The Moment (39 page)

“It doesn’t seem to be affecting the work,” I said, nodding toward the three canvases that were half-finished along the back wall of his studio. Though they resembled the geometric studies in varying hues of blue that he was working on before the attack, they were not reproductions. On the contrary, these new paintings had a fluidity and complex depth of coloration and perspective that marked a real departure from his previous work. Gone were the primal blues and pellucid lines that defined the others. These were troubled, yet supremely confident—a real mastery of shape and hue amidst moody abstraction. Alaistair saw me studying them—though perhaps the right verb would be “drawn in” by them, as they had that visceral effect on me.

“You approve?” he asked.

“Enormously.”

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Please.”

“I just saw Petra leave. Anything wrong between you two?”

“Let’s have a coffee and a cigarette.”

“No problem.”

The coffee percolated as I accepted one of Alaistair’s Gauloises.

“You’re up very early,” I said.

“Working all night. Been on one of those manic jags the last few days. Which has also been a reaction to a little change in my life.”

“Something serious?”

“Now here’s a question for the American writer: is a breakup of an arrangement serious?”

“You and Mehmet?”

Alaistair nodded.

“But I thought after that last little rupture things had settled down again.”

“They had. But then his wife became—as they used to say in Victorian music halls—‘in the family way’ and he feels he simply cannot risk seeing me again.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Two days ago.”

“You should have said something,” I said.

“And break the Fitzsimons-Ross Code of Stoicism, passed along for centuries by generations of rigid Protestants on horseback? I knew this would happen one day. But like most things that you know are going to eventually arrive in your life and leave you distressed, you tend not to dwell on their inevitability. Even when we had that little contretemps a few weeks ago—and Mehmet finally showed up here again after a few days—I knew that it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. If you ask me how I’m feeling, I will become homicidal.”

“It’s that bad, is it?”

“You never know your real feelings about someone until that someone is no longer in your life. Think of all the people who stay forty years married to the wrong person—and feel trapped most of the time. Then the hated spouse dies and they are bereft.”

“Or those who let somebody go, and then discovered that they had fired the love of their life.”

“I didn’t let Mehmet go.”

“I know that.”

“Yes, it’s all bothering me bloody more than I’d like it to. But . . .”

I could see his eyes fill up as he turned away from me and stood up to collect the now-percolated coffee, rubbing away his tears with the paint-stained sleeve of his sweatshirt. Then, taking a deep steadying breath, he turned to me and said:

“And now we’re getting off this fucking subject.”

I nodded while glancing at my watch and noticing that the time was now 7:08.

“Hurrying off somewhere?”

“Can I trust you with something, Alaistair? Something very private that must never be discussed with anyone else but me?”

Without pausing to think this one through, he said:

“Of course.” I could see in the clarity of his gaze that he meant it. So I told him that I was about to cross over to East Berlin and explained the purpose of my journey. I also told him about Petra’s arrest, her appalling incarceration, the suicide of her husband, and the way her son was “adopted” by a Stasi family. Alaistair listened in silence. When I was finished, his response was to reach for his cigarettes, light one up, and stare off into the distance for a few moments.

“You never really know the horrors that other people carry around with them, do you? There I was, thinking that Petra was sad, and perhaps the sadness had to do with a bad love affair in the past, or that buyer’s regret which many émigrés have after they’ve landed in the West. But this nightmare she’s been forced to live . . . it’s unspeakable. Fear not, I will never breathe a word I know anything about this to a soul, let alone to Petra. But thank you for entrusting me with it all.”

“I don’t have any contacts at the US embassy—and I definitely don’t want anyone called at Radio Liberty, as it might put Petra’s post there in jeopardy. But if I’m not home by eight tonight at the latest . . .”

“I will keep Petra calm. And I will make certain that the man on call at the US consul—I think they call him the duty officer—is fully briefed. But do try to get back in one piece . . . with the photographs.”

