In Times of Fading Light

When Irina came back from the bathroom, Kurt was leafing through the newspaper. His plate was still unused, with no crumbs on it.

“Why aren’t you having anything to eat?” asked Irina. “You’ll get that stomachache again.”

“Not a single word, there really isn’t,” said Kurt. “Not a word here about Hungary, nothing about refugees, nothing about the embassy in Prague…”

He folded the newspaper and slammed it down on the table. The headline on the front page said, in large letters:

THE GDR AND THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA STAND SHOULDER TO SHOULDER IN THE CONFLICTS OF OUR TIME

Irina had seen this headline already, yesterday—it was the weekend edition of ND, and Kurt hadn’t read it yet because the Literaturnaya Gazeta had arrived from Moscow yesterday. Irina wondered why he still read such garbage at all: really, Neues Deutschland!

Kurt tapped the paper with his finger. “Do you understand what they mean by that?”

Irina shrugged her shoulders. She had also seen the photograph already: VIPs of some kind standing in three rows, one behind another, so grainy that you could hardly tell the many Chinese from the Germans in the picture. A perfectly normal, typical, stupid ND picture, but particularly stupid in view of the fact that people were actually running away from the VIPs (a fact that filled Irina, unlike Kurt, with wicked glee rather than concern).

“It’s a warning,” Kurt informed her. “A warning to the people. It means: if there are demonstrations of any kind here we’ll do the same as the Chinese in the Square of Heavenly Peace. Good God—oh, really, concrete!” said Kurt. “Heads full of solid concrete!”

He took a white roll out of the breadbasket and began spreading it with butter.

The picture conjured up in Irina’s mind by the words “Square of Heavenly Peace” was of a thin student in a white shirt, bringing a column of four or five tanks to a halt. She remembered holding her breath in front of the TV set as the first tank, emitting clouds of fumes and rocking alarmingly, tried to maneuver its way past that small figure. She knew how you felt, up so close to a tank. She had been around them in the last two years of the war, if only as a paramedic. She knew a T-34 tank by the sound it made as it lumbered up.

“You’d better have a word with Sasha,” said Irina. “Tell him not to do anything silly.”

Kurt dismissed this idea. “As if Sasha would listen to me!”

“All the same, you must speak to him.”

“What do you want me to say? Here, look at this garbage”—Kurt tapped the ND with his finger so hard that it hurt Irina to watch—“lies and garbage, all of it!”

“Try telling that to your mother this afternoon.”

Irina fished a cigarette out of her pack. Kurt grabbed her hand. “Come on, Irina, have something to eat first.”

The clock in the living room began its nine o’clock whirring. For a couple of moments, as if by previous agreement, they both paused. You had to listen very hard if you wanted to tell the time by that toneless whirr. Then Kurt said, “Very well, I’ll speak to Sasha.”

He began eating his egg, stopped again, and added, “But after breakfast we’ll go for a little walk.”

Irina also took a roll from the breadbasket, spread it with butter and cheese, worked out how long she would have left for a walk if she didn’t go to the Russian Store. On the other hand, she didn’t want to go for a walk, certainly not with Kurt, who always strode on ahead. And she didn’t have any suitable shoes.

“Why don’t I call Vera?” asked Kurt. “Maybe she’d like to come with us.”

“Oh, I see,” said Irina. “So that’s what it’s all about!”

“What? What what’s all about?”

“You’re keen to see Vera, are you?”

“Vera is your friend,” said Kurt. “I thought you’d be bored with just me for company.”

“Vera was never any friend of mine,” said Irina.

“Wonderful,” said Kurt. “Then the two of us will go on our own.” Irina pushed the roll away and lit her cigarette.

“Ira, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Irina. “Go ahead, you can go for a walk with Vera.”

“I don’t want to go for a walk with Vera,” said Kurt.

“Excuse me,” said Irina, “you said just now you did want to go for a walk with Vera.”

For a moment all was still. Then a door creaked, and Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s shuffle was heard in the corridor, coming closer, hesitating… Irina flung the door right open and held the plate with the cheese roll on it out to her mother.

“Here, eat that,” she commanded.

“What is it?” asked Nadyeshda Ivanovna, without taking the plate. “For God’s sake, it’s a roll! A cheese roll! Do you think I’m trying to poison you?”

“Cheese doesn’t agree with me,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

Irina stood up, went into her mother’s room, and slammed the plate down on the table.

Only when she was back in the living room did the nature of the smell in Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s room make its way into her conscious mind—the mingled odors of moldy food and pungent but useless foot salves were dominated by the sweetish, mothball aroma of the Russian naphthalene powder that drowned out all else. Nadyeshda Ivanovna used the stuff in concentrations inimical to all forms of life.

Irina opened the door of her mother’s room again and shouted, “And could you please air this room!”

She sat down and buried her face in her hands.

“Like some more coffee?” asked Kurt.

Irina nodded. “Sorry,” she said.

Kurt poured her some coffee and then spread her a cheese roll just like the one she had taken into Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s room, carefully distributing the butter, which was slightly too hard, over the bread, and then handing it to her. “Irushka, I thought we had all that behind us.”

Yes, thought Irina, I thought we had all that behind us too. But instead she said, “Listen, Kurtik, you go for a walk on your own. I really do have a lot to do.”

“On my own?” said Kurt. “I go for a walk on my own every day.”

“Then go into the garden,” said Irina, “and prune the roses.”

“Prune the roses?”

Kurt sighed, and Irina added, “I’ll bring you out coffee later, and a roll and raspberry jam.”

Kurt nodded. “Rasp-bairy jam,” he repeated.

Because instead of “raspberry” Irina pronounced it “raspbairy.” She also said not “GDR” but GairDairAir. She had done the same for thirty years, persistently developing a dialect of her own, and for thirty years Kurt had teased her about it.

“What’s wrong now?” asked Irina.

“Nothing,” said Kurt, keeping a perfectly straight face. And after a little pause he added, “First the jam is in the bear, then it comes out of the bear, and then you bring the roll and raspbairy jam out to me in the garden.”

“Oh, you!” said Irina, hitting out at him. But she laughed.

Kurt pretended to be running away from her attack on him, and went to the study to find his pipe. At that moment the phone rang again.

“Wait, I’ll get it,” cried Kurt from his study.

He hurried back and put his pipe on the table. Went over to the phone, lifted the receiver.

“Yes?” said Kurt.

“Hello,” said Kurt, and from the way he said “Hello” Irina knew that it wasn’t his mother this time.