Fear of Mirrors

by Tariq Ali

  Just before the clock struck two, Helge and I announced our engagement.

  ‘Comrades!’ I informed them. ‘Why make one commitment when you can make two?’

  Laughter and several toasts followed, but I forgot everything the next morning when Gertrude returned. I told her everything. She started addressing me as Vladimir, a sure sign that she was angry.

  ‘I am not a solitary sorceress, Vladimir. I am your mother and I am already half an hour late for my meeting. Surely you’ve insulted me enough for one day. Can we not continue tomorrow morning over breakfast?’

  Before I could reply, she had walked out of the room and left the apartment. My aim had been to provoke an angry response in the course of which some hidden truths might be revealed, but my hopes remained unfulfilled.

  Weeks passed and she continued to sulk. Relations between us had become frosty ever since I had presented her with a daughter-in-law of whom she disapproved. I defended Helge’s integrity with great vigour.

  ‘It’s not Helge’s fault that her father’s a Lutheran pastor. Your father was a bourgeois. You still loved him.’

  ‘My father perished in Belsen.’

  ‘So if Helge’s father was dead it would be fine.’

  ‘Why did you have to marry her?’

  ‘It was necessary.’

  ‘Why? Is she pregnant?’

  ‘You mean that would be sufficient reason?’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  Helge’s attempts to normalize relations had also failed. Gertrude was never rude, but she insisted on preserving a painful degree of formality. She also made it clear within a few days of her return that it was her apartment and that it was she, not Helge, who retained overall control.

  Till now, despite all our arguments, I had thought of Gertrude, despite her flashes of temper, as charming, intelligent and sensitive. Now I saw a side of her which took me by surprise. One afternoon, I took advantage of Helge’s absence and asked Gertrude to talk over things frankly with me. She looked at me as if I were a total stranger and refused to respond.

  Why was she in such a state? I could understand that, like a good Jewish mother, she resented the intrusion of another woman in my life. Or that I had gone behind her back. It could be that the thought of sharing her apartment with a young couple permanently ensconced in the tiny bedroom next to her own made her furious. Our nocturnal whispering and passions might have made her feel an outsider in her own home. That would be normal, but was that all? Or were there some subterranean reasons as well? Something that had more to do with her own past, something that frightened her.

  It could not have been a matter of ambition. She had no career planned out for me and the last thing she wanted was for me to follow in my father’s footsteps. I was her link with a past infected by loss and deprivation. It made her unhappy, but it also made her strong. She might regret the price she’d paid for her own determination, but she had it and she used it. She gave me a hard time about Helge. Sometimes it felt eerily like an interrogation rather than an argument. Her physical stillness was a weapon, body armour. I’d stare back into those pale grey eyes and wonder what sights they’d seen …

  When Gertrude remained obstinate, refusing resolutely to engage with me, I unburdened myself of everything I’d been storing up for the last six weeks. I defended my love for Helge. Gertrude had never seen me so passionate. It confirmed her prejudices against Helge. Her son’s innocence had been wrenched from him by this blond-haired seductress. She said something like that and I replied in kind.

  ‘I lost my virginity when I was barely seventeen. To a friend of yours, Mother, a loyal comrade. She was staying with us. Remember?’

  ‘You’re lying, you bastard!’

  At last I had got to her. Pleased with myself, I became very calm. ‘Since you’ve now raised the question of my legitimacy, Mother, won’t you tell me more about my own? What was your real relationship with Ludwik? What happened to him?’

  ‘I’ve told you a million times. He’s dead.’

  ‘Who killed him?’

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Who killed him?’

  ‘Yezhov. He ran the NKVD in 1937.’

  ‘Playing games again. Stalin had him killed. Who pulled the trigger?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Someone must know in Moscow. You never tried to find out?’

  ‘Those who knew are also dead.’

  ‘The whole system is dead, Mother. Khruschev’s revelations have –’

  ‘Some of us did not need Khruschev’s speech, Vladimir. We knew.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You knew, but you carried on regardless. Nothing mattered except saving your own skin.’

