A GERMAN REQUIEM
For Jane, and in memory of my father
It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
From ‘A German Requiem’, by James Fenton
PART ONE
These days, if you are a German you spend your time in Purgatory before you die, in earthly suffering for all your country’s unpunished and unrepented sins, until the day when, with the aid of the prayers of the Powers – or three of them, anyway -Germany is finally purified.
For now we live in fear. Mostly it is fear of the Ivans, matched only by the almost universal dread of venereal disease, which has become something of an epidemic, although both afflictions are generally held to be synonymous.
1
It was a cold, beautiful day, the kind you can best appreciate with a fire to stoke and a dog to scratch. I had neither, but then there wasn’t any fuel about and I never much liked dogs. But thanks to the quilt I had wrapped around my legs I was warm, and I had just started to congratulate myself on being able to work from home – the sitting-room doubled as my office – when there was a knock at what passed for the front door.
I cursed and got off my couch.
‘This will take a minute,’ I shouted through the wood, ‘so don’t go away.’ I worked the key in the lock and started to pull at the big brass handle. ‘It helps if you push it from your side,’ I shouted again. I heard the scrape of shoes on the landing and then felt a pressure on the other side of the door. Finally it shuddered open.
He was a tall man of about sixty. With his high cheekbones, thin short snout, old-fashioned side-whiskers and angry expression, he reminded me of a mean old king baboon.
‘I think I must have pulled something,’ he grunted, rubbing his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry about that,“ I said, and stood aside to let him in. ’There’s been quite a bit of subsidence in the building. The door needs rehanging, but of course you can’t get the tools.‘ I showed him into the sitting-room. ’Still, we’re not too badly off here. We’ve had some new glass, and the roof seems to keep out the rain. Sit down.‘ I pointed to the only armchair and resumed my position on the couch.
The man put down his briefcase, took off his bowler hat and sat down with an exhausted sigh. He didn’t loosen his grey overcoat and I didn’t blame him for it.
‘I saw your little advertisement on a wall on the Kurfurstendamm,’ he explained.
‘You don’t say,’ I said, vaguely recalling the words I had used on a small square of card the previous week. Kirsten’s idea. With all the notices advertising life-partners and marriage-markets that covered the walls of Berlin’s derelict buildings, I had supposed that nobody would bother to read it. But she had been right after all.
‘My name is Novak,’ he said. ‘Dr Novak. I am an engineer. A process metallurgist, at a factory in Wernigerode. My work is concerned with the extraction and production of non-ferrous metals.’
‘Wernigerode,’ I said. ‘That’s in the Harz Mountains, isn’t it? In the Eastern Zone?’
He nodded. ‘I came to Berlin to deliver a series of lectures at the university. This morning I received a telegram at my hotel, the Mitropa -’
I frowned, trying to remember it.
‘It’s one of those bunker-hotels,’ said Novak. For a moment he seemed inclined to tell me about it, and then changed his mind. ‘The telegram was from my wife, urging me to cut short my trip and return home.’
‘Any particular reason?’
He handed me the telegram. ‘It says that my mother is unwell.’
I unfolded the paper, glanced at the typewritten message, and noted that it actually said she was dangerously ill.
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
Dr Novak shook his head.
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘I don’t believe my wife ever sent this,’ he said. ‘My mother may indeed be old, but she is in remarkably good health. Only two days ago she was chopping wood. No, I suspect that this has been cooked up by the Russians, to get me back as quickly as possible.’
‘Why?’
‘There is a great shortage of scientists in the Soviet Union. I think that they intend to deport me to work in one of their factories.’
I shrugged. ‘Then why allow you to travel to Berlin in the first place?’
‘That would be to grant the Soviet Military Authority a degree of efficiency which it simply does not possess. My guess is that an order for my deportation has only just arrived from Moscow, and that the SMA wishes to get me back at the earliest opportunity.’
‘Have you telegraphed your wife? To have this confirmed?’
‘Yes. She replied only that I should come at once.’
‘So you want to know if the Ivans have got her.’
‘I’ve been to the military police here in Berlin,’ he said, ‘but-’
His deep sigh told me with what success.
‘No, they won’t help,’ I said. ‘You were right to come here.’
‘Can you help me, Herr Gunther?’
‘It means going into the Zone,’ I said, half to myself, as if I needed some persuasion, which I did. ‘To Potsdam. There’s someone I know I can bribe at the headquarters of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. It’ll cost you, and I don’t mean a couple of candy-bars.’
He nodded solemnly.
‘You wouldn’t happen to have any dollars, I suppose, Dr Novak?’
