Europe Central (100 page)

All the same, the instant I reached the East I’d begun to
feel
different, as if I’d escaped from false consciousness. They were marching, or gliding as I should say, beneath a banner which proclaimed their lives better and more joyful; I got caught up in their emotion: Life seemed that way to me. I dreamed about marrying the owner of that long, dark hair, whoever she was, just as soon as the pale man confirmed my presence on the safe citizens’ list. Or arguably I’d go into currency speculation. But first I needed to be
vigilant.
Suspecting that once again Shostakovich might doublecross me, I resolved to keep calm no matter what; according to any enlightened calculus it didn’t matter if he got to play dead once or twice more. Eventually he’d stay dead. After all, if he didn’t, how would I ever get my name moved from the bad list to the good list?

At a café in a ruined courtyard I stopped for a beer. Didn’t I have the right? I was an operative in good standing of the Gehlen Organization! On the radio, Klavdia Sulzhenko sang “The Blue Kerchief.” The war had died; that song was getting old; then again, so was I. But the beer was good; it actually tasted like something more than dreamwater; night by night I was adopting a more realistic attitude to the East. For instance, the Iron Curtain was better for both sides; I’d realized that now. It used to be that the NKVD drove right into West Berlin to kidnap people they didn’t like, and once they were back in the Russian sector there was nothing anybody could do. Now we were safer from them, and they were safer from us; that was why LIFE HAS BECOME BETTER. I was also thrilled by the degree to which this zone had retained its infinite character, endlessly bearing dark grey European field-rectangles outlined in white or sometimes silver; this unlimited aspect reminded me of the good old days when we’d dreamed of a summer to which no one else could put a final four-beat rest. When
did
Europe actually come to an end? In the Urals, so I’d been advised, there were places where the map had been crumpled into mountains, that was where the Frost Giants dwelled. But first things first: I’d now perform Opus 110: “The Execution of Dmitri Shostakovich.” Poor man! It was nothing personal. Time to fly over ruins, ruins again, orienting myself (assuming that I actually cared to be oriented) by those parallel railroad tracks as multitudinous as the music-lines for a single measure of Wagner’s
Ring
; long trains rode them eastward, bearing German prisoners and machine tools.

Someone tried to kiss me, but I’d have none of it; I wasn’t about to let myself be caught in an East German honeypot trap. The waitress brought me another beer.

Now where was I? Was I drunk or merely sleepy? How long ago had Klavdia Sulzhenko finished singing? I wanted a warm voice to drink; Elena Kruglikova’s would do, but better yet would be that sweetly husky cigarette smoker’s voice of Shostakovich’s bisexual Muse. Hiding in the oblivion behind a hill of rubble, I spied on a bright-lit doorway which was all that remained of a building; its broken brick edges ended as distinctly as a starfish’s arms; they were dead white against the darkness; and within the doorway was also darkness; foregrounded against that darkness stood Elena Konstantinovskaya with her hair down and her brown eyes wide with sadness and love.

Knowing that in Dreamland one meets the anima wherever one goes, I left that incarnation of her to grieve in peace; doubtless she’d just separated from Shostakovich. Verification (achieved through Zeiss lenses): Tears nearly as large as grapefruits were rushing down her cheeks. I’ve heard from Comrade Alexandrov, who continues to closely follow this case and who’s codenamed LYALKA, that the last thing she said to him, or rather called out or sobbed out as she went down the stairs, leaving our composer writhing on the bed like a loathsome worm of agony (she’d kissed his mouth, then his forehead, then one last time his mouth; he’d kept his lips closed) was that she was sorry and that she loved him. He called down that he loved her, too. If this intelligence is true, then what? I theorize as follows: She was
afraid
of being alone with him, isolated, locked into a dark bedroom beneath the piano keys. She screamed an obscenity at him; at least she didn’t break dishes. He expected her to
change,
in order to accommodate his desire! (Am I thinking of Shostakovich here or of R. L. Karmen?) That was why she’d left him twice already; and that third time, when it was really him forcing the issue, he asked her to write out on music-paper what she wanted of him; he wrote out what he needed of her; he agreed to everything she wanted of him but now she refused to believe that he could live up to that, and she for her part couldn’t do what he wanted, which was to give him ever more of herself; she feared being consumed; and so the last time he’d come to see her they quarreled and hadn’t made love at all; then the time after that, which was the absolutely last time, when she’d come to take care of him after the first time I assassinated him, she’d slept with him, but only slept, and with her clothes on; she’d embraced him, but never closely enough to stop the draft which blew in between them, and when he’d begged her to hold him tight she’d angrily refused, and so they were compelled to part forever; it was she who pronounced the sentence, but only when he asked her; and she could have been willing to go on as they were—poor Elena!—she didn’t want to lose him or hurt him; she was sobbing and sobbing as she went down the stairs forever, with big tears speeding down her face. I can’t say I didn’t long to comfort her.

