertips—he should have been keeping watch. Together they measured the shattered door and spent till midnight putting in a similar one, admittedly numbered 1201 but freshly cloaked in steel, with an undamaged lock and a chain latch attached to the wall with rivets. Since such installations make noise (i.e., so that tenants next door might remain unaware that we’re treated like favorite children), they invited us downstairs to the super’s office, to watch TV, some ice tea for the younger of the ladies.
We both decided we’d rather take a walk. Passed from the shady Hudson, through the catacomb tunnel under the Henry Hudson Expressway, to the Eighties on Riverside Drive and back. Maybe we were looking for Marjorie. (If, Mrs. Cresspahl, the city of New York has ever done you harm or made you suffer . . .) It was too late at night. She was nowhere to be seen.
July 30, 1968 Tuesday
The Soviet Politburo, largely unlocatable since Saturday, emerged yesterday morning, nine men strong, in fifteen green sleeping cars that a red, yellow and green diesel engine pulled across the damp wheat fields in Czechoslovak territory from Chop, a Soviet border town, into Cierna, led by the party chief, Leonid I. Brezhnev, who was greeted at the brick station by Alexander Dubček and fifteen of his advisers. Kisses? Embraces? None. A three-and-a-half-hour meeting, then each delegation ate on their own in their own train.
No communiqué unless we fish one out of Pravda, which informs the hosts, scout’s honor, that: the Soviet Union supplies their country with virtually all its petroleum, four-fifths of its iron-ore imports (border crossing point: Chop/Cierna), 63 percent of its synthetic rubber, and 42 percent of its nonferrous metals. Soviet prices are also more advantageous to Czechoslovakia than ones in the Western markets, where favoritism and discriminatory trade practices are rife.
Unless we bend our ear to the NY Times. This energetic lady, with her hypnotic compulsion to research every angle, opines: a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia would be a disaster for the French Communists. But she also concludes, on the evidence that the Soviet government has banned its own journalists from traveling to Czechoslovakia, that its own propaganda is a fabrication. But what if the Soviets only wanted to protect their reporters—a valuable cadre—from a future where people visiting Prague might have one or another hair on their head harmed?
On the first day of school after the Whitsunday trip, those who returned were given their welcome, along with those who’d stayed home to pen a love poem to Comrade Stalin, or to TBP, or to a girl he’d noticed sun-bathing as he peeped through the gaps in a gooseberry hedge. At first many failed to notice the welcome. Gneez, like Jerichow, was covered with posters—why would they notice the DIN A5 sheets plastered on the glass in the main entrance of the Fritz Reuter High School and in rows at eye level around the walls of the building? They showed members of the Free German Youth, in formation, the color blue all too recognizable as well as the question to the FDJ’ers: What are you marching for? The desired answer came so automatically that Pius hadn’t bothered to keep reading and had forgotten all about the handbills by the start of second period; Gesine too. Equations with two unknown variables, with three, can challenge the free German youthful brain, distracting it.
Then, right into the middle of the math problems being rehearsed under Mrs. Gollnow, burst Bettina’s voice from the loudspeaker—hoarse, despondent, desperate, brittlely harsh. All students are to remain in their classrooms, ignoring any bells. Teachers currently in the room are in charge.
It was evening, a late-May twilight, before the last students were let out onto the street. The criminal police (D Squad) started their questioning with the seniors, so six hours passed before 10-A-II’s turn. At first Mrs. Gollnow conducted class as usual, finishing the day’s planned lesson; then she offered extra one-on-one tutoring to anyone who wanted it; eventually she started telling what she called “tales” from her life. What it was like at Leipzig University; her correspondence with the writer Joachim de Catt, who went by the pseudonym Hinterhand. The windows were wide open; there was plenty of air; around noon the 10-A-II classroom started to feel like a prison. A merry one, for a little while. For Dr. Gollnow—who to universal gratitude decoded her first initial for us: Erdmuthe—would rather let us see her as an ingenious person than do without out of pride any longer: she was a smoker, and admitted it. Referendum: permission to smoke in the confines of a room meant for educational purposes. Inventory: all available tobacco products. Communist distribution: to each according to his need, not his merit. Still, by around two o’clock the filterless Turf cigarettes
Thousands Under Russian Flags.
