In Times of Fading Light

he was double—not merely seeing himself double, really double. For moments, he told Irina, he had seemed to have more than two arms and two legs, and more than only one khui—for talking sexy they spoke Russian.

And Irina, as her orgasm was still ebbing away, wound her legs around him and whispered in his ear, “I think I ought to ask my friend Vera along sometime…”

Next morning Kurt was late getting up, not until eight. It was Sunday, and Kurt—bringing all his powers of self-discipline to bear—had accustomed himself over the years to not working on a Sunday. He had even learned to look forward to Sundays without work.

He entered the kitchen in pajamas and bathrobe, stood there and declaimed, with great feeling, the quatrain that he always used to compose while shaving on a Sunday to amuse his family. Today’s ran:

From Moscow I came home, untroubled,
But here I felt my powers redoubled.
Even while shaving, never fear,
I hope to fill your hearts with cheer.

Sasha made a face. Irina smiled in silence as she poured Kurt a cup of chamomile tea. She insisted on his having a cup of tea to settle his stomach, before he drank any coffee, and Kurt went along with that.

Over breakfast Irina told him she’d have to go out today: Gojkovic, the Yugoslavian actor who took the leading part in the Western movie that DEFA Studios was making, was coming to Berlin.

Kurt swallowed. Crumbs of white toast scratched his throat. Ever since Irina had started working at DEFA— as what he had no real idea—she had taken to disappointing him like this quite often. Apparently hers was a part-time job, but in fact she frequently worked into the night or on weekends, and all for nothing, because ultimately she frittered away more money than she earned, thought Kurt. But he didn’t say so. Took a mouthful of coffee to wash the crumbs down. Yes, of course Irina had a right to work. Although it was highly unusual work, sitting around in the DEFA guesthouse with actors of some kind, drinking vodka, or driving about town with that Indian chief. Kurt had seen a photo of him: a muscleman. Got himself photographed bare to the waist, would you believe it?

“Lunch is on the stove,” said Irina. “I’ll be home at four.”

After Irina had gone, Kurt went into his study, still in his pajamas and bathrobe. He turned up the heating and sat on the radiator. As he felt the increasing heat on his buttocks (yes, the gas-fired heating had been another good idea!) he looked at the imported Swedish built-in wall unit, with its bookshelves, which Irina had obtained for him by dint of some unfathomable and, he only hoped, not criminal transactions. For five years he had dragged his books from room to room in crates. Now they stood there in perfect order, a sight that always gratified Kurt, only all of a sudden it was not clear to Kurt why he had put Krikhatzky’s Latin primer next to his own works—shabby little volume that it was, he had taken it around with him in the camp for ten years. He took the book out, but then didn’t know where to put it (couldn’t be classified with any reference subject or any period), so he put it back again.

Then he took out the lectures and journals of his colleagues in Moscow, the notes of phone numbers and addresses, the usual stuff you brought back from a trip of that kind, most of it naturally garbage, and although he had conscientiously entered most of the phone numbers in his own telephone book he would never call them; most of the typescripts of lectures would lie around his study for a while until, after giving them a stay of execution for the sake of appearances, he threw them away. Kurt put aside the photocopies he had had made for him in the archives—and threw all the rest into the wastebasket. Picked the note of addresses and phone numbers out again, began sorting them. Suddenly found himself holding a number with no name beside it, it took him a few seconds to realize whose number it was… and was tempted for a moment to call it in revenge for Gojkovic—but then he remembered yesterday evening, the gilt-framed mirror, his wonderful self-duplication, and the promise that Irina had breathed into his ear, immediately associating itself with an image that now rose before his mind’s eye again—just at the moment when the doorbell rang.

He quickly put the note in the pocket of his bathrobe and went to the front door, still with that image before his eyes, an image dating from last summer, a vacation by the Black Sea, where they had been by chance at the same time as Vera, whom they had been surprised to meet in the transit lounge. Kurt had known her only slightly, a former colleague of Irina’s from her time in the archives of the Neuendorf Academy. Vera, it turned out, was with their own travel group, and as it also turned out, she was recently divorced, so she was flying to Nessebar on her own, and it was from there—from the beach at Nessebar—that the image, however fleetingly, went through Kurt’s mind as he took the twelve or fourteen steps from his desk to the front door. All three were visiting a southern seaside resort for the first time, and all three had been surprised to find, when they set foot on the beach, how hot the sand was. Kurt had instinctively begun hopping from foot to foot, and so did the women, suddenly they were all hopping from foot to foot, performing a silly little dance, and also joining the dance were Vera’s things, coming into view in some strange way or perhaps just because the belt of her bathrobe had come loose, Kurt thought of them as things, he couldn’t think of another word for them, heavy, white things with tiny blue veins running through them, and they were still dancing in front of Kurt’s nose when he opened the front door and looked into a round face with a crooked smile, which he identified a few fractions of a second later as being the face of his party secretary, Gunther Habesatt.

“Hello there,” said Kurt.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Gunther, shifting from one leg to the other as if in urgent need of a pee.

But Gunther was not in need of a pee. He stood there for a while, still shifting from one leg to the other, in the middle of Kurt’s study, expressed his admiration of the house and the room and the imported Swedish wall unit full of books, refused coffee but asked for a glass of water, and then sat down in one of the rather shabby shell- shaped chairs that came from Charlotte’s house, into which Gunther’s sizable body mass sank as if into a bathtub. Secretly, Kurt despised men who ran to fat. On the whole Gunther was a nice guy, helpful, not an intriguer, but a rather weak and susceptible character, or so at least Kurt thought he could conclude from the fact that Gunther had let himself be persuaded, if reluctantly (or anyway giving an impression of reluctance), to become party secretary. Kurt had also been approached, but he had—of course—refused.

After he had tipped the contents of the glass of water into his big body—downing it apparently without swallowing at all—Gunther glanced around the room once more, as if he might have overlooked someone, and began, lowering his voice, wagging his head, and rolling his eyes, to explain why he had turned up. The occasion for his visit was as simple as it was stupid. In that historical journal the Zeitschrift fur Gewissenschaft Paul Rohde, a rather high-spirited and not always well-disciplined member of Kurt’s study group, had written a review of a book by a West German colleague casting a critical light on the so-called United Front policy of the Communist Party of Germany at the end of the 1920s (which as everyone knew had really been a divisive policy, sullying Social Democracy and encouraging fascism in the worst imaginable way!), and then Rohde personally had sent his West German colleague a copy of his review, together with an apology for its negativity, the whole study group, he said, thought the book clever and interesting, but in the GDR, unfortunately, they were still far from being able to discuss the subject of the United Front policy openly…

Writing in such terms to a West German colleague was, of course, incredibly stupid, but… there was something that Kurt didn’t understand. With growing discomfort he listened to Gunther telling the rest of the story, which in brief was that the Scientific Department of the Central Committee of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, was demanding the imposition on Comrade Rohde of a stiff penalty, its nature to be decided tomorrow, Monday, at the Party meeting, and on this occasion—you know what it’s like—it was expected that Rohde’s colleagues, but particularly his colleagues in the study group, and even more particularly Kurt, would express “spontaneous” opinions, and, Gunther explained, he had wanted to let Kurt know in advance, in strict confidence, as he hardly needed to say…

“And how, if you don’t mind my asking, do you know about the contents of the letter?”

Gunther didn’t seem to understand him.