An Inventory of Losses

by Judith Schalansky

  You take the ladder to the first floor. You climb up it, rung by rung. It’s still dark, but you’ll be able to feel with your hands that you’re going the right way. There’s a ring dangling from the ceiling. You can grab hold of it in an emergency, if you’re in danger. After all, there’s not a lot of space up there. And there’s even less as you go on. But you’ll fit through. At the back you’ve got the balcony with two sun loungers, though the balcony door is blocked up with books. Books make an excellent insulating material, you know. Not many people know that. There’s a lot that people don’t know. Then it’ll get a little lighter, because on the left is your space, your domain, the separate little room. Sometimes the door won’t open. And you’ll be coming in autumn. Everywhere will be full of sweet chestnuts. The whole valley, the garden, the house. They fall down. They fall on you. They could strike you dead. The largest of the three fruits tastes the best. The nuts are glossy, their shells prickly. The tip of the nut is hairy, a sweet down. Like burrs, the chestnuts collect everywhere. The only clear space is in the separate little room. The chestnuts don’t get in there. They don’t belong there. Because that space is yours. Everything is there, close to hand, in the place where it belongs: the window behind the books, the dressing table next to the mirror, on the window ledge a little washbasin, a watering can, a fire pump, and the little hollow among the piles of paper, that’s it—the sleeping space I’ve made especially for you, the female. Everything is ready: the mattress on its wooden frame, a nice bed, the fabulous clothes and furs. All of them the latest fashion. You can try them on. Hanging on a coat hanger is a yellow-and-green-patterned ladies’ swimsuit. The other coat hangers are spare. You can hang your own clothes on them.

  You’ll look around, see the two nude photographs above the bed, and right opposite them the black and white nude photo of a young woman lolling on a sheet, the romantic images of couples kissing, the classical relief of a pair of lovers. You will look at your reflection in the mirror on the dressing table, and find everything you need there: nail varnish, beauty magazines, and brochures, books on hat fashions and hair care, along with the book Female Attractiveness and Beauty. What a Girl Needs to Know, studies on pregnancy, fertilization, and the menopause, menstruation pills, an ashtray, a pair of scissors, a powder compact, toilet paper. Everything is catered for. An alarm clock, lots of hot-water bottles, a washbasin and water jug, a radio, and a vibrating device.

  Once some girls turned up and walked along the winding footpath. Unfortunately they were stupid, though they could read. Not that this means anything. Nowadays everyone can read. They were two sisters. Or so they told me. They came into the garden. They read and looked and were even pretty. Young, at any rate. They said they were hitchhiking. Not many cars stop here though. After all, the valley doesn’t go much further. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Only into the grotto. It’s nice there. Damp even in summer. I nearly thought one of them was you. I showed them the house. They laughed when they saw the newspapers and the chestnuts. And again when I showed them their sleeping place and when I gave them ravioli from a tin. They kept laughing. Even though that’s a perfectly decent meal. Yet when I knocked on their door they just screamed and ran away. I was only going to tuck them in. Tuck myself in with them. Show them everything, teach them everything. I was glad when they were gone. They ate too much anyway. The stupid nanny goats.

  There’s an illustration in the book about the female organs of sexual arousal containing a view of the vulva. It shows the external pubic area of a deflowered woman, those instruments of the sublime orchestra that has so many different names, and is symbolized by the peach or the seashell. You can see the mound of Venus and the pubic arch, the large and small labia, the urethral, anal, and vaginal openings, the perineum, the vestibular glands, the vestibular bulbs, and the hymen. The pubis is a well. It is damp, fathomless and smells of moths and moss. A precise opening, a hollow, an abyss, a blind chasm. Desire is boundless and hard to pin down. There are so many questions. The term psychosexual perversion should be used with care. Every abnormality is rooted in the normal. And every normal state contains a grain of abnormality. Every pervert retains a tiny remnant of normal perception. How do you define perverse, anyway? A man actually looks much more elegant in women’s stockings than in socks and suspenders. The sexual practices of male and female homosexuals are no different from those of people of normal sexual orientation.

