JANA’S SLEEP was troubled. She sat with her fists clenched in her lap, her face taut, her forehead damp. Now and then she muttered No, pleading, her fingers fluttering, then returning to her lap, clenched. They were stalled in Karl-Marx-Allee, Berlin rush-hour traffic. Dix watched her and listened to Bach on the car radio. He wondered about her dream, where the no came from and what it signified, if it signified anything. He hoped she wasn’t disappointed. She had brought off her scene in fine style, her voice a steady oboe, always within the range of one octave. She had summoned tremendous expression in her face by the movement of her eyelids and by the parting of her mouth. Her hands were motionless except when she thought to link her forefinger in the gold bracelet she wore on her wrist. Rolf seemed mesmerised, watching her with his sullen expression, his body unquiet. When he moved his hands on the oars, anyone would think he meant to strike her, swinging the oar like a baseball bat. She wore him down with the remorseless monotone of her voice.
This is the life I have led. This is what it has come to, and I will surrender no part of it. She never pleaded, and indeed what she had to say was, in the strictest sense, impersonal. This is what you must do because you must do it, find a woman of means and return with her here, to this place, and settle all debts—and then she ridiculed his preference for warm weather, for languid afternoons and pretty Italian gardens. Did he have fear of the vast and unsettled German forests? It is from the mystery and sovereignty of the forest that we acquire our courage and our way of looking at the world, what we expect of it. You may take up your travels at a later date. No doubt you will have ample opportunity to do so, and I shall hate the day when it comes because you are dangerous outside your own realm. You should follow your father’s example, but I know that is impossible.
And when he said, You are trying to punish me, you do not have the right, the sound of her slap could be heard by the cameraman on the shore fifty yards distant. Rolf recoiled, gathered himself, sat brokenly a moment, then moved the oars, and the boat silently made its way to the long wooden pier at the edge of the water. The baroness alighted, and without a word moved off up the path through the forest to the unseen house beyond. The forest swallowed her up and she was lost to view, all but a sliver of the crimson scarf. And the frame froze.
Jana was awake now but settled low in the seat, her knees resting on the dashboard. When Dix asked if she had had a bad dream, she shook her head, no comment, and he turned his attention to the traffic, flashing lights ahead, a commotion of some kind. The line of cars began to move. Rain fell in Karl-Marx-Allee, darkening the huge apartment buildings on either side of the boulevard. Something caught his eye and he looked up to see a young woman in one of the apartments waving a red bandanna; he thought of a switchman at a railroad crossing. A stationary figure in the window of the apartment below stood impassively watching the traffic in the street. There were other observers in windows above and below. Somebody’s audience, Dix thought; not Jana’s, perhaps mine, an apathetic balcony crowd looking at their wristwatches and waiting for the play to end. The car was stalled again, and now through the rain he saw a plume of white smoke rising and flowing away almost at once. From a distance came the waa-waa of sirens, and when he lowered the window a crack he could hear angry voices and snatches of a martial melody; and how odd that it sounded like a stately phrase from Bach. When his eyes began to water, he knew the white smoke was tear gas and that he had run into a demonstration—farmers, students, workers, teachers, Nazis, Reds, he had no idea who they were. And then he heard breaking glass and a thin animal roar from the demonstrators, who were now marching between the cars, banging hoods and roofs with clubs. A brick sailed through the air and struck the car next to him. A woman cried out and her children began to scream, but the demonstrators came on, not very many of them, marching in a kind of slow-motion swagger. Their grievances were serious but he did not know what they were. He could not read the placards, which had been discarded in any case.
Lock the doors, Jana cried.
Who are they?
Reds, I think. Mostly.
He locked the doors of the Mercedes and watched a loose-limbed teenager take aim at the hood ornament and send it flying with one swing of his club. The boy rushed past them and beat a tattoo on the rear window, the glass caving but not shattering. When other demonstrators surrounded the car, Dix moved to cover Jana with his body. He pushed her onto the floor and lay over her, and it was then that he could feel her trembling. She said something to him but he could not hear her words. Bits of glass fell on them and the noise was terrible. Then he heard police whistles and more shouts and the pop-pop of tear-gas canisters. The demonstrators still came on, pursued now by the police. His eyes began to water and he raised himself on his elbows to give Jana air. She coughed, her hands to her throat, her face white with—not fear, for just then she mustered a grim smile. He felt glass on his shoulders and in his hair and he could see blood on Jana’s coat but he did not know whose blood it was. One contorted face and then another appeared at the window. He could see their teeth and the whites of their eyes as they screamed and pounded on the windows and doors. Jana was quiet under him, her eyes closed. The clamor seemed to decrease, its pitch wavering, and then Dix wondered if this was how Europe would end, grievance washing from nation to nation, remorseless as the tides, marching to Bach’s tempo. He turned off the radio and touched Jana’s forehead. He felt no life at all. He noticed silence inside and outside the car, and the droning of sirens far away, and then the clump of the boots of green-suited police. When he looked up he saw the girl in the window fold her bandanna and slip back into the interior of the apartment.