But maybe it never happened like that; maybe she never left him. I was in Dreamland, so I might have been getting Elena mixed up with Lina, who left me before Operation Citadel; I forget why; sometimes we forget in order to, you know.

Well, now that she’d officially left him, I wouldn’t be hurting her if I shot him. The theme I meant to instill—renunciation, letting Elena go, helping her find her ideal one, her
true
Shostakovich—could best be played out by liquidating the false one upstairs.

The American bombers had blown off the front wall of this stage set, so I took aim, but every bullet turned into a black music-note that screeched straight into his heart!

I should have known that he wouldn’t mind it; he even liked it. After he had popped his eyeballs back in and cleaned his spectacles he even waved; thanks to me he’d now collected new despairing dissonances for Opus 110. What was I doing wrong? Next time I’d figure it out. It was simply a question of time and manpower. But I didn’t dare look over my shoulder, in case Shostakovich might be imitating my mannerisms, even sticking out his tongue.

12

In Berlin-West I made my plans all day, although the brightness hurt my eyes; I almost wished for the old wartime blackouts. Or perhaps it was simply that I couldn’t bear to stay awake. Could I bear to live this way anymore? Moment by moment I try not to be gruesome. Hospital wards crammed full of soldiers without legs or eyes, never mind! Shostakovich’s music, fine. NATO’s come to save us from all that. But until we’ve garrisoned our side of the Wall, I’ll dwell in dreams.

First the Iron Curtain, then the Gendarmenmarkt, that was how it would go. Belgian Nazis who survived by selling their memories to both sides advised me to poison his piano; that would get to him; but the little operative codenamed GREINER, whom I was frankly beginning to consider defeatist, insisted that the Soviets had antidotes to everything, even unfortunate facts. I found myself dreading the night; I didn’t know why, for I preferred the east side now; I craved the safe and comfortable feeling which always came over me when I saw Stalin’s massive, star-topped portrait guarding the Hotel Adlon, which had been more or less burned down by drunken Red Army men in search of wine.

All the same, GREINER had taught me that the Gehlen Organization was in the right to pursue Operation ELENKA: Our target (you know whom I mean) was a pianist in exactly the same sense as were those members of the infamous Red Orchestra, who consorted with innocent German women, sold us black market goods at friendly prices, and carried out orders in our offices across occupied Europe; all the while, these fanatically loyal subordinates, whom we’d trusted in our noble German manner, were playing Hagen’s part, stabbing Siegfried in the back with their myriad Judeo-Bolshevik spears. But halt! Our subject was pianists. Oh, yes, they rented flats in Paris, Brussels, even Berlin itself; and at hours and frequencies which their Center, which they undoubtedly called Europe Central, dictated, they hunched over their transmitters (which it sometimes took us great trouble to pinpoint) and played
our
enciphered tunes of troop dispositions for Operation Barbarossa, strategic objectives for Operation Blau, entrainments for Operation Citadel. Gestapo Müller used to be a friend of mine. He said: Think of them all as dark little Jews, bent over their transmitters at night, clicking away all our dearest secrets!—Actually, he was never my friend; I seem to have been dreaming someone else’s dream. I couldn’t even hum my own songs.

More and more I say to myself: Why bother? Haven’t I already failed at everything? Isn’t it better that I don’t know to whom that strand of long dark hair belongs? Especially since I’ve long since lost it; I’d tied it to my ring of invisibility for luck . . .

