“Those photographs that Petra mentioned in her letter . . .”
“Of course, of course,” she said, standing up with the cigarette still in her lips. “I have them in a special hiding place. So if you wouldn’t mind shutting your eyes for a moment . . .”
“Why should I do that?” I asked, my voice edging into controlled anger. “I mean, who am
I
going to tell about your hiding place?”
I could see her entire body tense up again. I suddenly felt terrible for snapping, but I also couldn’t help but think how this woman had denounced Petra for years, while simultaneously being her best friend. Still, I had to remember Petra’s own comments about Judit being put under the worst sort of psychological strain—and remind myself that I could not engage in armchair moralizing about a system under which I fortunately never had to live.
“You’re right, you’re right,” I said. “I have no business seeing your hiding place. So I’m going to turn around and shut my eyes and open them when you say so.”
I did just that. Less than thirty seconds later she said, “You can open them now.”
As I did, and turned back toward her, I could see that she was crying.
“Thank you for that,” she said.
“I’m sorry if I was a little abrupt before.”
“Please, please, do not apologize. It is me who should apologize . . . for everything.”
I saw that she had a book of photographs in one hand—a small ring binder with a gray vinyl cover.
“Here,” she said, extending it toward me. “I managed to get a mutual acquaintance to send Petra a letter after she had crossed over, explaining that I had been able to get her photographic albums out before the Stasi sealed her apartment. I put them all together into one book. I wish I had been able to claim more of her possessions, but I had so little time and they arrived six, seven minutes after I was there. I hope she will take some comfort from—”
Once more she broke off, shaking her head, muttering to herself. I opened the book. There were snapshots of Petra holding Johannes close to her in the hospital bed, evidently just after his birth. There were photographs of him asleep in a small crib. Of Petra breast-feeding him. Of Petra tickling him on a sofa. Of Johannes holding a stuffed zebra. Of Petra pushing Johannes in a stroller along a street. Of Petra with him in a local playground—perhaps the one I happened upon in Kollwitzplatz on my first trip here some months back. Of Johannes and Petra in the middle of a double bed. Of Johannes standing up and looking bemused at being able to do just that.
Of course, he was a cute baby. What baby isn’t? But what struck me immediately about this collection of twenty or so photographs was the fact that not one showed Johannes with his father or Petra with her husband. Judit must have been reading my thoughts as she said:
“I pulled out all the photographs with Jurgen, as I know Petra wouldn’t want to see them.”
“Well, maybe we should let Petra be the judge of that. So why don’t you give them back to me and . . .”
“I can’t give them back to you. I burned them. Burned them all.”
“But why?”
“Because it was Jurgen’s insanity that brought on this catastrophe.”
“You still should have let Petra decide if she wanted them.”
“Jurgen was like a cancer that infected us all. And what do you know of anything over here?
Anything?
”
She was shouting—and she was clearly surprised that she was shouting, as she now turned shamefaced.
“Listen to me, listen to me, idiot, idiot, idiot. You bring me lovely things. You love my friend. You tell me my friend forgives me. And how,
how,
do I behave? Like the complete, total, pathetic, useless . . .”
“Enough,” I hissed. “I thank you for the photographs. I will tell Petra—”
“Tell her I hate myself for what I did. I tried to communicate this in the letter I sent her months ago. But it was all coded, not direct and honest. Tell her I am grateful for her forgiveness, and that I don’t merit it.”
“All right, I’ll tell her all that. Now, tell me about the back alley way out of here, please.”
She gave me very detailed instructions, informing me exactly how to negotiate the maze of nearby side streets and make it undetected to the Schönhauser Allee U-Bahn station.
“Thank you,” I said, putting the photo album in my daypack and standing up.
“I hope you can forgive me,” she said.
“Forgive you for what?”
She hung her head, like a convicted criminal on whom sentence had just been passed.
“For everything,” she said.
When I left a few moments later, I waited until Judit had closed the door behind me, then I took the photo album out of my daypack, spent several minutes removing all the snapshots, placed them in an envelope I had brought with me, pulled out my shirt, stuffed them in the back of my pants, and covered them again with the tail of my shirt. Then I dumped the empty photo album in a trash can and hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should follow Judit’s clandestine route to the U-Bahn or simply brave the public way back to Prenzlauer Allee. Part of me thought that if I left now I could possibly count on the Stasi awaiting me at the U-Bahn station by the time I arrived—that is, if she had already made a call to them. Whereas if I simply walked down to Alexanderplatz, using side streets to avoid the tram stop at Marienburgerstrasse which might now be under surveillance, they might still be awaiting me at Checkpoint Charlie. But I could refute any of their accusations that I was in Prenzlauer Berg this morning. That is, of course, if there wasn’t already a police car awaiting me outside Judit’s front door.