  There is a remarkable photograph in the book Abnormal Traits. It’s obscene. It’s beautiful. You won’t want to look at it. You won’t be able to take your eyes off it. An emotionally charged scene: first you see a man and a woman, the woman’s buttocks, the act of coitus. But then you’ll notice that they’re both wearing black silk stockings, and realize that the phallus is not a real member, but is fastened around the woman’s buttocks with two transparent straps, the kind that are popular these days. Like must go with like. It’s the only way to achieve order. A friend sent me the photograph a long time ago. Nowadays I no longer open any post. I haven’t known anyone for years, so that’s that. The postman used to come once a week to check if I was still alive. Now he doesn’t come anymore. I don’t open letters either. After all, you never know what they might say. It might be you writing to say that you don’t want to come anymore. How am I meant to reply to that? Anyway, at some point I would work out for myself that you weren’t coming. I couldn’t send you anything either. And who knows whether the postage stamp I have is still valid? Who knows whether the letter would arrive? Who knows whether you would read it? So it’s better to keep it. To keep everything. There’s nothing one really needs. Just a pint of milk, a bread roll, and a radio that plays through the night.

  East Germany

  Palace of the Republic

  * Designed by a collective of architects led by Heinz Graffunder at the East German Building Academy, the symbolic government building was erected on the derelict land known as Marx-Engels-Platz on the former site of Berlin’s City Palace, which had been demolished in 1950. It took thirty-two months to construct, and was inaugurated on April 23, 1976 as the People’s Palace.

  The most conspicuous feature of the elongated, five-story, flat-roofed edifice was its facade of bronze-mirrored windows framed by white marble. The building housed not only the plenary chamber of the East German parliament or Volkskammer, an auditorium accommodating nearly eight hundred and another holding up to five thousand people, but also several conference and meeting rooms, thirteen restaurants, eight bowling lanes, a theater, and a discotheque.

  It was the social hub of the party and state leadership, the home of the party conferences of the Socialist Unity Party (S.E.D.) and the seat of the Volkskammer, a venue for major national and international conferences as well as a cultural and entertainment center. The “Glass Flower” in the forty-meter-wide, eighty-meter-long double-height main foyer was a popular meeting place. Its walls displayed a collection of sixteen large-format pictures by well-known East German artists entitled “May communists dream?”

  † To enable the building to withstand the pressure of the groundwater in the glacial valley of Berlin, a concrete slab one hundred and eighty meters long, eighty-six meters wide and eleven meters deep was cast as the foundation. A skeleton of steel girders was constructed around eight concrete cores, before being encased in asbestos cement. A special legal provision permitted the use of sprayed asbestos, even though this technique had been outlawed in East Germany in 1969.

  On August 23, 1990 the parliament in the palace voted in favor of reunification with the Federal Republic. One month later, on September 19, the same body took the decision to close the palace with immediate effect because of the asbestos contamination. In 1992 the German Bundestag declared itself in favor of its demolition. Between 1998 and 2003, specialist companies cleared the approximately five thousand tons of sprayed asbestos from the building, doing so in a way that would allow the building to be either demolished or renovated afterwards
. With the carcinogenic material removed, the palace was reduced to a shell.

  After several architectural competitions to determine the future of the square which, in 1991, reverted to its original name of “Schlossplatz,” the Bundestag decided in 2003 to have the palace demolished. Between spring 2004 and the end of 2005 the gutted palace was temporarily reopened to the public for cultural events.

  In the end, the demolition of the building had to be postponed several times—in part due to heated protests. Work on dismantling the building finally began in February 2006. The Swedish steel in the basic structure was melted down; some was sold to Dubai for use in the construction of the Burj Khalifa, and some bought by the automotive industry and recycled into engines. Work on the reconstruction of the historic Berlin City Palace began in March 2013.

