Roads to Berlin Read online

  An old man climbs up to the microphones and declaims, “Eins, zwei, drei!” The sound booms around the empty space. High up on the grey gantries behind me, camera crews from East German television are working away, grey-looking men in fur hats. They have been up there since six this morning. The cold is all-pervasive. The Italians are really feeling it and they are not suffering in silence. I carry on doing circuits and reading the slogans, welcoming, cheerful and inspirational, that are plastered all over the station just as they are throughout the city: Ganz zu Ehren des VI. Parteitages. Der wissenschaftlich-technische Höchststand.3

  Words cannot quite capture the stiffness, the wooden reality that reigns in this place. It is a backward, infantile, old-fashioned world, but it is a world that exists, and not without reason. And it is this reality, this desiccated, fervent past which claims to be a vision of the future, that creates such a sense of alienation. Surrounded by fragments of a doctrine of salvation that has taken physical form and so become dangerous, I stand in that future, a perfect stranger; it is as though I have been standing here for a month, or a year.

  Occasionally, I see signs that something is about to happen. German officers give German orders to German soldiers; a phalanx of men takes up position on the steps, sending small eddies swirling through the crowd. But then the men disappear into a hole plastered with more slogans and leave us to our waiting. A West German journalist starts up a melancholy conversation with an East German. I stand about a meter away, watching them. Their discussion is pointless. A wall runs between these two compatriots that nothing can penetrate, except maybe bullets. Every thought, every argument, ricochets off it and falls to the ground at our feet, there for the taking: Globkes and walls, Adenauers and fugitives shot dead in the water, constant atonement for the past. The foreigners stand around, watching in silence. It is five o’clock, then six. Suddenly, the concourse fills. Television lights go on and start gleaming: white faces above leather, German jackets. Groups of women with terribly red flags. The journalists, with no specific position allocated to them, are scattered and outnumbered. A long line of military cadets enters in single file. They receive an order and begin to knead away at the crowd. First one way, then the other. I am half-crushed against a camera gantry, where a soldier grabs me and pushes me even further back. When it is all over, I find myself standing quite a long way from the stage, surrounded by large, hefty men, whose huge fingers are holding on tightly to their ridiculously tiny flags. Military music whines out of loudspeakers high up on the walls, one record after another. There is some shouting and then little Ulbricht with his unmistakable features makes his entrance, striding past the people with rapid steps. The others follow—Bulgarians and Mongols, Czechs and Germans—a tight cordon of sturdy men climbing the stairs, which two old ladies have just swept clean for the tenth time. A red carpet to fend off the cold, a line of cadets to protect lives, Germans behind me shouting at others to take off their hats: “Hut ab! Hut ab!” Then, a sudden silence as the music vanishes and the little Russian man comes down the stairs, surrounded by the faithful, governors of a world that begins at Helmstedt and ends at Shanghai. The little man, his fat face very white under the scrutiny of the television lights, waves in response to the cries of the crowd: “Druzhba, druzhba, druzhba!” Paper flags ripple in the air like a blast of heat; a group of Algerians shout their own welcome, before the silence of anticipation descends once again and the ceremonial greeting of first secretaries of central committees begins—old, long-winded titles replaced by new, long-lasting titles, and not a single one is omitted.

  Every name brings applause in its wake. I stand on tiptoe to look at the assembled officials on their illuminated podium. Little Ulbricht comes forward, receives a kiss and, in his prissy Saxon voice, he begins to tell a story. The crowd pays attention. Then Khrushchev speaks. There is no doubt about his popularity with the party faithful on the concourse. It is hard not to be impressed by that voice. It is weighty and archaic; it flows, argues, persuades, ridicules, recounts, threatens. The pitiful, high-pitched voice of the interpreter follows, drawing red, German lines beneath his speech. Looking at myself in this crowd, where the only thing distinguishing me from the others is the cut of my clothes, it occurs to me that I could just as easily be standing there shouting and singing a German song, being a Party stalwart—and I see myself as part of a crowd in a way that they can no longer see themselves, because I am here and helping to fill a hall in the same way as they are filling it, but merely looking at them and listening to that emotionally charged German shouting creates a sense of ludicrous isolation and fear of a world that is so full of its own reality that it has no place for outsiders. It is still snowing when I go back outside. A long line of officers stands in silhouette against the whiteness of the snow on the empty square. Taking a detour through dark, silent streets now hung about with black flags, I return to my car. Half an hour later, I am back in the West. That is how simple it is.

