A Book of Memories (117 page)

Then they must have brought her back.

Then she was in the house in Eötvös Street, the house she herself had picked out and where she'd supervised every alteration; and then everything was all right, and soon she'd be surrounded by familiar faces.

There was a winding staircase, but no linoleum; there was a woodshed, she could smell the freshly chopped wood and the sulphur smell of coke briquettes, but what her bound hands touched was a damp brick wall.

She was lying on something soft; she kept falling asleep and waking up.

Her lips got so puffy from thirst she couldn't close her mouth; she had no more saliva left, her tongue was sticking to raw, swollen sores.

She tried to relieve the hot throbbing pain by pressing her face against the damp bricks, but there wasn't enough moisture there for her dry tongue.

After a while she managed to work the blindfold loose.

No, it wasn't that house, after all
—and then there was no hope.

Very high up she noticed a windowlike opening covered with a plain piece of cardboard; around its edges some light and air seeped through, which meant there was no glass.

In the wall she discovered the sharp edge of a rusty hook; on that she rubbed and scraped the rope used to tie her hands together until she managed to undo it.

Now she had a piece of rope, but it wasn't long enough for a loop and a knot; and besides, there was no place to fasten it.

In her sleep she heard soft music, soothing, lovely music; she was sorry to wake up, but the music continued; it wasn't as lovely as before, more like regular dance music.

She must be hallucinating; she knew that thirst could drive a person mad; she'd lost her mind, then, but not completely, if she was aware of it.

All right, then, she'd gone mad, she just couldn't figure out when it happened.

She even knew she was going to have another fit of anger, she felt it coming on; she was fully aware and felt that she was throwing herself against the wall, and although she had no strength left, she went on slamming herself against the wall.

The music was coming from outside; it got much cooler in the cellar, and no light at all filtered in from anywhere.

It had to be evening.

But she couldn't decide anymore when she was sleeping and when she was hallucinating and seeing images that weren't really there, because the music turned into a little stream in the wall, the trickle became a flow, a flood
—a burst pipe, she thought—turning into a roaring, rumbling waterfall; she almost drowned.

The next moment, or a half hour, or two days later
—she wasn't sure anymore—she woke up thinking that everything was all right; with her finger she was trying to scoop out wet plaster from the spaces between the bricks.

She even managed to clamber up all the way to the window, but just at that moment the music started playing again and that made her fall back.

But she didn't give up; she tried once more, and with the tip of her finger, with her nail, she reached the edge of the cardboard over the opening.

The cardboard was fastened to the wall, but she kept jabbing and prodding it until she moved it, and then it simply fell down.

She looked out on a terrace lit by colorful Chinese lanterns; people dressed for the evening were dancing to this same music, and on a staircase leading to a dark garden two men were talking in a foreign language with a beautiful young woman.

She wore a colorful print dress, her expression seemed serious.

If after a short while they hadn't come for her and walked her up the same staircase, and if the two men and the young woman hadn't let them pass as casually as they did, and if she hadn't been led across the dance floor on the way to another part of the same house, then she would still be convinced that this garden party with the Chinese lanterns was one of her hallucinations.

From the smells, the overheard foreign words, the look and shape of ordinary objects, she surmised that they had taken her across the border, and they were somewhere near Bratislava.

First they showed me your father's signature; I had to read his official testimony, and then a statement by János Hamar confirming the accuracy of that testimony.

Two men sat facing me in comfortable armchairs.

I told them this wasn't true.

They acted surprised; why wouldn't it be true, they said, and chuckled, and interrupting each other, they kept making pointed and vulgar references to my relationship with both men.

Either they are lying or you tortured them, too, or they've gone mad; there's no other possibility, and that is all I have to say about this.

There was a glass of water on the table in front of them.

One of them said, We've prepared a statement, if you sign it, you may drink the water.

I told them there was no interrogation, no statement, how could I sign anything?

The other man gave a signal and I was dragged out through a side door.

As soon as the door closed behind us, they started beating me; they shoved me into a bathtub, poured hot water on me, struck me with the shower head, called me a spy, a traitor, and said, Now you can drink all you want, you slut.

When I came to, I was in the cellar, but they soon dragged me upstairs again.

Not much time could have passed, because my clothes were still sopping wet and I could still hear the music.

This time they didn't lead me across the terrace but up the spiral staircase, through the garage, and into the garden; we probably used the main entrance this time.

They brought me to a very small room with only a large desk and a chair in it.

A blond young man was sitting behind the desk, by the cozy light of a lamp; even from here the music could be heard.

As soon as I walked in, he jumped up and seemed quite happy to see me, as if he had been waiting for me for a long time; but he greeted me in French, asked me to sit down in French, and expressed his indignation in French that contrary to his strict instructions I'd been treated this way.

From that moment on everything would be different, that he could promise me.

I asked him why we had to speak in French.

The odd thing was that he sounded pretty sincere, and I let myself be a bit hopeful, that maybe I was in good hands, after all.

He spread his arm apologetically and said that French was the only language we had in common and it was very important that we understood each other well.

I insisted on knowing how he knew I spoke French.

Come on, Comrade Stein, we know everything about you.

When your friend was released from jail, in May 1935, and he confessed to you that the secret police got him to work for them, you neglected to report this very significant fact, didn't you? the two of you left for Paris and returned only after the German occupation, with false passports, on Party instructions, if I'm not mistaken.

That's almost how it happened, except my friend was not recruited by any kind of secret police, and he didn't confess anything to me, consequently I had nothing to report, and we went to Paris because we were out of work, we had nothing to eat.

Let's not waste time on meaningless quibbles, he said, let's get to the point.

