In Times of Fading Light

years and still, even twenty years after the Second World War, bearing marks of the artillery pounding it had suffered in the last days of the conflict. Once you were past the janitor, an ostentatious flight of steps led to the slightly raised first floor, where the management of the institute had made itself at home. Kurt’s department was on the top floor. The modest conference room was already very full when Kurt arrived, more chairs had to be fetched from the secretaries’ office, although these additional chairs stood in a cluster at the back of the room, while in front, where members of the small committee were just taking their places, the space was more sparsely occupied.

The committee consisted of Gunther Habesatt, the director of the institute, and a guest from the Academic Department of the Central Committee of the SED, whom Gunther introduced as Comrade Ernst. The man was around Kurt’s age. He was not very tall, distinctly shorter than Gunther and the director, and had gray hair cut short and a face that seemed to be constantly smiling.

When Gunther—stiffly, and without any rolling of his eyes—had opened the meeting, and read out the sole item on the day’s agenda, Comrade Ernst took the floor and, flanked by Gunther’s mournful face and the nodding, pregnant with meaning, of the director of the institute, began talking about the increasingly complex international situation and the intensification of the class struggle. Unlike Gunther, Comrade Ernst spoke fluently, almost eloquently, in a thin but penetrating voice that he lowered beguilingly when he wanted to emphasize something—and all at once the way he spoke seemed to Kurt familiar, or perhaps it was his curious habit of leafing through his notebook without actually looking at it as he mentioned the revisionist and opportunistic powers in whom, according to Comrade Ernst, the archenemy was to be found, and at the word archenemy Kurt caught sight of Paul Rohde, who had obviously been sitting close to the committee table all along, gray, shrunken, looking into empty space—done for, thought Kurt. Paul Rohde was finished, expelled from the Party, dismissed without notice, suddenly it was all clear to him. This wasn’t about Paul Rohde. This wasn’t about some damn letter, far from it. This was the realization of something that Kurt had feared for a long time, more precisely since the fall of Khrushchev (although in fact he had feared it since before the fall of Khrushchev), after all, there had been plenty of signs, only those signs had not been signs, Kurt now understood, but the thing itself: the last plenary session at which writers who expressed criticism had been crushed, the minister of culture removed, they had broken with Havemann, that was it, it was there, in the institute, in the figure of the man with the ever-smiling face, the beguilingly lowered voice, with the notebook through which he leafed without looking at it while he enlightened the meeting on the role of historiography in the struggles of our time, and on the connection between the Party line and historical truth.

Silence had fallen in the room, a silence that did not turn to coughing and rustling even when the speaker came to an end. Now it was Rohde’s turn: self-criticism. Kurt listened to Rohde jerkily reciting the text he had learned by heart, every word of it obviously fixed in advance, Kurt heard him swallowing, the pauses stretched out at unbearable length, until remarks like with hostile intent… acted… irresponsibly… slowly formed structures resembling sentences.

Then Gunther asked for opinions. The head of the department “spontaneously” spoke up, condemned their colleague Rohde, in whom he was severely disappointed, and then, to a nod of approval from Comrade Ernst, apologized for his own lack of vigilance.

Next in line was Kurt, that was the order of events. He sensed the attention of the others turning to him. His throat was dry, his head was empty. He himself was surprised by the words that came out of his mouth.

“I’m not sure that I entirely understand what this is about,” said Kurt.

Comrade Ernst narrowed his eyes as if he could hardly see Kurt. You might still have thought he was smiling, but his face had changed to something malicious and piglike.

For a moment silence reigned, and then Gunther leaned over to Pig-Face. It was so quiet in the room that Kurt could hear what Gunther whispered:

“Comrade Umnitzer was in Moscow last week.”

Pig-Face looked at Kurt and nodded.

“Comrade Umnitzer, no one is forcing you to express an opinion.” And turning to everyone, he added, “We’re not here to stage a show trial, are we, comrades?”

He laughed. Someone laughed with him. Only when the next of his colleagues spoke up did Kurt notice that his own hands were shaking.

One hand was still shaking when he raised it to vote for Rohde’s expulsion from the Party.

Then he felt thirsty. After the meeting he went down the stairs to avoid the rush for the gentlemen’s toilets on the upper floor, and when he opened the door of the toilets one floor lower down he found himself facing Rohde. Rohde looked at him and offered him his hand.

“Thank you,” he said.

“What for?” asked Kurt.

He hesitated to take Rohde’s hand, and when he did it was cold and damp. But he hoped, thought Kurt, that meant it had just been washed.

Shortly before six, Kurt was already at Berlin East station, earlier than usual. The train left punctually, but then stopped one station before Bergholz: a malfunction, the conductor asked the passengers to be patient.

Not that a malfunction on this stretch of the line was anything out of the ordinary, but the low-voiced conversation of the other passengers suddenly got on Kurt’s nerves. He wanted to think, but even his thoughts seemed blocked in the stationary train. He climbed out, crossed the track, which was against the rules, and started walking. Twilight was already beginning to fall, but it was less than ten kilometers to Neuendorf, and he knew this area, they had once gone searching for mushrooms here in the fall. But instead of following the road, which made a long detour around a neighboring village, he struck out from Schenkenhorst along a track that would bring him back to the road a little to the northwest—he could rely on his sense of direction.

He walked briskly, although he was so hungry that he felt a little weak at the knees. At Berlin East he had thought of buying a curry sausage, but then didn’t, fearing it might upset his stomach. Now his sense of hunger was gradually affecting the hollows of his knees: hypoglycemia, that was the word for it. Nothing to worry about. Kurt knew how long the body was still capable of functioning in spite of hunger; it went on functioning for a long time. The sky clouded over. Kurt instinctively quickened his pace. Gradually images of the Party meeting came back into his mind… Pig-Face. Those eyes. That thin, sawing voice: We’re not here to stage a show trial… Who the hell was it that the man reminded him of?

Now the track led straight into the wood. It was distinctly darker here than out in the open fields, and Kurt hesitated. Maybe it would be better to skirt around the wood? Still, what kind of a wood was it? Only a little one. Think how often he had walked in the taiga. Think how often he had spent the night in the taiga! All the same, he was now striding along fast. At this point, however, the track curved farther and farther to the east. So as not to lose his sense of direction, Kurt turned sharply off it and to the left, and walked straight over the soft, mossy ground into the darkness… then, suddenly, he remembered.

The Lubyanka, Moscow 1941.

Now he saw the man before him. A striking similarity: the narrowed eyes, the crew-cut hair, even the way he had opened the file in his folder and leafed through it without actually looking at it.

“You have criticized Comrade Stalin’s foreign policy.”

The facts of the matter were that, back when the German– Soviet Non-Aggression Pact between Hitler and Stalin was signed, Kurt had said in a letter to his brother, Werner, that time would show how much of an advantage it was to make friends with a criminal.

Ten years’ detention in a labor camp.

For anti-Soviet propaganda and forming a subversive organization. The organization consisted of Kurt and his brother.

And now the soft woodland floor underfoot suddenly seemed uncomfortable. He felt that he heard the grating of the double-handed saws, the eerie roar of the giant trees as, each turning slowly on its own axis, they fell to the ground. And after a while there were images as well, fleeting, disconnected: numbering off in roll call at thirty degrees below freezing; the sight of ice on the ceiling of the hut in the morning, a sight bound up with memories of the muted activity of two hundred occupants of that hut as they got ready for the day, of their body