by S J Naudé
Then the false letters. The tone is bright, everything is hunky-dory. She vaguely enquires about his well-being, shares sunny news: one of his former school friends who has won a trophy from the Afrikaans Trade Institute, the outcome of high school rugby matches. She sends cuttings from Beeld or Citizen of cute news stories. About baby elephants, for instance, who had been injured in a veld fire and were now being cared for by young (white) volunteers. News about his father’s working life, his grandmother’s ailments.
He ties up the letters with a ribbon again. He can smell something chemical. Is it emanating from the well, or the sewage pipes? Is it the vinegar factory a few blocks away? He notices one of Axel’s little plastic bags on the floor. He picks it up, turns it around, shakes it. A few remaining hairs fall in his hand. A bitter harvest: the hair of a child who is probably dead by now.
His thoughts float back in the direction of Berliner Chronik. Shreds of Benjamin’s texts keep churning in his thoughts. And some of the matching film sequences he now knows too, frame by frame. He has borrowed a film-school projector again. He resolves never to return it. Each night he watches the first reel. He ought to be more careful; the film might disintegrate in his hands, or melt away in the projector’s gears.
Irmgard’s diary refers to urgent post-production work on the first two reels, before filming was completed. Judging by the number of scenes – all roughly of equal length – on the first reel, and taking into account Irmgard’s original list of scenes, the film should fill three reels. Somewhere another two reels are awaiting Etienne. In an archive cellar or sideboard. In an attic. In a trunk underneath a bed, in a dank storeroom or dark garage. In a cupboard smelling of the cologne of someone who has been long dead.
He closes his hand in a fist, pockets the hair.
Etienne no longer stokes the Dover. The rooms are icy, the attic the coldest of them all. What has stayed with him from his mother’s letters is her request to send a photo of himself. He rummages around in the frozen attic chests, finds one of Axel’s post-mortem photos: a recently deceased Victorian boy, his head resting on his mother’s lap (is his ear still warm?). He puts it in an envelope, just that, writes the address of the house in which he grew up and posts it. His first letter in months (if you can call it a letter). And probably the last.
Two hours before Axel’s flight is scheduled to land, Etienne is waiting at the airport. The week has passed slowly. Except for a few fellow students and his film-school instructors, Etienne hasn’t had contact with a soul.
Jet-lagged passengers walk into the arrivals hall. Etienne is playing with his knuckles, feeling his collarbones. He thinks of how Axel would always seek out the weakest points of his body: the tender skin of his lids, the thin bone over his temples, the cartilage of his throat, the testicles. The places in between pleasure and pain. Often he would blow on Etienne’s eyeballs, knock his knee until it jumped, press a thumb on Etienne’s sinuses, or on the funny bone, or the little triangular bone below the sternum. ‘This bit of bone,’ Axel would say, ‘can be converted into an arrow point with one thump. Driven straight into the heart.’
The arriving passengers have thinned to a trickle. Axel’s luggage must have been the last to emerge, Etienne thinks. Another twenty minutes pass. Etienne keeps an eye on people’s baggage; there haven’t been Lufthansa labels for a while. He is reluctant to abandon his post, but goes to the airline desk to make an enquiry. They refuse to provide information about a passenger. He waits for another hour, eyes fixed on the entrance doors. He cannot understand how they could have missed each other. Is Axel waiting for him in Bermondsey Street?
He takes the Tube back to the city. He unlocks the front door at Bermondsey Street, calls out. He walks up the stairs, looks into every room. He ends up in the freezing attic. Winter sun is pouring in through the wide windows. Train wheels screech against tracks. Then all is quiet again.
It is slowly dawning upon Etienne that he doesn’t have a single piece of useful information about Axel. He doesn’t know why he went to Berlin, has no address or telephone number. Is his surname Fleischer, like his grandmother Irmgard’s? Etienne doesn’t know the name of a single other family member. Not one of his London acolytes, the ones who used to swirl around him, would know more than Etienne. The brochures for his exhibitions used only his first name. Axel might as well be one of those names in Etienne’s list of Berliner Chronik’s production team members, pinned on some forgotten noticeboard. A name lost in the Berlin mist. Etienne frantically searches rooms, goes through all of Axel’s pockets. He doesn’t find a single personal document, not one bill showing Axel’s name. Not one letter or envelope or form. How does someone exist like this? Is ‘Axel’ even his real name?