It was his solemn duty to convey a request, and it was only a request, nothing more, made by Comrade Stalin himself and addressed directly to Comrade Stein.

It consisted of only six words:

Do not be stubborn, Comrade Stein.

She had to think a long time, because on this third day nothing could happen that would still strike her as improbable; and as she kept looking at the face of this blond young man, she realized that this was the request she'd been waiting for all her life.

If this is truly how things stand, she said, then Maria Stein would like Comrade Stalin to know that in the given circumstances his request cannot be granted.

And the blond young man was not at all surprised by her reply.

He leaned all the way across the table, kept nodding and staring at her for a long time, and then, in a very quiet, very threatening voice, asked if Maria Stein really believed they could find anyone crazy enough to deliver such an impertinent message.

Stars shone brightly in the spring sky; it was getting chilly.

I knew I just had to get up sometime; she also, stood up but didn't stop talking; later, I walked across her room, and she came after me and continued talking.

I walked into the hallway; I already opened the door for you, she said; I looked back at her, and she was still talking and didn't even lower her voice.

I closed the door and began running toward the staircase, still hearing her voice; I ran down the stairs and out of the building, and on the trail continued to run toward the railroad tracks, where just then a well-lit but empty train was screeching terribly as it made its turn.

It was getting late.

The yellowish light of streetlamps cast a soft, festive shine on all that whiteness.

The snow's reflected light made the sky look lighter, yellower, and wider, the softness of the glow toning down every sound; on high, from behind the thinning edges of the dark slow-moving clouds every now and then the moon showed its cold face.

It must have been around midnight when I got back to the flat on Wörther Platz.

In the lobby I shook the snow off my shoes; I didn't turn on the light in the stairwell.

As though anyone, at any time, even at a late hour like this, could demand to know what I was doing here.

First feeling and moving aside the tongue-like lid over the opening, I carefully slipped my key into the lock.

Not to wake him, should he already be asleep.

The door lock snapped back in the dark, that was all the noise I made.

Careful not to make the floor creak, I reached the coatrack almost without a sound, when he called out from the bedroom that he wasn't asleep.

I sensed that he had left the bedroom door open because he wanted to see me.

Yet he didn't want to pretend to be asleep, either; he himself would have been offended by such a pretense.

I hung up my coat and walked in.

It was a pleasant feeling to be bringing in the chill of the snow and the smell of winter.

The bed creaked as he made a move; I could see nothing in the dark, but assumed he was making room for me. I sat down at the edge of his bed.

We were silent, but it was a bad silence, the kind one should never get into, even if the conversation replacing it is forced or trivial.

He finally broke the silence and in a hollow voice said he wanted to apologize for hitting me; he was truly ashamed, and he'd like to explain.

I didn't want his explanation, or, I should say, I didn't feel I was ready for it; I asked him instead what he had thought of the performance.

He couldn't say that he liked it or that he didn't; it just didn't do anything for him, he said.

And Thea?

She wasn't bad, he said vaguely; she was probably the best of the lot, but he couldn't feel sorry for her, or hate her, or admire her; nothing.

I asked him why he had run away.

He didn't run away, he just wanted to come home.

But why did he leave me there, why didn't he wait for me?

He could see we needed each other, she and I; he didn't want to disturb us with his presence.

I couldn't leave her there, I said; Arno had moved out, for good this time, and he didn't leave anything in the apartment, not a pencil, not a handkerchief; but it had nothing to do with me.

He lay silently on his bed, and I sat just as silently in the dark.

And then, as if he had heard nothing of what I told him, or found nothing new in the little that he did hear, an episode in a life that no longer concerned him, he continued where I had interrupted him before; he would like to tell me something, he said, a simple thing, really, but also difficult, he couldn't tell me here, could we go for a walk?

Now, I asked, go for a walk now? in the cold? for I really wanted to skip the explanations.

Yes, now, he said.

The night wasn't even that cold.

We took our time; with slow, leisurely steps we walked all the way to Senefelderplatz and crossed the silent Schönhauserallee, and where Fehrbellinerstrasse touches Zionskircheplatz, we turned and went along Anklammerstrasse and then followed Ackerstrasse, until the street came to an end.

On our nocturnal walks we never chose this route, because we'd find ourselves facing the Wall.

While we were walking, I looked at the streets, stores, and houses with the eyes of a professional, as if all this were only the locale of my invented story and not a place where my own life was unfolding.

I plundered my own time, and wasn't displeased with the looted treasures of an imagined past, for it stopped me from being overwhelmed by the present.

Along this stretch of the street the Wall was also the brick wall of an old cemetery, and beyond it, in a mined, floodlit no-man's-land, stood the burned-out skeleton of a church destroyed during the war, the Versöhnungskirche, the Church of Reconciliation.

It was beautiful how the moon shone through the bare ribs of the bell tower, penetrated the hollow nave, and made some broken pieces of stained glass glimmer in the rose window.

Yes, it was very beautiful.

The two friends were standing next to each other and watched both the church and the moon.

A little farther away, a border guard's footsteps sloshed softly in the wet snow.

They saw the guard; he took four steps in front of his booth, then four steps back; and he noticed them, too.

The whole scene was so strange, I almost forgot Melchior might have something bad to tell me.

Very gently he lowered his arm onto my shoulder; his face was lit by three different lights: the moon, the yellow streetlamp, and the floodlight, but they cast no shadows, for all three sources of light were also reflected by the snow; and still, it wasn't light around us, there was only the glimmering of a many-colored darkness.

So I'm leaving, he said quietly, it's all arranged; two-thirds of the cost, twelve thousand marks, has already been paid; for ten days he'd been waiting for the confirming message.