Field Study (6 page)

A direct announcement which had Hannah quickly on the defensive.

– But your father fought against them, didn’t he? Isn’t that important?

– And now I’m supposed to say no, so you can feel superior?

– You just don’t want to see any good in him. You can’t bear it that he did something brave and right in his life.

– Hannah, at the risk of sounding patronising: it is a lot more complicated than that.

Hannah was quiet, then, and Jochen was sorry to have been so blunt. Later he did talk about it with her, briefly. Tried to explain a little of how he felt about the
Nazivergangenheit
, the Nazi past.

– I know: it’s part of my father’s life, and so it is part of mine too. And of course I know it is important. But you don’t know my father and you didn’t grow up in Germany, west or east. You don’t realise how the past sits on your shoulders there. Old Nazis, victims, the people who fought against them. Buildings, street signs, graffiti, newspaper articles.

He shrugged.

– And my father, that’s all he could ever see somehow. He was blind to everything else.

Hannah remembers this conversation now, driving home from their upstate weekend. Loves her husband. Knows how difficult it must have been for him to say this, grateful that he made this effort, but still the memory upsets her. Because she knows he does talk about it sometimes. Not with her, but she has heard him on the phone to his
brother and in the kitchen on Karl’s last visit. In a German so fast Hannah couldn’t follow what Jochen said, but she recognised his tones of anger, shock, sadness. Stood quietly in the hallway listening: excluded.

__

– Your husband is from Germany, isn’t he?

The midwife’s first question after the twins were born. Under her breath, conspiratorial, and with an understanding nod. What is it about him? Not tall, not blond, hardly any accent to speak of, but still unshakeably, unmistakably
deutsch
.

__

Summer goes by, the twins’ third birthday, and though Jochen resists, Hannah is persistent. She would really like to meet her father-in-law again, to know more about him. Jochen is not keen on the idea of visiting his father at first, but over the weeks, he does talk more, even starts to volunteer information.

His father wrote articles and books, on the pre-war German Communist movement and the postwar division. He was considered something of an authority in East German circles, celebrated for a while in left-leaning West German ones too. Jochen remembers finding his father’s name in a book at school once, in a list of prominent anti-Nazis, but still he has no pride in
his father’s ideals, his achievements. On the rare occasions he speaks about them, he is at best sarcastic, at worst really mean.

– Postwar Germany according to my dad, are you ready? In the East there are the good people, the farmers and workers. In the West, on the other hand, are the capitalists and the old Nazis, who will of course stop at nothing in their quest to corrupt and undermine. And so to keep these fascists and exploiters at bay they, regrettably, had to build a nice big wall.

– Come on. He’s an intelligent man. It won’t be as simplistic as that.

– Okay, granted, I am being less than generous. But to him the cold war was western aggression, and everything that happened in the East was somehow a defensive reaction. This is what I hate, you see, this hypocrisy.

– The state was hypocritical, or your father?

– Listen Hannah: my father fought one repressive regime and then used his credentials to defend another. He was so righteous about the journalists who worked for the Nazis, and then he spent his own career writing lies and excuses.

__

His books are no longer in print but Hannah does find one of her father-in-law’s articles in the microfiche room at the university library. The rhetoric is indeed off-putting, but the photo of the author fascinating. Tight-mouthed,
guarded. An expression she recognises from her husband’s face.

__

Their discussions that autumn are often tense, but they argue less and less, and sometimes when Jochen phones his brother, Hannah notices that he will also talk briefly with his father. And then, just before Christmas, a further health scare helps Hannah win him over. When New Year arrives, they fly with their sons to Germany, because Jochen agrees that it is right for them to see their grandfather. That he should see his grandchildren at least once before he dies. He sends them a letter, the old man, in response to the announcement of their visit. Brief, curt, and in English: Hannah uses it as a page-marker in the book she takes onto the plane to read to the twins.

Since you are coming all this way, it would seem a waste of time to just stay in Frankfurt. I would strongly suggest that we pay a visit to Berlin.