Thousands,
I tell you.
as well as the hit-or-miss imitation Americans were gone, and secret terror was creeping up to our throats, since Gollnow had banned all speculation about the quarantine. Something must be going on out there that affected the whole student body. Was Gneez in flames?
At around three o’clock, a doggedly uncommunicative Loerbrocks, guarded by a civilian unconnected to the school, handed out rolls from the cafeteria: dry bread with no water or soup; before long it hurt to swallow it. The silent guessing, the confused (sometimes scornful) questioning looks, the helpless shrugs; it soon got hard to keep up one’s confidence. Anyone who needed to go to the bathroom could give two knocks on the classroom door; they would be let out, but accompanied by a male or female officer, who refused to say anything. In 10-A-II they started calling students by seating position, not alphabetically (did the school office have a copy of the seating chart?). So Gantlik came before Cresspahl, Wollenberg before Pagenkopf, and no one came back. Cresspahl was the last person waiting with Gollnow, who had run out of anecdotes and whispered something about Good luck!, as if this student might be in particular need of it. A burning, hungry look had come into Dr. E. Gollnow’s eyes.
Gesine did have good luck. In the hall she saw the single raincoat abandoned among the countless empty hooks and she slipped it on as if it were hers. She felt paper in a pocket; while waiting outside the principal’s office she was even able to read some of what was written there in block letters. Elise Bock’s job was guard and watchman; she gave the student a soothing look and had already snatched the scrap away when the incoming call rang the bell of her phone. Shadows of trees behind Elise’s back.
That was neatly done, Anita. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The cops first covered 10-A-II as a whole, with TBP smack bang in the middle of it. But you’re the target.
I went numb racking my brain trying to figure out why.
They wanted to know if you were mad at the state. Over the shitty deal the founders thereof gave your father. Fünfeichen and all that.
Always direct and to the point, our Anita.
Since I was in a hurry. Also if you’d skipped the Germany Rally so you could secretly go to West Berlin—
Where I don’t know anyone except a German shepherd.
—and collect handbills showing free German young people marching under and behind barbed wire.
So that’s what I get for serving in the FDJ.
They don’t give a rat’s ass about that; if anything it’s a strike against you, Gesine.
Which is why you hid behind block letters.
A student stepped into the principal’s office, the interrogation room, with head lowered, braids feeling heavy; she barely lifted her head to look at FDJ Comrade Selbich, who was staring at her from behind her desk, fists clenched, and who jerked her head toward where the visitors were. A set of upholstered chairs, confiscated from the Bruchmüllers; on one a Mecklenburg man with the badge of the Unity Party on his lapel, almost too tired to take the trouble to be crafty; next to him a young man Bettina’s age, who would have plunged Lise Wollenberg into a fit of jealousy if he picked another lady instead of her—a gentleman. Fabric of elegant cut on his chest, knees showing off the creases of his freshly ironed pants. A stern, mocking look which said: Don’t worry, we’ll get you too. The student said: My name is Gesine Cresspahl, 10-A-II, born on . . .
– There are serious matters, ver-r-ry serious matters that we have to discuss with you . . . : this upright citizen began, in a mix of Platt and High German—the nice uncle who doesn’t like punishing anyone, unless it be deserved, or needed. An upraised palm stopped him in his tracks, like a well-trained animal: – . . . to discuss with you: he said again, using the formal pronoun: We wancha to see right off that we’re treatin you with all due respect. Tenth grade, all that horseshit. Now, you probably know where Hans-and-Sophie-Scholl Street is in Schweri-en?