Enough dreaming! In 1950 we’d bored a listening tunnel under the Curtain; that had been Operation Gold. Today was the dawn of Operation Quick-silver. In other words, Operation ELENKA will mutate into its own success. I recited to myself:
We must base our work on the assumption of victory.

13

Next ploy: I rang up ELENKA on the black telephone.

Crumpling a piece of cellophane up against the receiver all the while, to imitate static, I shouted: Comrade Shostakovich, Europe Central calling! You’ve been summoned to the Teltowkanal at once.

But this is really, I mean, thank you, thank you!

I crumpled cellophane.

And could you tell me please exactly where the, how should I say it, this
Teltowkanal—
oh, oh, excuse me, someone is knocking now. What if it’s, how should I say? Just a moment; just a moment!

And that tricky bastard hung up on me!

Well, never say die. Flashing my passport, I crossed legally behind the Curtain, this time at Friedrichstrasse, because I was now both a foreigner and a diplomat. I was a one-man column of marchers luxuriously flowing in a specific direction.

14

Skipping silently between the land mines, I came to a burned tank, ducked down, caught my breath, and peered carefully around to see East Germans working by torchlight, hauling away limestone from the shell of our Reich Chancellery on their special narrow-gauge railway. Well, why not? It was dead, and its half naked skeleton was flanked by hills of its own gravel and powder. If only they could trundle away my last few vanities and illusions! I wanted to fulfill myself by casting off everything dubious. I wished to become a perfect skeleton. No doubt if I only swallowed the correct pill I’d be able to reach a zone where the Chancellery still stood, and then if I strode down the Marble Gallery, which was as long as a runway for light aircraft, I’d get farther and farther from this brave new night of red-starred constellations. Unfortunately, they were breaking up the Marble Gallery right now. They were using it to make headstones for Soviet heroes. Talk about illusions!

They’d already torn down the American Embassy by the Brandenburg Gate. I had to laugh; it seemed so pointless! They’d reopened the Volksbühne Theater for proletarian shows. They’d renamed everything they could. We’d changed Bülowplatz to Horst-Wessel-Platz, so
they
changed it to Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. I should have known! Wilhelmstrasse became Otto-Grotewohl-Strasse, and who the hell was Otto Grotewohl? Let’s just say that he was no Kaiser. If you don’t mind, I’ll keep calling it Wilhelmstrasse. They deny the broken earthworks of their war memories by memorializing the future; I do the same by living in the past. Frankly, that’s why we’ll always need two Germanys. (But everything’s all dreams, all nothingness.) Dorotheenstrasse became Clara-Zetkin-Strasse; well, I can live with that; I’m not against women, even women Communists. If only one of them would kiss me again! But Reds have no time for kisses. Besides, who would kiss me? I’m a traitor to both sides, and I’m long in the tooth; my eyeballs are sinking into my face, so to hell with everything except for that one black hair which can’t say no to me. They’d stolen the pearl-studded golden ball with a golden crucifix attached to it by bands of gold; they’d crowned Stalin with our crown of precious stones; they’d given him our crosshatched dagger, our golden scepter. They could shove it up Stalin’s ass—oh, I was in a fine mood these days! PFITZNER had informed me that my colleagues were getting disappointed. Well, how was I supposed to neutralize an unkillable target? For that matter, what had PFITZNER done to further our goal? He could at least have obtained the cooperation of a small neutral country. I detested PFITZNER. And these land mines on the Wilhelmstrasse where our Foreign Office used to be, those ruins in the night, their spires and lacunae sweeping up and down like the spans of fancy bridges, all that was enough to irritate anyone.

Over there stood the Schauspielhaus, almost untouched. Why hadn’t they demolished it yet? I once saw Marlene Dietrich there in 1927. Now they used it for giving uplifting speeches about work quotas. Never mind. I was used to falling asleep; their speeches wouldn’t trouble me. Besides, the pale man at the Gehlen Organization had promised me that we’d get everything back.

I went and hid behind one of those impressive pillars, which were scarcely even scorched, and took my bearings.—No, I’d underestimated those Slavs! The voice of Elena Kruglikova rose into the sky.

15

That was when I realized the following:
I am Shostakovich’s shadow.

But what do we each stand for? We’re opposites, granted. So, if his significance gets added to my significance, is the result zero? In that case, why proceed?