The Moment (38 page)

“I lowered my head as my eyes filled up with tears. I could feel Frau Jochum’s hand pressing harder against mine.

“‘I know how difficult this news must be. That’s why I wanted to wait until morning.’

“‘You got me out,’ I said. ‘Now you have to please get my son out.’

“I could see an anxious glance pass between Ullmann and Frau Jochum.

“‘We’ll discuss all that tomorrow, Petra,’ Frau Jochum said once more.

“‘In other words, it’s hopeless,’ I said.

“‘We will explore every avenue possible,’ Ullmann said. ‘Of that I can assure you.’

“‘I’m never getting him back, am I?’ I said.

“Another nervous glance between Ullmann and Jochum.

“‘We’ll do our best, Petra,’ Ullmann said. ‘But we are up against certain realities here. The biggest reality is that those people do not play by the same rules as we do.’

“They brought me to a compound, located in the far west of the city. Frau Jochum was right. The apartment into which they ushered me was, by the standards of what I had known until now, the most luxurious imaginable. There was a woman there named Frau Ludwig, in her mid-forties. She informed me that she was going to look after me in the weeks ahead. Frau Jochum turned me over to her and said that, after a medical appointment I was to have tomorrow morning, she would be back with Herr Ullmann in the late afternoon to have an extended chat with me.

“Once she was gone, Frau Ludwig informed me that, in the coming weeks, I was to call on her for anything—and that right now I probably needed a shower and a good night’s sleep. There was a living area with a sofa and a big reading chair and a television—all very modern, very much like a deluxe hotel. There was a bedroom with a massive bed, made up with the most wonderful sheets and the softest duvet imaginable. She asked if she could run me a bath—and I spent almost an hour soaking in this deep tub filled with scented bath salts. She had fresh pajamas awaiting me. Once I changed into these, she insisted on using a tape measure to take some basic measurements so she could order me some new clothes, as the ones I had on not only were too big for me, but were, of course, the only set I now had in the world. She wished me a good night, I climbed into that massive bed and couldn’t sleep for more than an hour. All this cocooned luxury. I was also still so traumatized by the last three weeks of isolation and sensory deprivation that it was hard to cope with such changed circumstances. Then there was the overwhelming sadness and strange guilt that I felt about Jurgen’s death, coupled with the deepening horror at the realization that Johannes was lost to me forever. Staring at the ceiling, trying to still fathom why I had been released so suddenly, and how I would never be free of the longing I had for my lost son. It was all just too confusing, too wounding.

“But I finally did surrender to sleep. When I awoke the next morning it was just after noon and Frau Ludwig presented me with two pairs of jeans—actual real Levi’s—and a corduroy skirt and a very nice double-breasted dark blue military-style overcoat and assorted underwear. I remember all this not just because I was overwhelmed by the quality of the clothes and the generosity of my benefactors, but also because, again, I couldn’t understand why all this goodwill was being visited upon me.

“After breakfast I was walked across a spacious courtyard—so beautifully landscaped—to a medical facility where a very efficient but kind doctor ran all sorts of tests on me. He said that the now-fading red welts on my body—which happened during that alleged ‘photographic session’—were, in fact, radiation burns, and that I wasn’t the first person he’d examined upon release from a Stasi prison who had suffered such burns.

“‘But why would they expose me to radiation?’

“He hesitated for a moment, then said:

“‘Our theory is that they use radiation as a way of marking certain dissidents, in order to be able to trace them in the future.’

“‘Or to make them deathly ill.’

“‘There is that,” the doctor said. ‘But it all depends on the level of radiation with which they hit you.’

“‘If it caused such burns on my body . . . ’

“‘Yes, it is a great worry. But the lasting damage to your health—if, that is, there is any—will only be discerned many years from now. And there is the good possibility that you will be spared any illness.’

“‘Just as there is the possibility I will get very sick from what they did to me.’

“‘Yes, that is a potential outcome. But the physical scars—the welts—should fully disappear within weeks.’