Half an hour later I was emerging out of the Kochstrasse U-Bahn station, passing the “You Are Leaving the American Sector” sign, and heading toward the barriers up ahead. As I reached the gate, a guard looked at me. I nodded, indicating that I wanted to cross over. He nodded back. The barrier was raised. I walked in. I was the only customer this morning. The uniformed Volkspolizist officer in the booth accepted my passport and asked me the usual questions: “Purpose of visit?” (“Tourism”). “Anything to declare?” (I shook my head). “You are aware that this is a day visa and you must cross back through this checkpoint—and only this checkpoint—by 23:59 tonight?” (“Yes, I am aware of that”). Then he asked me for the obligatory thirty-deutsche-mark entrance fee. I had it ready in my pocket—and after handing it over, he pushed back to me thirty ostmarks, Lenin’s jutting chin filling up half of the bills. Then he asked me one final question:

“Are you bringing in any goods that you plan to leave in the GDR?”

Actually, I had five packets of Camel Filters and six bars of Ritter chocolate in my daypack but decided to take a risk and simply said: “No.” The guard studied me, decided not to press the matter further. With a nod of the head toward the East, he indicated I was in.

On to the next barrier. My passport was checked again, the barrier raised, and I headed up a near-empty Friedrichstrasse to the Stadtmitte U-Bahn station. The day was bright, sunny, almost warm. I blinked into the unforgiving light, peering up this bleak boulevard, still devoid of people, cars, signs of life. The U-Bahn station was just up ahead. I went down its narrow stairs and found myself in a subterranean world of harsh lights and the stench of a very powerful disinfectant. I bought a ticket. Then I waited for the train to Alexanderplatz, sharing the platform with two other people. They were a young couple in their twenties, both wearing nylon jackets—his gray, hers a curious shade of maroon—holding hands awkwardly, occasionally smiling when their eyes met, but looking tentative and a little shy. Had they just spent the night together for the first time? Were they edging their way into love and still unsure how to negotiate it? He had long, slightly greasy hair and a moustache that was just one step beyond peach fuzz. She had a pretty face but was already a little heavy in the thigh. For the entire five minutes as we waited for the next train, they exchanged plenty of shy yet affectionate glances, but not a word passed between them. New lovers, without question, in the disinfected netherworld of the East German U-Bahn.

Just as we were about to board the arriving train, I looked to my right and saw that now standing on the platform was a man in a blue suit that gave off a serge-like shine. He was half-hidden by a pillar, reading that morning’s copy of
Neues Deutschland
. He wore a porkpie hat and slightly tinted oversized black glasses. When he saw me catch sight of him, he adjusted his body ever so slowly to disappear behind the pillar. Immediately I wondered if he had followed me from the border checkpoint. As the train rumbled into the station, I walked further down the platform away from him and boarded the second carriage.

The train only took ten minutes to reach Alexanderplatz—and Mr. Undercover (as I now deemed him) never appeared in the carriage where I was sitting. When we arrived I bolted up the stairs and emerged in the shadow of that overbearing and very looming television tower that so dominated this barren square. I checked my watch. I needed to keep moving. So I walked to the tram station right by the big S-Bahn station and was in luck: a tram toward Danziger Strasse was just leaving. I climbed aboard and could see my fellow passengers eyeing me warily. Was I that identifiably a visitor from the West? Even in my beat-up army desert jacket, was it so damn obvious? I was also just a little disconcerted to see the man in the tinted glasses and porkpie hat at the far end of the tram. Was I being followed? Or was this one of those strange coincidences, and could he also just be another man in a porkpie hat and 1950s style eyewear?