If that’s all you want to know, Mr. . . . (no name given to fill the pause). From the main train station in Schwerin you take a right onto Wismar Street, in other words south toward Stalin Street, continue to St. Mary Square, now called Lenin Square, where the Dom Ofitserov is, and, to the east, the arcade to the palace, known and loved across the country. Past that, Kaiser Wilhelm Street, nowadays the Street of National Unity, branches off to the right, still heading south, and leads to Count Schack Street, going right and left. That’s the shortest way, I think. Count Schack Street, every young Mecklenburger knows that address—that’s where you go dancing, at the Tivoli! There are only twelve numbered buildings on that street; the municipal health insurance building used to be there, part of Mecklenburg State Insurance, and Pastor Niklot Beste lived at 5C, he was a member of the High Consistory after the war, state bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Mecklenburg State Church after 1947. Count Schack Street is part of the original Schwerin suburbs. Adolf Friedrich von Schack, born in 1815 in Brüsewitz just outside Schwerin, member of the Munich School of poets starting in 1855, made a count by the Kaiser in 1876, died in Rome (Italy), 1894. His epic poem Lothar. . .
How happy, I! Oh childhood bliss,
The golden days of life’s sweet dawn!
A light we in our blindness miss,
Last glimpse of infinity shimm’ring on,
It shines upon thee yet!
Those who cherish this opus know all about his street, whatever name it now bears. From the left, eastern half, you can look down toward Castle Lake. In New Mecklenburg, this part was renamed for the Scholl siblings.
– Shut UP, Gesine! Shut up already! She’s making fun of you, Comrade, this brat, this . . . bitch!: Bettina Selbich shrieked, raising and shaking her fist so that her blue shirt seemed to flutter all over. The local interrogator’s partner was up in a bound, sending a whiff of fruit over to the accused, who sat there looking as meek and contrite as could be. This stranger busied himself about his comrade. Your nerves, my dear lady. It’s been a long hard day, a blow to our World Peace Movement, please calm down, perhaps out in the waiting room if you’d rather . . .
Thenceforth it proceeded as if tea were laid out on the low table with the crocheted doily, as if the lady being held there were constantly being offered cakes, a glass of sherry if she wanted. So, the student knew about the Scholl siblings? Yes, they were students during the time of the Nazis, Hans and Sophie, executed in February 1943 at ages twenty-three and twenty-two in Berlin-Plötzensee for having distributed leaflets at Munich University. – Excellent!: came the grade from the Sovietnik, glancing at his German trainee as though encouraging him to learn these dates too, though not with much confidence he would. – And we: he said, with a touch of delight, with clear amusement: We are from the M.f.S. on Hans-and-Sophie-Scholl Street in Schwerin. We are looking into the leaflets that arrived last night at the Gneez station and were handed over to a total of four distributors, one of whom patched up your high school. Perhaps it was you, Miss Cresspahl? Would you like that?
What followed was a back-and-forth of verbal blows, today I’d say: a squash game; but one with my skin at stake. (– Skin is always on the outside: a friend likes to say.) The only thing that made it easier was the fact that the tempo stayed the same, furious as it was, racing past the Mecklenburg minion as Achilles did the tortoise, thus numerous times, because an infinite series does converge on a finite sum, both in mathematics and out; a microphone from (the people-owned business) RadioTech had been placed, as a precaution, on the extended leaf of the cabinet:
And may I ask what M.f.S. stands for? Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, the State Security Service. Thank you very much. Don’t mention it, happy to help. Was the founding of the M.f.S. somehow skipped in Contemporary Studies? It was, as far as I can recall. The historic date of the law of February 8, 1950? Maybe because of the excitement over the Peace Rally trip to Berlin. Name of instructor responsible for the omission? The Bl—Bettina Selbich. Incidentally, we already know everything, FDJ Comrade Cresspahl, all we need is confirmation from you. / So, she claims as an alibi that she arrived in Gneez on the milk train, after the school had already been wrapped in paper inimical to the state? Since the freewheel on her bicycle is broken and you can’t get a replacement for money or coupons. There’s a little device to separate a driven wave from a driving one, trademark Torpedo, ready and waiting for Miss Cresspahl, you can get it at any bike shop in West Berlin. Denial of having made any shopping trips to West Berlin. But FDJ-member Pagenkopf seems to have no problem paying visits to that den of iniquity. Pagenkopf is well aware what he owes to his father’s position in the leadership of the Mecklenburg State Unity