In Times of Fading Light

“Well, Wilhelm would like to see you in it.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Alexander.

He looked at Kurt. Then at Irina. Then at Christina. For a few seconds no one said anything. Then Alexander said:

“You surely none of you seriously expect me to wear my uniform tomorrow morning.”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” said Christina.

“Could be the last time,” said Irina.

“I do understand you,” said Kurt. But Alexander might remember, he added, that otherwise (unless Wilhelm died) he wouldn’t have been given leave at all. And after all, he could change in the car. And Granny herself had sent a telegram to his regimental commander. And for God’s sake, yes, it was crazy, but Alexander knew what Wilhelm was like.

“Are we going anywhere or stopping here for a picnic?” asked the taxi driver.

They got in.

As usual, there was a crowd of people outside the Berg, none of them with tickets. A bottle of vodka was being handed around. They rocked back and forth to the music coming through the walls and windows, breaking slightly, and just as Alexander and Christina arrived, the two-part guitar riff “No One to Depend On” began, sad, biting, beautiful, a Santana song that the Delfine band, as the fans expected, imitated bar by bar, note by note, sigh by sigh, as if Carlos Santana himself were standing onstage. Equally faithful to the original was “Fools,” by Deep Purple, and even “Hey, Joe” in the arrangement by Jimi Hendrix, and in the first interval the door opened, the doorman stood on tiptoe and, with an inscrutable expression, performed the ritual that consisted simply of letting his forefinger circle in the air above the crowd and, with a brief you, you, and you picked out three or four lucky people—a selection process that every visitor to the Berg knew and accepted, even though, or perhaps because, the criteria were indistinct.

Christina had never had any difficulty with this selection process. She obviously had everything that would make the doorman’s forefinger point to her: her pale blonde hair, her clear blue eyes, her chic, smoky blue leather coat that, like the strikingly short acrylic dress that she was wearing under the coat, itself intentionally left open, came from her sister who lived in the West (both garments being immediate consequences of the Basic Treaty between the GDR and the Federal Republic)—so Christina was chosen at once, and as Alexander followed in her wake he had always, so far, slipped through the door with her easily.

But this time the doorman put his arm between Christina and Alexander and said, “Stop.”

“He’s with me,” said Christina.

However, instead of waiting for the doorman’s decision—which, after all, might have been in his favor— Alexander turned around and walked away.

Well, now that he had gone and spoiled everything again, Christina insisted on at least going to the Cafe Hertz to drink a glass of wine. They did get a table there, although in the worst place, in the aisle directly opposite the cake display counter, where they drank a bottle of Rosenthaler Kadarka in the glaring light, while Christina greeted old acquaintances from a distance, and now and then someone came over to their table, to make sarcastic remarks about Alexander’s haircut, or inquire politely or maliciously or sympathetically how he was doing, before being asked by an irritated waiter please not to block the aisle—and Alexander somehow managed to take all this as equably as possible, trying to preserve his self-control, not to complain, not to lose his temper, not to feel jealous (or at least not to show it) and whatever happened not to start on the uniform question—because now he had just one aim in view, and in no circumstances did he want to endanger it.

On the way home he even managed to pretend reasonably well to be in a good mood, he reminded Christina of the first time they went out dancing—at Kellermann’s on that occasion—how he had taken her home later, and then she had taken him to the tram, he had taken her home again and she had taken him to the tram again, and Christina let him put his hand on her hip, just as he did in the past, and when he felt her hips moving he even thought he could feel the excitingly coarse texture of the acrylic dress under her coat, and as the air he was breathing grew thicker and thicker he imagined all kinds of things, scenes beside the fridge, her dress pushed up, or in less of a hurry to music on the record player, with dimmed lighting—but when they got home the slow- burning stove had gone out hours ago, the room temperature had sunk almost to the temperature outside, Christina undressed quickly and without fuss, and crawled under the covers, Alexander lay beside her, feeling as awkward as the first time, trying mechanically and with increasing desperation to warm Christina up, and finally, almost as soon as he had penetrated her, had a lengthy but not entirely satisfactory ejaculation.

In the morning he tried again, still drowsy and with the aftertaste of alcohol and cigarettes in his mouth; they caressed without looking at each other and somehow, at least, managed to come at more or less the same time.

Alexander lit the slow-burning stove, went down two flights of stairs to the toilet, brought water up with him on the way back, and then, while Christina was making breakfast, went off again to fetch rolls from Braune the baker. They ate their breakfast eggs, drank coffee from their “Bonny” cups, without once using those pet names for each other, and Alexander asked Christina whether she still loved him.

Instead of answering, she asked him whether he still loved her. And she twisted her mouth the way she twisted it when she was talking about books that he hadn’t read, and it occurred to Alexander that maybe Christina wasn’t as beautiful as he had always thought. It occurred to him—and didn’t even horrify him.

At eleven, without a word, he put the uniform on, and they stood outside the front door. Kurt and Irina drove up in their new Lada, with Granny Charlotte in the back.

“My boy,” said Granny.

“There, you see,” said Kurt.

“He looks like a German soldier,” said Irina, wiping away a tear before she stepped on the gas.

The car smelled of artificial leather straight from the factory.

The clock on the dashboard of the Lada 1300 said four minutes after eleven.

It was 2 December 1973.

Alexander had another five hundred and thirteen days of military service ahead of him.

2001

He has slept well. He would like to tell Marion—she was right again, he thinks, without being quite sure what she was right about, but she’s probably still asleep, he doesn’t want to wake her. He turns over on his side again to face Marion, glad that she’s there. Except that when he opens his eyes, the other side of the huge double bed is empty.

He pulls the pristine pillow toward him, crumples it.

At least he didn’t sweat in the night, he’s not running a temperature, he isn’t suffering from pain or nausea; he has now studied the symptoms in an Internet cafe, all of them rather vague, nonspecific, as they call it, but one thing can’t be denied: the lymph nodes, when his right hand feels for them, are still swollen.

He takes the plugs out of his ears. Following a stupid impulse, puts them under the pristine but now crumpled pillow. Stands up.

Checks to see whether the dogs are really still there (answer in the affirmative).

Brushes his teeth—using mineral water these days, since he read on the Internet that there is a link between Hodgkin’s nonspecific lymphoma and greater susceptibility to infections. And then, like a morning prayer, the passage about a sufferer’s expectation of life that he also found on the Internet runs almost word for word past his drowsy consciousness:

In all cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the average survival rate of five years applies to 62 percent of