“That afternoon. Herr Ullmann and Frau Jochum both interviewed me. I learned that the reason they wanted me ‘out’ of the GDR—and the way they traded me for two GDR spies who had been imprisoned in the Bundesrepublik for many months—was twofold. I had been interrogated by Colonel Stenhammer, a ‘gentleman’ who interested this pair intensely. They had targeted me as a potential bargaining chip because the GDR authorities knew that I was essentially blameless—and therefore, as such, had nothing to share with agents of ‘the other side.’

“‘The fact is, we need to question you extensively about Stenhammer,’ Frau Jochum said. ‘Because he has been a key interrogator of many dissidents and you are the first of his “subjects” that we have been able to get out. So, over the next few days, if you are agreeable . . . ’

“‘Of course,’ I said, knowing that something would have to be given back in return, and that the only hope of being reunited with Johannes would be through Frau Jochum and Herr Ullmann.

“‘There’s something else you need to know,’ Ullmann told me. ‘This is something we also need to question you about. Within your circle in Prenzlauer Berg there was a Stasi informer. This informer did you and Jurgen a considerable amount of damage, as she was reporting back to them all your conversations. As you trusted this person, as she was your closest confidante . . . ’

“As soon as he said the word
she,
a chill ran through me. A chill followed by disbelief. Surely it wasn’t
she.
Surely
she
would never do that to me.

“‘Your friend Judit Fleischmann has been a longtime informant of the Stasi. From what we can gather from our source within their organization, she reported everything you confided to her back to them.’

“I felt as if I had just walked into an empty elevator shaft and was on a long downward plunge. Frau Jochum saw this and reached over and gripped my shoulder with one of her hands, saying:

“‘I know how betrayed you must feel right now. But you need to remember that the more information you can give us about what she told you, the more leverage we can bring when attempting to negotiate the return of Johannes to you.’

“‘He’s with a Stasi family now, isn’t he?’ I said.

“I watched as Frau Jochum and Herr Ullmann exchanged another uncomfortable glance.

“‘We have reason to believe that is so,’ Ullmann said.

“‘Do you have the name of that family?’

“‘If you attempt to somehow contact them, Petra,’ Frau Jochum said, ‘it will throw all our efforts into . . . ’

“‘I just want to know the name of the family who have my son.’

“‘Herr Stefan and Frau Effi Klaus.’

“‘Where do they live?’

“‘We don’t have the exact address,’ Ullmann said.

“‘Just tell me the district.’

“‘Friedrichshain.’

“‘And my “friend” Judit. Was she rewarded for such a “patriotic” betrayal of her best friend?’

“‘Our contact on the other side informed us that your friend had something of a breakdown after you were arrested and Johannes was placed with another family. I’m certain you despise her now, but the Stasi knew that she had been having an extramarital affair with a woman for some years and threatened her with exposure to her husband as a lesbian if she didn’t cooperate. We have learned that since her breakdown, she’s been institutionalized.’

“My head was reeling. Jurgen dead. Judit in one of those psychiatric hospitals from which few people ever emerged unscathed. And the knowledge that my best friend had been forced into informing on me. But overriding everything was the realization that Johannes was now being brought up in a Stasi family. Would a Stasi couple—undoubtedly childless—really return a baby to his lawful mother when that woman had been expelled from their ‘democratic, humanistic’ republic? Never. I knew that immediately. Frau Jochum saw that I knew it—and tried to comfort me some more by saying:

“‘This could be a long process, Petra, but you have my word that we will move mountains to get Johannes back to you.’

“‘You don’t need to “move mountains,” I whispered. ‘Just The Wall.’

“I spent the next few weeks cooperating fully with them, answering all their questions. I accepted their offer to help me find a small apartment and the job at Radio Liberty. When they offered me three thousand deutsche marks to buy furniture and clothes, I didn’t say no. Frau Ludwig became like a big sister to me, taking me out clothes shopping, bringing me around West Berlin so I could get my bearings, making certain I ate well, keeping me in reasonable spirits, and evidently monitoring my moods to see how well I was coping.

