In Times of Fading Light

still clapping away, Wilhelm, objectively considered, was one of those personally responsible for the way the forces of the left had torn each other apart during the twenties, allowing fascism to emerge triumphant. And in 1932, Kurt remembered, clapping all over again (because the Order of Merit of the Fatherland in gold had now been pinned on Wilhelm)—in 1932 Wilhelm, as second in command of the Red Front League in Berlin, had been among the organizers of a large joint action of Nazis and Communists. Even after the “seizure of power” by the Nazis, of which no mention was made in the story of his life, Wilhelm supported the idea of social fascism, which was not to be officially corrected until 1935, only to be outdone in stupidity and obscenity a few years later by the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany: lies, all of it, thought Kurt, carrying on with the clapping. The 1920s as a whole had been one huge lie—and the 1930s after them as well. The “Anti-Fascist Resistance” was fundamentally nothing but another lie, since Wilhelm’s reason for saying nothing about that time was not, or not only, that he was incorrigibly boastful and a mysterymonger, but that the history of the Anti-Fascist Resistance was nothing other (and against the background of Soviet policy could have been nothing other!) than a history of failure, of fratricidal struggle, of misjudgment and betrayal—of those who ventured into illegal operations and were betrayed by Stalin, the “Great Helmsman.” When Kurt finally stopped clapping, although only just before everyone else, there wasn’t much left of the Opposition but a funny feeling… in his pants.

When the cold buffet had been declared open he even hesitated at first to stand up, fearing that there might be a mark on his pants (a fear that on closer examination proved groundless), but Melitta also stayed put where she was, and Kurt assumed that she was waiting to ask him about Sasha, so he stayed put himself. However, she didn’t ask. And before Kurt could make up his mind to say something, Bunke came back with a plate heaped high, and next moment Harry Zenk and Anita were back, and right away the Gorbachev discussion was in full swing again.

“We have to tell our population the truth,” insisted Bunke.

And Kurt, maybe because it annoyed him to see Melitta nod approvingly, joined in after all.

“So who decides what the truth is?”

Bunke looked at him, baffled.

“Who decides that?” asked Kurt. “Do we decide? Or Gorbachev? Or who?”

“Precisely,” said Zenk. “The Party is always right.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Kurt, annoyed to be so misunderstood. The truth, he said or wanted to say—and the sentence he was forming in his mind would have been something like: The truth isn’t a Party possession doled out to the people as some kind of alms (and presumably he would have gone on to several fundamental considerations of what was known as Democratic Centralism, the real socialist power structures, and the role of the Party in the Soviet system)—well, something like that was what he planned to say, but he never got that far, because the attention of his audience had left him some time ago and moved to a place diagonally behind him and on his left, to wit, the corner of the room where Wilhelm was sitting in his armchair and—incredibly—had broken into song.

At first it seemed to be a kind of murmur. It took Kurt a moment to recognize it as singing at all, and only when the two tubby barrels were nodding in time, and Mahlich was joining in, although he was not entirely sure of the text (or maybe wasn’t sure whether it was still all right to sing along with the bit about Stalin), only then did he realize what ditty Wilhelm had struck up: oh no, how stupid could you get? Or rather not stupid, thought Kurt, it was criminal. Basically, he thought, this was the shortest way to sum up the whole wretched mess. Basically, the song justified all the wrong that had been done in the name of “the cause,” was a mockery of millions of innocent people whose bones had been the foundations on which so-called socialism was built—the famous Party anthem that some feeble poet (was it Becher or was it Furnberg?) had not had the sense to refrain from composing: The Party, the Party is always right…

What, wondered Kurt, am I doing here? He watched, with his own hands paralyzed, as renewed applause broke out among the company, as an almost blissful smile spread over Anita’s face, as Mahlich—or had his eyes deceived him?—wiped a tear from his eye. As Zenk nodded, pleased, as if his opinion had been officially approved. Bunke was also clapping, laughing as if someone had cracked a good joke. And the pudgy barrels looked at one another and went on nodding their heads in time.

Only Melitta was not clapping, or rather, she merely put the palms of her hands together a couple of times for the look of the thing and cast Kurt a glance full of meaning, to which he responded by raising his eyebrows. He was almost hoping, now, that she would ask him about Sasha, but before they could continue their conversation another noise made itself heard, this time coming from the right, and once again it was so improbable that it took Kurt several moments to realize that it was more singing, from Nadyeshda Ivanovna! The song about the little kid that she always used to sing to Sasha when he was small, a monotonous form of speech-song with a tedious number of verses. But the fit of shame that threatened to sweep over Kurt proved unnecessary, because of course they were all delighted by the Russian babushka, competing with one another to give evidence of their attachment to the fraternal socialist nation; after only the second verse the guests began singing along themselves, out of sheer stupidity, and instantly the atmosphere was that of a Free German Youth conference of delegates (although Kurt, to be honest, had never been to a Free German Youth conference of delegates), and since every line in the refrain of the song began with the words vot kak, vot kak—just listen, just listen!—people thought they understood that it was a Russian drinking song and bellowed vodka, vodka! in chorus; they even began clapping rhythmically as they sang vodka, vodka, and finally the lady on Kurt’s right at the table (some sort of Neuendorf Party veteran) tried linking arms with him and rocking back and forth—which made Kurt freeze rigid. He sat there like a rock in the middle of the birthday party. Suddenly everything was rocking. Heads bobbed up and down as if separated from their bodies: Anita’s bottle-blond head, Mahlich’s black-haired skull, the purple balloon of Bunke’s face that looked as if it might explode—any moment, right now!

“I think,” said Kurt, when the wolves had finally arrived, when they had finally eaten the little kid, when they had finally gnawed its bones clean, nothing left but hoofs and horns, sadly she mourns, nothing left but hoofs and horns—“I think,” said Kurt, “I ought to tell you that Sasha is in the West.”

“Oh,” said Melitta.

“Yes, well…” said Kurt.

Somehow, he had expected more, but Melitta didn’t add anything, and Kurt himself was suddenly at a loss. For a moment he wondered whether Melitta had failed to understand him. Without taking his eyes off the coffee cup—it was her coffee cup, a Nazi cup, with the imprint of her lipstick clearly visible on the rim—he said:

“I don’t know how things stand with the maintenance, but while Sasha can’t pay it of course I’ll take all that over.”

Then there was a crash in the next room. Kurt watched as people rose to their feet and streamed toward it—only Markus was moving in the other direction, from the next room to here, going against the stream, and asked what had happened.

“We’re going,” said Melitta.

“Why now?” moaned Markus.

“I’ll tell you outside,” said Melitta.

Sulkily, Markus took Wilhelm’s stuffed iguana off the shelf.

“Wilhelm gave me this,” he explained to Kurt.

“Very nice of Wilhelm,” said Kurt, overheartily shaking the hand that Markus offered him.

Then he was going to shake hands with Melitta—but she put her arms around him. In sheer surprise, his head didn’t find the right way to go. His chin collided with Melitta’s forehead. In his hands, which dared not hold her properly, her upper body felt like a piece of wood.

Kurt poured himself another East German brandy, and went into the next room. In passing, he noticed that the buffet table had collapsed. He kept his distance and watched all the activity going on around the ruins of the collapsed buffet.

He could feel the pressure of Melitta’s forehead on his lower lip.

The East German brandy smelled revolting.