The Valley of Unknowing (16 page)

The line clicked. ‘Yes.’

A curt male voice, but not one I knew.

‘Herr Andrich, please.’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘I need to speak to him at once.’

‘Who’s calling, please?’

‘It’s urgent.’

‘Your name.’

‘What about Herr Zoch? Is he . . . ?’

‘
What. Is. Your. Name
.’

It was then, just in time, that I saw where my putative interrogation of Herr Andrich would lead, where it was
certain
to lead: to the extraction of more names. I would learn nothing. The internal workings of the state security apparatus were not disclosed to anyone, not even Champions of Art and Culture. The flow of information was strictly one way, the information in this case being the identities of those who had slandered the state with their rumours of covert arrest, torture and death in custody. Where did you hear these rumours, Herr Krug? Who has been propagating these scandalous lies? Such were the questions that would be put to me, with ever increasing force. What would it cost me not to answer them, even assuming I had the strength?

‘Hello?’

I put down the receiver. The vodka was still out on the table. I poured myself a shot, then another, then a third. It was the only thing I could think of to do.

26

The glass was still in my hand when the doorbell rang. The Richters had left behind their report from the hospital and I assumed this was what had brought them back, but when I looked out of the window it was not the Richters I saw. On the doorstep stood the man who had followed me from the college of music, his hands dug deep into the pockets of his bomber jacket, the butt of a cigarette protruding from his lips. For an agent of the state security apparatus his appearance was casual, even slovenly. But it came to me that this would be standard operational camouflage for agents of a certain type.

I had nothing to gain from being evasive. I buzzed the door open without demanding identification (as a man with no enemies might do) and settled into my armchair to wait. I also turned on the radio and hastily tuned it to Rundfunk der DDR, where a talk was under way on South Africa and the history of apartheid. I took deep breaths and mentally practised looking blameless, which I decided was best achieved with a show of contentedness and good humour – except where the situation in South Africa was concerned. Clearly no good citizen could be contented about that.

I waited a minute and another; then returned to the window. A black Wartburg crawled past the front of the building, but the stranger was no longer on the step, nor anywhere else that I could see. I sat down again for another minute, then went to listen at my door: sure enough, I heard footsteps – slow and laboured for such a young man – approaching from below. I sat down once more and waited for the knock, my stomach noisily imploding as if in response to the worsening South African situation. The footsteps in the stairwell grew louder and slower, then unexpectedly softer. I held my breath. Keys jangled – keys whose particular timbre I knew well: they were an old neighbour’s keys, being readied for an old neighbour’s door.

I went out on to the landing and peered over the rail. The lights were on but there was no sign of movement. What had become of my unannounced visitor? Why had he rung the doorbell if not to gain entry? Without putting my shoes back on, I went to investigate. As I reached the entrance hall – a tiled space, once grand, now scored, faded and smelling of fungus – the lights cut out with a clonk. Turning them on again, my eyes came to rest on an envelope propped up on the table by the door. On the front was written simply:
B.K.
I ripped it open. Inside was a letter in Theresa’s tidy hand.

Dearest Bruno,

I hope you received my postcard and haven’t been worried. I have to write quickly now because there’s someone who can take this letter to you and I think it’s best to send it that way. I’ve some important things to tell you that I couldn’t put on a postcard.

At this point I stopped reading and climbed back up to my apartment, my footsteps heavy with the anticipation of a new disaster. When a young woman writes to her lover that she has
something important
to communicate it usually means one of two things: either she is breaking up with him or she is pregnant – rarely both, this being a mercy or a misfortune, depending on the lover’s view of paternity. It did not immediately occur to me that the important something might be connected with Richter’s book, because the book itself was not important, not to me. Theresa was what mattered.

I reinstalled myself in my old leather armchair and took a deep breath before reading on.

I arrived back here without any problems, just the usual checks at the border. The guards took one suitcase away for a while – not the one that mattered – and when it came back it was missing a lipstick and, of all things, a tube of toothpaste! Otherwise, everything went fine.

Now I’m at home, looking after my mother and practising when I get the chance. At least I have no other distractions – although some of those distractions I could certainly do with. I expect you can guess the ones I’m talking about . . .

Now to my news. I’ve had some success regarding
The Valley
. I didn’t know where to begin; so I went to a bookshop in Linz to see what was what. I wasn’t ready to talk about the book, but when I was in there a sales rep turned up from a publishing company in Munich. We got chatting. He asked me what my book was about. I babbled hopelessly. It’s about a lot of things and I hadn’t rehearsed what I should say. The rep – his name was Matthias – said it sounded ‘interesting’ and gave me the name of an editor. He said it would take months to get an answer, but that he would put in a good word. The company is called Bernheim Media Verlag. The man who worked in the bookshop said they were ‘up and coming’ and published a lot of science fiction. I went to a print shop and got the manuscript copied, and sent it off to Munich right away.