“The fact was that the shock I was feeling, the profound grief and anguish, translated into a silent resolve to simply try to get through the day. When it came time to find a little apartment somewhere, Frau Ludwig raised a concern when I insisted on finding something in Kreuzberg very near The Wall—because she knew why I was choosing this location.

“‘Is this a good idea, living so close to where Johannes is now?’ she asked me.

“‘I need to be near him.’

“‘But knowing that you can’t be with him, aren’t you allowing the wound to stay open?’

“‘Do you really think it will ever close?’

“‘Speaking as a mother, no, I doubt it will. But speaking as someone who cares about you, you are going, in time, to have to find some sort of accommodation with it all.’

“‘That will never happen,’ I said.

“A year on, the wound remains as fresh and as raw as ever. The love I have for you, Thomas . . . the love you have given me . . . the love we share . . . of course, it has changed my life. And I have begun to know happiness again. But before you the only real happiness in my life was Johannes. No matter how hard I try to negotiate with myself—to try to accept that he is lost to me, that I simply will never get him back and I need to mourn his loss as if it was his death—I still cannot find a way of accepting this reality. It so haunts everything. I know it always will. That’s why I have to say that for your own sake, it’s best if you walk away from all this, from me. Because as long as my son is being raised on the other side of that monstrosity by people not his own—people who were rewarded for their dirty work for the regime with the gift of my son—a part of me will always be so damaged, so sad, that a life together will be impossible.

“So, please, Thomas, get up right now and walk away. Save yourself from all this. Save yourself from me.”

EIGHT

A
S SOON AS Petra finished talking, I stood up and took her in my arms. But her reaction to this embrace, this attempt to comfort her, was disconcerting. She was limp, lifeless—as if the telling of this terrible tale had depleted her entirely. I held her close to me, saying:

“When you first came here—that night we first spent together—you asked me to never let you go. I promised you I wouldn’t. And that promise holds—even more so after what you’ve just told me.”

“You really mean that?”

“You know I do. Just as you know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, for us.”

“Us,” she said, pronouncing the pronoun carefully, as if it was foreign to her or—worse yet—a word that had been proscribed. “I so want that. But . . .”

“I won’t accept the word ‘but.’ What you’ve been through, what you’ve survived, it would have broken most people. It didn’t break you. Now, together, we have a real chance at happiness.”

“But, as I told you, how can I ever be happy if Johannes is with those people?”

“You can have another child. With me.”

“It won’t bring Johannes across The Wall. It will never end the sense of loss.”

“True, but it will mean you will be a mother again.”

“But do you really want that, Thomas? You, who live this vagabond existence, who love to wander, to roam. Surely you don’t want to be changing diapers or forced to stand still for a while . . .”

“I want this, you, us. And, yes, I want a child with you.”

“Please don’t say that just to make me feel better.”

“I’m saying that because I mean it. And because I will also do everything I can to get Johannes back to you.”

“You’re being far too romantic, Thomas. What Herr Ullmann told me a year ago was correct: there is no way you can negotiate with these people.”

“They got you out.”

“Because they had a bargaining chip: Dieter Mettel, a high-ranking officer in the
Bundesnachrichtendienst
who turned out to be a Stasi operative. He was such a big catch for the West Germans that they traded him for three East German dissidents and me. The only reason they wanted me out was that they could learn all about Stenhammer’s interrogation techniques. He was someone who had broken many of their own people over there. And I was able to give them a very comprehensive account of his strategies when it came to breaking his victims.”

“But he didn’t break you.”

“I didn’t tell him anything he wanted to know. But yes, he still broke me. Just as they broke Judit.”

“But she betrayed you. Betrayed you utterly.”