I got my answer when I stepped off the tram—as instructed by Petra in her note—at Marienburgerstrasse. Mr. Undercover followed. Then I did something extreme and potentially stupid. I started to run. But instead of crossing the tracks to my left, I made a beeline down a street on which there was a church in bad repair. The signpost of this street—Heinrich-Roller-Strasse—flashed by as I sprinted, my old cross-country training coming back, as I glanced around behind me and saw that Mr. Undercover was giving pursuit. But he was a little on the hefty side and possibly hadn’t been running as much as I had been recently—so I lost him within moments, cutting into an alleyway and hiding behind a parked car. Three minutes later he came jogging by, his face beetroot red, muttering
“Scheisse”
under his breath, glancing everywhere, clearly panicked. I waited another minute before peering out of the alleyway, seeing him now at the bottom of the street, wildly glancing left and right, then dashing rightward. As soon as I was certain he wasn’t doubling back, I ran across the road, down a side street, then back up to the tram tracks. Fortunately, there were no police around. And the few passersby just looked on with mild bemusement. Perhaps they thought I was just running for a tram.

As soon as I reached the tram tracks—which bisected a boulevard called Prenzlauer Allee—I stopped running, especially as there were police here. Looking right and left—and very much behind me—I saw no sign of Mr. Undercover. I wondered if he had ducked into a phone booth or a shop to make a call to his superiors, telling them to be on the lookout for a Westerner in a dark green desert jacket, now in the vicinity of the Marienburgerstrasse tram stop. I took off my jacket and bundled it into my daypack. Then I crossed the tram tracks quickly, but not at a speed that could call attention to myself. Keeping my head down, I continued moving until I found Rykestrasse—a street of imposing nineteenth-century apartment blocks, all badly in need of a paint job, yet still redolent of a certain bourgeois solidity. There was a Martello-like tower at the end of the street—blackened by coal and other pollutants, its masonry chipped, frayed, like a crumbling holdover from a Grimm fairy tale. I pulled out Petra’s note. Judit lived in number 33 Rykestrasse—a building that had a dilapidated quasi-Gothic portico, into which had been placed a grim steel door. It opened at a push—there was no security system—and Petra’s note informed me that Judit’s apartment was on the ground floor, just to the left of the stairwell that led to the higher floors. The stairs were in dangerous condition, with large chips missing from their once-solid stone construction. There were two fluorescent tubes, unevenly suspended from a skylight with cracked glass, casting the foyer in a strange orange glow. And the aroma of scorched grease and overcooked cabbage intermingled with the same toxic disinfectant that I smelled in the U-Bahn. The door to Judit’s apartment was also made of steel, but looked as if it had been repeatedly attacked with a hammer or some other hefty object. I could hear a radio playing inside, a voice intermingled with a considerable amount of static. I knocked on the door several times. No response. I knocked again, this time louder. The radio snapped off and the door opened a tiny crack. I was looking down at a set of eyes, from behind which came a hoarse voice:

“Ja?”

“Are you Judit Fleischmann?”

“Who are you?” she said, sounding accusatory and a little fearful.

“I am a friend of Petra Dussmann’s.”

“I don’t know any Petra Dussmann.”

“I have a letter here from her to you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“My name is Thomas Nesbitt, and I live with Petra in Kreuzberg.”

I said this in a low voice, just in case there were nosy neighbors or listening devices planted around here.

“This is no lie?” she asked, her voice trembling.

I dug the letter out of my pocket and held it up to the crack in the door.

“She wrote you this,” I said.

A small trembling hand shot up and grabbed the letter from me. The door suddenly snapped shut. I waited outside, cursing myself for allowing her to snatch the letter and not let me in. But after a moment the door opened and I found myself staring at a most diminutive woman—she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall—with short cropped hair that had turned gray, a face that, though once possibly attractive, was already heavily lined. She had a cigarette between fingers with heavily chewed nails. She was dressed in a shabby floral bathrobe. She looked thin to the point of emaciation. Her eyes were underscored by deep rings that gave her the look of the perpetual insomniac. I could tell that she saw I was disconcerted by her appearance, so I lowered my eyes as she hissed: