“Come in, come.”
I stepped inside. She quickly closed the door behind me. I was in a room of around fifteen square meters. It had a high ceiling—and that was the only thing to recommend it. It was squalid. Yellowing linoleum on the floors, a stained cream blind half-covering the greasy window. A double bed in a corner, unmade, with a blanket dappled with cigarette burns. A hot plate, a small fridge, a sink stacked with dirty dishes, empty bottles of schnapps and brimming ashtrays, a small stack of books next to a folding card table that served as a makeshift desk, and clothes strewn everywhere. The smallness of the place didn’t get to me—I’d lived in plenty of tiny apartments. Nor did the basic nature of the furnishings, as only the privileged few on this side of the ideological divide had access to decent household goods. No, what was truly unsettling about this place was that it was the apartment of someone who had chosen to live in a doleful way. I could only wonder if this sense of self-flagellation had begun to rise when she was forced to rat on Petra and increased radically after Johannes was taken away.
She reached over to the radio and turned it up a few notches. The announcer’s voice was now blaring.
“I do that so they can’t hear us,” she said, her voice leathery and wheezy from far too many cigarettes. “If, that is, they are even bothering to listen to me anymore. Since my husband left, I have been here entirely on my own, so if they are listening they’ve been hearing the radio and no other conversations. What did you say your name was?”
I told her again.
“You sit here,” she said, pointing to a folding chair. “You want tea? I don’t have coffee, because the coffee is never good here.”
“I have coffee,” I said, opening up my daypack and pulling out the two bags of pre-ground coffee I’d picked up alongside my other gifts.
“You brought this for me?” Judit said, wide-eyed.
“And a few other things,” I said. “Petra told me you liked a strong cigarette, but filtered.”
I brought out the five packs of Camel Filters. Judit began to shake her head, as if in considerable distress.
“Why did you do this?” she asked.
“Because I thought it would be nice to bring you a few things. You like chocolate, I hope?”
I now placed the six bars of Ritter chocolate—two mint, two marzipan, a yogurt, and an almond—on the table next to the cigarettes and the coffee.
“Take them back. I don’t deserve them.”
“I’m not taking them back.”
“Did Petra tell you?”
“Yes, she told me everything.”
“Everything?”
“Absolutely.”
“And yet you still bring all this to me?”
“She forgives you.”
She lowered her eyes as they filled with tears.
“How can she forgive me?”
“What does it say in the letter?”
She picked up a pair of battered wire-rimmed glasses, one corner of which was held together with black electrical tape. Putting them on the edge of her nose, she opened the letter. From what I could see it was short and covered less than one side of the page. Judit moved her lips as she read. When she finished she lowered her head and began to sob quietly. I stood up and found a battered percolator on a shelf near her sink. I opened it and found the hardened remains of old coffee grounds embedded within. I pulled out the tin filter and ran it under the tap until the hot water finally began to erode the congealed grounds. It took around five minutes to loosen it all and dump its soggy remains in the trash basket. Then I rinsed out the base of the percolator, reassembled it, and carefully measured out three tablespoons of coffee. As I did all this Judit sat at the table, lost in thought. When I placed the now reassembled percolator on the hot plate, my host snapped out of her reverie and said:
“I would have done all that.”
“Yes, but I was already up by the sink.”
“You are being far too polite. May I have one of those cigarettes?”
“They are yours, so there’s no need to ask me.”
“I just feel . . . awkward about all this.”
“Don’t.”
“In the letter Petra says very little—except that she would like me to give you some photographs of her and Johannes. She also said that she had heard about my stay in the hospital and hoped I was now in a better place. And she concluded with one sentence: ‘Despite all that has happened I still consider you my friend.’”
She lowered her head as her eyes filled up again.
“The problem is, I can’t forgive myself.”
“Maybe the fact that Petra does forgive you . . .”
“They still took away her son. And she will never get over that.”
“Perhaps, in time, it will get easier.”
“You’re a young man. And, I sense, one without children. Though you may possibly be able to imagine what it must be like to lose a child—or, in Petra’s case, have one taken away from you—you still cannot imagine the true horror of it all.”
“Did you lose a child?”
“I never wanted children. Because I knew that they would just bring loss, pain. Like the pain Petra is suffering now. The pain I caused.”
“You weren’t the reason she was arrested.”
“Please stop trying to be nice to a stranger.”
“Should I try to be horrible instead?”
That raised a small smile.
“What do you do, Thomas?”
I told her.
“So Petra’s found herself another writer,” she said with more than a hint of irony.
“It looks that way.”
“Not that I would ever try to compare you with Jurgen.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Believe me, it is. Because that man . . . he was, at one time, brilliant, extraordinary.
Ein Wunderkind.
But then he had a few setbacks and he came completely unstuck. And started doing mad, irrational things. That’s when the Stasi moved in on me. Because someone had informed them that I was Petra’s best friend. And they had this information on me. Did Petra tell you about that?”