  January 19, 1963. “Comrades, there now follows the closing speech of Walter Ulbricht, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands.” The journalists in West Berlin’s luxurious press center lean back in their chairs and look again at the same scene they have viewed so often this week: the immense hall, packed with four and a half thousand delegates of Communist parties from seventy countries. Walter Ulbricht strides through serried ranks of human bodies, his own head gliding past the white marble head of Lenin. He starts to speak. There is a slight sheen on his forehead; the light is shining on his glasses. By his standards, it is a good speech. Relaxed, gently amusing, almost chatty at times, he quotes the familiar articles of faith.

  The atmosphere is extremely friendly, even a little touching. Ulbricht’s Russian friend sits behind him, a cord dangling from his ears, with a translator’s Russian voice travelling along its length. The camera occasionally pans across the delegates. I recognize some of them, but most are unfamiliar. The Chinese do not appear on the screen—even though, only that morning, so many friendly Chinese men shouted and whistled when, in spite of Khrushchev’s friendly request for détente, the Chinese delegate once again attacked Russia, this time citing the revisionism of the South Slavs. Ulbricht does not enter into a discussion. He thinks everything is going to work out, yes, it is all going to be perfectly fine—and there is disagreement in the West too; you only have to look at de Gaulle.

  Ulbricht’s mirth is matched only by the mournfulness of his republic. No, Germany is no longer the most westerly socialist country in the world. That is Cuba now, which is a great advantage, because it means that Germany is much closer to America. Why is that? Because of our ambassador in Havana! Laughter. He becomes more serious when he talks about his party manifesto. Once again, it is clear that we will never be able to dismiss this world by damning it, just as any half-hearted sympathy will not make us part of it. In that hall, a sense of being in the right reigns supreme. We sit in our seats, watching it all happen, no more than a couple of kilometers away. Through the screen, the power of the proletariat flows over us, the advancement of socialism, the transition to Communism, the articles of faith.

  Between them and us lies the Wall, that document in stone. But it is a document that means nothing there, except perhaps to underscore just how right they are. They go to look at it themselves, just as Western journalists go to look at it, and they shake French tourists by the hand, wave at the people. They are sure of their cause.

  The parallel with religious sects keeps coming to mind. This is a faith that became a state, then many states. And so the faith had to change. Schisms and rifts divide this hall, and that is something else that we are watching: the practice of being right, a book by Marx, by Engels, by Lenin, which turned into Cuba, East Germany, North Korea, which turned into this hall, where the little man, occasionally, when he leans forward in a certain way, suddenly looks like a black man, as he tells his stories about engineers and workers in that slow German voice, becoming e
motional as he speaks about the pure happiness of labor and the joy that factory construction can bring, then finding himself at a loss for words and declaring that this is the sort of thing writers should describe: real life, the delight of work.

  New stories from this new folklore are presented too: the professor who spoke to the young agronomists, the writer who received a reprimand because he was too far removed from real life and had not learned a proper trade. The crowd laughs and claps; now and then a camera catches a single face, serious, joyful, elated, indifferent, its expression setting it apart from the others. I watch and I think: That man up there comes from what might be the most horrific country in the world. He is just standing there, talking to the West Germans, repeatedly inviting them to come and visit the East and talk to workers and farmers, but what does he think they will see, those people who come from the West to look at the East?