The one thing I almost forgot was to add a title page. I’d been putting this off, because I knew it would feel wrong. You know why. I managed it, though – after a few misaligned attempts – and, I must admit, I did get a guilty glow of satisfaction seeing my name on top of that pile of pages, which contain so much originality and life. It was the first time I felt able to imagine myself as an author. There is something liberating about being someone new, trying on a new persona. I imagine this is the thrill an actor gets, except that actors must play their parts as written. Maybe this is really the freedom of the writer, who makes up his characters and lives inside them, in his mind. Is this why you do it, Bruno, because it gives you a special kind of freedom? If so, then perhaps I am closer to understanding you than ever.

A week went by and then, out of the blue, I got a telephone call from Konrad Falkner. He is the chief editor at Bernheim Media. He said he and his colleagues all agreed that the book was ‘very powerful and very gripping’. I tried to sound surprised at this critical assessment, but once again, I don’t think I made a good job of it – because, of course, I was not a bit surprised. I knew it was very powerful and gripping. I would have been surprised to hear anything else!

I think Herr Falkner was slightly disappointed at my reaction. He asked me if I’d had any offers for the book yet and I told him the truth: that his company was the first to see it. He then told me about all the successful books his company had published. I hadn’t heard of them, but he did sound very enthusiastic. As agreed, I didn’t tell him what the book is really about. I was a little surprised, though, that he didn’t ask.

Herr Falkner finished by saying he was hopeful of being able to put together a ‘pretty compelling’ offer. His only reservation, he said, was that the title was too lyrical. Could I suggest an alternative? Something more ‘gritty’? Of course, I couldn’t. So I said I would think about it. Personally, I like
The Valley
. Perhaps I should have said that, but I didn’t want to sound pretentious. What do you think? Can you think of another title that might keep Herr Falkner happy?

I will try to get away to Linz again tomorrow so that I can talk again to the man in the bookshop. How else will I know whether or not to accept Herr Falkner’s offer when it comes? If only I could consult with you about it, but that’s impossible (I wonder what a ‘pretty compelling’ offer means in the publishing world? Should one be compelled by a thousand Deutschmarks? What about ten thousand?) How long will it take them to get the book in the shops, I wonder?

It is almost midnight and I’m exhausted. If only you knew how much I miss you. I was sometimes a little lonely in the East – before I met you – but I’m even lonelier here. Is it possible I don’t belong any more? How I wish I could curl up with you right now and talk about everything. Even when I’m scraping away on my viola, I’m so very often thinking of you.

All my love,

Theresa

PS I may not be able to write another letter before I leave here (on the 25th). There are risks involved in getting it to you and I don’t want to ask too many favours. If only for my sake, please destroy this letter as soon as you’ve read it. Promise?

27

I never received the postcard Theresa had sent me, but on the afternoon she was due to return, I went down to the central railway station to wait for her, carrying a bunch of white chrysanthemums (the only fresh flowers I could find). I didn’t know which train she would be on. But the alternative – sitting in my apartment, waiting for her to contact me – struck me as ungenerous and unnecessarily cool. It was not enough to tell Theresa that I had missed her, that her return mattered to me deeply. I wanted her to see it for herself. By going to the station I was shrinking the time spent apart from her to the smallest possible size.

The trains from Berlin came in about once an hour. The intervals between them I spent in the waiting room, a rank and murky cell full of litter and mouse droppings, or on a variety of benches, inside or outside, depending on temperature and precipitation. In the end, after the third empty train (not literally empty, but empty to me) I took to touring the area on foot, pacing the stark expanse of Wiener Platz and the surrounding streets, always returning in time to my vantage point at the end of the relevant platform, where none could pass without my seeing them. Between four o’clock and five there were two trains from Berlin; another two between six o’clock and seven. Theresa was not on any of them.

Hours went by. The shutters came down on the station café. The waiting room emptied. The sky beyond the steel canopy went from grey to pink to grimy blue. Lights went on high above the platforms. I paced now to keep warm, multiple shadows wheeling around my feet, ignoring the doubtful looks from station staff and the mice darting brazenly back and forth. I had always liked the larger sort of railway terminus. There is grandeur in the arrival of a train, ceremony in its final approach: the stately pace, the declaratory hiss of brakes. But this terminus held me prisoner. And, like a real prisoner, I had nothing to do but wait.