“I got a letter from her five months ago. A letter that had been smuggled out by a second cousin who teaches at Tübingen and was visiting her in the East. According to the letter, Judit only spent a few weeks in the psychiatric hospital—where she was administered electric shock treatment that, as she said, mentally neutered her. She said the horrible feelings she had for betraying me, for betraying our friendship, have been neutralized by the treatment. She said she’s almost grateful, as the horror became unlivable after I was arrested and Johannes was taken away. She said her ‘nervous breakdown’—that was the official word for it, as everyone is too happy in the People’s Republic to even contemplate taking their own lives—was an attempted suicide. She turned the gas on in her stove, stuck her head in, and passed out, only to be found by a neighbor. Judit told me that she had been blackmailed into informing on me because she had a secret that she was terrified of being made public. And since she had a job teaching art in a grammar school, she was certain that the revelation about her lesbianism would mean the end of her career. She told me she wasn’t trying to make excuses for what she had done or ask for my forgiveness—because what she did she found unforgivable. But she did want me to know that on the morning of my arrest, she made a sweep of my apartment, taking several photograph albums and some letters before the Stasi’s people came and turned the place upside down. If there was any way I could ever get them collected from her . . .”

“And the photographs were of . . . ?”

“My parents, my childhood, my friends in Prenzlauer Berg. But most of all, they were all the photos I took of Johannes during that first and only year we had together.”

“Is Judit teaching again?”

“Not at all. In her letter she’s on indefinite sick leave. From what I could gather, she spends most of the time at home in her little apartment, her husband having left her for another woman while she was in the hospital.”

“So if I was to show up on her doorstep, saying I had come for the photographs . . . ?”

Petra looked at me with care.

“But you could get arrested, thrown into jail.”

“For what? Collecting a couple of volumes of family photos?”

“They’d find a reason to arrest you. It’s too dangerous, too risky.”

“Not from where I sit.”

“You’d actually do this?”

“I’m doing it. Tomorrow.”

“But it’s not necessary.”

“Do you have any photographs of Johannes with you?”

“None. When they arrested me they took my wallet, along with the photographs of my son that I had with me. When they expelled me, they kept the wallet.”

“You’ll have some photographs tomorrow by nightfall.”

“I want to say, ‘Yes, please, go.’ But if anything happens to you . . .”

“Do you think Judit is still being watched?”

“Given that I am out of the country and her life has been ruined, I doubt it.”

“Then I’ll get up early and cross Checkpoint Charlie by eight. I presume I can take the U-Bahn up to her.”

“You get the U-Bahn from Stadtmitte—that’s the first East Berlin station after Checkpoint Charlie—up to Alexanderplatz. Then you switch for a tram heading to Danzinger Strasse. You get off at Marienburgerstrasse and cross the tramline and walk two streets until you reach Rykestrasse. Her apartment is in number thirty-three—and her name, Fleischmann, is on the bell. I will write a letter explaining very little, except the fact that you have come for my photographs. Once you’ve gotten what she can give you, you need to somehow not be seen carrying them back here.”

“I’ll bring a daypack with me, big enough to carry a few photo albums.”

“What if they search it on your way out?”

“The worst they can do is confiscate the photos.”

“That is hardly the worst they can do.”

“I’m an American.”

“And like all Americans, you think yourself indestructible.”

“Absolutely. I also know that if I’m not back by nightfall, I will get someone to make a call to my embassy and they will send in the Marines.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

I now finally understood the horror and the sorrow that shadowed Petra’s every move. The very fact that she had somehow managed to survive all that had been visited upon her struck me as extraordinary and made me want even more to put things right for her. As we clung to each other in bed later that night, I told her:

“This will all work out. It may take months, maybe a few years. But you will get Johannes back.”

“Please stop this sort of talk now,” she hissed. “I know you mean well. I know you want to fix everything. But all this positive talk, all this
hope
. . . it has a contradictory effect on me. It just underscores the hopelessness of the situation. And now, if anything happens to you over there . . .”

“Nothing’s going to happen because I plan to be very careful.”

I glanced over at the clock by the bed. It was just after ten. I set the alarm for six-thirty tomorrow morning, telling Petra I wanted to get an early start to Checkpoint Charlie and try to be at Judit’s apartment before eight-thirty, in case she was heading out for the day.

