You might imagine that in a socialist society a personality such as hers, with the distinctly unegalitarian idea of life that it projected, couldn’t possibly thrive. But somehow she managed to short-circuit the mental processes by which people might form a criticism of her in political terms, and confront them instead on a more intimate and primitive level of the psyche, where authority, if it succeeds in imposing itself as such, is unquestioningly believed in and – how shall I put it? – quaked before.
She was no beauty, with her sturdy little frame clad always in the drabbest brown and grey clothes, her crooked, slightly jagged-looking front teeth that dominated one’s initial impression of her face, and made even her oldest acquaintances prefer to shake hands with her than exchange kisses. But there was something forceful, even magnetic in her appearance. Her dark brown, slightly protruberant eyes, encased in folded, lashless lids, possessed an unusual mobility and expressiveness. As they narrowed attentively, tilted to admit a faint sardonic lightness, gathered into their corners the traces of a codified smile, flashed with anger or coldly averted themselves from your gaze, drawing behind them an almost visible portcullis, one felt – with the fascination of seeing anything naked – that one was observing the fluctuating movements of the very organism to which the names Frieda, Frau Vogel, Mother, all referred. For as long as I can remember, there was a patch of pure white in her greyish brown hair, such as you see in certain city pigeons, and this too seemed the mark or brand of some quality that set her apart, though I was always uncertain whether it represented something done to her, or something she was liable to do unto others.
All of this – the haughtiness of her manner, the crooked teeth, the naked, imposing eyes, the little arctic patch on her head – was contained in, and to some extent tempered by, an overall burnish of tragedy; a kind of final, stabilising layer that had been added to her portrait during the middle part of the 1970s. This was the tragedy of thwarted ambition, and my father was to blame for it.
In his profession hard work and competence landed you in Hungary or, God help you, Romania; above-average skills might get you as far as one of the West European Permanent Representations; a certain type of well-connected career lackey would end up in Moscow. But in the private hierarchies of my mother’s imagination, a mission into the Imperium Americanum was an acknowledgement to those entrusted with it that they were the very crème de la crème, the crack troops, the elite. As our posting there grew more certain, all the chilly potency of that vast opponent seemed, by virtue of our association with it, to decant itself into our lives, and for several weeks we emitted an eerie glow among our friends, like that of immortals from legend, imprisoned for a term among mankind, but now at last able to reveal their true lineage.
Naturally my mother pretended to make light of these developments, even to disparage them. At the mention of America, or New York, or the United Nations, her lips would purse with a look of involuntary annoyance, as if some ancient personal grievance were being referred to, after which she would rather affectedly change the subject. Nevertheless, she saw to it that people were told of our imminent elevation. Allusions to my father’s jet lag were dropped nonchalantly into conversations with our neighbours. Our friends in the Politburo, the Gretzes, were invited to dinner with Uncle Heinrich, who could be counted on to raise the subject with a twinkle of indiscretion, and thereby ensure that they were properly confounded. Heinrich himself, whom my father had helped get a job in the Office of the Chief of the People’s Police, spread the word among our acquaintances in the security community.
Once, to my chagrin, my mother made an appearance at the school my brother and I attended, asking to be allowed to sit in on my history class. The subject was a comparative analysis of the emancipation of the serfs in Russia and the abolition of slavery in the United States. The idea being instilled in us was that the Americans had had no ideological interest in freeing the slaves, and only happened to do so by accident, whereas the Russians, as their subsequent history showed… et cetera. My mother sat at the back of the classroom with a stern expression. Halfway through the class she stood up and called to me in a quiet voice:
‘Stefan, come with me, would you, please?’
Writhing inwardly, I rose and made my way towards her under the puzzled eyes of my teacher. We went to the office of the principal, whom my mother proceeded to harangue about the poor quality of the class.
‘I don’t see that the interests of our children are well served by quite such a crude portrayal of the Western powers,’ she declared. ‘I hardly think that those of us obliged to have direct contact with the capitalist system’ – placing a hand on my arm – ‘are likely to benefit from being taught about it in terms of caricature…’
I stood beside her; oppressed, heavy, numb; assuming the posture that now seems characteristic of my entire adolescence: hunched, eyes averted, blank-faced; a kind of permanent, petrified shrug.
The principal eyed us shrewdly from beneath her portraits of Marx and Engels. She must have been trying to decide whether my mother was raving mad, or was perhaps privy to some new educational policy development forming itself in the higher echelons of the party. Luckily for us she seemed to choose the latter. She promised to investigate the matter personally and see to it that the teacher in question was properly reprimanded. With a curt nod my mother thanked her and we departed.
The culminating act in her folie de grandeur (it amounted to that) came one evening while my father was away in New York. She, my brother Otto, myself and our ‘lodger’ Kitty (our maid in all but name) were seated at the dinner table, which, as usual, Kitty had covered with a cotton cloth before laying, when my mother suddenly exclaimed, ‘The linen! The von Riesen linen! We’ll take it to New York!’
It turned out that a trunk full of family belongings had survived not only the war but also the upheavals following Yalta that had left my mother and her brother orphaned and penniless in what became East Germany. The trunk was in my mother’s possession, stored in the basement of our apartment building. Among other things it contained a full set of Irish linen, including tablecloths and napkins, every piece embroidered with the von Riesen initials and family crest. Upon some fantastical new whim, my mother had taken it into her head that this linen, spread on a communist table in New York (I suppose in her imagination she saw herself as some sort of society hostess in the diplomatic world), would strike just the right note of mystery and coolly ironic humour, while at the same time impressing people tremendously.
‘Nobody will know what to make of us,’ she declared. ‘And we won’t explain. Just -’ and she gave a sort of aloof shrug as if indicating to some fascinated inquirer that she personally had never troubled her head to wonder about anything so trifling as a set of initials that happened, yes, since you ask, to coincide with those of her own maiden name. On these rare occasions, when the outward guard of her demeanour was let down to reveal the rather childlike cravings and fantasies it served to advance, there was something endearing about her. Our hearts went out to her then; we felt we were being gathered into some rich and vulnerable conspiracy, and our loyalties were aroused.
Otto and I were sent down to fetch the linen as soon as dinner was over. To do this we had to get Herr Brandt, the janitor, to let us into the storage room.
‘Try to keep Brandt from poking his nose into our things, would you?’ my mother asked. ‘Not that we have anything to be ashamed of. But he can be a nuisance. Here, take him one of the miniatures and ask for the keys to let yourselves in. Tell him you’ll give them back to him when you’re finished.’