In Times of Fading Light

Klaus again: Markus could always apply somewhere else, and if he had good grades on his CV, and so forth, and Markus wondered what kind of amazing grades Klaus had on his own CV, had he studied how to be a member of the Bundestag, or what? And was Klaus in any position to solve the math problems in vocational school, sines, cosines and so on? He, Markus, rather doubted it! And then he had to yawn, just like that—the meal, the last two nights, for once it was not expressly intended to annoy Klaus, but Muddel suddenly got upset, couldn’t he put his hand in front of his mouth, she asked (as if putting your hand in front of your mouth was what mattered), and didn’t he know how grateful to Klaus he ought to be for getting him the trainee post, and blahblahblah.

“I never asked him to do it,” said Markus.

Which was one hundred percent true: he had never asked Klaus to get him a trainee position for the job of electronics communications technician (he would really have liked to be an animal keeper, and if that was not possible, because apparently there were no traineeships open to applicants from the general public, then he would have liked to be a cook, for which there were traineeships open to applicants, but no: electronic communications technician it had to be).

All the same, he ought not to have said that. Tell the truth… but if you really did tell the truth for once, Muddel started shouting, or rather tried to shout with a voice that never came out sounding right, and after she had shouted for a bit (the content of her remarks was of no interest), she took careful aim and slammed down a tiny plastic bag on the table:

Dope. Grass. A substance that, as Markus was convinced, was a thousand times less dangerous than alcohol, nothing to get worked up about—but Muddel was worked up. Okay, so he had promised not to smoke any more of it, well, what else could he do? And the mere existence of the plastic bag didn’t prove that he had actually been smoking it. Look at it properly, and the fact that the bag was still there, thought Markus, proved the opposite. But logic wasn’t about to get him anywhere now.

“That’s enough,” said Muddel. “I’ve had it up to here! Understand, right up to here!” And she pointed to a place just under her nose.

The pastor’s voice started up again.

“If you don’t change your ways here and now, Markus, then there’ll be a time when we have to…”

“Oh, wow!” said Markus.

“Listen to him, will you?” shouted Muddel.

“That jerk’s not telling me anything,” Markus shouted back.

And then, at last, the jerk was shouting, too.

“Get out of here!” shouted the jerk. “Out!”

Markus packed his things and went to Cottbus.

He spent Sunday evening on his own in front of the TV in his shared apartment, zapped his way through White Men Can’t Jump and a feeble crime-scene drama, ended up with the sex channel giving nine hundred phone numbers, and jerked off.

On Monday morning he turned up punctually for work. This week he had been assigned to the customers’ technical service department, and went out with an experienced colleague: data lines, dealing with interference. The colleague’s name was Ralf. He was at least forty. It was raining outside, a cold November rain, and your fingers got clammy. They stopped once at a snack bar, and Ralf bought him a curry sausage and some hot tea. They sat in the car with the engine running, it was nice and warm, and the only trouble was that Ralf listened to such stupid music.

On Tuesday evening the others who shared the apartment were all there. They laid in a few bottles of beer and told each other what sort of girls they’d picked up on the weekend. It soon began getting Markus down, and he went to bed early and jerked off again (this time thinking of the off-blond with the athlete’s tits).

On Wednesday after his shift he hung around in what they called the city center, watched two drivers bawling each other out over a dent. Then went to the only club that was open on weekdays. Stood in the corner for a while, gawking at girls.

On Thursday he tried to learn a bit of math.

On Friday morning he told Ralf he had to go to his granny’s funeral. Ralf drove him to the rail station.

He was at the Goethestrasse cemetery around eleven. He had sometimes passed it with his grandparents in the old days, had seen the gravestones or old grannies with watering cans from outside, but it had never occurred to him that what lay behind the crumbling wall, beyond the gate hanging askew between its gateposts, could have anything at all to do with him. It had always struck him as a self-contained place, outside time, outside the world, and although of course it was a cemetery, as he arrived he was overcome by doubts that his grandmother was really going to be buried there today. But sure enough, in a weather-beaten glazed display box for notices at the entrance, a funeral was announced for today at twelve noon.

Although the temperature was not below freezing, it was very cold. Damp clung to the branches of trees, penetrating everything, the ground, the air, and soon the old Swedish army surplus coat that he had bought in a Berlin store where they sold clothes by weight, at so much per kilo. Markus walked up and down outside the cemetery for a little while. The store opposite was boarded up. There was only a florist’s open, a tumbledown flat-roofed GDR building, with the area around the display window halfheartedly sprayed with graffiti. Markus went in. It was warm there, but the saleswoman asked him at once what he would like, and for a little while Markus acted as if he were looking for flowers. It did actually occur to him to buy some for Granny Irina. But he couldn’t scrape up more than ten marks, and he decided it would be a better idea to buy a hot drink in the nearest bar.

Five hundred meters farther on he found a basement corner bar, the Friedensburg. He was the only customer. An old boxer dog with terrible cancerous swellings lay snoring quiet beside the counter. A waiter with thin, combed-back hair and a stained napkin over his arm dragged himself very slowly, almost in slow motion, through the room and, with the words, “Your good health, sir!” put a small tray down in front of him. On the tray were a cup of tea, a little glass of rum, and a sugar bowl. Markus poured the rum into the tea and added two spoonfuls of sugar, assuming that the sugar was part of it. The drink went to his head at once, and for the first time since he had known about Granny Irina’s death he was overcome by something like sadness and was relieved, was almost glad of it. He imagined them—Grandpa Kurt, his father, he himself—standing by Granny Irina’s grave, a silent and emotional scene. Or was there a pastor involved, too? With an umbrella, like in the film he’d once seen? And where was the grave itself? Or would he see it only when he went in?

When he went back to the cemetery—just before twelve, to be on the safe side—the brief high that the tea with rum had given him was dying down. Suddenly the bumpy road had cars parked all along it, people were arriving from all sides. They carried wreaths and flowers. Markus followed them down an avenue leading to a small building. There was a crowd like rush hour on the suburban railroad outside it. The room inside was crammed. The double doors were opened so that those left outside could see something, and more and more people kept coming, couples, little groups, single figures. Markus looked at their faces—were these the “old comrades” Klaus had mentioned? The woman with dyed hair, the actor he’d once seen on TV, that incredibly fat man with hair bristling chaotically… and the one with the big, purplish face, wasn’t that the guy who had been bellowing something about more democracy at Wilhelm’s birthday party?

Looking over heads and shoulders, he cast a glance at the inside of the building. Right at the far end was a big black cross. On each side of it were potted palms, looking artificial even from a distance. A little farther forward there was a wooden speaker’s lectern covered with black fabric—not very neatly covered; one thumbtack was missing, and the material sagged on that side. Then he saw Grandpa Kurt in the front row on the right, a gray head with a bald spot in the middle of it, and there beside Grandpa Kurt, on his right, he was.

Music began to play, classical music, squawking slightly because the loudspeakers were too small. The crowd settled down. People bowed their heads. Then a woman went up to the unevenly covered lectern, not a pastor, he could tell that at once, and began speaking:

Irina, dear Irina, said the woman, as if speaking to Granny Irina, we say there’s still plenty of time before we part—an idea that always fools us… But where was Granny Irina?