“From what I could gather from her letter, she hardly ever leaves it and is a virtual recluse,” she said.

“Does she smoke?”

“Everybody over the age of thirteen in the GDR smokes—except the athletes they develop in those battery farms of theirs. So, yes, a packet or two of Camels would win her over immediately.”

“And the letter of introduction?”

“It will be ready by the time you wake up.”

“I love you, Petra.”

“I love you, Thomas.”

After a long, extended kiss, I turned over and surrendered to sleep. When I awoke eight hours later it was to the sound of the alarm going off and the smell of a smoldering cigarette.

“Want a coffee?” Petra asked.

“When did you get up?” I asked.

“I never got to bed.”

“But why?”

“Just was worried.”

“About me making this trip?”

She shrugged, then nodded, then shrugged again, turning away from me, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. I was immediately up out of bed, but when I attempted to take her in my arms, she stood up and reached for her coat, saying:

“I think I should go back to my place for a while.”

“Petra, there’s really no need to . . .”

“I just need to be by myself.”

“I’m going to be fine.”

“I don’t want you to do this. I don’t need the photographs. I don’t need reminders of . . .”

“Did you write the letter to Judit?”

She pointed to a sealed envelope on the table. It had the name—
Judit Fleischmann
—written on the front of it. Next to it was a piece of paper, covered with Petra’s neat handwriting.

“I’ve written down Judit’s address and all the necessary instructions for getting to her apartment. I’ll be awaiting you here tonight with dinner ready. Please try to get back by six, otherwise I’ll be . . .”

“I
will
be back by six.”

“I am not going to be able to think until then.”

She kissed me deeply, grabbed her coat, and headed for the door.

I wanted to give pursuit, to take her in my arms and again reassure her that all would be fine. But another part of me knew that when Petra was having one of those moments when sorrow and worry were clouding everything, it was best not to crowd her. If the death of a child was the worst thing that could befall anyone, then the idea of having your child physically removed from you and placed with a family had to be nothing less than a living death, especially when coupled with the realization that you could never see your son again.

Add to this the knowledge that with each day, each week, each month, this baby would become further attached to his new parents, and that he would have no memory of the mother who brought him into this world, who adored him from the moment he breathed for the first time, whose entire life was centered on him. I, for one, would have gone mad with grief and rage by now. Not only was it as cruel and vindictive a punishment imaginable, it was also so maniacally unfair.

Did I think that bringing back some photographs of Johannes would somehow ease Petra’s agony? I doubted it—but I still had to cross over to the other side and retrieve them. Because,
yes,
in that very American way of mine, I wanted to somehow try to do good, to make up for all the terrible things that had been thrown in her path. And my mind had already been thinking about scenarios and strategies for somehow reuniting Petra with her son.

But another thought struck me as I got dressed. I had not discussed with Petra what she should do if I was apprehended by the GDR authorities—as, perhaps, they were still keeping an eye on Judit and might immediately bring in for questioning someone visiting her from the West. There was also the possibility that if I was searched on my way back through Checkpoint Charlie, I could find myself being asked a lot of awkward questions about the photographs in my pockets. I knew that any lame excuse about me bringing these snapshots over to show my friends in East Berlin would be completely upended by the fact that the photos were so clearly
not
printed in the United States.

If such an arrest came to pass, and I didn’t show up, Petra’s panic would be enormous. Even if she did call the embassy, then what?

As I dug out my passport—and wondered if I should just leave a note for Petra, explaining what to do if I wasn’t home by mid-evening—I heard movement downstairs, specifically, pots and pans being rustled and Alaistair shouting “Oh fuck” as something hit the floor. A thought came to me: for all his bluster and extremity, he was a strangely good man. Someone I could trust.

So gathering up my daypack, the letter to Judit, and the paper on which Petra had written her address I headed downstairs. Alaistair was on his knees by the stove in his kitchen, sweeping up the remnants of an omelette into a dustpan.

“Fucking inept,
comme d’habitude
. I was far steadier on smack.”