– Out of the question.

Jochen nods at the letter over his complimentary drink.

– Why?

– Karl says Dad’s not well enough.

– Did he ask your father?

Jochen shrugs. They lose altitude slowly as they approach Frankfurt, and the twins rub their ears and pull their faces
into exaggerated yawns.

– He wants to go. I want to go. You and the boys can stay with your brother. I’ll take your dad to Berlin.

– It’s a bad idea, Hannah. He’s too old, ill. It will be a nightmare.

– How do you know?

Karl picks them up at the airport. Hannah tells him about the letter and he sighs, pushing the luggage trolley ahead of him.

– He’s up to something.

Hannah sits in the back again, between her sons, who are restless after the long flight. She tries to find rusks and toys in her bag and still keep an eye on her husband and brother-in-law in the front. Strains to understand what they are saying, becomes aware that she is the only woman in the car, surrounded by two generations of her male relatives: all tired and tense, with their shoulders hunched around their ears.

__

Her eldest male relative responds to her idea of a hire car and a road trip to Berlin with gruff enthusiasm.

– Very good, yes. I am going to bed now and shall see you in the morning.

The twins sleep in travel cots in the living room and Karl, Hannah and Jochen eat together in the small kitchen.

– At least no one will print his stuff now. Even if he could still write.

Karl rolls a cigarette, exchanges a glance with Jochen, and then tells Hannah:

– That was the worst time. After reunification, after the Stasi files were opened.

– He worked for the Stasi?

– Yes he worked for the Stasi, one of their informers. Informal co-workers.

– But he wasn’t the only one. Thousands of people did that, didn’t they?

– Yes, of course, but does that mean he is not responsible for his actions?

Karl doesn’t raise his voice, but his tone has changed. He looks at Jochen, then continues:

– He was against the Nazis, he had suffered for the cause. I think he felt that this absolved him.

Jochen opens another bottle and nods at what his brother says. Hannah sighs at the rhetoric, thinks the sons can be just as dogmatic as their father.

– One of our cousins, Sascha, he wrote some critical essays when he was a student. Critical of the government, and so he was thrown out of university.

– What did he write?

– Oh, unkind things about Honecker: nothing earth-shattering. But they had been following Sascha for some
time, the Stasi. And then without a degree, you see, his career chances were ruined.

– And that is your father’s fault?

– Well it’s not certain, of course, but our father lived with them for a while, in Sascha’s last years of school. You never know what piece of information brought him to their attention, do you? Sascha says he read things in his file that only our father would have known.

Hannah can feel Jochen looking at her. She keeps her eyes focused just beyond Karl’s shoulder.

– Do you know what he thinks now?

– No, he won’t engage with me. That’s what pisses me off the most. You just draw this blank with him there. No conversation, just this silence, this massive disappointment. Like we’ve all been a disappointment to him, the whole world, and we owed it to him to be what he expected of us, because he wanted it so much.

– He’s an old man. He was old by the time the wall came down. Maybe it’s not fair to expect too much of him?

– Oh, come on!

Jochen has been listening quietly, but is irritated now. He raises his hands in a defeated gesture. Hannah thinks he is about to declare the conversation boring and therefore over.

– Well? You don’t like talking about the past with me, do you? Maybe your father is not so different?

Jochen blinks at her.

– There is a difference, Hannah.

– Oh, really?

– Yes, really. He still believes the old lies.

__

Hannah is unsettled by the Stasi revelations. Awake on the sofa-bed next to Jochen, heart pounding. She takes deep breaths, but cannot fill her lungs, regrets the late-night coffee, the evening’s red wine. Jochen sleeps on and she is angry. Wonders why he and Karl decided to tell her now: to change her mind about the Berlin visit? She goes over their conversation again, those glances exchanged between the brothers, the tight smiles that appeared at her questions. Hannah lies there and resents them. The way they always insist on complication, the impossibility of explanation. Thinks they enjoy their Germanness and all its secrets, and after that she feels lonely and unkind.

She wakes early, finds her father-in-law already in the kitchen. He smiles and waves a silent good morning. Hannah catches herself watching him as he pours her some tea. Can’t help herself: she is intrigued. By this blunt man who can be so gentle, by this horribly compromised idealist. It occurs to her, making toast for them both, that she has only tried talking with the sons, never with the father. In her bag she has a road map of Germany, and one
of Berlin. Awake now, despite her bad night, Hannah is determined to take him.

__

The autobahn is dull and the day chilly and grey, but her father-in-law makes good driving company. He finds a radio station without commercials, tells her the names of the rivers they pass over, breaks a chocolate bar into neat pieces, lays them within easy reach on the dashboard for her.

– Strength for the road ahead.

Countless topics considered, discarded, Hannah talks non-stop about the twins for the first hour or so, and although their grandfather is interested, she is uncomfortable, sure he is aware that this is conversational safe ground. They come to a service station, and he suggests a coffee. He finds them a table by the window, and they smile together about the surly waiter and the plastic plants on the windowsill. Hannah remembers how they danced together at the wedding reception, in the restroom mirror tells herself to relax. Back in the car, she lets him ask her questions: is astonished by what he remembers, details even she had forgotten. That she had broken off her doctoral studies shortly before the wedding: the impossibility of combining work and research, the frustrations with her supervisor. He is sympathetic with her anger now over the cost of childcare, over having to stay at
home because she cannot earn enough to pay for it.

– Yes. It was much easier in the GDR for women to work than now. Good nurseries and the state paid for them.

He smiles in the pause this produces.

– Sorry. Not propaganda. It’s just one thing we did right, I think. Or at least better.

__

Coming into Berlin Hannah notices the weather is changing. The outside temperature reads two below zero and the clouds hang low and heavy over the city. She thinks it might snow and worries about the old man getting cold, fiddles with the dials on the dashboard until the heating system kicks in. The autobahn ends abruptly and they sit at traffic lights, blinking in the dry gusts of warm air from the windscreen. Hannah’s feet feel cramped and hot in her winter shoes. She can smell her father-in-law now, too. Wonders how often the home-help comes to wash him. Too busy inside his own head to remember; shuffling from one room to another, leaving behind a trail of half-read books and papers.

__

Inside the city the traffic is stop-start and Hannah struggles with the gear-shift and the lane changes. Her father-inlaw never learnt to drive, he says, navigates badly.

The old man sits up straighter after a while, tells her they have passed into the eastern side of the city. The difference seems very subtle to Hannah: same ugly apartment buildings, same oppressive crush of traffic lanes. There are trams to add to her unease here, and they are stuck behind one for a while, the tyres singing strangely on the tracks below them.

Visibly excited, her father-in-law navigates them along one edge of Alexanderplatz before road-works divert them up Karl-Marx-Allee. Smiling, shifting in his seat, the old man asks Hannah repeatedly whether she can see the TV tower in her rear-view mirror.

– Look. It’s an impressive sight, really.

He fidgets, turning to look out of the rear windscreen, stiff shoulders straining against the belt.

– They built it to stand right in the sight-lines of the avenue. Yes, the angle should be right. Just about. NOW. Now, Mädel. What’s wrong with you?

He stares at her.

– Sorry. The hire car. I’m not used to it, think I should concentrate on the road.

He coughs, turns back to look through the front wind-screen at the wide, straight avenue, its imposing buildings.

– This was called Stalinallee once. Karl Marx is much better.

He nods. Hannah can see the emphatic movement out of the corner of her eye.

– Uncle Joe. So the Americans called him, yes? American communists. Who, I understand, were banned from working for some time, put in prison.

The old man is looking at her now.

– Yes.

– Is that remembered in America?

Hannah changes down a gear, then up again.

– Yes, I think it is. I believe so.

– Did you learn this at school?

– No. My father told me.

She glances at him. He is listening, watching for her reaction.