Fear of Mirrors

by Tariq Ali

  Karl hid nothing. He told his astonished interlocutors that German stability required a Chancellor controlled by the apparatus. Better a weak-kneed provincial than a loud-mouthed populist who excited hopes that could never be fulfilled. Only under the SPD could Germany use its economic muscle and exert a political pressure commensurate with its new-found status in the post-Communist world. He added, for good measure, that only a politically assertive Germany could rebuild middle Europe. The two men from the Bundestag were impressed by the zeal and self-confidence exhibited by the young SPD apparatchik. Like them, he was interested only in power. They could certainly do business with him. They asked him to come and meet their colleagues in a few days’ time.

  The same evening Karl went to an early evening drinks party hosted by the local boss of CNN in honour of a visiting dignitary from Atlanta. At least three government ministers, numerous ambassadors, the SPD High Command and other denizens of the videosphere. A senior colleague introduced Karl to Monika Minnerup, a young woman who could not have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old. She smiled and her almond-shaped eyes lit up like oil lamps. Karl shook hands and looked at her. She had a wide, sensuous face framed by short, curly black hair, thin lips and was dressed in a loose grey silk suit, which made any speculation on the shape of the body that lay underneath a bit difficult. She was a systems analyst at a big bank and she earned a small fortune. Karl was impressed. If it had been any other occasion he would have stuck with her, but his eyes began to wander above her head, trying to glimpse the famous and the powerful. He wanted to go and join the group listening to the Foreign Minister.

  ‘If you want to go and kiss arse, why don’t you piss off? I loathe making polite talk with small town careerists. Goodbye.’

  Monika walked away leaving him in a state of shock. His first instinct was to run after her, but she was already near the exit and, anyway, he told himself as he recovered from her impact, he really did want to hear what the Foreign Minister was telling the Americans.

  After graduating, Karl had wanted only one thing: to run away, to get out of Berlin as quickly as possible. Helge’s dash to New York had initially upset him. Bitterness had set in soon afterwards. He was angry with her for deserting him. She could have moved and set up a practice in Frankfurt. Why leave the country at such a time? Karl was genuinely puzzled by her choice of New York. Ultimately he’d convinced himself that it must be a lover. Fine, but why hadn’t she told him?

  He knew she wasn’t pleased when, in one of her letters, she referred to him as an ‘apparatchik on the make in Bonn, and working for an apparatus full of shit’. Her letter had made him laugh, but his sharp reply had led first to a ceasefire and then a total cessation on her part. She no longer wrote. Instead they exchanged greetings and indulged in small talk on the phone, once, sometimes twice a week.

  Karl sighed when he thought of his father. He was beyond redemption. Vlady was no bloody use at all. He lived in his own world, cocooned from reality. He had achieved nothing in his own life, apart from a few jargon-filled books on Marxist aesthetics which were no longer fashionable. In previous years, even though very few students had understood what he was trying to say, his books had been obligatory bookshelf decoration for left-wing intellectuals on both sides of the Wall. Nobody bought Vlady’s books any more. Karl felt completely alienated from his father. Vlady’s lifestyle – he still refused to dress properly – was a disgrace. His politics just left Karl speechless and angry. Why couldn’t the old fool understand it was all over? Karl had stopped arguing, but Vlady still had enough intellectual power to provoke and irritate his son. On the last occasion Karl had struck back, his voice uncharacteristically high.

  ‘It’s all over, Vlady! Finished. Unlike the phoenix, your DDR will never rise again. And I’m glad.’

  Vlady smiled.

  ‘So am I, but what has any of that to do with Marxism?’

  This time Karl almost screamed in dismay.

  ‘Finished. Finished. Finished! A utopia flushed down with the rest. How can Marxism exist, when it has been abandoned by its subject – the heroic proletariat? Can’t you and Helge understand? Marxists are nothing but flecks of foam on the dark blue ocean.’

  He, who had once been so close to them, now wanted to disremember his parents. He was building his own career. He had a time plan. Success, he told himself, was the quickest way to erase DDR memories, which still haunted him. Karl intended to be a member of the Bundestag in 2000 and Chancellor by 2010.