  She lifted the bundle out of the string bag, unwrapped the cloth around the asparagus, and laid the spears on the kitchen table. Then she fetched a couple of handfuls of potatoes from the box in its dark corner next to the refrigerator. Several of them already had green patches on them, and some had even sprouted short, knobbly shoots. Evidently the box was not dark enough after all. The best way, of course, would be to store them in the cellar, but then they always tasted a bit of coal. She fetched one of the gray tea towels and laid it over the box as if it was a tablecloth.

  The hot wash in the washing machine was on its second rinse. With luck it would be dry by the end of the day, as the sun had actually come out at lunchtime. All morning it had been overcast as if it was about to rain any minute.

  She peeled the potatoes, slicing off a bit more where the green patches and shoots were, washed and halved them and placed them in a bowl by the cooker. She wanted to have everything prepared in advance as much as possible. At lunchtime she had only made herself some sandwiches, even though it was Sunday. She had never liked cooking just for herself. It simply wasn’t worth it.

  She had just started rinsing the sand off the asparagus spears when the doorbell rang. She quickly reached for the towel, went out into the hall and opened the door.

  “Ah, Marlene, have you got a moment?”

  It was Lippe. He lived downstairs across the landing on the first floor.

  “Sure. Come in. I just need to finish off in the kitchen quickly.”

  Lippe had a worn-out look about him. He was a nice, easygoing guy. Sometimes they would all sit together of an evening and have a drink, although not so much lately.

  “Holger not back yet?”

  He glanced in the living room.

  She shook her head. Lippe was studying military medicine, like Holger, but his specialism was stomatology.

  He hovered in the doorway.

  “Really, Lippe, you could have kept your shoes on, you know.”

  “Oh well, never mind.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “And the kid’s having a nap?” He motioned with his head in the direction of the bedroom. He looked really tired. Perhaps there was something up with Carmen.

  “Yes, she’s dead to the world. She was exhausted. The fresh air. We had quite a long walk.”

  Straight after lunch she had drawn the curtains and put the child down in her cot. She had babbled for a bit, but soon all was quiet. She had actually been meaning to prepare some lessons, but it had completely slipped her mind in the morning.

  “Mmm.” He tucked his hands in his trouser pockets. “Jule’s asleep too. It’s no bad thing, a bit of peace and quiet on a Sunday.”

  She laid the asparagus spears one after the other on a dry tea towel.

  “Queued up for asparagus, too, did you?” He took his hands out of his pockets, folded his arms and grinned broadly.

  She couldn’t help laughing. She was not the only one pinching asparagus from the field behind the allotments. Green asparagus. She had never once seen it on sale in the shop. Rumor had it that it all went straight to Berlin, to the Palace of the Republic.

  “Yes, I hope no one rats on us.” She dried her hands on the towel and took off her apron.

  “Like a drink?”

  He was still standing barefoot in the doorway. Lippe was quite a bit shorter than Holger. He had a thick, dark mustache and a receding hairline. His skin was sallow, almost waxy.

  “No, no. I won’t,” he replied. “I’m going to go down to the garden again in a minute.”

  The Lipperts, like themselves and a few other families from their block, had been allocated a plot in the field behind the new buildings and had cultivated it over the spring months. The soil was very sandy. They had had to cut away the turf with a spade and shake it out before a thin layer of topsoil appeared, and had then planted potatoes to keep the weeds at bay. Lippe had even got hold of some fertilizer from the agricultural cooperative and set up some cold frames, to improve the yield. They had reaped a fairly meager harvest. But she was glad of whatever she did get. Peppers, radishes, carrots, beans, parsley. They had even managed some strawberries. A small bowlful, but still worth it.

  “Come on, let’s go in the living room.”

  He let her past into the hall, she pulled the bedroom door to and went ahead.