I nodded—noting how Judit was imparting this information in a sort of rote style, as if she had told herself these facts (
“he came completely unstuck . . . and that’s when the Stasi moved in on me”
) many times over, as a way of reassuring herself that other people, larger forces, had so compromised her.
“Yes,” I said, “she did tell me about the information they had on you.”
“So you now know my dirty little secret.”
“I don’t think it dirty at all.”
“My husband thought otherwise. He found out via the neighbors and he’s gone. That woman I was involved with . . . she ended things between us when the Stasi visited her and said they knew all about our ‘relationship.’ She had a husband, too. But he either never found out or chose not to react—as I gather they are still together. Whereas I am, as you can see, alone.”
The coffee had finished percolating. When I stood up to get it, she insisted on playing host. She brought out two elderly yet rather fine china cups—floral in design, but harking back to a more elegant moment in time. She also brought out a sugar bowl and a small jug, all in the same design. Seeing these rarefied objects in the midst of this personal squalor was strangely touching. Judit must have noticed me taking them in, as she said:
“They belonged to my grandmother. Dresdner Porzellan. The best, unless you are from France and think that the world of fine china ends at Limoges. Grandmother died in 1976 at the age of eighty. She survived the destruction of her home city. She refused to leave the GDR when it was still possible in 1960. She adjusted to the austerity of life here. Even toward the end she remained the very proud
hausfrau
who polished twice a week what little silver she had left, and actually managed to rescue a full set of Dresdner china from the family house that was destroyed by Allied bombing, and which killed her two parents, her unmarried sister, and two of her three children who were staying with their grandparents on the night the city was leveled. A very dignified woman, my grandmother.”
“What was her name?”
“Lotte. But now you are getting me to tell stories. And we have this excellent coffee to drink.”
“It might not be that good.”
She poured out a cup and lifted it to her nose, taking in its aroma with a deep sigh.
“It is so good.”
She carefully reopened one of the packets of Camel Filters, tapping two out and offering me one. I accepted it and lit both cigarettes. Judit took a long drag off of hers, letting the smoke out with a low pleasurable groan. Then she took the first sip of coffee and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “It’s been quite some time since anyone has been this kind to me. Tell me about Petra’s life in West Berlin.”
Immediately I thought:
Danger. Maybe, for all her sad talk about the ruination of her life, she might still think she could win a privilege or two if she supplied the Stasi with any information that comes along her way
. Or perhaps I was just being far too overcautious.
“Petra is doing well. We are very happy together.”
“Is she working?”
“Yes, she’s working.”
“What kind of work?”
“Translations.”
“Ah, that makes sense. She was always so good with languages. Is she working for a government organization over there?”
“Why does that interest you?” I asked, my tone deliberately letting her know I didn’t like where this line of questioning was going. She caught the edge in my voice and quickly said:
“I just wanted to know if she had a job she liked.”
“She has a job she likes.”
“Good.”
An uncomfortable pause followed. Judit broke it.
“You now think I was digging for information, don’t you?”
“Not at all.”
“I have nothing to do with those people anymore.
Nothing
.”
“It’s really not my business.”
“Were you followed here?”
“Actually I was. But I managed to lose the guy on Prenzlauer Allee.”
“How did you do that?”
“I ran.”
“Didn’t that draw attention?”
“Not so far.”
“They are probably now scouring the area for you.”
“That thought did cross my mind.”
“You think I am going to call them the moment you walk out of here,” she said, her voice suddenly overwrought.
“I honestly don’t know what to think right now.”
“I swear to you, I won’t do that.”
“All right, I believe you,” I lied.
“In fact, I will show you a side way out of the building that will bring you down an alley and into a backstreet. From there you have to walk a bit, but you’ll reach, in ten minutes, the U-Bahn at Schönhauser Allee. It will get you back to Alexanderplatz, then you change for the line to Stadtmitte and the border crossing.”
“I think they will get suspicious if I am crossing only a few hours after coming over.”
“They won’t care.”
“How can you know that?”
Again my tone was challenging, yet the question was an evident one. How the hell could she have such knowledge of what questions they posed at Checkpoint Charlie?
“Of course, this is mere speculation on my part,” she said.
“Of course.”
“This cigarette . . . it is like nectar. And the coffee. Petra is lucky. A generous American.”
“How did you know I was American?”
“I just guessed.”
“I see.”
“Well, your German. It sounded American.”
I switched into English, asking:
“And do I sound American now?”
Judit tensed, looking like someone caught out in a possible lie.
“I don’t speak English,” she said, turning away from me. “I speak nothing but German, and have never been out of the GDR. You must forgive me. Please . . .”
“When I leave here . . . ?”
“Nothing will happen. As I said before, I am useless to them now.”
Is anyone ever entirely useless to “them”?
I wondered.
This was the problem in sticking your toe into the murky waters of a highly surveilled society that operated according to the principles of fear and paranoia. You could never really know whom to believe,
what
to believe. Ambiguity and doubt and mistrust were the holy trinity here—and watching Judit become increasingly agitated as she sensed I was on to her signaled the fact that it was time for me to leave.