  ‘Have you forgotten Victory Day in 1945? The big parade in Moscow? You and your friends cheering the victorious Red Army? Clapping your hands like a clockwork toy? And when they hurled those captured Nazi banners at the foot of Lenin’s mausoleum, Vlady, everyone watching began to cry. Fascism had been defeated. Even though to achieve it, many Communists, like myself, had to make a pact with the Devil. Why do you think we cried that day, Vladimir?’

  Despite myself, I was moved by the memory of that day in Moscow.

  ‘Grief for all our dead comrades.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But relief that the Soviet Union had survived. Maybe my skin was not worth saving, but the Soviet Union had to survive if Hitler was going to be crushed. Without the Red Army who knows what might have happened? Europe would have fallen for sure.’

  I wished Helge had been there to witness this quarrel. I found it difficult to convince your mother that mine was much more than an embittered party hack, who had sold her soul to Stalinism. I wondered, though, what Helge would have made of any argument that equated Stalin with the Soviet Union. Your grandmother had a nerve, Karl. I mean, even if she wanted to defend the DDR, how the hell could this translate into telling me how and whom to love? If all the means are vital to your ends, do you have carte blanche? Unacceptable.

  She reminded me of Gerd Henning, a creepy professor of German literature at Humboldt, a loyal Party member and a dedicated rapist. A few years ago, a young woman actually complained to the authorities and provided a graphic description of his method, the ‘come back to my room after lectures while I recite Goethe as he should be recited’ routine. When she did, he wanted her to shake hands with his penis. She kicked him hard and ran.

  The student’s father was a high-up in military intelligence. There was an investigation. Henning was cautioned. Can you imagine what he told his colleagues, Karl? He put on his most pious voice and declared: ‘You must excuse me, comrades. My background is different to yours. I was brought up in a proletarian family in Wedding. My parents were underground Communists during the Nazi period. Both died at Ravensbruck. I was hidden by a metal worker and his family. We used to drink and swear and fuck throughout the war, but we survived. Please excuse my insensitivity. Perhaps if I had gone to Moscow or Los Angeles or Geneva my behaviour would have been more refined, but here in Berlin, under Hitler, we lived roughly.’

  He refused to reply to questions and left the room. He never changed. I hate that sort of demagogy and despise men like him. It was Gertrude who told me that story, but her thinking wasn’t all that different from Henning’s.

  At the university that year, I was trapped into a massive row with Gerd Henning. I tried to persuade Henning to use his influence on behalf of Eva Sickert, a brilliant young lecturer, who had fallen prey to a harassment campaign organized by the Party and had, as a consequence, been removed from her post. Sickert was accused of being a follower of Lukács and ‘prettifying the novels of the reactionary English (sic) novelist, Sir Walter Scott’, a charge she did not even attempt to deny.

  Sixty students, including me, signed a letter of protest. Henning, with a patronizing smile on his face, told me: ‘This may be appropriate for you, Meyer, but not for me. My job, as a
professor of German literature, is to educate all of you, help you develop a critical understanding of our language and literature and precisely for this reason we should keep politics out of the university.’

  ‘The state has introduced politics, Professor Henning, by demonizing certain thinkers, and by the dismissal of Eva Sickert.’

  Henning smiled, shaking his head in disbelief at the naivety of the student who stood before him.

  ‘If a house was on fire,’ I asked, refusing to give up, ‘surely you would help to put it out.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear Meyer. I would rush to the telephone and call the fire department. I am a professor, not a fireman.’

  ‘You are a shit, Henning,’ I began to scream, ‘a swine without honour, without shame, without integrity. Your sort really knew how to survive under the Nazis. Didn’t they, Herr Professor?’

  Henning remained calm, though his eyes had filled with hate.

  ‘Leave my room, Meyer.’

  As I was leaving, he added an afterthought. ‘And, by the way, Meyer, there is no reason for such bitterness on your part. I never fucked your wife.’

  When, later that evening, Gertrude returned home, she was surprised to find me clean-shaven – in a fit of pique against nothing and everything I had shaved off my beard – but she was in too much of a state to worry about my appearance.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mutti?’