Party. And to himself? The FDJ class president does have a proper consciousness, yes. / Occasional overnight stays with the Pagenkopfs in Gneez due to arguments with her father? Not at all, he knows and agrees to it. Political agreement too? My father tries to understand the nature of contemporary events. With Miss Cresspahl instructing him? My father is not a talkative man, and also too weakened for extended conversations. Grandmother in the LDPD? Not an illegal party. Grandfather in custody with our Soviet friends? The proceedings are up in the air. A brother-in-law of Cresspahl’s in the West, working for a ministry? Not on speaking terms with the family. Cresspahl himself imprisoned, most recently in Fünfeichen? My father describes it as a verification; trust is good, control is better, as LENIN says. Excellent, and now here is a quotation from STALIN! “Never in world history has there been a party as powerful as our Communist Party—and there never will be.” Your grade in Contemporary Studies, Miss Cresspahl? B. Well, we’ll have to discuss that with our colleague Mrs. Selbich. / Please, what was your first thought when you saw these handbills! Visual advertising defeats its purpose if it irritates the viewer. You are criticizing the use of visual advertising, such as why smooth paper is available for it but only wood-fiber stock for school notebooks? Or that there is more fabric available for propaganda banners than consumer textiles? Oh, no, nothing like that; just that the fliers were keeping the light out of the front staircase. Why do you say “fliers” rather than “posters”? Because of the size of the paper. And now your second thought, if I may ask. The form of address. “Young friend!” No, it said “FDJ’er.” Like biker, gameplayer. To Mecklenburg ears it could sound somewhat childish, or maybe South German. The Red Biker bike messengers in Munich? No—modes of locomotion or athletics should be kept separate from the discriminating name of a youth organization which . . .Worth considering, I might pass that along to my s
uperior. All right, quick now, Comrade J. V. Stalin’s birthday? December 21, 1879, New Style, in Gori, near Tiflis, Georgia. Why “in Rome (Italy)”? Because there’s a Rome near Parchim, Mecklenburg, about four hundred souls, Mr. Inspector. / The advancing darkness invites us to respect proper form concerning two gentlemen and a lady alone in an interrogation. (– Hee-hee: bleated the Mecklenburg colleague.) Might we have a light turned on? At your service. Thank you. Look friendly, now, we are bringing in another witness. The principal? No need, she can mind the phone. My first interrogation—how different the dream is from the reality! Hello again, Mrs. Elise Bock; you, Selbich, get us some coffee, quick now. / Student Gantlik. Member of FDJ class chapter; employee of the local Red Army commandant. Student Lockenvitz says he got lost in Berlin. A new, strange city. Student Lockenvitz’s social origins? Something about farming in Prussian Pommern. This young friend’s attitude towards the government’s decision to hand his homeland over to the Poles? To the People’s Poland: is how Lockenvitz puts it. Jakob Abs, officially registered as living with Cresspahl, Brickworks Road, Jerichow, as a courier of leaflets from West Berlin? Of posters to paste up. Travels by rail on a free pass. After graduating with honors from the Locomotive Engineers School in Güstrow he registered for a course in Elements of Materialist Dialectics. The third tenet of this doctrine? The transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes. Railwayman Abs’s private life? Handball. His plans for the future? He’s a grown man, why would he discuss things like that with a seventeen-year-old girl! / Student Cresspahl comes to class in a white blouse. Blue shirt only for festive occasions. Turns up at school in a petticoat, dragging in the fashions of a declining empire. Completely incorrect: a petticoat is a woman’s underskirt. I hereby regret falsely accusing this FDJ friend of coming to class in an underskirt. In fact it was, out of vanity, a full, lightly starched skirt, made following illustrations in the democratic press. Student Gantlik has been found guilty of Protestant leanings. Well she is extremely interested in Max Planck; the physics here is way above Student Cresspahl’s head. Planck, the one stamped on the back of a West German two-mark coin? I’ve never in my life had a piece of Western currency in my hand; never seen it; no hide, no hair. Any liking on the part of Colleague Selbich for senior-year student Sieboldt? Only hearsay; it does look like she’s in love. Is it mutual? The principal was too young to have any influence on Abitur final grades. The principal seems to have it out for a certain someone. If only I knew why. Hypothetically, just between you and me? For myself. Psychology, is that it? and now, quickly, to your third thought upon seeing these criminal postings on the wall of the school, showing young friends in the FDJ behind barbed wire. Barbed wire? I never saw that.