Of course, it was perfectly possible Theresa’s travel plans had changed. I knew that. Nothing could be reliably inferred from her not appearing. As an episode it had neither drama nor consequence – originality least of all. The lover, bearing flowers, waiting hopefully but in vain: it was a scene I would have hesitated to put into a work of fiction. Characters in novels are not supposed to act like other characters in other novels; in so doing they show themselves as similarly fictional, which is something their creators generally seek to avoid. Characters do not come alive by conforming to type. Nothing can draw breath that is pressed from a mould – though some readers (I am told) prefer it that way, just as some people prefer their food from a tin. Yet here I was, bouquet symbolically wilting, the fallen petals inspiring rodent forays – likewise futile – from left and right, a cliché of the disappointed lover. Why had I taken on such an obvious role? Why, with night falling, had I not done the sensible thing, the painless thing, and gone home? The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that it was not my love for Theresa that had brought to me the station, but an older, more deeply rooted instinct, one which knew better than to believe in love stories with happy endings where Bruno Krug was concerned.

That evening I destroyed Theresa’s letter, as requested.

She arrived the following afternoon and telephoned me from the music college. When I finally met her, at an outdoor café above the river, it struck me that she had already begun to change, though I never suspected that Richter’s book was responsible. She reminded me now of a ballerina, fresh from the stage: she had lost a little weight; her eyes were puffy, her skin shiny, her hair pulled back and secured with an elastic band. The one dressed-up aspect of her appearance was a gold necklace from which hung a thumb-sized teardrop of amber – a leftover from her notional costume, whatever it was. As we held each other beneath the shade of a white plastic parasol, it struck me that she smelled different too: musky and sweet, like jasmine and vanilla ice cream. If I could have licked her without violating propriety, I would have.

Over coffee, as we held hands beneath the table, she updated me on her mother’s convalescence and the upcoming crisis of her final exams, but it was not until we were walking away that she seemed content to tell me about the book.

‘A lot’s happened,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll be pleased. If I’d known, I’d have signed with an agent at the outset. It would have made things simpler.’

At the suggestion of the local bookseller, it transpired, Theresa had acquired the services of a literary agency in Zürich. Liebermann & Klaus AG were now handling the sale of all rights to
The Valley,
foreign and domestic.

‘Martin thought we’d better stick . . .’

‘Who’s Martin?’

‘Martin Klaus, my agent. I mean,
your
agent –’

‘Though he doesn’t know that.’

‘Though he definitely doesn’t know that, right. He said we were so far down the road with Bernheim that we’d . . .’

‘Bernheim?’

‘Bernheim Media. You did get my letter?’

My attention had been drifting to Theresa’s mouth, to the prospect of the next long kiss.

‘Yes, of course, sorry. The Munich people. Science fiction.’

‘Mainly, but not exclusively. They’re really spreading their wings. This is their ideal halfway house, Konrad said. It’s just what they’ve been looking for.’

‘Konrad, right.’

‘So Martin thought we’d only hold out for an auction if Bernheim didn’t come up with a decent offer, which they did. I let them know Martin was on board – he’s very well known – and I think that got their attention, if you know what I mean.’

I didn’t know what she meant, as a matter of fact. I was still wondering who Konrad was, and what the halfway house was halfway
towards
(Switzerland seemed the likeliest end point, with its bank vaults and bullion). Nevertheless, I was quietly impressed by Theresa’s entrepreneurial zeal, which seemed to spring from nowhere, instinctively. She had been enjoying herself in the role I had carved out for her, which I saw as a good thing. Happiness, in whatever form, could only help keep us together.

‘Anyway . . .’ – Theresa took a deep breath and squeezed my arm with both hands – ‘the offer, which I’ve verbally accepted, is for an advance of fifty thousand marks.’

In the Workers’ and Peasants’ State fifty thousand marks was roughly double an average salary: fair reward for two years of creative struggle – especially since they had not been mine.

‘Well, that
will
come in handy,’ I said. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Bruno, I’m not talking
Ostmarks
,’ Theresa said. ‘I’m talking
Deutschmarks
.’

That was different. The official exchange rate between the two German currencies was one-to-one; the unofficial rate – the one everyone used, courtesy of the black market – was at least five-to-one; five Ost to one Deutsch. It was this that had made my foreign royalties from
The Orphans of Neustadt
, modest as they were by this time, so indispensable. At the Intershops, the Delikats and the Exquisits, where all the best luxuries were to be found, the humble, fraudulent Ostmark was not even accepted.

‘Fifty thousand Deutschmarks.’ I found it necessary to repeat the sum.

