In Times of Fading Light

“Take those vegetables to the graveyard!”

Bunke mopped the sweat away again and said, “Might as well stay there myself.”

…

Faces that Wilhelm didn’t know appeared.

“Who are you?”

Frau Backer who kept the fruit and vegetable shop.

Harry Zenk, head of the academy: hadn’t ever come to his birthday party before.

Till Ewerts—back after his stroke.

“Take those vegetables to the graveyard!”

Aha, Comrade Kruger. The community police officer.

“I’d have known you in uniform, comrade. Take those vegetables to the graveyard!”

…

The Sondermanns. Whose son was in prison for attempting to escape to the West.

“I don’t know you two,” said Wilhelm.

“But it’s the Sondermanns,” Charlotte pointed out.

“I don’t know you two!”

For a moment the volume of the voices in the room dropped lower.

“Right,” said Sondermann. He handed their bouquet of flowers to Charlotte and left, along with his wife.

…

Kurt arrived with Nadyeshda Ivanovna, but without Irina.

“Irina is sick,” said Kurt.

“And Alexander?”

“Alexander is sick as well,” said Charlotte, sticking her oar in.

Family of defeatists. Except for Irina. And except, of course, for Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna gave him a jar of pickles.

Wilhelm rummaged around in his memory. It was too long ago that he’d been in Moscow, at that time for training in the Department of International Relations, and the only word he could still dig up from the ruins of his Russian was garosh, good, excellent.

“Garosh, garosh,” he said.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna said, “Ogurzy.”

Wilhelm nodded. “Garosh!”

He got the jar opened (by Mahlich—Kurt couldn’t do it, not with his fingers, the fingers of an intellectual) and publicly ate a Russian gherkin. Once he used to smoke Russian papyrossy. Now at least he was eating a Russian gherkin.

“Garosh,” said Wilhelm.

“You’re spilling it,” said Charlotte. “Stuff and nonsense.”

…

Where was the district secretary?

…

A child all of a sudden instead. The child was carrying a picture.

“Your great-grandson, Markus,” said Charlotte.

Since when did he have a great-grandson? Wilhelm decided not to ask. He looked at the picture the way you look at pictures that children give you, and was surprised to recognize its subject all of a sudden.

“An iguana!”

“A turtle,” said the child.

“Markus is interested in animals,” said the woman standing beside the child, probably his mother, Wilhelm decided not to ask. Instead, he said:

“When I’m dead, Markus, you’ll inherit the iguana over there on the shelf.”

“Cool,” said the child.

“You’d better take it home with you right away,” said Wilhelm.

“Right away?” asked the child.

“Take it right away,” said Wilhelm. “I won’t be around much longer.”

He watched the child making the rounds of the room, shaking hands nicely like a good boy with all the guests. Only then did he go over to the bookshelves to look at the iguana for a long time, from all sides, still without picking it up… Wilhelm ground his teeth.

…

A man in a brown suit and gold-rimmed glasses. Why didn’t he come closer? Why did he stay standing there?

“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

The deputy, as it turned out. Standing in for the district secretary.

Why the deputy?

“Unfortunately Comrade Juhn is personally incapacitated,” said his deputy.

“Ah,” said Wilhelm. “I’m personally incapacitated myself.”

Everyone laughed, to Wilhelm’s annoyance.

The man opened a red folder. He began making a speech. His eyes were blue. His voice had roughly the frequency range of a telephone receiver. Wilhelm couldn’t understand what the man was saying. Wilhelm was annoyed. The man went on with his speech. His words clattered. They clattered through Wilhelm’s head without revealing their meaning. Noises. Stuff and nonsense, thought Wilhelm. Training as a metalworker. Joining the Party… immigration to Paris… Suddenly he caught the drift of it. This was his own CV. The CV that he had written down dozens of times, the CV on which he had spoken umpteen times to the border soldiers, the labor force at the Karl Marx Works, the Young Pioneers—and from which, as usual, all that really mattered was missing.

Everyone clapped. The deputy came over to Wilhelm. He was holding an order; there were dozens of such orders in Wilhelm’s shoebox.

“I have enough tin in my box already,” said Wilhelm.

The deputy leaned down to him and hung the order around his neck.

Everyone clapped, including the deputy, who had his hands free now.

The cold buffet was opened. Irregular traffic began moving between the two rooms, until people settled down at tables, both large and smaller, with their plates. Wilhelm sat to one side in his wing chair, sipping from his shiny green aluminum goblet. He thought of what really mattered. Of what his CV left out. Of Hamburg and his office by the harbor. Of the nights, the wind. Of his Korovin 635 pistol. He didn’t think about all this, he remembered. He felt how it had lain in his hand. He felt the weight of it. He remembered the smell—after you had pulled the trigger… and what, Wilhelm wondered, what for? He closed his eyes. There was a rumbling in his head. Talk. Pointless talk. Stuff and nonsense. Only now and then—or was he imagining it?—now and then, through the stuff and nonsense, he could hear a hoarse barking: Chev!… And again: Chev—Chev.

Wilhelm briefly opened his eyes: Kurt, who else? You’re another of them, you’re a Chev yourself, thought Wilhelm. Defeatist! The whole family! Apart from Irina, at least she’d been in the war. But Kurt? Kurt had been in the camp during the war. Had been made to work, what a terrible thing, work with his delicate little hands that couldn’t even open a jar of pickles. Other people, thought Wilhelm, had risked their asses. Other people, he thought, had perished in the struggle for the cause, and he would have liked to stand up and talk about those who had perished in the struggle for the cause. Talk about Clara, who saved his life. Willi, who soiled his pants with fear. Sepp, tortured to death in some Gestapo cellar because one traitor too few had been eliminated. That was how it had been, Professor Smart Aleck who can’t open a jar of pickles. That was how it had been—and how it still was. That’s what he would have liked to say. And there was something else he’d have liked to say: about then and now. And about traitors. And he’d have liked to say what was to be done now. And what the problem was, he’d have liked to say that, but his tongue was too heavy and his head was to old to make words out of what he knew. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his wing chair. Didn’t hear the voices anymore.