The hospital would have a record of him. But Etienne knows they won’t help him. In his mind’s eye he sees a stern nurse in uniform, asking intrusive questions, and himself standing in front of her like a mute schoolboy.
How is it possible that you could have discovered every centimetre of someone’s body, every sinew and every freckle, the labyrinth of each ear, could know the fumes of soot and iron he gives off when he is hungry or aroused, but know nothing about him? Not a single fact that would equip you to go and search for him in a strange city.
Etienne waits for a day. Maybe Axel has missed his flight. Perhaps he has decided to stay on longer with friends or family. All that briefly brings Etienne relief is to go up to the attic and have a look at the little figures made from children’s hair. He tries to imagine what might have been going on in Axel’s thoughts. It is as if he had to fend off something with his weaving. As if he could save the children in this way, could make them fire-resistant.
The little figures are all he has of Axel now. That and the rotting pigeons. And a handful of remaining photographs of dead children pretending to be alive. Well, the painting too. He is less and less convinced by the latter, though. It doesn’t seem to fit; it is a false note.
Another day passes. A week. There is no sign of Axel, no news. Three weeks. Then six. He hardly registers Christmas and New Year.
A needle in all the world’s haystacks. That is Axel, now. And he, Etienne, too. They have both disappeared.
II. DEEP ARCHIVE (Berlin, October 1987–May 1988)
Chapter 18
Despite the advanced German lessons he has taken over the past two months in London, Etienne is still not fluent. He can read, but in his stuttering practice conversations, he garbles prepositions and inflections.
He lands at Tegel airport in West Berlin. From there he takes a bus and overground train – the s-Bahn – to the Friedrichstrasse border crossing. There is no control on the western side. His limited German makes him sound brusque when addressing the East German passport official, who then calls a colleague. They observe Etienne with neutral gazes. He has a refugee travel document rather than a passport; on the cover it says Travel Document/Titre de Voyage. His asylum enables him to travel as if he is a Brit. The official thumbs through it, looks in his register. Etienne’s name is on a list, it turns out; they have been expecting him.
A border guard unlocks a series of doors. Etienne follows him through the corridors. Somewhere behind them, West German visitors are queuing beyond barriers, slowly snaking into the station. He and his guard follow a secret route. Etienne keeps an eye on his travel document. The guard is holding it in front of his chest, elbow pushed out. As if in a salute.
A woman is waiting behind the last door. She is wearing a light brown skirt and jacket, and flipping through the pages of’ a women’s magazine called Sybille. Her glasses point upwards on each side, a 1960s design. Next to her stands another guard. Etienne’s travel document is returned to him. Both guards disappear into the station.
‘Ich bin Frau Finkel. Sie sind Herr Nieuwenhuis?’ I’m Frau Finkel. You are Mr Nieuwenhuis? They start walking. ‘Welcome. I’m from the film school’s administration department.’ Outside they ge
t into a muck-coloured Trabant. She takes a thin file from under her seat. ‘For you.’ While she is struggling to get the little car started, he opens it. In the front is a city map. Stadtplan: Berlin Hauptstadt der ddr. There is a stylised representation of city landmarks on the cover. On the back, so a note indicates, there should be a Zeichenerklärung, a key to the map. But when he turns it around, there is nothing. A printing error? There is a separate map of the transport system. And brochures of the film school. He closes the file. For now he would rather observe the new world outside. They are travelling down a wide boulevard, past grandiose old buildings. ‘Unter den Linden,’ his hostess says. ‘You’ll discover it doesn’t look like this everywhere. Here everything is polished to a high gloss.’