  This was ironic, given that he had never revealed any real interest in politics. His addiction was very new. He had chosen the SPD like one chooses a football team. There is a simple rule. If you stick with your team through bad times, there is a reward sooner or later. When he was young he had simply ignored the endless chatter about history and politics. He had loved his grandmother Gertrude. She had spent a lot of time with him, but not like the others. She always put him to bed with adventure yams, stories of heroism during the last war and the resistance to Hitler in Germany. Perhaps some residue from that time had made him prefer the SPD to the Christian Democrats. Perhaps.

  Karl wanted to start life afresh. He had seen an advertisement for a researcher’s post and applied, never imagining that he would get an interview, let alone the job. The Ebert Foundation had advertised for graduates. They wanted bright young things in their twenties, whose brains could be attached to computers which would then churn out documents for the policy staff at SPD headquarters on the Ollenauerstrasse.

  He had interviewed well. His cold-blooded critique of the DDR had impressed the two women who interviewed him. Unlike those of some of his competitors from the old East, Karl’s presentation was emotionless. No grandiose proclamations of freedom had spouted from his mouth. His approach was clinical. He had concentrated on the inability of the state-ownership system to deliver the goods. For him, the collapse was due to material shortages, an insolvent economy which exposed an impoverished ideology. It was this, he told them, that triggered the Fall, rather than any great yearning for abstractions like democracy and freedom.

  The women were impressed. They looked carefully at this tall young man in his dark-blue suit and grey bow-tie. He was clearly intelligent. His instincts were conservative. Everything about him – the way he took notes, the meticulous filing system in his briefcase – indicated a neat and systematic approach to work.

  They kept him talking for nearly two hours, but the only time he had shown any trace of emotion was when they asked whether he would have been equally happy working for the CDU.

  ‘Of course not!’ Karl’s voice was a note higher. ‘I am a Social Democrat.’ The older of the two women, Eva Wolf, a veteran of the sixties’ student movement, would have preferred it if this young man had displayed just a tiny sign of rebelliousness, but he did not, and she had shrugged her shoulders. These kids were different.

  In her written report on Karl to the Foundation, in which she recommended that he be given the job, Eva described him as the archetypal new model Social Democrat. She noted that he was ‘a complete slave to power, obsessed with one idea: how to propel the SPD into power. If it means developing ideas that are acceptable to the Bavarians, he is ready to prepare a draft; if it means ditching old party shibboleths, even at the cost of annoying our friends in IG Metall, he is strongly in favour.

  ‘When we asked him if he was prepared to move to Bonn within a few months, he smiled and said he was prepared to leave Berlin tomorrow. I think Tilman should have a long session with him and then we should make a final decision. Karl Meyer would be wasted as a researcher at the Institute. He should be given a position immediately in the Party apparatus. He thinks quickly but is not the sort who leaps to intuitive conclusions. Everything is thought out carefully. I am enclosing a copy of the speech he wrote when we tested him. You will notice a few original phrases. If Scharping can deliver speeches like this, who knows but we might even win.’

  Eva’s intuition on these matt
ers was greatly respected by her friends at Party headquarters. Within a month of joining the Foundation, Karl was safely settled in the research bureau of the SPD.

  One outcome of his move to Bonn was a strong personal friendship with Eva. Twenty-five years his senior, she had partially replaced Vlady and Helge in this crucial transition period of his life. She was the only friend with whom he could talk about his past. He told her about Gerhard’s suicide, which had upset him a great deal. Gerhard, who understood him, but was worried by Karl’s indifference to Marxist politics. Gerhard, who had taught him a song that began: ‘From the devil’s behind blows unrest/From God’s backside only boredom …’

  There were moments, Karl told Eva, when he used to wish that Gerhard had been his father. Perhaps it was Gerhard’s closeness to Vlady, the fact that they were political siblings, that had created the confusion in Karl’s mind. He had written to Helge several times about Gerhard, and she had responded warmly. To Vlady he had written nothing, and Vlady was the parent who really needed to talk about Gerhard. Karl sometimes wondered why he was punishing his father, but no satisfactory response was forthcoming.

