In Times of Fading Light (12 page)

These open sandwiches were pathetic; the new bread had torn apart as she spread it. Furiously, Charlotte distributed slices of pickle over them, although the closer she came to the end of the job, the more determined she was
not
to take them down to the cellar herself...

Now what? The academy phone extension occurred to her: only recently Wilhelm had had a connection made to what he called his academy extension down in the cellar—an internal telephone system that Wilhelm shamelessly went on using even though he’d not been part of the academy for the last six years. She went to
her
academy extension and called Wilhelm on
his
academy extension to let him know that the open sandwiches were on the kitchen table—and although at that very moment she suddenly felt ravenously hungry, she got out of the kitchen before Schlinger came to fetch the tray.

She ate a lot and then slept badly. Pressure on her bladder woke her at 2:30 a.m., and she tottered along the corridor like a child, fearful and thin-skinned. In the small hours, as her mother had called this time of night, she had always been exposed to all kinds of misgivings. Even the shell in the corridor looked to her uncanny; she looked neither right nor left, tried not to think of anything unpleasant. But when she was sitting on the lavatory, waiting for the last few drops to drain away, she suddenly suspected that her article might have displeased Comrade Hager; she could have been on entirely the wrong track, and maybe her article really was bad and petty and backward looking ...

In the morning the idea was still there, although it was not so strong in the light of day. All the same, Charlotte resisted the temptation to run to the mailbox in her bathrobe and see whether
Neues Deutschland
had arrived yet. She got up as usual, took a cold shower, made herself a cup of ersatz coffee and a slice of buttered toast, and only then did she go to fetch the newspaper. She took it into the conservatory with her toast and coffee, even managed to skim the front page, which was all about the criminal machinations on the sector border, then leafed patiently on to the culture page—and there it was!

It wasn’t the first time the
ND
had printed something by her, but it was by no means a matter of routine either. Although she really knew the whole article by heart, she read every word once again, relishing it, along with the toast and coffee. Now it was printed it seemed even firmer and more conclusive than before.

Basically it was a review, but as it also dealt with questions of principle, Charlotte had been given half a page, all six columns. She was reviewing a book by a West German writer recently brought out by a GDR publishing firm. It was a bad, an irritating book. Charlotte had heartily disliked it from the very first page. The main character was a Jewish immigrant who returned to Germany—West Germany—to discover that Fascist ideology still lived on there. So far so good. But instead of going to the GDR—an alternative plan that he might have entertained, after all—he went back to Mexico, where he did a bit of philosophizing about life and death and finally took his own life. Agreed, it was full of tension and linguistically brilliant, and the author also adopted an anti-Fascist stance—but that was all.

In addition—a minor niggle—the picture of Mexico that the book presented was entirely wrong, as if the author had never been there.

Charlotte had no objection in principle to the central character’s homosexuality, even if, as she had to admit, it reminded her in an unwelcome way of her brother Carl-Gustav, but when the first-person narrator described his homoerotic adventures with underage Mexican rent boys it was long-winded, tedious, disgusting.

Her main criticism, however, was political in nature. The book was negative. Defeatist. It drew readers down into dark places, left them helpless in a bad, cruel world, showed no way out—because, thought the first-person narrator, there
was
no way out. Oddly enough, this conviction came over him when he was looking at the colossal statue of Coatlicue.

Instead of seeing the dialectic of life and death in the statue, instead of recognizing it as the creation of a heroic people, the first-person narrator saw it as one of the “boldest and coldest monuments to futility,” as “sheer acknowledgment of the ugliness of existence,” and from this view he drew the conclusion that his best course of action was to go into the jungle on his own—and disappear there.

No, this book,
read Charlotte, feeling how right she was with every word, with every syllable,
this book is not one that will educate young people into adopting humanist attitudes and opening their minds to the world. It is not a book to mobilize readers against the threat of a nuclear inferno. It is not a book to foster belief in human progress and the victory of socialism, and so it has no place on the shelves of bookshops in our Republic.

Period.

