Europe Central (101 page)

I was beginning to wonder if the only way to kill him was for me to kill myself.

That cold night zone opened up before me; it was even wider than the boulevard which the sleepwalker had once planned out for Berlin (it would have put the Champs-Élysées to shame by twenty meters); I sped through space until I met him at the stroke of midnight; he seemed to be expecting me, for just as I floated in through the window, Elena Konstantinovskaya screamed and he feebly raised one hand in front of his eyes.

That was when I discovered that I’d somehow forgotten to load my pistol; I hadn’t slept enough lately.

Shostakovich said: You know, my dear friend, there’s something you have that I don’t. You display, how should I say,
resolution.
To be sure, I stick to my own guns in my music; no one can dictate that, but otherwise I, well.

I told him, and I was being sincere: Actually, Herr Schostakowitsch, I admire you.

That’s too kind; that’s too kind. Oh, how you’ve dirtied yourself! You deserve to, well, well, why upset you? I’m willing to agree that something in me has to die. How can we both end this torture? Perhaps poison will . . .

That’s just what I proposed to GREINER, Herr Schostakowitsch, but he—

(Where was Elena? She’d dissolved into the air. What if she’d never been here? I was getting very sleepy.)

Do you hate me? he demanded.

Of course not, Herr Schostakowitsch! I just told you how much I admire you.

But I hate
you.
I consider you a wicked, terrible man. The nightmares you’ve caused my friends, especially, how should I say, Elena . . .

But this is harmless; it’s not real!

What can you hope to get out of my death? Money? An Adenauer Prize? It must be money. You love money over there.

Begging your pardon, Herr Schostakowitsch, but I’m on a list.

Oh, he said. So that’s how it is. And to save yourself you’re willing to, to—

I begged him to forgive me then. I realized that he was correct. In an instant, he’d completely turned me against the Gehlen Organization.

I refuse to forgive you, he said. I feel no pity, oh, not! Because you’ve been nasty, you see. Let me tell you something: Like all murderers, you’re too, how shall I put this,
optimistic.

In my now habitual state of disgrace and despair (I’ll never forget how Elena Konstantinovskaya looked at me before she faded away), I turned away from him, wandering west between various rubble-hills which were stuck through with steel spears. So he hated me! I lost myself in a tumble of bricks, a mass of plinths, iron collars, steel strings, rocky guts all crammed under ruined arches. He hated me! I felt as sunless as Dresden in winter. And I dug my way back under the Iron Curtain and into a blindingly bright afternoon in West Berlin, the long white boulevard stretching from the Arch of Triumph to the Hall of the People with its knife-winged dark eagle, the only entity which wasn’t white; the boulevard was perfect and it was empty; beyond the Hall of the People it articulated leftward into the clouds; white parks and guardhouses surrounded me, and then everything faded into a glare so excruciating that I finally comprehended that I would always be in the dark as to the real strategic purpose of this operation.

16

That meant that I must be awake at last: I knew that I didn’t know.

17

As soon as I’d rested, I penetrated beneath the Curtain through a disused S-Bahn tunnel which led to the center of the earth, which I can now assure you is a hemispherical room whose pattern of blue and white tiles have been chessboarded, staired and umbrella’d for centuries. Here I discovered rows of listening devices like pictures in a gallery, each machine affixed to reality by its two wires, each one labeled:
ZOYA, VLASOV, GEHLEN
. . . They went on and on, infinitely. Where was
SHOSTAKOVICH
? But after all, I had to
see
him; I had to face him! In a crypt in Berlin I’ve spied the effigy of an infant whose hand reaches innocently out at the world which he has been denied, while a stone eagle guards him. I was the child within the tomb! I had nothing, not even an eagle, because he hated me.

But I found resurrection in the delicious moonlight of Berlin-East. And like a champagne cork I popped up into the air, speeding into Europe Central! It was quite gusty; I would have enjoyed carrying my Variometer, to check variations in barometric pressure. But my Variometer was another item I’ve lost over the years. Prague’s hills crowded with trees and towers were all dark; Riga was buried under autumn leaves; and in an empty snowy park in Moscow I found Shostakovich walking round and round.