  Eva always listened sympathetically. She was startled by the contrast between her young protégé’s emotional confusion and his political confidence. Last night, during dinner, she had both comforted and confronted him.

  ‘Everything has its limits, Karl. Everything. What a couple does for each other, what a father does for his son or the daughter for her mother. The fact is, you love your father much, much more than you ever acknowledge. Gerhard’s death has forced you to admit this to yourself. Yet you hesitate. Why? You’re hurt that your father didn’t help you when you needed him the most, but did you ever help him?’

  ‘Does Matthias ever help you?’

  Eva smiled. She often discussed her family with Karl. Even though she had separated from Andi, her film-maker husband, when she was appointed Head of Research in the German section of the Foundation, they remained friends. Matthias, her son, was a lead singer with an anarcho-Green rock band in Berlin. He was the same age as Karl. They had nothing else in common. Despite his awkwardness, Eva adored her son.

  ‘No,’ she said in reply to Karl’s question, ‘but then I don’t need him so much. Matthias is very close to his father. They have many defects in common. Their financial condition is never stable, but they manage somehow. I am never permitted to send either of them any money. They help each other. Both of them regard me as a traitor. Matthias has written a new song about a once-radical and uncontaminated mother who joined the SPD and now thinks impure thoughts. I’m told that Stefan Heym’s supporters were singing it in the streets during his campaign. Unlike you, Karl, my Matthias hates Bonn. Hence my monthly trips to Berlin. Soon you’ll be back in Berlin, too. I’ll be left all alone. Will Monika accompany you?’

  Karl blushed. How the hell did she know about Monika? The SPD headquarters were relocating to Berlin. Karl was dreading the move. Monika was only one reason, but how had Eva found out? He asked her.

  ‘There’s no mystery. I tried to reach you a number of times. Your colleague said you were on the phone to Monika. Is it serious?’

  ‘I don’t know … She’s very big in her bank, you know. They’re fearful that she might be headhunted and taken away by rivals.’

  ‘Is she on our side?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s not interested in politics. All politicians are liars, shits and scumbags. Her words. She spent a year in San Francisco. Her grandfather was a colonel in the SS, a great favourite of Heinrich Himmler. Her mother was a Maoist and is now a primary school teacher. Her father? He died in Stammheim. Monika is certain that he could never have committed suicide. She insists he was murdered. I don’t know.’

  ‘I can see why she is removed from politics.’

  ‘Sometimes she is cruel. When we row I’m just another shitbag desperate to get into the Bundestag, tell lies and line his pockets. When I remind her that she’s making more money than any SPD member of the Bundestag, she claims her loot is not gained through deception, but by playing the market, without breaking any rules. I love her, Eva. I want her to have my children.’

  ‘And here I was, beginning to think you were just a robot and fearful that your girl might turn out to be another robot. Some mouse or the other from the apparatus on Ollenauerstrasse. You’ve really surprised me. I wonder what she sees in you? Bring her to me next week. Supper on Wednesday?’

  ‘Fine. I do not speak for Monika.’

  ‘Tell her my Matthias sings with a crazy rock band. It might make me a little less unattractive. Tell her what you want but bring her to me.’

  Karl spent the whole day preparing a briefing paper on the possibility of a new coalition. He wanted the SPD in power. He wanted Scharping as Chancellor. He wanted to stay in Bonn till 2000. By then the scars would have healed. He could even begin to see Vlady again. He made a note in his diary. Last year, at the height of his alienation from the past, he had forgotten his father’s birthday. There must be no repetition.

  He realized how much he still loved Vlady. The discovery shocked him.

  Four

  VLADIMIR MEYER was on a high. Yesterday’s Neues Deutschland had published a long piece by him on the new trends in Russian literature. It was a polemical essay, written with a keen sense of the comic, describing how ‘socialist realism’ had been replaced by ‘market realism’, and with equally disastrous results. A precious pornography had replaced the ritual references to various First Secretaries.