She had drunk her coffee, she had eaten her toast. She was left with an odd, pulling sensation in her stomach: somewhere or other in her papers there was a picture of Coatlicue, a cutting from the
Siempre.
Or was it a picture of Adrian?

She was tempted to see what Coatlicue could do—almost ten years later.

Noises started coming from the floor above: eight in the morning, Wilhelm was getting up. The sound of water running into the bath. It was Wilhelm’s habit to have a bath in the morning, together with fifteen minutes a day under the sunlamp as he sat in the tub. Charlotte put the newspaper back in the mailbox—rather silly of her, certainly, but she felt diffident about showing pride in her article, and wanted Wilhelm to find the paper where he always did and discover the review for himself.

At eight fifteen the porridge was ready. Wilhelm came downstairs in a good temper—she could tell by the sound of his footsteps—and already in suit and tie, both of which he wore even under a coverall. He marched straight off to the mailbox, fetched his
ND,
skimmed the front page as usual in order to comment on it as he spooned up his porridge. Today’s comment:

“Such farcical nonsense over West Berlin. We’ll just have to close the state border!”

Stupid thing to say, of course, but Charlotte wasn’t going to quarrel. She did not reply and ate her porridge. Wilhelm didn’t understand the first thing about foreign policy, four-power status, the Potsdam Agreement: they were all beyond his ken, thought Charlotte, but she said, “The janitor’s gone, too.”

“What, Wollmann?”

“That’s right, Wollmann,” said Charlotte.

“The hell with Wollmann,” said Wilhelm. “But all these young people! Can you understand it? Studying at our expense, and then they make off. We’ll have to bolt the door!”

Charlotte nodded, and cleared the plates away.

After breakfast Wilhelm went to read his
ND.
He did that at his desk. As he had done back in Mexico, he still read every single report.

Meanwhile Charlotte went about her housework, but she was really waiting for Wilhelm to find her article. She began tidying the kitchen, then decided to leave it to Lisbeth; wandered around the house thinking of what could be done with the room that Kurt and Irina had now vacated; felt annoyed all over again at the sight of the furniture that she, Charlotte, had bought for Kurt and Irina when they came back from the Soviet Union, and that Irina had ostentatiously left behind when they moved out—and her mind was suddenly back with Zenk. Or more precisely, she was wondering how she could put the Zenk problem to Hager, if Hager happened to phone in the next few days—or even more precisely how, without saying so directly, she could make it clear that, frankly, she thought she herself would be a more suitable vice-president.

When she came downstairs again, Wilhelm was already on his way around the house.

“Have you finished with the
ND?
” asked Charlotte with apparent innocence.

“Yes,” said Wilhelm. “Can we take this for the raffle?”

He held up a tablecloth in the Mexican colors, handwoven, with a pattern of snakes and eagles.

“No, Wilhelm, that is definitely not going in the raffle.”

Hadn’t he read the article? Or had he simply overlooked her name?

Lisbeth came at ten. As usual, she asked all questions five times, even those that had already been answered ... No, Lisbeth, I don’t want you using the vacuum cleaner while I’m in the house ... yes, this is the day to do the laundry ... yes, lunch at one.

“Do you happen to read
Neues Deutschland,
Lisbeth?”

“I already take the
Märkische Volksstimme.
” The local paper.

“Oh, well, the
Märkische Volksstimme.
”

But Lisbeth was too naive anyway. She might just as well read the
Märkische Volksstimme.

Wilhelm was back again, holding the white china eagle that the previous owner of the house had left behind when he ran for it.

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Who’s going to buy a thing like that?”

“Not buy it! Don’t you know what a raffle is?”

Lisbeth asked, “Frau Powileit, should I make creamed potatoes or potato purée?”

Charlotte counted up to five, to keep herself from shouting at Lisbeth, then she said, “Lisbeth, I couldn’t care less.”

Kurt rang the doorbell at three, punctual as ever. Charlotte had taken a nap after lunch, and was now wearing her gray skirt suit and, in honor of the day, a discreet Mexican necklace.