Smeared with iron-colored grime I interrupted his circles; I blocked his way; I snivelled and insisted: Herr Schostakowitsch, I’m sorry—

Indignantly he interrupted: I must tell you this, my
dear
German friend: I feel it’s the worst cynicism to, to, to besmirch yourself with ugly behavior and then speak beautiful words. I, do you know, I think it’s preferable to say ugly words and not commit illegal acts . . .

But nothing could take me away from him now! He was everything to me. He—and Elena, of course. (Where was Elena?)

Oh, how cold it was! I had to get down and grovel in the snow. But it paid off; I fulfilled my objective. People rarely choose to accept my apologies. But in the end, Shostakovich did. He’s a very nice man.

What I dreamed of by then was inventing a method to bring about a reconciliation between him and Elena (who was codenamed LINA); was I supposed to shoot him before or after that? How about not at all? You see, I’d come to adore the man, and I valued his happiness more than my own. Many’s the time I’ve peeped in on him as he’s composing. When he closed his eyes, I saw how happy he truly was; with my Zeiss lenses I was able to obtain a magnified view of the veins in his eyelids, which pulsed in time with what must have been his Fifth Symphony, described by R. Taruskin as
a series of components, gestures or events that are immediately recognizable as signs or symbols whose referents are not specified by any universally recognized and stable code.
Now he was smiling! His fingers spread out on the table and he seemed to be playing a complex chord on the piano, or perhaps milking Elena’s left breast—how I loved him for his happiness!

On one of those assassination visits, which now numbered more than the total number of Allied bombing raids on Berlin, he’d confided to me that there was a certain
other world
he sometimes lived in, a world beneath the piano keys; not caring to hurt his feelings by revealing that I already knew that, I calculated the sum instead: Let me keep this all straight; first there’s Berlin itself, divided into East and West just as Europe is; second of all, there are the four sectors of Germany; meanwhile, within the Soviet zone, there’s this other zone, this place where everything is beautiful and pure (this is why I loved him; this is in fact an extremely Germanic conception); but who can go there? Only Shostakovich himself? Can Elena go there, too? She left him because she didn’t want to go there; but what if she’d actually left him because he believed her capable of entering that world and she knew that she couldn’t? Whenever I listen to Opus 40 I believe that she can, but if that’s the case, where did the operation break down? He’d told me that toward the end she was really trying; she framed the first page of the score to Opus 40, a composition which was truly
her
as he knew her; and she hung it up on the wall of her little flat on Kirovsky Prospekt in Leningrad, to show him that she, that she, you know (these last six words come verbatim from Shostakovich). All right, but could he ever bring her there? Please God, why not?

He’d also told me of a nightmare which had attacked him for years: He tries to make love with Elena but every time he takes her into his arms the telephone rings.

I begged him for the password. I wanted admission to that world east of East, the world beneath the piano keys. If I only had that, I’d be free; I wouldn’t need to worry about which list the Gehlen Organization kept me on.

He said: But that’s sad, because you’re not my, how should I say, I mean, your name’s not Lyalka! What’s the basis of our relationship? I mean, frankly, you really haven’t been very, you know. Moreover,
it’s not your world.

Where is my world then, Herr Schostakowitsch?

Build one, my dear friend . . .

I don’t know how.

So much energy, so much, how should I say, aggression, so much talent! No doubt you could make something look good. You’ve worked hard—

But that’s the kiss of death, Herr Schostakowitsch!

I’m sorry; this is all very . . .

I filled his glass with West German schnapps and he cried: Oh, thank you, thank you!

Then I implored him again, so he said: You can get in, but you can’t get out.

Whatever do you mean, Herr Schostakowitsch?

Where were you in this war? How can you not understand? Never mind. Listen to this chord!

And he closed his hands around the air. I heard a bell-like sound.

Oh, my God! It was the most beautiful sound that I ever did or ever will hear—and the saddest.

I would have done anything for him then; I would even have stuttered like him.

But there remained what Goethe would have called
the eternal Elena-question,
because, well, how should I say . . . ?

