The Valley of Unknowing (10 page)

16

Later that day I made a second attempt to buy toothpaste. It was no more successful than the first. The only item I managed to procure was an antiseptic gargle that tasted powerfully of burnt rubber and stripped the lining clean off my tongue. It was on my way back from the pharmacy that I had a disturbing encounter with an old derelict who habitually wandered the eastern districts of our city.

In the Western world Gruna Willy, as he was known locally, would have been classified as ‘long-term unemployed’. But not in the East. In the East no such designation existed, for the simple reason that unemployment, like prostitution, had been abolished by Party fiat and could no longer be said to exist. All citizens under Actually Existing Socialism were workers, regardless of whether they actually had work. In any case, Gruna Willy was not without employment. He was fully employed in poisoning himself, a task that demanded long hours and exemplary dedication. (Years later, after the Workers’ and Peasants’ State had ceased to exist, Willy took additional steps to fend off the West’s undesirable nomenclature, which by that time applied to a fifth of the Saxon workforce. To the occupation of drinking he added that of urination – not the simple function, performed out of biological necessity, but public, premeditated and targeted urination. From somewhere he had acquired a bronze bust of Lenin, which he placed at a busy intersection south of the city centre. There, protected on every side by streams of traffic, he pissed at regular intervals on Comrade Ulyanov’s bald head, grinning gleefully and shaking his Johnson for all it was worth. Proof that this amounted to self-employment was supplied by passing drivers, many of whom acknowledged Gruna Willy’s performance by hurling their change at him. Whether the coins landed at his feet or struck him in the face, Willy’s entrepreneurial response was always to bow low before scooping them up in his cap.)

Like many in his line of business, Gruna Willy had a number of proprietary catchphrases, which he used to distinguish himself from the competition. The most unnerving, which he would bellow at passers-by as evening fell, was ‘
Watch out for the death strip!’
This was a reference to the mine-sown no-man’s-land that ran along our side of the inner German border, an undesirable stretch of real estate where the border guards (the
Grenzer
) were empowered to shoot more or less on sight. It was whispered – with what authority I cannot say – that Gruna Willy had been one of the
Grenzer
himself, and that he had shot someone on a night patrol, the guilt driving him into the arms of alcohol and madness. I even heard it said that his victim had been a young woman and that the young woman had been carrying an unborn child. These were fictional embellishments, I had no doubt, but they made Gruna Willy an object of dread and fascination, a spectre whose comings and goings were watched from behind the net curtains by young and old alike.

Blasewitz was not on Willy’s regular mendicant circuit, but now and again he would show up like a bad conscience, reminding the local populace of his cautionary message and soliciting for funds. I had given him money on occasions, at other times food. Not only did I pity him; it struck me that the tenor of his message was essentially public-spirited. And there was something of the Old Testament prophet about his wild grey hair and deep oracular voice. Once I gave him a volume of my
Factory Gate Fables
(I had on that day’s wanderings spotted it lying in a skip), an act of charity to which he responded with one of his deep, theatrical bows. This, I expect, is how he came to know my name.

The day of my second date with Theresa, I found Gruna Willy pacing the street outside my building, wearing a long military coat with a length of clothes line for a belt. Even from a distance he looked older and wilder than usual, his eyes red-rimmed, his lips twitching ceaselessly, as if muttering to an invisible companion, his breath making clouds in the freezing air. The kindergarten children were inside by this time, gas masks stowed, but I noticed several young faces pressed up against the glass, watching him open-mouthed.

To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness. Sharing this common prejudice, I decided to avoid contact by crossing to the other side of the street. But no sooner had I reached the door than I was overcome with shame. What if Gruna Willy had made the journey to Blasewitz specifically in the hope of finding me? To survive in Willy’s line of business it was important to keep a reliable mental record of where and from whom assistance has been received. I could imagine all too keenly his despair at seeing me turn my back.

Holding my shopping bag in one hand, I reached into my jacket for some money. I heard a vehicle pull up behind me and turned to see Gruna Willy hurrying across the street, uttering his usual warning, but with more than usual urgency.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him, producing a five-Ostmark note. ‘I’m not going
near
the death strip.’