  A country, he says, where everything is collective property, and he elaborates on this theme, not neglecting to mention the exploiters and the militarists. As his voice goes on and the camera scans the delegates, over in the press room we experience that familiar emotion yet again, that feeling of complete alienation, a fashionable word that signifies fear as much as repulsion and complete incomprehension. A third of humanity is ruled by these men, following an ideology that is riddled with ossification, an ideology that can no longer flourish and sometimes does not even appear vibrant enough to live up to the ideals of its own handbook. The only response to the dangerous ossification on the other side of that Wall is not to become paralyzed by even greater ossification. Attending a conference like this can be a valuable experience.

  So much is written about Communism that many people have probably forgotten that it actually exists, that it is a reality. And right now, that reality has taken the form of a thorough self-examination, accompanied by the necessary détente.

  Within the Communist camp, opinions differ on every important point: capitalism, war, revolution, schism. When Khrushchev says that the aim of the working class is not a spectacular death, but the construction of a happy life, Mao responds that a war would inevitably result in the destruction of imperialism (us) and the victory of socialism (them).

  Complacent indifference to this ur-dialogue has been one of the main reactions from the West. And that is also why so many journalists were quick to leave this tedious congress, whose lack of drama was something of an anticlimax.

  1 Do not agitate against the D.D.R. The D.D.R. has safeguarded peace in Germany.

  2 Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (S.E.D.)—Socialist Unity Party of Germany. See also Glossary.

  3 In honor of the sixth party conference. The pinnacle of science and technology.

  I

  Once upon a time, the first time. I had driven to Berlin with Eddy Hoornik and W. L. Brugsma. A visit from Khrushchev, a congress of the East German Communist Party. It was my first visit to an Eastern Bloc country since Budapest in 1956, seven years before. Budapest had been a watershed in my political thinking, which back then was still closely linked to emotion. It had brought back the scent of war. I had left before the Russian troops closed their pincer movement towards the border, and I felt as though we, and therefore I, had betrayed people, that I was leaving behind something that would be locked away forever.

  Now it was 1963. I was driving in the opposite direction, and that also came with a feeling attached: fear. This was the forbidden kingdom, protected by guards, dogs, towers, barbed wire, barriers. It was cold, winter. There was snow on the ground, and the searching, panting dogs you could see from the car looked sinister against that whiteness.

  In another present, 1989, there are still guards, still dogs, still barriers. But the weather is spring, the border crossing is wider than it was back then, and there is more traffic, and yet still it refuses to become normal. The feeling of fear is no longer there, but the Cold War and the memories of back then are still deep in my bones. Service here is prompt. I am missing some document or other, a Genehmigung, and at first I cannot understand what the representative of the People’s Police is yelling at me from his hut. He tells me to move my car out of the line and park up and then walk over to another wooden hut to pay. No big deal, but all of this has happened before: the shouting, the German, the uniform. I am never going to escape that war.

  I drive through that piece of East Germany at a hundred kilometers an hour, with one eye on the speedometer. Two kilometers more, my friends have told me, and “they” will leap out from behind a bridge, a tree, a house, and present you with a fine. It is not the fine that bothers me, but I want to avoid the confrontation. Everyone else must feel the same way, as the cars whine along the wide Autobahn, thick as treacle.

  When I reach the door of my new house, I receive a sharp reminder. I have not even parked the car to unload my luggage and my books for the next six months when a window flies open and an old man starts screaming down at me, calling my behavior unverschämt: shameless, outrageous. I am home.