  ‘Vlady, is there something you haven’t told me?’

  Panic. Till that fateful New Year’s Eve, I had no political secrets from Gertrude. The dispute over my hastily concocted nuptials was, in part, a semi-conscious attempt to cover up the fact that Helge and I were engaged in clandestine political activity. Many times I’d been tempted to tell her everything, but something held me back. And then the intensity of the row over Helge convinced me that she was a dreary old Stalinist after all, and I was glad not to have revealed our secret.

  ‘Vlady?’

  ‘What could I possibly have hidden from you?’

  ‘Listen to me, Vlady. These are not joking matters. You could end up in prison or dead. Now tell me everything.’

  ‘How much do you know and how?’

  ‘Forget the “how”. It does not concern you. What I do know is that you and some others have distributed a manifesto calling for the overthrow of the DDR.’

  ‘Not true, Mutti. We have called for a democratization of the DDR and the end of the one-party state. Far from being a call to “overthrow the DDR”, it is the only way to strengthen and stabilize the DDR. The workers realized that instinctively in ’53.’

  ‘Did you draft the manifesto?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Every single word?’

  ‘Every single word.’

  ‘Let me read it.’

  I was trapped. I had no alternative but to give her a copy. Later she told me that a part of her had felt proud of me. The incident had brought back memories of Ludwik and his gentle eloquence, of conversations which, if reported, would have led to their immediate imprisonment and probably death in the Siberian camps. Those were much worse times, and yet many veteran Communists had risked their lives and denounced Stalin. What would Ludwik have made of her boy?

  I handed her the manifesto and hovered round her chair as she put on her spectacles.

  ‘Sit down, Vlady. Better still, leave the room till I’ve finished. You’re not ten now, waiting to see what I think of your homework.’

  I was relieved that she had calmed down. I smiled to myself and walked away. She saw me smile and it irritated her.

  She put the manifesto on the table and stared at the photograph of me and Helge on the mantelpiece. ‘I would love to have a good talk with her. To tell her that I love you so much that I can’t help being jealous. To encourage her to give me a grandchild…’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Peace at last. Our little civil war was over. As Gertrude resumed reading the manifesto she could not conceal her delight. Later that night she told Helge how she appreciated my political intuition and the crisply formulated sentences. There was a clarity of thought here, a euphony, which she found incredibly refreshing. Similar thoughts, she told us, were being whispered openly in Moscow, where Party members were slowly beginning to lose their fear.

  Gertrude had looked up a few survivors from the twenties, two men and a woman who had never been uncovered as part of Ludwik’s circle because they had left the Fourth Department and become school teachers several years before the Terror. Remarkably, they were still alive and delighted to see Gertrude. A whole evening was spent talking about Ludwik and the other Ls.

  The two teachers had been part of a delegation of old Bolsheviks, which had included Bukharin’s widow, who met Khruschev and pleaded for the freedom of all those who had been wrongfully imprisoned. Khruschev had given them his word that the prisoners would be released and, the day before she left Moscow, some of the newly released prisoners had arrived in the capital. In those days, Karl, the term quite matter of factly used was ‘rehabilitation’, as if the prisoners had simply been ill and just got better or maybe they were a set of old, rickety chairs: a bit of glue and some loose covers and they’d be quite serviceable. The same would have been done for the rest of the chairs had they not been found surplus to requirements in 1937 …

  Had it not been for her Moscow journey, Gertrude would have been petrified and would have done anything to protect her son. Yes, anything. Now she knew that it was only a matter of time. What Moscow did today, the DDR would ape tomorrow. Vlady might even end up a member of the Politburo.

  The voice of the future member of the Politburo interrupted her dreams.

  ‘Well?’

  She looked up at me and smiled.

  ‘What do you think, Mutti?’

  ‘I agree with almost everything. If you remove the reference to a multi-party system I could even sign it myself.’

  ‘But that is crucial. Rosa was right on this and Lenin wrong. Anyway, if you accept the right of a minority to exist inside a party, how can you challenge their right to form a separate party? You see, Mutti …’

  ‘I do see, Vlady, but I disagree.’

  ‘Fine. No problem. The debate will continue.’

  ‘Excellent. Now tell me something. How many of you are involved? Who are the others?’

  I hesitated. I did not want to tell her.

  ‘Vlady?’

  ‘I cannot betray their trust. We pledged secrecy. Who told you about the manifesto?’

  ‘A very senior Party member. Like me, he was impressed. He thought it was the work of students. A few inquiries at Humboldt indicated that you might be involved. Nothing definite, you understand. But I knew straight away that you must be implicated. Instinct, I suppose. Who are the others?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘So I can make a few inquiries. What if one of your fellow-conspirators is working for the Stasi?’

  ‘Outrageous.’

  ‘Perhaps, but necessary for the success of your project. Please be a bit realistic, Vlady.’

  I rose and began to pace up and down. She saw me stroking my forehead, which had always irritated her, a sure sign that I was nervous. I couldn’t understand my own nervousness. Only six months ago I trusted her completely, told her everything she wanted to know and retired to bed with a light heart. This trust of an only child for a single mother may help you understand why I often berated myself for doubting her word that Ludwik was my father.

  Before I could explain my refusal, I heard the noise of a key turning in the front door. My heart began to beat faster. It had to be Helge. She had returned. My mother would stop pestering me in Helge’s presence. I had underestimated Gertrude.

  Just as Helge entered the room, Gertrude stood up and greeted your mother with a cordiality that left us speechless. She took Helge’s coat and pushed her on to the sofa.

  ‘Go and make Helge some tea, Vlady. Can’t you see she’s exhausted?’

  Astonished and speechles
s, I rushed into the kitchen. In my absence there was a remarkable development. Gertrude sat next to Helge and kissed her on the head.

  ‘You must forgive an old mother her bad manners, my dear,’ she began in her most charming tone. ‘This boy is the only thing of value I have left in this world and I did not want to share him with anyone, not for another few years. I see now that you both love each other very much. Will you forgive an over-protective mother her psychic frailties? Shall we be friends?’

  Helge was thunderstruck. Gertrude had, with one simple stroke, completely disarmed her. She hugged Gertrude and the older woman sighed and began to stroke Helge’s hair. This was the incredible scene that greeted me when I returned with a glass of tea for Helge. Naturally, I was deeply touched. I thought it was my political démarche that had won Gertrude over.

  Later that night Helge and I sat with Gertrude and recalled the old times. Without much prompting, we told her everything she wanted to know. Gertrude made a mental note of the other names and gave the project her blessing.

  That night was the first time Helge and I felt at home.

  Nineteen

  WHILE RUMMAGING in Gertrude’s desk one day, I came across an envelope with a set of unusual black and white photographs of her. In one of them, she was standing on a flat empty beach, but it was her clothes that struck me as odd. She was wearing a matching skirt and jacket, a beautiful straw hat and was laughing. She really looked happy. In another photograph she was with another woman, whom I did not recognize. In yet another, she was standing arms linked with a young man with a hard, beaming face and spectacles. He looked vaguely familiar; perhaps I had met him in Moscow. When I showed her the photographs, she snatched them from me angrily and left the room. I kept pressing her, but she remained tight-lipped and unfriendly whenever I mentioned them.

  I had virtually forgotten the entire incident when one Sunday afternoon, she volunteered the story of those photographs. During her early years in Moscow, Gertrude had been especially close to Zinoviev. Perhaps they were lovers, though I have no evidence to sustain this speculation. News of his execution in 1936 had unhinged her. Ludwik had to use all his powers of persuasion to prevent her taking her own life. If she was not allowed to commit suicide, she asked him, why could she not denounce Stalin and his tyranny and break publicly with Moscow? Ludwik was not unsympathetic to this particular request, but he persuaded her to wait six months and then they would discuss the matter again. He sent her off on a long rest cure to the Norfolk Coast in England, where she would be isolated from Moscow’s prying eyes.