I touched the back of my shirt to make certain the photographs were tucked away. Then I spent a few moments calming my nerves by rolling a cigarette, grimly thinking this could be my last smoke for a while if the Stasi were out front awaiting me. But when I stepped out into the street there was nobody there. I looked both ways. Outside of a few parked and empty Trabbis, the street was devoid of cars. I began to walk, heading down Rykestrasse toward the ruined tower, then around a side street, snaking down a street that ran parallel to Prenzlauer Allee. Once again I kept expecting a car with tinted glass to drive up beside me and men in dark suits to hop out and bundle me into the backseat. But I walked on unencumbered, without anyone on my tail (or, at least, not to my visual knowledge), all the way down to Alexanderplatz. I checked my watch. It was just after eleven in the morning. I knew I simply wanted to jump the U-Bahn back to Stadtmitte and walk the hundred yards to Checkpoint Charlie and cross over. But I sensed that I would be inviting far too many questions about why I had only chosen to make a three-hour crossing into the GDR. So I bypassed Alexanderplatz and continued walking south, killing two hours in Das Alte Museum near the Berliner Dom, looking at a profoundly dispiriting collection of Socialist Realist art on themes such as
The Workers Strike Against the Prussian Oligarchy
and
Children of the Democratic Republic Sing Songs of Peace Against Capitalist Oppressors
. There was also an entire section of the museum consecrated to “Photographic Work from Fraternal Socialist Nations,” in which I gawked at happy peasants bringing in the wheat harvest in Bulgaria and the Cuban baseball team helping bring in the sugarcane crop on a collective farm east of Havana.
Propaganda always casts off a spectral, sinister glow—a sense of trying not just to preach to the submissive, but also to dress up terrible realities in the raiment of gaudy fabrication. Two hours amidst such totalitarian kitsch left me stupefied, and finally made me decide:
To hell with the risk. I’m crossing back over now
.
I ducked into the bathroom and stuffed the photographs deeper into my jeans, so they were hidden completely. Then I headed off into the sun-drenched early afternoon. Twenty minutes later I approached Checkpoint Charlie on foot after a stroll down Unter den Linden and a turn left on Friedrichstrasse.
As soon as I arrived there, I saw a figure standing by the guards at the first checkpoint. He wore a blue serge suit, tinted glasses, a porkpie hat.
Shit, shit, shit.
Mr. Undercover. Since losing me in Prenzlauer Berg he had evidently doubled back here and was probably ordered to position himself at this checkpoint, through which I was obliged to pass, until I returned. From the surprised and pleased look on his face, it was clear that he was relieved I wouldn’t be keeping him loitering until 11:59 p.m., the last possible moment I could cross back into West Berlin without overstaying my Cinderella visa and landing myself in all sorts of trouble.
Which I was about to do just now.
Mr. Undercover motioned toward the uniformed guard and whispered something in his ear. I saw the guard place his left hand on the revolver holstered next to him. Though terrified, I knew I had no choice but to submit to their questions and, I hoped, be granted access to the thirty yards that separated their world from mine.
The border gate swung upward. I walked toward Mr. Undercover and the guard. As soon as I had crossed the painted line on the ground, the guard had his hand around my right arm.
“You will come with me,” he said.
I was ushered into a prefabricated hut just after the border. As the guard led me in, he was joined by Mr. Undercover and an older uniformed man with several medals adorning his two breast pockets. There were no chairs in this tiny space—just a long table in front of which I was ordered to stand.
“Papers,” he said. I handed them over.
The officer studied them, then turned to Mr. Undercover and asked, “This is the man who ran away from you?”
“That is him,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
The guard stared down at my papers and said, “So, Herr Nesbitt, this gentleman says you started running when you left the tram at Marienburgerstrasse in Prenzlauer Berg.”
“That’s right. I started running.”
“Why did you start running?”
I took a deep steadying breath, trying to tamper down the fear that had seized me.
“I ran because I am a runner. I have a run every morning. And this morning I thought it would be interesting to have a run over here.”
The guard looked at me as if I were mad. Which, perhaps, I was.
“That is a ludicrous story. This gentleman said you were acting suspicious on the tram.”
“And what does this gentleman do?” I asked, my tone simultaneously challenging and nervous.
“We are posing the questions here.”
“I am bemused at why I am being questioned for deciding to go for a jog in Prenzlauer Berg.”
“You’re not dressed for running.”
“I have a pair of sneakers on,” I said, pointing to the Nikes on my feet.
“You live in West Berlin?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you do there?”
I explained that I was a writer of books.
“What kind of books?”
I told him about my one and only book.
“So you are in West Berlin doing research?”
“No, I’m writing a novel.”
“About what?”
“The first girl who broke my heart.”
Again he gave me a withering look.
“What brought you over here this morning?”
“I wanted to see the exhibition at the Das Alte Museum.”
“And why did you want to see it?”
“Because it interested me.”
“But why did it interest you?”
“Because that sort of artwork interests me.”
“Even though it has nothing to do with the romantic novel you are writing.”
“Who says my novel is romantic?”
“If you were going to the Das Alte Museum, why were you first in Prenzlauer Berg?”
“As I’m certain your records show, I made an earlier visit here more than four months ago. I discovered Prenzlauer Berg during that day over here. And I found it very agreeable.”
“I think you were seeing someone there.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You’re lying.”
“Do you have proof I’m lying?”
As they hadn’t seen me enter Judit’s apartment, I was fairly certain I was in the clear on this issue, unless she had called them. But had she called them, she would have landed herself in deeper trouble, as she did give me the photographs now hugging the small of my back.
“I just know you are lying,” the officer said.
I shrugged, trying to appear unruffled, even though I was profoundly nervous.
“I would like to inspect the contents of your backpack.”
I handed it over. He pulled out each item: a blank notebook, a copy of
The New Yorker,
my tobacco pouch and rolling papers, assorted pens and pencils, a paperback edition of Graham Greene’s
Our Man in Havana,
which I was reading for the first time, and a half-eaten bar of Ritter marzipan chocolate. The guard examined each article intently. Then he asked me to empty my pockets. I did as ordered, putting keys, money, and my wallet on the table. He was greatly interested in my wallet, reading every card I had stored in its assorted pockets.