In Times of Fading Light

“Give him one of your turtle pictures!”

Grosskrienitz Village Center was the name of the bus stop. Their farmhouse was on the edge of the village, indeed a little way outside it. He walked three meters behind Muddel, preserving a safe distance in case she tried taking his arm.

They crossed the disused railroad track, went past the former firefighting station, where something from the collective farm was stored these days, past the building site where the cement mixer churned away every weekend although there was never any visible change, past the village pond, all mucky with duck shit, past the cooperative store where Frickel and he used sometimes to buy ice cream after school, past the low-built old houses of Grosskrienitz, where you might have thought no one lived anymore except that now and then the net curtains at the windows moved. Of course it was all the same to him what those village idiots thought, but still, he was glad that Muddel was at least wearing a parka over her party outfit, even if the parka hardly covered her skirt. Farther down, her patterned calves flashed at intervals of a second, and you could see and hear her stiletto-heeled shoes on the steeply sloping sidewalk of Grosskrienitz.

If he succeeded in not treading on any of the joins between the stone slabs all the way to the bus stop, thought Markus, then the bus wouldn’t turn up. Buses quite often failed to turn up here; on this route they were still the old rear-engined Ikarus buses, and if this bus didn’t come that was that, because on a Sunday the next one wasn’t due for another two hours. However, he mustn’t step on any of the cracked slabs on the sidewalk, because the cracks counted as joins between the slabs, and observing that rule wasn’t so easy. Muddel quickened her pace, and Markus had to concentrate hard.

Even from a distance he heard the strumming of someone practicing the guitar coming from the church. He didn’t need to look up to see who was addressing Muddel.

“Hello there,” cried Klaus. “So where are you off to?”

Klaus was the pastor.

“To catch the bus,” Muddel replied. “It’s my mother’s birthday.” Markus looked up in surprise, just for a second, but it had happened. “Oh, hell,” said Markus.

“But you’ll be coming to the prayer service for peace this evening, won’t you?” said Klaus.

“We’ll have to see if we make it back in time,” said Muddel.

“Oh, what a pity!” Klaus called after them. “And today of all days!” The bus was arriving just as they reached the stop.

The rear engine clanked slightly as it started off. The old Ikarus accelerated lethargically. Outside, the scenes that he saw every morning, the stubble fields, the pine trees, the silvery silage towers in the background (which Frickel had always claimed were really firing ramps for Russian nuclear rockets).

He somehow had the feeling that he must give Muddel moral support. “I’m not going to see my father anymore,” he announced.

“What’s the matter now?” said Muddel.

He briefly weighed the side effects of this variant of events: no more Berlin, cinema, Natural History Museum—however, these things were such rare occurrences that all of a sudden (particularly in view of the fact that sometime, and soon too, he would be big enough to go to Berlin on his own) it did not seem at all impossible to dispense with the occasional favor of being fetched by his father for a visit.

“That asshole,” said Markus.

“Markus, please!”

“That asshole,” Markus repeated.

“Markus, I don’t like you to talk about your father that way.”

The bus stopped briefly, an old granny got on and sat down at the front. When the bus moved on again, Muddel said:

“I was married to your father, and we had you together because we loved each other. And the fact that we’re separated has nothing to do with you. Your father left me, not you. Okay?”

“Fucking hell,” said Markus.

It kind of made him really furious when Muddel defended his father. He had left them both—Markus as well! He had done things to his mother. It was true that he had still been too little to remember, claimed Muddel, but he did remember a little all the same. Being left. The horror. Things that hurt. He remembered Muddel’s whimpering, quiet so that he wouldn’t hear what his father was doing to her in the next room, it somehow had something to do with hair pulling, with being dragged over the floor, women get carried away, Muddel had once said, although now, of course, he realized that that meant something else—but he clearly remembered the whimpering in the next room, and how he lay there rigid with fright, and he had always been sick as a child, all that came of being left by a parent, as a psychologist Muddel ought to know that, after all, and the dream of the fish heads, before Muddel gave him a dreamcatcher he sometimes had it even in the middle of the day.

The collective farm came into sight, a dilapidated tract of land: rusty machinery in the tall grass everywhere. Then the concentration camp for pigs, a structure made of rough concrete blocks that always came into his mind when they had to sing the song that ran Our homeland’s not only the towns and the cities, and went on to talk about the beauties of Nature.

“Why did you say it was your mother’s birthday?”

“Oh, well, it just came into my head,” said Muddel.

But he knew it hadn’t just come into Muddel’s head. She felt embarrassed to tell Klaus that she was going to visit Wilhelm on his birthday. They somehow didn’t go together: Klaus meant the Church and Wilhelm meant the Party. Only Klaus didn’t know Wilhelm at all (or her mother either), so it was a totally unnecessary excuse. But instead of pointing that out to Muddel, he asked:

“Is Klaus really against the GDR?”

“Klaus is not against the GDR. Klaus is in favor of a better GDR, with more democracy.”

“Then why is he a pastor?”

“Why not?” said Muddel. “Anyone can be in favor of more democracy. As a pastor, for instance, he can organize prayer services for peace.”

Markus did not want to pursue this subject; he could already sense that Muddel was going to try to convince him of their merits again, but he thought the prayer services for peace were dreadful, all that holding hands and singing along together, all that fuss and bother, and afterward everyone would take a nap at home in the garden, get drunk, and go for a pee in the tomato plants: all for a better GDR. How it was to be achieved, however, was a mystery.

They could see West Berlin in the distance now: the tall white buildings that looked like the future. Frickel lived there.

“Why don’t we apply for an exit permit?” he asked.

“If we applied for an exit permit today,” said Muddel, “then it wouldn’t be granted—and then only maybe— until you’re eighteen. Or twenty.”

“Or we could simply go off,” said Markus.

“Not so loud,” said Muddel.

That suddenly struck him as a brilliant solution. Then they’d be rid of it all: Grosskrienitz, the pottery. And his father would be left with egg all over his face.

“And just how would you do that?” asked Muddel.

“Like everyone else—by way of Hungary.”

“It’s not that simple.” Muddel spoke softly, as if she suspected the old granny at the front of the bus of being a Stasi agent. “You need a visa for Hungary, but no one’s getting those anymore, and then remember: if we went to the West you’d never see your friends again.”

“Yes, I would. I’d see Frickel.”

“Okay then, Frickel. And how about the others?”

“Lars is already over there anyway.”

“And Granny? And Grandpa? And your father?”

“That asshole,” said Markus.

“Markus,” said Muddel, “has something gone wrong between you two? Do you want to talk about it?”