Willy’s forward progress was abruptly halted by the appearance of two uniformed officers of the
Volkspolizei,
who unceremoniously seized him by the shoulders and dragged him towards a van that had stopped in the middle of the road.

‘The dogs, Herr Krug! The dogs!’ Willy cried, seemingly oblivious to his predicament. ‘They’ve got your scent!’

The police officers threw him in the back, neither of them giving me so much as a glance. I lost sight of Willy at that point, the glass in the side windows being frosted, but even after they slammed the doors I could still hear him shouting – until quite suddenly the shouting stopped.

The human cerebrum produces strange visions when routinely pickled in alcohol. I did not take Gruna Willy’s delusional outburst seriously, even if he had identified me by name (which I did find disturbing). Still, it must have made some impression, because when Theresa opened the door to me an hour later the first thing she said was: ‘Are you all right?’

17

The temporary unavailability of toothpaste continued to dog the early days of my affair with Theresa Aden. Ordinarily it would have been a simple matter to borrow half a tube from a well-disposed neighbour, but the contamination scare had brought out the innate hoarding instincts of the valley dwellers. Even to make such a request would have been the height of presumption, like asking to borrow a selection of underwear or a litre of blood. The one person I could have turned to was Frau Wiegmann. She could not have been more kindly disposed towards me than she was at this time. But I found myself reluctant to approach her. To ask a favour of her would be to pretend that she was indeed in my debt and that I had, in spite of all my sincere protestations, been her saviour in cement. So instead of toothpaste I made do with salt and whatever I could steal from Theresa’s bathroom – which I visited as soon as I could whenever we returned to her apartment, even though it must surely have left her with the impression that I suffered from a weak bladder, as older men often do.

Despite these oral inconveniences, those first few weeks brought me happiness. What’s more, it was the kind of happiness men crave most: happiness that raises the pulse and dilates the pupils, happiness that fills the heart with hope. It was not an unwavering state, needless to say. Happiness, in my experience, never is – that breathless kind of happiness least of all. My continual state was, if anything, one of heightened anxiety, because when I wasn’t with Theresa I worried that something would go wrong: her affection for me would fade, or she would find someone else she liked better.

Between these agitated states I did experience quieter pleasures. We talked a lot, mainly about music. A player’s perspective, I discovered, is different from a collector’s. The player sees the inner workings with greater clarity, the way an engineer sees a bridge. She sees the flaws, the devices, the cosmetic repairs, as well as instances of inventiveness and the innovation. Gradually I became familiar with her tastes and preferences, and not only when it came to music. She hated brushing her hair, to cite one example, which she was obliged to do often and always before bedtime; otherwise it would tangle spectacularly and self-knot during the night, leaving her looking like a warrior from some mythical tribe of savage blondes.

‘Why don’t you cut it short,’ I suggested one time, as she fretted before the mirror, ‘if it’s so much trouble?’

‘I did once,’ she said. ‘People started calling me “sonny”.’

She would not eat beetroot or drink beer. Vodka, for reasons opaque to us both, frequently made her sneeze.

I remember a habit she had, when she sat down at the dining table, of spreading her fingers out in front of her and looking at them for a moment with an expression of confusion, as if unsure what should be done with them. I loved those moments of disengagement from the predictable continuum of life. It was as if she had glimpsed the strangeness of human existence, its arbitrary forms (ten fingers, not eight or eleven), and been able, if only for an instant, to perceive it from without, like a being from another world.

The way we passed our time together was not extraordinary. The valley, for all its history, was no recreational paradise. Yet every shared activity, no matter how mundane, was gilded with a sense of possession. We owned the streets we walked along, the parks we sat in, the cafés we frequented (or so it seemed to me); they were the backdrop for the drama in which we starred. I took photographs to prove it. Even a trip to the Hygiene Museum – her idea, not mine – with its giant glass bodies and luminous internal organs, its vivid recreations of bodily malformation and infectious disease, failed to put our romantic escapade in context, or to remind us that its days were numbered.

Not all my discoveries were happy. On my second visit to Theresa’s apartment I asked her to play for me. She refused. Instead, she told a joke: ‘Why do people take an instant dislike to the viola?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because it saves time.’

I assumed she was being modest and repeated my request, not because I was especially anxious for music, but because I liked the idea, in a depraved, sultanesque way, of her performing for me; and even though she would not, like an actual harem-dwelling concubine, be disrobing for my entertainment, I would still be able to enjoy a shameless perusal of her body, interpreted through the caress and cling of her clothes and the rhythmic shift of balance and weight.

Finally she played a transcription of Bach, a short piece, pure, timeless and impeccably mannered. I made her play some more. Then, sensing that time was moving on, I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth; and when I returned I found that the viola was back in its case. I asked her to take it out again and play some more.

‘The solo repertoire’s very limited,’ she said. ‘I need an accompanist.’

‘No you don’t.’ I lay down on the bed. ‘What’s the matter? You perform for strangers, but you won’t perform for me?’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘What is it like?’

Theresa blushed. ‘What makes you think I like performing for
anyone
?’

‘You mean you don’t?’

She sat down on the bed with her back to me. ‘As a matter of fact, no. Not recently. What I enjoy is playing for myself.’

‘All alone?’

She said it was the only time she felt comfortable. ‘The rest of the time I feel . . .’ I remember how she brought a hand to her throat ‘. . .
constrained.
It’s been that way since . . .’

‘Since when?’

She shrugged. ‘Since I got really good at it, I think. Since I started winning prizes at school. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it.’

I was troubled by this revelation, though not as troubled as I should have been. The musician is a performer. She lives to be heard. Yet as Theresa’s expertise had grown, so – apparently – had her inhibitions. But before I could question her on this paradox, she took out her viola again and knocked out a sweet, sentimental folk tune, moving round the room and doing circles as she played, like a gypsy violinist at a Hungarian restaurant. It was an insincere, kitsch performance, but having her dance for me, as well as play, was even more arousing than I’d hoped. I soon forgot her strange confession and the ardour with which I grasped her, pressing my mouth to hers, was genuine; likewise the hunger with which I pushed my hands beneath her clothes (both her hands were still occupied holding instrument and bow), uncovering her nipples with all the impatience of a teenager behind a sand dune. The coupling that followed I remember with almost as much affection as our first. It was breathless, hungry, impolite. And the look on Theresa’s face (which I could see clearly, there having been no time for atmospherics) was mostly one of surprise, followed by breathless introspection, allowing me to imagine, if only for a minute or two, that she was experiencing revelatory levels of arousal.

I also recall distinctly, as we finally lay breathless and naked on the churned-up sheets, wondering for the first time what Theresa was doing about contraception. What if she was, in fact, doing the same as me, namely nothing? I considered this without the frisson of terror that such speculations usually engender in the male. Instead, I found myself thinking that it would be apt if such instinctive and primal lovemaking had a lasting effect; that for there
not
to be conception and birth (a bouncing baby boy, four kilos at least!) would be almost anticlimactic. These brief, post-coital reflections were, of course, almost adolescent in their selfishness. But, as I have said, so was the sex itself, on that day.

One afternoon we were walking through the Neumarkt. As we passed the towering ruins of the Frauenkirche I checked among the mounds of rubble and brambles for the bouquet I had left there to mark my mother’s birthday. That was when Theresa, perhaps misinterpreting my interest, asked me if I believed in God ‘by any chance’.

In spite of the obvious context, the question caught me by surprise. In the Workers’ and Peasants’ State the otherworldly was an important resource, not to be squandered promoting hollow observances and redundant moral strictures –
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ox
, for example, oxen having been fully collectivised under the agricultural reforms of the 1950s. Visions and evocations of a Promised Land, although as fantastical as any vision of heaven in the Bible, had been brought down to earth and put to the service of society. Even under Actually Existing Socialism the halcyon prospect of a perfectly just world in which the coercive power of government was redundant, remained the official long-term goal. Churches, ministers and small congregations still existed. Among our hankering youth, religious gatherings were quite popular, providing both a frisson of countercultural danger and an opportunity to meet girls. But the rest of us saw no particular reason to get involved. The state had diligently supplanted religious rites of passage – marking birth, coming of age, marriage and death – with alternative, secular ceremonies. And since, just as in the West, this was all the use most people had for religion, the connections between Church and people had all but withered away.

‘Why do you ask?’ I said.

