settled on the Cecilienhof palace and the nearby Neuer Garten park after all, but with some detours. Alexander was satisfied.
“Our car has a reserve tank,” he informed Charlotte.
Charlotte nodded.
Cecilienhof at last. Parking maneuver—it was like steering a ship. Kurt helped her out, which was quite a feat of mountaineering, and then he asked, “Well, how do you like our car?”
“It’s wonderful,” said Charlotte.
Alexander wiped a bird dropping off the car with his sleeve. Charlotte refrained from saying anything about that. Alexander turned several times to look back at the car, and Charlotte waited until it was well out of sight.
“When I was your age,” she began, for the third time, “I had to go to the Tiergarten park with my mother every Sunday, because my mother had taken it into her head to bow to the Kaiser, who sometimes went for a walk there.”
Alexander was wide eyed.
“The Kaiser?”
“That’s right,” said Charlotte. “Kaiser Wilhelm. And then we sometimes waited for hours—would the Kaiser be there today or wouldn’t he?—and I always had to wear a white woolen dress that was horribly scratchy. A really scratchy dress,” said Charlotte, looking at Alexander’s face for his reaction to her remarks.
There wasn’t any. Instead, Alexander asked, “And did the Kaiser turn up?”
Irina said, “Do stop it, Mutti. If something bad happens to you in life, you don’t have to wish it on other people, too.”
“And did the Kaiser turn up?” Alexander insisted.
“Yes,” said Charlotte, “then the Kaiser turned up. And I hated him.”
At the outdoor swimming pool at the end of the Heiliger See bordering the park, Irina and Alexander went to feed the swans. Charlotte sat down on a bench with Kurt. There was a pleasant, light breeze, and you could hear the reeds rustling.
“Well, what did you think of my article?” asked Charlotte, adding, “But don’t be too hard on me!”
She saw that Kurt was hesitating.
“Come on, out with it! So you didn’t like it?”
“I don’t understand you,” said Kurt. “Or how you can go along with something like that.”
“What do you mean, go along with it? Go along with what?”
Kurt looked at her. She suddenly noticed that he was looking at her only with his one good eye, and for a moment she felt something like guilt—as if she, as his mother, were responsible for that.
“Mutti, this amounts to a political campaign,” said Kurt. “People here are trying to take a harder line.”
“But it’s a bad book,” objected Charlotte.
“Then don’t read it.” All of a sudden Kurt was unusually brusque.
“No, Kurt, that won’t do,” said Charlotte. “I have a right to express my opinion too. I have a right to think a book is bad and harmful, I do think this book is bad and harmful, and I’m sticking to that.”
“It’s not about this book.”
“It is for me.”
“No,” said Kurt. “This is about factional struggles. This is about reform or stagnation. Democratization or a return to Stalinism.”
Irritated, Charlotte put her hands to her temples. “Stalinism… suddenly everyone’s talking about Stalinism!”
“I don’t understand you,” said Kurt, and although he kept his voice low there was a sharp edge to it, and he emphasized every word as he said, “Your son was murdered in the Vorkuta gulag.”
Charlotte jumped up, signaling to Kurt to keep quiet.
“I don’t like to hear you say a thing like that, Kurt, I don’t like to hear you say it!”
Alexander came running up to tell them that the gulls were stealing the swans’ food, and then he was off again.
Kurt said no more, and nor did Charlotte.
You could hear the reeds rustling on the bank.
The first thing she noticed in the house was the stuffy air that descended on her lungs like an old rag. She knew the reason for it when she climbed the stairs to the bathroom: Mahlich and Schlinger, each with a brush in his hand, were busy working on a large poster in the upstairs corridor and—obviously so as to have a smooth surface underneath the poster as they painted—had rolled up the long carpet runner. The air was thick with dust.
“What do you two think you’re doing?” snapped Charlotte.
“Wilhelm said…” Mahlich began.
“Wilhelm said, Wilhelm said!” Charlotte muttered through gritted teeth.
In the bathroom she took a prednisolone tablet. After showering, she held a damp cloth over her mouth in order to get down the corridor. By now the two artists had summoned reinforcements in the shape of Wilhelm.
“What’s going on?” asked Wilhelm.
Charlotte did not reply, but made her way along the narrow corridor, inadvertently bumping into Schlinger, who in turn lost his balance and stepped on the freshly painted poster, right on the word
“What’s come over you?”
Charlotte walked on without turning and went downstairs, with Wilhelm behind her. He barred her way into the conservatory.
“Can you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Wilhelm,” said Charlotte, as calmly as she could manage. “You ought to be aware by now that I suffer from an allergy to household dust.”
“From what?”
“An all-er-gy to
“How you do keep on about all that,” said Wilhelm.
Charlotte closed the two halves of the conservatory door in his face, and drew the curtains.
She lay down on the bed, listening to her heart beating. Listening to the slight rattle in her breathing. She could still taste the bitterness of the prednisolone tablet on her tongue.
She lay like that for some time.
She remembered the Queen of the Night. The plant she had taken back to the flower shop without ever seeing it in flower.
And come to think of it, she had never had asthma in Mexico.
That night she had bad dreams again, but couldn’t remember them in the morning. Nor did she want to.
She spent Sunday pulling up weeds.
On Monday, she heard on the news that an invading army equipped by the United States had landed in Cuba.
On Wednesday the army of invasion was wiped out.
Comrade Hager didn’t phone again.
Wilhelm’s raffle was a great success. The district secretary made a speech. And the representative of the National Front decorated Wilhelm with the gold Pin of Honor.
1 October 1989