‘Less commission. But it may be just the beginning. Martin’s very bullish about Frankfurt.’

‘Frankfurt?’

‘The book fair. There’s the whole foreign market: England, France, America. Apparently there have been enquiries already from Holland and Italy. The word is definitely out.’

I felt a little dizzy. I tried to focus on Theresa, on the face I had been waiting so impatiently to see again, but everything was soon obscured behind a grainy red-brown mist.

‘The last time I spoke to him,’ she was saying, ‘he said something about a strong possibility of pre-emptive bids.’

We were near the opera house, standing at the top of a flight of stone steps. I know this because I had to grab hold of the railing to keep from falling down them.

‘Bruno, are you all right?’

It was the sudden stampede for Richter’s book, the tidal wave of affirmation and expectation building behind it, carrying it upward (financially) and outward (geographically) at unstoppable speed – that was what unsteadied me.

My experience with
The Orphans of Neustadt
had been very different. After the publication of that pivotal volume, it had been nearly three years before Éditions du Seuil in Paris produced the first non-German edition. The book was translated into English a year later – badly and with several unauthorised cuts (a faithful edition, care of Faber & Faber, had to wait another four years). Other translations followed gradually, two or three each year for the rest of the decade and well into the next. Curious Koreans, Greeks and Indonesians were finally able to enjoy the work in their own language fourteen years after it was first published in mine. Perhaps this was because I had no agent in the West, the rights to the book being handled by Michael Schilling’s firm; but from where I stood, it was as if
The Orphans of Neustadt
was being passed by hand, reader by reader, around the globe – a process that seemed to me quite natural, a true reflection of how books have always been experienced and weighed (that is, slowly and with the occasional pause for reflection). By contrast,
The Valley
, like the latest teen craze, was spreading round the globe like news of the Second Coming. Was it really that good? Was it really that much
better
? Had Richter been alive, I would have been jealous. But this was not jealousy, not exactly. It had more in common with fear.

‘It’s all a bit unexpected,’ I managed to say.

‘You are pleased?’

‘Ecstatic.’

‘It is what you wanted?’

A cool breeze blew off the river, carrying a hint of algae and burning tyres. Slowly my vision cleared.

‘Of course. I just hadn’t expected that kind of reaction. I pictured something a bit more discreet.’

Theresa took my hand as we walked down the steps. At the bottom she leaned closer, the better to whisper in my ear, lover to lover. There were still those ‘distractions’ she had mentioned in her letter. I assumed they were carnal and hoped she was anxious to make up for lost time. But it turned out love was not on her mind.

‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve been very careful. Not even my mother knows the truth yet. As they say in the theatre, I’m really growing into the role.’

It had been a worry to me that Theresa might find the burden of secrecy too much. I assumed that keeping secrets was something she wasn’t used to. Had I been more cynical, or more shrewd, I might have been less concerned. People share secrets mainly to demonstrate that they have them. Secrets imply inclusion, influence and status – but not in this case. For Theresa to reveal that she was not the author of
The Valley
would have had the opposite effect. It would have revealed that she was not as talented, interesting or noteworthy as she seemed.

‘What about your friends at the college?’ I asked. ‘You’re happy to keep them in the dark?’

Theresa shrugged. ‘I’ll be done here before the book comes out. If anyone hears about it later, I’ll say I wanted to keep it under wraps, in case it didn’t amount to anything.’ Her cheeks were pink and flushed, no doubt in marked contrast to mine. ‘That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

‘Perfect sense.’

‘It’s what I’d do, if I actually wrote a book. I wouldn’t tell a soul until the deal was done.’

I had exercised precisely the same caution when drafting
The Orphans of Neustadt.
I wrote it longhand in a series of notebooks bound in blue cardboard, working at night and whenever the chance came to be alone. When challenged, I claimed I was writing a journal of my dreams, which invariably had the effect of forestalling any further enquiries. Nobody knew what I was really up to. My motives for secrecy were complex. I was afraid of being mocked, yes. I was also concerned that my story might not meet with official approval; but more than these, I felt the fragility of the world I was creating. Like some rare fungus, it needed warmth and darkness to flourish and take shape. I had no thought of readers. If I addressed myself to anyone it was to my long-vanished mother, who I felt sure would take an interest in my imaginings, as being indicative of her son’s interior world.

Those were my reasons. What were Theresa’s? I assumed it was modesty that lay behind her instincts. Theresa played the viola. She didn’t care for the limelight; she cared for music. It did not occur to me that to work in secret only because you dare not be seen to fail, that is not modesty. That is pride.