  The sun now cast a shaft of bright light onto the aquariums, which stood on a homemade shelf unit to the left of the door. They were Holger’s fish tanks. Guppies, black mollies, neon tetras and a single catfish that stayed hidden away in its hollow most of the time. To start with they had only had one, but then Holger had kept producing more wooden spindles and sawing more planks, and created space for a second, smaller aquarium above the first, and eventually even a third one, smaller still, right on top. Like a pyramid. The playpen stood in front of the aquariums.

  Lippe sat down on the settee. His checked shirt was a bit tight across his stomach. His sleeves were rolled up. His forearms were covered in a dark fur.

  “Marlene, we . . .”

  He took a deep breath.

  Then he sat forward and folded his hands in his lap.

  “We deliberated for a long time whether we should tell you.”

  Strange that he referred to “we,” even though he was sitting there on his own in front of her.

  He hesitated.

  “Well . . . ,” he started again, “you know we were in Berlin yesterday. Carmen had a lecture, and I had gone along with Jule. A long old trek, but it was worth it.” His right hand was wavering in midair.

  “Oh yes.” She had completely forgotten.

  “And afterwards, we thought we’d give ourselves a treat.”

  He looked over at the window. The cactuses looked really dusty against the light. They could do with watering.

  “So we went into the Palace of the Republic, something a bit special, you know.”

  There was something indecent about his bare feet with their hairy toes on her carpet. She looked at the carved legs of the coffee table. Holger had discovered it a while ago in a derelict house in a neighboring village. A shabby old thing. You could clearly see the woodworm holes. They would be there for good. The two of them had managed to transport it home by bicycle along the sandy paths through the wood.

  “You see, Marlene . . . ,” he resumed, straightening his back.

  “We saw Holger there. With another woman.”

  He looked at her now.

  “In a compromising situation.” He tilted his chin up a fraction, passed his hand over his face and slumped down slightly again.

  “We just wanted you to know.” It sounded like an apology.

  “At first Carmen said it was none of our business.” He ran his tongue over his teeth.

  “But this morning I said to her: How would you feel if Marlene spotted me somewhere with another woman and didn’t say anything?”

  A compromising situation? A compromising situation. Poor Lippe. Such a nice guy. Much nicer than Carmen, with her severe plait and her beauty spo
t, just above her mouth on the left-hand side, which looked as if it had been drawn on.

  “I don’t know what I’d do either.”

  His right foot bobbed up and down. “Perhaps you’d like to have a chat with Carmen? You know, woman to woman?”

  Carmen was a pharmacist. She had never really felt comfortable in her company.

  “I don’t think he noticed us,” he added.

  The table was green. They had painted it themselves. They thought it would be kind of nice.

  “Thank you,” she said, without knowing why.

  Lippe stood up. “I’ll get going.” He wiped his hands on his trouser legs.

  She heard him slip his shoes on in the hall, close the door of the apartment, and go down the stairs. The dust danced in the light. Actually, the table looked vile.

  He twisted round, took his briefcase from the rear seat, laid it on his lap and undid the catch. In amongst his clothes was a water-filled sphere, a present for his daughter. He picked it up.

  “Nice,” said Achim. “She’ll like that.”

  The greenish water sloshed back and forth. The duck smiled. Holger returned the ball to the briefcase and got out his sandwiches.

  “Would you like one?”

  He took them out of their greaseproof paper.

  Achim turned towards him briefly and shook his head.

  “Nah, it’s all right.” He looked back at the road. There wasn’t much traffic.

  “I don’t want to spoil my appetite.”

  Holger bit into the sandwich. Spam. The bread tasted old. He had made the sandwiches yesterday morning, while Marlene and the little one were still asleep. To avoid waking them, he had not put his shoes on until he was out in the stairwell, then he had taken the stairs two at a time in his usual way and walked the kilometer to the main road. But an eternity had passed since then. He put the sandwich down and wrapped it up again in the paper.