And W. recalled his apprenticeship at the training workshop, a bit uphill from the expanse of ruins. At that time he had already begun writing poems and short stories. . and one day the workshop was investigated for written materials, he couldn’t remember what exactly: books or texts copied out from books, magazines or journals, some sort of illicit printed matter was circulating, there were confiscations and searches. And he had tied his notebooks and papers in a bundle and hidden them in one of the underground corridors.
At the time it had seemed like a game to him; he was simply uncomfortable at the thought of his secret writings spread out before the eyes of the training staff, and the passageways beneath the ruins were safe. — At a much later point in time he had divulged this hiding place to his drinking buddy Harry; it happened one night at a pub in A., when both of them — they were the only two left standing after a weekend on which they’d barely slept and outdid each other drinking — ended up sitting in a back room until long after midnight. There Harry had suddenly broken down crying, in part from alcohol-induced enervation, in part from genuine despair, saying something about a series of cheque forgeries he’d been charged with — W. asked himself how such things were even possible — and that he already knew when he’d be arrested; tomorrow, Monday, a ‘friend’ from the police station had tipped him off, they’d be coming for him. But apparently the evidence was still shaky, they might have to let him go again, temporarily, if he could manage to hide something before then. Harry didn’t say what he had to hide, he spoke of some sort of papers; W. offered to take them home with him. Harry refused; they’d been seen together. . and he had to hide the things that very night. . in a pinch he might even have to hide himself. — Why? W. asked, finding the whole thing implausible and incomprehensible. — His girlfriend Cindy was getting out of prison some day the coming week, he had to see her to clear up their future relationship. .
And W. ended up telling his drinking buddy about the existence — at least the erstwhile existence — of tunnels on the edge of town. . he’d only done it, he reproached himself later, so as to appear to Cindy in the right light. . and Harry didn’t seem to find this story at all improbable. . Were the tunnels still there? he immediately wanted to know.
On Harry’s urging they had headed there that very night; the terrain had long since been cleared and levelled, only on the edge of the forest, where they weren’t in the way, had piles of rubble and a few remnants of walls remained, swallowed almost wholly by the outspreading underbrush, you could hardly see a thing in the damply breaking dawn, with the fog creeping from the forest. — Drunk as he was, Harry had suddenly slipped and slid down the grass and fallen leaves of a peculiar hollow, caught at the bottom by a bank of mud, gravel and shrubbery. He was lying next to one of the tunnel system’s almost-buried exits. Only a narrow chink still indicated the opening in the vertical fragment of a wall overhung by a tangle of brambles. .)
Brought to Light
When the train at Warschauer Strasse finally started moving, I was wide awake. ‘Stand back’ came the barely intelligible snarl, though there was no one on the platform; the bell shrilled and, as the red lights over the doors went out, a dull jolt travelled down the row of cars, the closed doors locking into place; first haltingly, then gaining speed, the train began to roll. I’d been asleep; despite my damp clothes, clammy on my skin, my sitting position (prenatal, I’d once called it) irresistibly induced sleep. It was a sleep that took practice: it kept my thoughts in full swing, or even seemed to increase their intensity, as they lacked all grounding in temporal relationships. I sat against the back wall of the empty car, squeezed into a corner, feet tucked up against the radiator under the seat, which sent up waves of warmth that seemed mingled with steam; I’d jammed my fists in my lap, and the back of my head, resting on the wall, picked up the trembling vibrations of the train’s motion.
My thoughts shut out time, and so could not quite be called memories, veering without transition between spaces in time (you could no longer call them spaces of time). . I dispelled my fear that I’d see light in my flat from the street, and would have to go straight to the basement without changing my wet clothes, by reminding myself that I’d run into the Major on Alexanderplatz just a short time ago. . of course he could have overtaken me, maybe he’d had a car parked nearby, I had no idea how long I’d slept in the train. As always when I came in from the rain, my watch had stopped, it couldn’t cope with the damp which the radiator warmth released from the clothes I’d worn too long, nor, apparently, with the sweat I worked up on my way from the basement to the fifth floor; it could only cope when I rested, when my blood pressure dropped, it ran best in subterranean spaces, or lying atop my heating stove as it cooled off overnight. . as though then reapproximating the temperature of its former owner: Harry Falbe’s frosty girlfriend Cindy. With her knowledge it had been given to me at one time for safekeeping; when one of Cindy’s prison stays ended, she had forgotten about the watch. . it would have a certain role to play later on, a primitive men’s watch of considerable size, the sort fashionable with a certain type of young woman several years before, that bellicose time when razorblades and carpet tacks had found their way into the jewellery shops. — One day — it was at the Whitsun holiday, presumably last year — a watch which readily stood my body’s basement effluvia had been placed in my hands by the Firm. . no, not in my hands; I’d found a note summoning me to Feuerbach’s office; the Major wasn’t there, the watch lay on his desk in a plastic case, next to it the certificate with the Firm’s heraldic emblem, and next to that a note in Feuerbach’s handwriting: Dear Cambert, this is for you, congratulations! Destroy the certificate immediately.
(W. had kept the certificate, folded over and over again and well hidden. Alongside other pre-printed, illegible signatures it had been signed by a Colonel Reuther, MSS Sect. 20, Berlin, the?? of??)
Upon leaving the office I had already forgotten the date; that was even safer than destroying the certificate. . on the stairs I met Feuerbach, who slipped me an envelope with money. — We’ll have to sign receipts again one of these days, he said, you haven’t signed anything for quite a while. As if you had a problem with signatures. . maybe tomorrow in the cafe, if that’s OK with you.