  This was his first published essay since the dismissal from his post at Humboldt. The results pleased him. A minor triumph. A clear signal to the enemy that he would not take defeat lying down. He would show young Karl that they were more than flecks of foam. He was going to fight back with his literary fists.

  Several old friends had rung to congratulate him. In the old days Gerhard would have been the first to call. But Gerhard was dead. He knew me well, Vlady thought. He knew exactly how to drag me out of my melancholy. His judgements were sober and reliable. Not a trace of envy in his make-up. Gerhard, soft-hearted Gerhard, had not asked much of this world, but he had ceased to resist. Fatal. Death, in the mask of the new German order, had claimed him.

  Outside it was night and a blanket of mist covered the street. Vlady had decided to stay at home. Better to be surrounded by ghosts, he thought, than to engage in the forced frivolity of the tavern. He read, paced up and down his room, read old letters, talked to himself, to Karl, to Helge, to Gerhard and then, as the clock struck two in the morning, he fell asleep.

  That was yesterday. Today it was already late when he awoke. The day was clear, but the winter shadows were already beginning to mark the landscape. In a few hours the light would vanish. He jumped out of bed, dressed quickly and walked out into the street. Vlady wandered aimlessly, and, at the end of an hour and a half, feeling sad and lonely, he found himself in a second-hand bookshop on the Ku-Damm. The sight of bookshelves cheered him a little.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Evelyne was standing behind him. Surprise registered on both their faces. She smiled and hugged him with real warmth. ‘The same old overcoat. The same old Vlady. Why haven’t you shaved?’

  He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. For a moment his depression disappeared. The sight of Evelyne had despatched his anxieties to the future. They walked to a tiny art gallery which dispensed the best coffee in Berlin. Evelyne behaved as if nothing had ever happened between them. She treated him as if he were just her old professor, pressed him to attend the press preview of her first feature film that evening and join the cast and crew for a celebratory dinner afterwards. Vlady looked doubtful. He was on his guard, not at all eager to be rejuvenated.

  ‘You can meet my husband and his boyfriend. Come on Vlady. It’s obvious you’re not doing anything. My movie is a comedy. Even you will laugh.’

  He accepted her invitation, thinking to himself that he could always change his mind.
r />   ‘Have you found a new job?’

  Vlady shook his head.

  ‘Or a new politics?’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘Stop living in the past, Vlady. Wake up. I’ll see you later.’

  After she had left, he ordered another coffee. The next hour was spent in deep contemplation. Only a few hours ago, Vlady had ignored the beautiful autumn sun as he thought of the desperately empty day that lay ahead of him.

  Could Evelyne be the remedy to his ills? Vlady shut his eyes, remembering the time they had spent together, but it was of no use. The world he did not want to see was buried deep inside his head. It seemed as if it would never go away.

  It had been shattered by reality, but it was still there in his dreams and nightmares. Intact. Untouched. The old Prusso-Stalinist DDR with its maze of bureaucratic laws; its own peculiar customs; its deeply embedded irrationality; its habitual cruelty; its distorted lens through which one could only see a disfigured world. He was now compelled by history to live in a new world which had deprived him of his dignity as a citizen. Many others thought like him. Once he had complained bitterly to Gerhard, who had become impatient.

  Vladimir Meyer was not alone in thinking that there had been aspects of life in the old DDR that were preferable to what existed today. Many saw their problems as the temporary result of a painful transition from a state-ownership system to the free market.

  Vlady differed. He refused to write everything off as an unmitigated disaster. When he expressed these thoughts to old friends, they would reply, ‘Of course things are bad for us, Vlady, but here in Berlin we do not wake up every morning and wonder whether we will still be alive at the end of day as many do in Sarajevo and Moscow.’

  Vlady did not like such arguments. The blind worship of accomplished facts always led to passivity. Why should one come to terms with the present? Such an attitude would never have brought down the Wall. He refused to accept what existed simply because happenings elsewhere were much worse. History became an alibi. It was a cursed history whose womb was producing tiny new republics. Monstrous creations. How could they be otherwise, deformed as they were by decades of unnatural confinement?