Take one of these tablets! he added. They’re new.
New? So what?
They improve concentration. That’s what you need now, soldier.
I didn’t want to, but his lower lip trembled, so…
Then I went out; I went down, and came up one of the marble passageways into the foyer of the Südbahnhof; I came into the sunlight; I descended the steps, which were almost infinitely wide, crossed the street and gazed back at its immense rectangular facade with the two giant clocks and the swastika-gripping eagle; the Bahnhof’s windowed stone arms stretched out in either direction as far as I could see. I felt safe; all my powers seemed to have returned to me. If only my dear friend Shostakovich could see this! He’d be proud of me at last.—My speculations grew ever more rhapsodic, until I awoke behind the Curtain, in the former hospital at Berlin-Karlshorst. In case you haven’t heard, I’ll now inform you that people no longer go there for their health.
Three tall men in blue uniforms sat on an extremely long sofa, comparing scores of Shostakovich and Wagner and making tick-marks with red pencils. Between them slept a woman in a blue smock. When she woke up, I realized that she was Elena Kruglikova, although she actually might have been Klavdia Sulzhenko. At last I saw the light. She was a “Juliette” spy! They meant to distract me from Elena Konstantinovskaya! That must have been the objective all along. Against Kruglikova’s charms I safeguarded myself with the cautionary tale of that Romeo spy WALTER, who once upon a time seduced, then married LOLA, who coincidentally happened to be a secretary in the West German Foreign Ministry. Poor LOLA! I even know her real name. One day the Gehlen Organization, or perhaps the Central Intelligence Agency, reeled in her Soviet handler, MAKS, who accordingly defected, exposing both spouses. When she was arrested and shown her husband’s confession that he had married her for ideology, not love, LOLA hanged herself in her cell.
A glass of water with my interrogators, a brandy-toast to friendship, a nibble or two of caviar, you know how it goes. These were the people who’d snatched the jurist Walter Linse right out of West Berlin and hanged him in Moscow.
If you work correctly with us, we will always be good friends, promised the tallest man, who was codenamed GLASUNOW.
The woman who might have been Kruglikova opened her eyes, sat up, and smiled at me with a what’s a little sex between comrades? look. I shook my head, and she vanished into the air.
Then they gave me a nice leather map case with three pencils in its stitched-on pockets, but there was no map in it. Unable to resist stroking it, I knew at once that any rumors of black tears in der Sowjetzone were propaganda!
Sometimes, you see, I didn’t know who I was without my identification sign! And after all the cutouts and dead letterboxes of the Gehlen Organization, after far too many crossings of that bridge over black satin water, water which was really a black curtain with pleats of grainy yellow light; and then somehow (for I was already getting sleepy), after too many traversals of that broad white wall arched with darkness, with windows and white palaces, I couldn’t even be certain what I loved. You see, “Juliette” spies are so treacherous! And alliances can get even more entangling than that. For example, consider this subplot from Case NIBELUNG: When RÜDIGER, once his friend and now by virtue of conflicting loyalties about to become his enemy, offers HAGEN his own shield, the latter fervently swears never to harm him in the forthcoming battle, and keeps his word; instead, RÜDIGER will be killed by the sword which he’s presented to his son-in-law GERNOT. What’s the use of that? I wish I’d never decrypted it. What should HAGEN and RÜDIGER have done? The flat clean blankness of the sleepwalker’s stone banks and ministries always stood for something unchanging—no matter that the Nazi-Soviet Pact became Operation Barbarossa; that was a superhuman event, occurring so far above me that it failed to twist my integrity. Now that I possessed a choice, I’d tried to act, each time blaming my failures of accomplishment on illusionism of miscast silver bullets; what if there were a better explanation which relieved me from even more responsibility? Oh, how sleepy I was! I could slumber now; I could blame everything on the opportunism of the bourgeoisie; it was as good as having the sleepwalker back.
The shortest man, codenamed RIMSKY, said to me that freedom means understanding our place within the laws of history; we are more free when we acknowledge our submission to the law of gravity than when we foolishly deny it.
And it seemed to me that RIMSKY was as familiar as my own father; he offered me the comfort which my father would have, if he hadn’t been gassed at Ypres two wars ago. Laws of history! I could surely find myself if I only obeyed enough laws.
But what would GREINER have said about me then, or the pale man in the dark glasses? Whom would I become if they thought badly of me?
Socioeconomic formations versus an officer’s heels on a parquet floor, which would I choose?
RIMSKY advised me to never think backwards. If I betrayed the Gehlen Organization freely and fully, they’d give me a nice little villa in Trescow-Allee where Elena and I could make little Kruglikovas. Then I’d be safely in the peace camp! Every now and then I’d be called on to speak out against remilitarization and for reunification on the appropriate terms. Was I ready?
I need to dream about it.
Dreams are for cowards, said the third man, who must have been the East German spymaster, Markus Wolf.
They flew me to a walled villa in the woods outside Moscow, whose grounds were illuminated at night; and here, among the pines and birches of Silverwood, where Elena Konstantinovskaya had given birth on 22.6.41, the Center gave me my chance for happiness.
Elena, will you please marry me?
Which intelligence service sent you here? Remember, they’re listening.
Elena, if I devote myself to you, will I be able to become myself?
No.
I promise to be very, very loyal. I’ll always say yes to you. Please say yes to me—
No. Your eyes scare me. I’m sorry. Try to be strong…
That was how I learned that no is stronger than yes. (Shostakovich already knew that.) It takes two yesses for I to become we, but only one no for we to break apart, no matter what the other party wishes. Elena Konstantinovskaya’s no killed my yes, which fell voiceless into solitude. She did this, and there will never be any remedy.
She said no, in order to be true to herself. In that case, will I find myself if I say no? How can I be any worse off? (I dislike this feeling in my heart; I wonder if I can sleep it off?) From now on, I’ll say no to everything.
In the next room, Shostakovich sat at the piano. I can’t say he was in on what had just taken place; I’ll never know how much he knew; I was too heartbroken. Probably he didn’t know; he was far too lost in himself, stationed in that windowless chamber day and night, writing passwords and cipher groups into the score of Opus 110.
Patting me on the shoulder, he said: Don’t worry, don’t worry. There’s nothing but nonsense in this world…
He was kind to me; he didn’t need to be kind! He was the one I loved…
So I refused to collaborate. I said no. Unfortunately, no means yes, since they’d arranged the meeting with Elena Konstantinovskaya and they must have influenced the outcome. But yes would also have meant yes. In other words, yes is stronger than no. All the same, I insist that I acted upon my convictions. I told them my guilt was too great, not that they cared about guilt. I demanded to be turned over to the Stasi. I confessed that I was even at this very moment a malignantly active member of the Gehlen Organization. Even an interview at the Ministry of State Security didn’t change my mind. When they pinched me, I scarcely felt it.