4 Oct 89—MOSCOW-LEIPZIG
Moscow had depressed Kurt Heinemann deeply. The gloom was gathered in the stones, in the dreary apartment building walls, in the darkness of the Kremlin streets, in all the conference rooms. The conference was over at last, the last rumors were repeated in the special clubs inhabited by off-duty KGB officers, and Kurt Heinemann could not wait to escape the dread that was everywhere in Moscow.
He had learned everything informally. He had longstanding friends inside KGB and they told him things they would not repeat inside the walls of KGB headquarters. They told him what he had suspected; that it was just dawning on them, on the Russian insiders, chilled him because they were so far behind in their own intelligence. They spoke like children of the change happening all around them. They said they feared Moscow was going to let loose the reins, let the Warsaw Pact disintegrate, that the mobs making demonstrations in places like Leipzig and East Berlin and Bucharest and Sofia… well, the mobs would have their way and they could scarcely believe it. They wanted to cling to something but they didn’t know what it was. They were deluding themselves and that made the depression so much worse.
Kurt Heinemann could not wait to change planes in Berlin for Leipzig, to shake off the Russian mentality he had spent ten days understanding. Only one of the Russians he knew had been clear-eyed enough to see the end of the world: “We will hang on to ourselves, Kurt, only ourselves, and the rest of the world will be let to drift out to sea. The GDR will be no more, Kurt. You must escape this. You must come into Moscow. We will make it safe for you.”
A pension in Moscow. Live like a Russian for the rest of his days. It had frightened him, to think of it. The end of the world was coming to Moscow, too, and the fools didn’t even see it.
The Interflug flight to Leipzig was as dreary as a flight on a Russian-built plane could be but Kurt did not notice his discomfort. He merely wanted to be among Germans again, to see if the madness infecting the world could be contained by rational thought, rational acts. He could scarcely hide his contempt for the Russians anymore; they had gained half the world and were now letting it slip away because they did not know how to make enough bread for peasants.
He took his own car from Leipzig airport to his mother’s home. He needed to be in his mother’s home now, he needed the reassurance of its familiar smells and familiar talk. He needed his mother’s frank assurance that the world would not end after all.
There were crowds on the streets. Slogans and banners. Drunken youths. Broken shop windows. Surges of people in unexpected places. Madness, madness.
He entered his mother’s house and it was calm except for the drone of the television set. She watched the news and the news told her nothing of the crowds she had seen with her own eyes that day. She kissed her son when he entered the half-darkened living room at the front of the modest brick house and they watched the news on television together, in silence. When it was over, without a single truth having been told, she turned the set off. They sat together in silence.
“What do they say in Moscow?” she finally said. She was a vigorous woman in her seventies and she still shopped every day on foot exactly like a peasant, though Kurt had offered her a car and a driver. He shared her stubborn countenance and clear black eyes.
“They say one thing in one place and a different thing in another place,” he said. “It is very bad now. Bad.”
“For you.” A statement.
He sighed and rose and went to the sideboard. He poured himself a small brandy schnapps. He tasted it and then put it down on the sideboard with his back to her.
“Where is Ruth?”
“She went out to see the crowds.”
“That’s foolish, Mama. She could be hurt.”
“I told her. She laughed and said that no one would dare to hurt the sister of the Double Eagle.”
“Ja. The Double Eagle. Invincible.”
Bitter.
She turned in her rocker and looked at him. “What will you do?”
“What can I do? If everything is gone, then I’m gone.”
“There are no police in the streets. There was a water cannon yesterday but not today. The mobs break windows.”
“Mobs always break things,” Kurt Heinemann said. “I can go to Moscow. To be safe.”
“Will you go to Moscow?”
“No. I couldn’t breathe there. And what about you, Mama?”
“I don’t care. My life is long and almost over. Ja, it’s true, Liebchen. But I don’t care for me. I care for you. You are in danger. And what can Ruth do now without you?”
“Ruth, Ruth.”
They said her name like that very often. Ruth, Ruth. A strange girl grown into a strange woman. She worked very well for long periods—she was a teacher in more than one school—and then she would have to go away inside herself. She would take a lover and live with him and then it would be over and she would come to Kurt to arrange things. There had been two abortions. And once, Kurt had to kill a man who insisted about Ruth. Ruth didn’t want them for very long, just for a while, just for some fantasy that she could not explain.
He had thought about it in Moscow in all the dreary days and nights conferring with his colleagues inside KGB. He had already begun to plan his escape before he realized he would have to escape. And he had thought about his sister in exactly that tone of voice: Ruth, Ruth. Wearily said. Sadly said. Shaking his head when he said it. He loved her very much and she loved him. She had once tried to make love to him as she made love to her men and he had been horrified and that had made her crazy for weeks after; she had fits of weeping and she would moan in her bedroom at night. Ruth, Ruth.
“I have to go away,” he said to his mother. A clock on the mantel ticked off unseen minutes. The house was very still, very calm, the center of the stormy world. “I will take Ruth with me.”
“Where can you go?” Softly, waiting for the answer with dread.
“You know,” he said to her back.
She gazed out the window and held her breath. Then she shook her head. “Ja, Kurt. I know. Will they harm you?”
“They will welcome me. I can bring them my mind. There was a contact. Many contacts with them. But one I have in mind. He is very important now. I can use him if he thinks he can use me.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“Not at all. It’s all right. I can’t be trusted either.”
“That dreadful place,” she said.
It was her word for America, where she had buried one husband. She would never say the name of the country; it was only “that dreadful place.”
“Ja, ja. For some while. If the country falls, then the Stasi will be torn apart. I will take care of myself. And Ruth. But what can I do for you?”
“Leave me,” she said. “Children have to save themselves.”
“Mama.” And there were tears in the hard, bright eyes that she could not see because she was looking out the window at the empty street. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, son. But take care of Ruth, that’s what must be done.”
“It’ll be done,” he said.
“I love you,” his mother said.
They repeated the phrase in the semidarkness of the still house. They repeated the mantra several times when silence threatened to overwhelm them. They waited for Ruth to come home and were relieved when she did. They ate supper together and they talked about what would happen to them.