  Home is an apartment in a large, dark building in Goethestraße. Enormous rooms with huge, obsolete heating stoves that are taller than me, like great square idols. Before me, a Chilean writer lived here for many years, but he has returned to his own distant country for now. Tempora mutantur. Some of his books are still here. You’re acting like a dog, Simone says. She is right: it is canine behavior. I sniff at the books. Sniff sniff, Neruda. Sniff sniff sniff, Heine, Kleist. A Philosophisches Wörterbuch with a Marxist bent, Günter Grass in English, Third World Affairs 1987, plenty of Spanish, plenty of authors I do not know, a Diccionario del habla chilena and, thank goodness, plenty of poetry. The furniture stares at me and I stare back. This is the furniture of chance; you can push and pull it around and it will not put up a fight. It has not chosen you and you have not chosen it. This furniture bears witness to the life of exiles, and that suits me fine. I spend half of my life in hotels; it is becoming my natural state, always the cuckoo in some-one else’s nest. A painting-cum-sculpture featuring a rather terrifying hammer, which refuses to budge, a Dufy reproduction, two Hoppers, a gloomy painting of prisoners and missing persons, a Matisse poster, a playbill for a drama by the absent Chilean author, featuring a quill that appears to have been dipped in blood, in which it has just written the word “Freedom.” Now the sorting out and settling in can begin. Out in the courtyard there is a chestnut tree that will soon be green.

  Conquering a city. Just as with a real war, it begins with topographic maps, reconnaissance. Friends provide covert intelligence. The house serves as the base of operations and always offers the option of strategic retreat. The lines of communication: tram, underground train, bus, feet. Provisions: where is the market? Gradually, the surrounding city begins to take shape: flickers of recognition, the shortest route, points de repère, library, department store, museum, park, Wall. Negotiation, capitulation—the house starts to behave like a house, we begin to act like residents. The building’s main hallway is dark; there is a lion’s head on the stair rail. I stroke it every day and the lion starts to greet me, while the other residents still do not. The postman has come to have a sniff. He is tall, a grey man in a uniform with a cap, and the dialect he speaks is almost incomprehensible. The letterbox has been hacked into the door of the apartment, a hand’s breadth and only two centimeters high; almost nothing can get through it. It is a faulty connection to my home country. I read the Frankfurter Allgemeine now, a serious business. This country does not treat itself frivolously. There is none of the casual irreverence I am used to at home. A stern front page, usually without a picture; I probably even look different when I am reading it.

  I saw a poster on the U-Bahn for a Gesprächskonzert with Mauricio Kagel, an Argentinean composer who has lived in Germany for a long time. I love his music and have been commissioned, together with Hugo Claus, to translate the words of his oratorio La Trahison orale for the Holland Festival. The concert is in the auditorium of the Sender Freies Berlin. Anyone from Amsterdam c
ould not fail to be struck by the sheer scale of things in this city. You are constantly dwarfed by vast empty squares, wide avenues. In the U-Bahn, I spot the other people who are heading to the concert, and I am right; all I have to do is follow them, a small, scattered shoal with a Japanese man as pilot fish. There is someone from Japan in the orchestra too, of course. It is a secret Japanese agreement: there has to be one Japanese person in every aeroplane, restaurant, orchestra. They are employed specially. The Japanese person in this orchestra is a cellist, and he plays magnificently (as I hear when he has his solo), but then the whole orchestra plays magnificently and it is a wonderful evening. The composer is sitting beside the conductor on the stage. Tall, balding, large horn-rimmed glasses. It is as though Harold Pinter were up on stage, watching one of his plays being performed. There is only one piece on the program this evening: “Quodlibet,” but this is not just the title (literally, “what pleases”), but also the name of the genre. A quodlibet is a form that dates from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mainly French, which parodies and comments upon a large number of songs in counterpoint. It is a piece for several voices. The singer this evening, Martine Viard, is able to sing all kinds of different voices and she does so with verve. She looks serious in her long blue gown and glasses, but those sustained high notes and displays of masculinity undermine her seriousness. The conductor is Gerd Albrecht, white-haired, bell’uomo, exactly what a conductor must look like in every young girl’s dreams, and what is more, his deconstruction of the piece is exceptionally deft; he interrupts, disassembles, dissects, regroups. The composer has compiled the lyrics from Old French texts. The piece, about an unhappy and dramatic love affair, begins with the singer in a state of utter confusion: