The Valley of Unknowing (13 page)

21

Under Actually Existing Socialism the discreet destruction of compromising literature is not as straightforward as it is elsewhere. In the West, for instance, where mountains of printed matter accumulate daily on the doormat, uninvited and unloved, literary purges are built into the routine of every household. Sack loads of writing are collected and removed each week. Roomy suburban gardens provide ample opportunity for incineration if greater discretion is required.

None of these solutions was available to me. Garbage was not bagged up in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, there being no ready supply of bags. Anything that could not be recycled was emptied in plain view into a communal skip. Ideally I would have burned Richter’s manuscript – it was at least fitting that the created should share the same fate as the creator – but that was not an option: my stove ran on oil and any fire outside the building was bound to attract attention. I considered pulping. As a schoolchild I had spent many contented hours making papier-mâché masks and assorted wild animals. I mixed up some flour glue and attempted a trial run with an old set of page proofs. But the trial was not successful: the paper was too stiff, and after an hour of boiling and pounding, I had got through less than thirty pages’ worth of
Factory Gate Fables
. There was always the river. I thought of drowning the manuscript the way people drown kittens, in a cloth sack weighed down with stones. But the bridges and quays were the most visible spaces in the city; I was almost certain to be observed. After much deliberation I decided that, just like a real murder victim, Richter’s book was best buried in the woods.

As it happened, our city was blessed with sixty square kilometres of forest, the Heide, not half an hour’s walk from Blasewitz. Nonetheless, planning was essential. I would need to establish a suitable location for the burial. I would need to get there without arousing suspicion. I would have to dig a hole – but with what? A man walking towards the woods carrying a spade might well have been deemed suspicious. The Heide was officially designated parkland. Digging there was a state prerogative.

I worked out the elements of my plan one by one. The key to it, I realised, was to have an alternative explanation for every step, an explanation both innocent and credible. This required some creative thinking, but I was glad of the occupation, glad to focus on the how and not the why. The answer to why lay in the past, but the past could not be changed. Besides, I was taking a risk, for Schilling’s sake more than my own. I was being strong for both of us, in case – only in case – the rumour he had heard about Richter’s death was true.

Early one morning, a few days later, I set off on a bicycle towards the river. Theresa still had the manuscript, but that was fine. I had decided to make two trips: the first to find the spot and dig the hole; the second to carry out the burial. I was dressed in hiking clothes and carried on me, among other things, a pair of small binoculars and an ancient copy of
Native Birds of Central Europe
by Siegbert Pressler, borrowed from the library. I also had, tucked into my belt, a builder’s trowel, with which I planned to do the digging. If challenged, I would say I had simply found it lying by the road.

The wind was strong and gusting as I passed beneath the pale blue girders of the Loschwitz Bridge. It was cold, but the smudges of sunlight that drifted over the rooftops and the woods and the flat grey waters of the river held out a promise of spring. I hadn’t ridden my bicycle in a long time and it was badly in need of oil. Pedalling was difficult, especially when I reached the uphill slopes on the far side of the river. I broke into a sweat and my front wheel wobbled comically as my speed dropped to walking pace. A woman pushing a pram turned to look at me and laughed, revealing a missing front tooth. An old man stared at me from a window. The idea was to look like a birdwatcher on his way to watch birds. To this end I stopped to admire a pair of starlings perched on a telegraph wire. At the appearance of a sparrow, I paused to consult
Native Birds of Central Europe
. I tried not to look over my shoulder more than a birdwatcher would, though the approach of every car sent a pulse of effervescent terror up my spine.

Soon enough there were no cars and no pedestrians either. I climbed off my bicycle and wheeled it through an iron gate into the Albert Park, a landscaped corner of the Heide, mostly fallen into neglect – ponds rank with algae, rusty iron benches, paths pockmarked with molehills, moss and piles of undisguised dog shit. The place was named in honour of a nineteenth-century Saxon king and in its decayed condition there was the flavour of casual proletarian disdain. I soon felt better about my chosen location. It was empty, unregarded, unloved; the perfect final resting place for a stillborn work of art. My bicycle wheels made garlands of wet leaves as I struck out across an untended lawn.

I headed for King Albert’s memorial, a plain granite monolith as devoid of originality as the man himself. The woods beyond were mainly birch, the trees bare and widely spaced, providing insufficient cover. I paused for some pantomime birdwatching (the birds themselves seemed to keep their distance, as if aware of the pretence) then continued, crossing a narrow potholed road, and pressing on into thicker and wilder woods.

The ground here was broken and uneven. It was impossible to maintain a straight line, especially with the bicycle. I tripped on roots and slithered down inclines, sinking in mud up to my shins. But at least no one was watching me, I was sure of that. What reason could anyone have for being out here, unless it was a reason like mine? I wished I’d had the manuscript with me. I could have got rid of it there and then.

In the lee of a slope I came across a trio of evergreens. The tidy symmetry reminded me of a pagan grove, as depicted in a neo-Gothic painting. It seemed like a good spot. I took out my trowel and began to dig. The ground was soft, but a couple of inches below the surface I hit a tangle of roots. Most were no fatter than my little finger, but the trowel was not an ideal tool to tackle them. I stopped digging and started stabbing, with one hand to begin with, then with both. Dirt flew into my face and into the folds of my clothes. Meanwhile the wind was growing stronger, kicking up leaves and spinning them across the hollow. I went on hacking into the ground, clearing the earth a handful at a time. I could have chosen a different place, but I was hidden here. I felt safe.

Then, over the hissing wind, I heard a sound, a deep animal sound, too faint and brief to identify – a dog perhaps, or something larger. The bears and wolves were long gone, but there were still wild boar and deer in the Heide. Barbara Jaeger once told me that shoots had been organised for visiting Party bigwigs from Berlin – Comrade Honecker was an ardent huntsman – though they had to freight in some extra livestock to make sure there was enough to kill. I went back to work. The hole wasn’t as deep yet as the manuscript was thick. I picked up the pace, hacking at the stubborn ground and the stubborn roots.

It took me a moment to realise that I was not alone. It wasn’t a sound that told me, or even a lack of sound, but a perceptible stillness behind me. I looked round and there she was, looking down at me from the lip of the hollow, still in that old brown coat I recognised, still holding that battered suitcase: my mother, older but still the same. The same brown eyes, the same dimpled chin, the same smear of dirt across her forehead. She was younger than me, of course: not thirty years old.

I got to my feet. In the distance I was dimly aware of dogs barking. They were coming closer, but I couldn’t move. She should have held her arms out wide. After all this time, she should have been desperate to enfold me and hold me close. But she just stood there, my mother, neither smiling nor frowning.

‘It’s just a book,’ I said. ‘I’m burying a book.’

I knew then that I couldn’t go through with it. I was no more capable of destroying the manuscript than Michael Schilling was.

My mother took a step back, turned and walked away. I threw down the trowel and hurried after her. The bank was steep. I slipped and fell. When I finally stood where she had stood moments before, everything had changed. I was no longer in the woods. I was back in the Neumarkt, a refugee among the mountains and valleys of rubble, with the dust clouds stinging my eyes and the tears rolling down my cheeks.

But the dogs were still there. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. They had my scent. They were closing in. A voice came over a megaphone, screeching and bellowing. The only words I could make out were
stay where you are
.

When I opened my eyes I was in the middle of trying to scream. I’m not sure if I made any sound – that of a startled seal, perhaps – but in any case the effort was interrupted by the buzz of my doorbell. It was this that had woken me. Still shaky with fright, I climbed out of bed. The clock said half past nine. I went to the window and looked out, half expecting to see men in uniform and salivating wolfhounds, straining at the leash.

It was a girl wearing a black beret. She stepped back from the door and looked up: Theresa. I hadn’t been expecting her. It had been my policy to avoid early morning encounters, except as an unavoidable coda to nocturnal ones.

I opened the window. She was holding something, a package, clutching it tight to her chest. Though the colour was different – she had wrapped it in a black plastic bag – I recognised the dimensions at once. It was Richter’s manuscript. I had only given it to her a few days earlier, but here she was bringing it back.

‘Sorry to show up like this,’ she called up to me. ‘Can I come in?’

I pressed the buzzer and spent the available sixty seconds throwing on a dressing gown, hastily rinsing my mouth and arranging my sleep-flattened hair so as not to look like Hitler. I also managed to drag some books from the shelves and leave them open around the sitting room, so as to give the impression of an intense creative stew.

‘I woke you up, I’m sorry,’ she said as soon as I opened the door. ‘I tried to call, but the phone wasn’t working.’

She was out of breath, and not just from the stairs. It occurred to me that she had hurried all the way, so impatient had she been to get here. All thoughts of my dream, its lingering aftermath of dread, were banished.

Theresa stumbled as I pulled her into an embrace. ‘Let me get my coat off,’ she said.

‘Nothing’s wrong, is it? Nothing’s happened?’

‘Your book.’

She handed me the package and wriggled off her coat. Her blonde hair tumbled out from under her beret with a crackle of static. A dizzying sensation in my loins told me I wanted her badly, and soon. If only I hadn’t been standing there, unwashed and unshaved at half past nine in the morning.

I tossed the manuscript on to the hall table. ‘I didn’t think you’d like it.’ She was going to say something but I held up my hand. ‘Don’t worry in the slightest. I told you it needs a lot of work.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it. I
love
it. It must be the best thing you’ve ever written. You seemed so unhappy with it last time, I just had to tell you how wonderful it is.’

She put her arms round me and squeezed.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m reassured.’

‘It could only be you, Bruno. The voice is unmistakable.’

‘You think so?’

‘Of course. I just read
Orphans
, remember? Only this is even better. I’m so happy for you.’

‘So am I.’

‘And to think, if I hadn’t found it here, I wouldn’t even know the book existed.’ Theresa looked up at me. I forced a rictal grin. ‘How did you keep from boasting? From even talking about it?’

I shrugged. Words were beyond me.

‘You’re incredible.’ She brought a hand to my unshaven cheek. ‘Artists are meant to be egotistical. Most of them
are
egotistical, the ones I know. And vain. But not you.’

Theresa stepped back, the better to look me in the eye. I took a deep breath, struggling to rally.

‘You really aren’t in it for the glory, are you? What
are
you in it for?’

‘The girls, obviously,’ I said and dragged her towards the sitting room, just so she wouldn’t look at me any more.

Theresa had felt compelled to come and see me that morning for another reason, besides the brilliance of Richter’s novel: back in the West her mother had contrived to fracture her pelvis in a bicycling accident and was going to be wheelchair-bound for months.

‘She says she can manage, but I can tell she’s really struggling. She hates hanging around the house at the best of times.’ Theresa was standing in the kitchen doorway by this time, watching me make coffee with my French cafetière. ‘They’ve got her on all these painkillers. I think they’re really dragging her down.’

‘You’ve an aunt, don’t you? Can’t she help?’

‘Astrid’s got kids and she’s three hours away. There’s not much she can do.’

‘I don’t suppose your father . . .’

Theresa shook her head. Her parents had divorced when she was twelve years old (amicably, she maintained, which is to say the worst of the rage and bitterness had been hidden from her). As she saw it, she had no choice but to go home. A break from lectures was due in any case, and she could both study and practise perfectly well at her mother’s house. All in all she could afford almost seven weeks away; enough time, she hoped, to see the maternal invalid through the worst.

‘When do you leave?’

‘The day after tomorrow. It’s very soon, I know, but I think she really needs me.’

I needed Theresa too, but what was the point of saying so? I couldn’t bind her to me with guilt. Guilt was an unreliable adhesive and notoriously corrosive. Still, her announcement brought one possible end to our affair a big step closer. When Theresa returned, it would be for her final term. Once her studies were complete, her visa would be revoked. From then on there would be a wall between us – not just any wall, but The Wall, an object which could in theory be negotiated (provided we both had the desire, the passion, the need), but which could no longer be ignored.