Alexander was waiting beside the car, and so was Irina—brightly made up like a parrot, but that was her business, of course.

“Darling,” said Charlotte to Irina. “My little sparrow,” she said to Alexander. To Kurt she just said, “Kurt.”

The car was blue and tiny, a Trabant. First they admired it from all sides. Wilhelm came out of the house, too.

“Not a word to Wilhelm,” Charlotte whispered to Kurt.

Naturally, Wilhelm didn’t know that she had lent Kurt five thousand marks for the car. To Wilhelm, she said, “Coming for a drive with us?”

“Certainly not,” said Wilhelm. “I don’t have time for that sort of thing.”

“There are only four seats in the car anyway,” said Kurt.

Alexander said, “My suit’s all scratchy.”

Wilhelm tapped the Duroplast bodywork and informed everyone, “All cars will be made of plastic in future.”

“How do I get into the back?” asked Charlotte.

The car had only two doors.

“You can sit in front,” said Kurt.

But Charlotte protested (not least for reasons of safety; after all, Kurt was a beginner), and Kurt folded a seat forward so that Charlotte could get into the back of the tiny vehicle, although on all fours. Funny idea, saving on the doors.

What surprised her most was that Kurt sat down in the passenger seat, while Irina got behind the wheel.

“Who’s driving, then?”

They both turned in surprise. “I’m driving,” said Irina.

The meaning was obvious, even though Irina still spoke with a heavy Russian accent after five years in Germany. Enough to make you wonder how she had passed the driving test.

“My suit’s all scratchy,” said Alexander.

It was the suit that Charlotte had given him for Christmas.

“How can your suit be scratchy?” asked Charlotte.

“It scratches my throat,” said Alexander.

“But your shirt is next to your throat,” Charlotte objected.

“It’s scratchy all the same.”

“Right,” said Irina, “then we’ll drive home first and you can change into something else.”

Rather annoying to see the child being pampered like that. An intelligent, communicative boy, but the way he was being brought up you could tell he’d come to no good.

“When I was your age,” Charlotte began, and was about to tell Alexander about the scratchy white woolen dress that she always had to wear when her mother took her to the Tiergarten park on Sunday, but at that moment the engine started and the whole car rattled like a coffee mill.

Irina stopped at the Fuchsbau house, which was surrounded by scaffolding. Kurt had also borrowed a considerable sum from Charlotte for the renovation work.

“Then the car is really more for Irina than you?” inquired Charlotte, after Irina and Alexander had gone indoors.

“Mutti, I can’t drive a car, you know I have vision in only one eye.” Charlotte did not reply. In fact she hadn’t thought of that. On the other hand, what did Irina need a car for?

“And I’ll pay the money back,” said Kurt. “I’ll be paying you two hundred marks a month, three hundred when I get my raise.”

“So that’s what it boils down to,” said Charlotte, and managed,
just
managed to stop herself adding: You pay and Irina drives the car.

All the same, Kurt said, “Mutti, I don’t know why you’re being so hostile.”

“I’m not being hostile.”

“I think,” said Kurt, “we ought to take the fact that we’re living in separate houses as the moment to open a new chapter in our relations.”

“I think so, too,” said Charlotte.

She didn’t want to enlarge on the subject. It hurt her that Kurt was so unjust about this. As if it were her fault! She had been trying to improve relations for some time, and it wounded her to think that Kurt didn’t even notice. She never allowed herself to say a critical word about Irina, about her airs and graces, her love of extravagance; on the contrary, she provided money for Irina’s house-renovation project, although to be honest she thought it was excessive in every way. And now Irina needed a car as well ... but what had she achieved? Zero. Kurt worked like a Trojan, Kurt had gained his doctorate, had written his first book, a fine book—while Irina still hadn’t finished her training as an archivist. And how could she, when she didn’t even speak German properly?

Charlotte said none of these things. Instead, she asked, “Have you read the
ND?
”

“Yes,” said Kurt. “I saw your article.”

Then Irina and Alexander got back into the car, Alexander in a sweater, and Charlotte tried again. “When I was your age ...”