There’s no way out. I am about to lose everything.
* * *
Thomas was out for the evening at a concert. I got home. I threw away the remnants of the underwear that Haechen had torn off me. I took a long, hot shower. By the time Thomas walked in I had managed, as always, to shove everything I was feeling (the rage, the fury, the fear) into that dark room in which I only dwelled. I took Thomas by the hand immediately and pulled him into the bedroom. We made love. I was so overwrought, so wound tight, that I seemed to be even more fervent than usual, screaming when I came. Afterward I curled up in a corner of the bed, wishing I could confess it all to Thomas. He put his arms around me and asked me what was wrong.
Everything
.
But I said not a word. I just told him I loved him, then shut my eyes and feigned sleep. Sleep, however, never arrived that night. At one point I got up, went into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of red wine, smoked several cigarettes, and finally came up with a solution to my checkmated life. The moment that I chose to execute this plan would have to be the right one. Everything else would have to be in place before I made the move I would make. Because that move would be irrevocable. I would have to bide my time—doing all that was asked of me—until that certain moment arrived.
But having decided on this course of action—having finally realized there was a way out of all this—a certain calm came over me. When you have a solution to something insoluble you also have hope.
* * *
At our next rendezvous Haechen didn’t rough me up. When he kissed me my lips didn’t contort with horror. Rather I kissed him back hard—and pumped hard with my pelvis to make him come that much more forcibly.
He noticed this, saying afterward:
“So you have decided to be a nice girl,
ja
?”
“I will do what you ask. For my son. For my homeland.”
He seemed to buy this.
“You can demonstrate your patriotism by convincing your lover to run a little errand for me. Not, of course, that he will ever know who the guiding hand behind all this actually is. Do you think you could convince him to collect some photographs of your son from your friend Judit?”
* * *
That night I revealed to Thomas the fact that I have a son. I told him the entire story—and Thomas listened in shocked silence throughout the rendering. I didn’t embellish. I didn’t play up things in an attempt to win his sympathy. I never once cried—though the retelling of it all made me want to on several occasions. I just reported the facts—including the discovery that my great friend Judit had betrayed me. And I told him that life without Johannes was a form of living death.
Thomas could not have reacted more wonderfully. He said that knowing all this explained so much—and he couldn’t imagine having endured what I had endured.
I mentioned that I had received a letter some months ago from Judit, a letter smuggled to me. In it she said she was so appalled by her betrayal of me and begged my forgiveness, while also stating that she had a collection of photographs that belonged to me. Thomas immediately said he would go to East Berlin, knock on her door, and get the photographs. I felt such a stab of guilt when he said this. Because there had never been a letter from Judit. And the only reason I knew she had the photographs was that Haechen told me his “people” would be delivering them to her this week and would brief her on what to say to Thomas when he arrived at her apartment.
“All he will have to do is bring back twenty or so photographs,” Haechen told me. “Half of them I will keep. The other half you will be able to keep. So, you see, you profit from sending your boyfriend on this expedition. You will finally have photographs of your beloved son—and trust me, the Republic will be most impressed by your assistance. This could be the turning point for you.”
Now listening to my beloved Thomas insist that he collect those photographs for me . . . that he just had to do this . . . my guilt was bottomless. How could I do this . . . how could I involve the man I so adored in such a grubby, shadowy business?
But as my panic mounted, it was shouted down by that reasoned voice within me. And that voice said:
“You do what you have to do to get through the next few weeks. Then all will come right. And you will be free.”
So—after sounding very reluctant to involve him—I told Thomas that, yes, I would be hugely grateful if he could pay Judit a visit.
* * *
He left early this morning for Checkpoint Charlie. I held on to him a very long time before he left, telling him to be careful. Even though Haechen informed me yesterday that I shouldn’t worry about Thomas’s safety—that it was in
their
interest that his trip to East Berlin was an uneventful one—I still didn’t believe a word he told me. Haechen is a man whose entire life is made up of fabrications, lies, falsehoods, the control of others through the threat of blackmail, extortion, physical injury. So who knew what games they might spring on my beloved.
Because they are the Stasi. And their rules defy moral logic.
I ran to the window and watched Thomas walk off. Oh God, please get him back to me tonight. Safely.
* * *
He was home before five! He looked tired and a little shaken up—as he had a story to tell. The border guards had held him at Checkpoint Charlie for a good two hours. They gave him no reason for this delay. And though they tore his bag apart, they didn’t make him undress—he had secreted the photographs under his jeans. I cried when I saw all the images of Johannes. He’d grown, of course. He was a little chunkier than when I last held him—which was a relief, as whoever was looking after him was feeding him reasonably. He had more hair, his eyes were more alert, but there was that ever-present half smile. Seeing that smile, seeing my son again after all these months, I couldn’t stop myself from crying. And Thomas held me until I finally did
Much later—as Thomas dozed in bed after we had made love—I got up and collated the photographs together, feeling each one, wondering which contained the microfilm or whatever they had secreted within them. I could sense no bulge in any of them. But they were rather professional when it came to such things, weren’t they?
* * *
Haechen was pleased with the photographs.
“Good work,” he said, handing me ten of the twenty that I was allowed to keep. Then: “You won’t be hearing from me for a little while. I have business elsewhere. But I might call on you to join me in a few weeks. So keep checking that loose tile in Der Schlüssel. Twice a week as normal. When I need you, I will let you know. Do not believe that this absence is a permanent one.”
Afterward the thought struck me that he had somebody here doing part of his dirty work for him. Tailing me. Keeping tabs on all my movements. Leaving his notes. Knowing everything about me.