Theresa shook her head. ‘That’s what everyone says here. You ask them if they believe in God and they always say: “Why do you ask?”’

‘And what do people say where
you
come from?’

Theresa glanced over her shoulder. It was a habit she had when we were out and about, a reflex. I had just begun to notice it. ‘They usually say they’re keeping an open mind.’

‘They don’t want to commit themselves.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

A pair of vertical creases appeared between Theresa’s eyebrows. ‘Not really. One lot of people are answering the question and the other lot are evading it.’

‘It seems to me, calling yourself an agnostic is just another way of not answering the question.’

Theresa took my arm. ‘You
really
can’t see the difference?’

We walked on a few paces, going round the ruins now, although that hadn’t been my intention when we entered the square. I suppose it must have been force of habit: to observe them from every angle, just in case.

‘The difference lies in the motive,’ I said. ‘Both responses betray fear. But they’re fear of different things – in the latter case, God.’

‘And in the former case?’

‘Man,’ I said and left it at that, sensing no profit in any further discussion of divinity. Eventually we completed our circuit of the ruins and came to a halt at the exact spot where I had last seen my mother. Billows of mist blew across the scene, so that it was possible to believe the whole city was just as it was the day I lost her – except for the grass and the sign that read: KEEP OUT – DANGER OF COLLAPSE.

Theresa pointed at something among the fallen stones. ‘I wonder who put that there?’

It was the remains of my bouquet: a brown bunch of twigs, camouflaged among the clumps of dying grass. The pale blue ribbon round it was the only trace of colour.

‘I did,’ I said. ‘For my mother. It’s the closest thing she has to a grave, you see.’

I had already told Theresa about the day of the disappearance. She had read about me growing up as an orphan and had winkled out the facts one morning as we lay in bed. But the birthday ritual was always something I had kept to myself.

‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’ I said. ‘Technically, it’s an offence. These ruins are supposed to be an object lesson, not a memorial.’

We carried on walking. Theresa fell silent, imagining perhaps the boy Krug abandoned in that wasteland. I noticed how she absently touched at her temple, at the faint depression below the hairline. It was something she did often when lost in thought.

‘How did you come by that, by the way?’ I asked, wanting to lighten the mood, expecting to hear some anecdote about a childhood mishap or an argument with a double bass. It was only then I noticed the tears in her eyes. I had never seen her cry before, not even at Richter’s funeral. I suppose being here, at the scene of my tear-choked search, had made my story real for her.

‘Come by what?’

‘That,’ I said, running my fingers over the spot. ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’

She sniffed and wrapped her arm round my waist. ‘No, I don’t mind.’

That was when I finally learned about her twin. It was a revelation she had been keeping back until the right moment, I realised, and the right moment had finally come.

‘She was called Clara. She was born a few minutes after me and until she came out, nobody even knew she was there.’

I said Clara was a nice name.

‘That’s her right knee you can see up there. Her right knee made that impression.’ Theresa touched her forehead again. ‘It’s all that’s left of her now; the only living thing. She had heart problems, you see.’

The use of the past tense had already told me Clara was dead.

‘Do you remember her?’

Therese shook her head. ‘She only lived a few months, although . . .’

‘Although . . . ?’

‘I don’t remember
her
. How could I? But I remember her presence. It’s hard to explain. I remember the knowledge of her. When I close my eyes sometimes, I can feel the space she left behind, her absence.’ Theresa sighed. ‘I expect it’s all in my head.’

We had left the Neumarkt and were heading down a narrow street beneath the shadow of the town hall. It was starting to get dark.

‘My parents told me the story, years later when I was almost grown up – though I already knew it somehow. I must have overheard it, I suppose.’

I didn’t have to ask what story she meant.

‘My parents were woken up one night by the sound of crying – howling they said. They went into the room where we were sleeping, Clara and me, and I was the one making the ruckus. They thought I must have something really wrong with me. They picked me up and tried feeding me and burping me, and my father went to get a thermometer because he was convinced I had a fever. But nothing worked. I just howled and howled. It was only after a few minutes they thought to check on my sister. She hadn’t made a sound, you see. That’s when they discovered she was dead. I was crying because I knew I’d lost her, according to the story.’