They drive past a low, copper-coloured glass building. ‘Der Palast der Republik,’ she says. ‘The seat of our government.’ He tries to gauge her tone when she says ‘our government’, but it isn’t betraying anything. The building vaguely reminds Etienne of the State Theatre in Pretoria. Above and beyond the government building, the silver ball of the Fernsehturm – the television tower – is visible.
Frau Finkel takes him to the Volkspolizei’s headquarters, where his name is entered into another register and he is issued with a student residency permit. They stamp his travel document, affix something like a postage stamp next to it. She takes him to another government office, where he obtains a visa that permits him to travel freely into and out of East Berlin – a rare privilege.
She has to hurry back to the film school in Potsdam. She hands him an envelope with a handful of Ostmark. She points out the address of his lodgings in the file, and the route to get there. She drops him at the underground station – Alexanderplatz u-Bahn – and departs without saying goodbye. He stands on the sidewalk, looking up at the Fernsehturm that is gleaming like a lamp in the afternoon sun.
He doesn’t have coins for the u-Bahn ticket machine. Hardly anyone uses it, he notices, and there is no control point. He boards the train without a ticket, travels through stations with names like Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Dimitroffstrasse. In the rocking coach he studies the train map, testing the shape of station names between his lips. He chooses favourites based on the sounds: Storkowerstrasse, Rummelsburg, Leninallee, Nöldnerplatz. He will be sure, before long, to pass through all the stations with the most beautiful combinations of consonants.
He alights at Schönhauser Allee station, turns left in Stargarder Strasse. Map in one hand, trunk in the other. It is as if photographs of everyone else who has walked here with a suitcase before are being projected onto him – each photo a transparent membrane. The street is almost empty. Only one or two figures are moving at a distance in the autumn haze. The buildings are worn, the way they looked right after the war, and have decayed further since. This is what he expected: disconsolate streets with disconsolate buildings. He stops at No. 72. The building’s plasterwork is a patchwork of gravel; the façade is scarred with decades-old gunfire. Balcony railings are lined with steel plates.
Most bells don’t have names on them. His landlady’s – Frau Drechsler’s – does. He rings. Nothing. After a while, again. A figure appears behind the glass doors, opens up. A young man, about his own age. Tall and thin, pointed face. Surrounded by an aura of silence.
‘Nils.’ His voice is hushed.
‘Etienne.’ Nils doesn’t take the hand Etienne extends, doesn’t look him in the eyes.
Nils has descended several flights of stairs from Frau Drechsler’s flat; her button to remotely open the building’s front door is broken, he explains. ‘You have to sign in first with the building caretaker,’ Nils says. He gently knocks on the door of a ground floor flat.
The door opens slightly. ‘Ja?’
‘Wir brauchen den Hausbuch, bitte. Frau Drechsler nimmt heute einen neuen Untermieter ein.’ We need the house book, please. Frau Drechsler is taking in another tenant today.
The man opens the door wide, observes Etienne over plastic-framed spectacles. He is in his sixties, his cheeks hanging over his jaws like a bloodhound’s. His voice is sharp, whistle-like: ‘Und für wie lange bleibt er?’ And for how long will he be staying?
Nils shrugs his shoulders. ‘Für einen Jahr, ungefähr. Er ist Student—’ For about a year. He is a student—
‘Nóch ein Student!’ Another student! The man snorts. ‘Es wird ein Höhle, dieses Haus, von Unruhestifter und Bummler!’ This building is becoming a filthy den for trouble-makers and bums!
Etienne catches the drift of Nils’s ensuing explanation. If it is Nils to whom the man is referring . . . well, he is not in fact a student. Nils’s tone is patient, weary. As if this kind of defence is routine. And all the students in the gdr, he continues, are, after all, model citizens of the socialist state. He gestures towards Etienne. He, for instance, is an anti-fascist who had escaped South Africa and ended up in Britain. And who has now come to the gdr to be educated. (Is there a sardonic undertone in Nils’s soft voice?)
Saggy Cheeks remains sceptical, keeps watching Etienne while he signs the register. He takes the book, studies the entry as if Etienne might have provided a false name. He is offended by the Afrikaans nomenclature. ‘So, du bist nicht Deutscher?’ So, you’re not a German? Etienne remains silent.