The eternal note! Love Elena or die! Love Elena
and
die! It must be one of the two. Oh, if only I could, well, you know.

18

The next thing I knew, I had fallen for Elena Konstantinovskaya. To hell with Shostakovich! I wanted her for myself. Oh, don’t tell me I don’t know what Aryan beauty is; I’ve seen Lisca Malbran posing in a peasant dress. But so what if I never saw another film with Lisca Malbran in it? Elena was the one I loved.

At the office, they most definitely weren’t happy. They’d nearly lost their faith in me. I don’t dare tell you what HAVEMANN said . . .

They declined to offer me a chair in the outer office where two men sat diagonally at each oak desk, one of them by the telephone, the other at the typewriter; oak filing cabinets rose all the way up to ceiling, and I longed to know which drawer contained me; probably HAVEMANN knew, but HAVEMANN, after administering his reproof, left me alone, after which no one would look at me. I could scarcely stand myself now—oh, how I longed not to exist!

Finally the buzzer rang. GRAENER and NEY escorted me down the corridor of white steel filing cabinets, turned right at the hall of black steel filing cabinets where an operative stood whistling, pretending to study a certain fingerprint record when all the while he was glaring at me over the top of the document, and then GRAENER and NEY abandoned me on the threshold of the inner office.

Stroking the cradle of his black telephone, which curved down as freakishly as the secretary’s spectacles—he’d send her away for the duration of our little chat—the pale man demanded to know whether I’d really swallowed that very first pill. I insisted that I had; I, how should I say, stuck to my guns, you know.

You’re grimacing, he reproved me. You look as if wild horses are pulling you apart!

It’s the times, sir, I said.

Sit down, he said.

I did.

Clearing his throat, he began: The mystery of why Siegfried stole Brunhild’s ring and girdle, which laid him open to being proved her deflowerer and therefore hated by her kinsmen, the matter of why he told Kriemhild of his vulnerable spot so that she herself could foolishly reveal it to Hagen, these point at a will to self-destruction. And where does
that
come from?

I replied (and I was proud of my answer, too): Firstly, vanity. Secondly, inability to keep a secret. Isn’t all this in the case file, sir? There’s every reason to suspect Kriemhild of being a “Juliette” spy. As for Siegfried, he refused to be colorless or self-protective; he was simply
himself,
and he paid the price.

My friend, that’s true as far as it goes, but don’t you see that it’s beauty which causes all evil? Do you remember Hoffmann’s tale “Madame de Scuderi”? The demonic goldsmith makes bracelets, necklaces, rings so perfectly that he can’t bear to let them go. What can he do but creep out by night, murder his clients, and get his treasures back again? And isn’t your Elena also like that?

No. With all due respect, she isn’t.

She’s warping your reason.

By your command, sir!

Whose hair did you tie to that covert operations ring we issued you?

I don’t know.

You didn’t lose the ring. We took it to get the hair.

Didn’t you plant the hair in the first place?

He chuckled.—Perhaps we did that, too. If so, what would that prove?

I don’t know.

Coward! Take this tablet! No, wait. Your responses are extremely revealing. What really happened
before
between Siegfried and Brunhild—I mean, before the legend begins?

I agree that she somehow knows him, since—

You do agree? Good. That’s why I need you to tell me the origin of that single dark hair you found on your pillow.

A succubus? I theorized.

Don’t be sarcastic with me. I order you to consider your prior, unconscious relationship with Elena Konstantinovskaya, who by your own interpretation of pattern-events is undoubtedly a “Juliette” spy. Prepare a written report by tomorrow. Name every name.

By your command, sir, I said. But Elena was still the one I loved. Knowing that I loved her, I knew who I was.

19

What about Shostakovich? By this question I don’t mean,
who is he
? Opus 110 answers that. I mean,
what shall I do about him
? One of the Gehlen Organization’s own “Juliette” spies, perhaps NEY if not a high-class torch singer at the Wintergarten, might lure him away from her. I’d certainly given up on silver bullets. Oh, but how could I do even that to him? Well, for Elena, of course. (She would have her own secret world; I could hide there.)