* * *
Thomas has told me we are going to Paris!
Paris. I cannot believe it. All these years when Paris seemed like a distant planet, out of permanent reach. And now . . .
Alaistair’s paintings continue to astonish me. I said that to him the other day, the fact that they are so extraordinary. His reply:
“I have no damn idea if they are good or not. And even when I finish them, I probably won’t like them. But you can like them for me.”
Much later Thomas and I joined him for several vodkas downstairs in his studio. When Thomas excused himself to use the bathroom, Alaistair turned to me and said:
“You seem happier than I’ve ever seen you. What’s happened?”
“Life has gotten simpler.”
Because Haechen had vanished. For the moment.
* * *
I am just back from Paris.
Paris.
If I die tomorrow I can think: at least I was once in Paris. And with the man of my life.
Paris.
Where to start?
The Rue Gay Lussac perhaps? That’s the street that housed the charming little hotel into which Thomas had booked us for several nights. He noted with amusement that it was a little run-down, a little too noisy, a little too impregnated with tobacco, and a little too “French plumbing” when it came to the feeble shower in our room. I didn’t care. We were in Paris. And Paris was overwhelming in ways that appealed to me. Yes, it had its majestic moments. Yes, it was all such a visual set-piece. But what I loved most about it were things like the little bakery near our hotel where you could buy the sort of croissants that were akin to a religious experience. Or the little cinemas where you could hide in old movies for a few francs. Or the jazz place near Châtelet where all the musicians seemed to be black American émigrés, wildly gifted and so deeply cool. Or the wonderful little café next to our hotel where all the local workmen seemed to gather for a glass of wine at nine in the morning and where, while sitting there with Thomas, I could pretend for the length of a coffee that I lived the sort of unencumbered bohemian existence that I know is nothing more than the fantasy of somebody visiting this city with a return ticket to elsewhere.
What a wondrous fantasy. Does Paris always seduce with its sensuality and its image of life unimpeded, even though I know damn well that, like anywhere else, people here are paying rents and raising children and fighting with their spouses and dealing with jobs that leave them unfulfilled, all the
realpolitik
of day-to-day life that we tend to overlook while sitting in a café on an atmospheric street in the Fifth Arrondissement, watching life go by?
I had my decoy journal with me, recording all the films and museums and cafés we loitered in while playacting Parisians. But how I wished I’d had this “real” journal with me, to confess something that has been on my conscience for some time now:
With Haechen absent from my life for the past few weeks, I made a decision as soon as I had my last period—and I knew that I did not risk getting pregnant anymore by
him
.
I went off the pill.
Yes, yes, I should have told Thomas immediately. Yes, yes, I shouldn’t be making decisions for the two of us. Yes, yes, I know he has spoken many times about wanting a baby with me. But the word “eventually” has always been there.
So why have I decided to get pregnant without consulting him?
Because I fear all the other shit coming back at me. Because I want certainty. Because I know that Thomas will not be angry about this. Bemused perhaps. Anxious, of course (aren’t all men?). But he has told me often enough it’s what he wants with me. And I want it now. I want a new child. A new life.
Yet I feel so profoundly guilty at the same time about it all. I should have told him. But I can’t. Just like I cannot tell him about the even bigger betrayal I have perpetrated upon him.
Does love—profound love—have to involve a degree of betrayal? I ask myself that question so often now. Had I followed my instincts at the outset I would have pushed Thomas away from me, because I knew I was a mine field of conflicting interests. And because I had to answer to the man who had announced he controlled my destiny.
But if I had pushed him away—if I had chosen the less problematic route (even though there was hardly anything unproblematic about the Faustian bargain that Haechen had offered me)—I would never have known what it was like to feel so certain about another person, and to have that conviction validated by him.
But, damn me, why didn’t I just tell him:
I want to have a baby
with you now
. Why did I insist on retreating into connivance and deceit when a straightforward statement of fact would have been unquestionably met with the response I so wanted?
Why do I complicate things so? And why do I gamble with the love of the one and only man in my life who has ever shown me real love?
* * *
We were sitting in a café in the Odeon, holding hands, drinking wine, when he asked me to marry him. Just like that. Yes, he’d mentioned marriage in the past, but always in the manner that one mentions some place you’ll visit in the near future.
This was definitive. It came in the wake of me stating (again!) that I thought we should move here. He then said, “Well, why don’t we get married as well?” I thought at first he was joking. But it was clear he was immensely serious. And this threw me. I wanted it more than ever.
But instead of expressing the joy I truly felt, I disappeared into the ladies’ room and locked myself in a stall and lit up a cigarette and talked myself out of the panic attack I was having, telling myself once again that there was a plan. Once that plan was followed all would be fine. So I went back outside and said that, yes, I would marry him. He insisted on ordering champagne—and we talked about our possible life in New York and renting a larger apartment there and me finding work . . . and, yes, the fact that I had now given up hope about ever being allowed custody of Johannes again, and Thomas saying it was best to give up hope, as hard a conclusion as that was to reach. And me thinking all the time: the fact that I have finally given up hope has allowed me to begin formulating the plan that will liberate me from Haechen forever.
But things need to move along now. Part of me prays that, if we can expedite things—the marriage, the green card—we might be gone by the time Haechen gets back. He could have me chased to New York. But then what? More threats of exposure? Now that I accept that Johannes is gone, so too is their power over me. My son again was the last bargaining chip they had with me. Of course, they could threaten to eliminate me—but I have an answer to that as well. First things first. I need to see Haechen one more time. Just to definitively close the chapter, end the tale, turn the page, all those clichés we mouth in the hope that things can change. Then life can become good again.