Nils’s voice has a deep, natural calm: ‘Als ich sagte, er ist ein Austauschstudent von Grossbritannien.’ As I said, he is an exchange student from Great Britain.
The man demands Etienne’s passport. He shows his refugee travel document. He tries explaining in German, then switches over to English. Saggy Cheeks interrupts him. ‘South Africa,’ he reads – slowly, in a heavy accent, clearly proud of his English. Then, suspicious again: ‘Südafrika.’ He keeps thumbing through the pages, studies the East German stamps. ‘Nicht Grossbritannien, aber Südafrika!’ he shouts at Nils. His cheeks tremble. How does one harbour such rage without it damaging your body? Etienne wonders. Saggy Cheeks makes a note next to Etienne’s name in the register, then apparently decides that this is a matter for a different forum. He holds out the travel document, haughty like a border guard.
Nils gestures with his head towards the document when Etienne puts it in his pocket. ‘Be sure always to carry that with you.’ Etienne follows him upstairs with his suitcase. The stairs are covered with reddish-brown linoleum; the walls are peeling. On the ceilings there are traces of old frescoes. Different kinds of textured glass on the stair landings warp the view of the courtyard.
‘Nothing personal, by the way, the house book. Anyone staying for more than three nights must sign it.’ Nils climbs the stairs with unusual concentration, eyes fixed on his feet. He stops so suddenly that Etienne crashes into him from behind. Nils bends over double to compensate for his height – and the higher stair he is standing on – and then speaks softly into Etienne’s ear: ‘The Stasi has free access to each book . . .’ Nils continues walking up the stairs in a careful march. Etienne is surprised by the frankness. He follows, looking at Nils’s long legs.
Frau Drechsler is waiting for them on the fifth-floor landing. Her hair is tied up in a librarian’s bun and she has the blunt face of a factory worker. She is wearing an olive-green dress with a 1940s cut. Her face has premature signs of age – she can’t be much older than fifty, Etienne reckons. The eyes are small and round; nothing else is moving in her flat face. Etienne stands panting next to his trunk. She looks him up and down, then enters the flat. Etienne follows, Nils behind him. Frau Drechsler points out Etienne’s room. Deep inside the flat, across from a bathroom. The flat is in the Vorderhaus; the room is spacious and looks out on the street. There is a small desk, even a basin against the wall. ‘Nicht zu benutzen,’ she says, pointing at the basin.
‘Broken,’ Nils says in English, as if Etienne doesn’t understand any German. ‘Don’t use it.’
‘And,’ Frau Drechsler wiggles an index finger in Etienne’s direction, ‘you’re not allowed to put up anyth
ing on the walls. No nails, no self-adhesive tape. And no electrical appliances in the room. About the other rules – meals, the curfew, telephone and hot water – he can inform you.’ She points at Nils.
Nils does not inform Etienne about any rules; he doesn’t enquire. Frau Drechsler provides two meals, it turns out. When she is dishing up the pale-boiled food, her face is like an empty page. Etienne is thankful Nils is at the dining table too. Frau Drechsler’s silences carry the heavy weight of suspicion and warning.
Etienne wanders through Prenzlauer Berg. The few pedestrians on the streets avoid each other’s gazes. He is apparently the only one walking without a fixed destination. At Schönefeld Allee station there is a supermarket. Lebensmittel, it says in green letters on the front. Whatever there is on the mostly empty shelves, one buys. Gherkins from the Spreewald. Apples, potatoes. White cabbage, red cabbage. Sausages. Sometimes a Hungarian salami. Across from Stargarder Strasse 72 there is a bakery. Early in the morning the rye bread steams when you break it. Etienne enters a clothes shop. Everything is synthetic and – this he can see even without trying anything on – badly cut.
A week after his arrival he has to report to the hff – die Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen – in Potsdam. The commute is long; one has to travel in an arc around the southern part of West Berlin. He takes the s-Bahn south, changes to a provincial train. From Potsdam station he takes a tram to the film school.