He touched Jana’s cheek and her eyelids fluttered open. When she turned her head he saw she had a gash on her temple, blood leaking down her neck and clotted in her hair and ears. Her eyes were dull and unfocused and she seemed not to recognize him. He told her to be still and he would find a medic.
Can you talk, Jana?
She drew her mouth down in a clown face but did not reply.
He moved to open the door but it would not budge. Then he remembered he had locked it, but when he threw the switch it still refused to open. Helmeted police were all around them but they were too busy to respond to his signal, even when he banged on the window with his cane. One of them looked at him and said something but he had no idea what it was. Dix sat back then, cradling Jana. She tried to speak but no words came and she gave it up with a long sigh, leaning her head against his shoulder. He held her with a tissue against her wound, feeling the beating of his own heart. She murmured something and nestled into him, her eyes closing. When he looked up again he saw a crowd, a television camera, police, motorists who had freed themselves from their cars. They looked at him incuriously, an older man with a young woman in his arms, apparently at peace with the world. The camera closed in, a foot or so from the shattered side window, and Dix turned his back to shield Jana. When a fireman began to work at the car door with a crowbar, Dix put his mouth next to her ear.
You must not die, he said.
I won’t, she whispered.
The police are here.
She recoiled, her eyes wide with fear.
They’re here to help, he said. You have a nasty gash.
Yes, I know, she said, and settled in again.
He was still holding her when the door flew open and she was taken from him.
They put Jana into an ambulance and drove her to a private hospital in Dahlem, not far from the Brücke Museum. Dix remained behind to make a report to the police commander, a sympathetic Berliner of about his own age, who cluck-clucked over the condition of the Mercedes and offered to have it towed away. The commander asked a few obvious questions, then ordered one of his men to take Herr Grunewald at once to the hospital where his—and here the policeman looked at him with raised eyebrows until Dix replied, Friend—friend was in surgery. When the police returned his papers, Dix nodded his thanks. He said, Very kind of you. You are at Mommsen House? the policeman asked with a suppressed smile. Dix said, Do you know Mommsen House? Oh, yes, the policeman said. I have had many, many dealings with the intellectuals at Mommsen House. Always trouble, he went on. So it was good to see an intellectual in trouble not of his own making and be able to help. When Dix asked him the identity of the demonstrators, he replied that they were a coalition of the disaffected. Angry disaffected, Dix said. Very angry, the policeman agreed. And likely to remain so.
At the hospital, Dix was told Jana was in fair condition.
Was her life in danger?
They thought not. But there were tests.
What sort of tests?
Tests that the doctors would determine, Herr Grunewald.
And when would they know for certain?
Not long, Herr Grunewald. In due course.
He returned the next day and the day after, but still Jana could receive no visitors. On the third day they said she was better but resting. On the fourth day they agreed to admit him to her room but he must remain only a short time, under the supervision of a nurse. Frau Jana was weak and had lost much blood and the extent of her injuries to her head were as yet not known. But she was resting comfortably.
He had brought her books in English and German, and his Erich Heckel poster, Drei Madchen, three Sorb girls exchanging secrets. He taped the poster near the door where she could see it, then turned to look at her closely, her head wound tight with white bandages. But her eyes were clear, and he thought he caught a mocking smile when he showed her the poster. The girls were nude, whispering in a forest clearing.
Do you remember any of it? he asked.
Some, she said. Not all.
You said they were Reds.
I don’t know who they were, she said. They weren’t Sorbs, I know that.
Nameless rioters, he said. A cop told me it was a coalition of the disaffected.
I’m tired, Dix.
I’ll come tomorrow, he said. Her eyes showed great weariness, and her head was set at a strange angle. She did not look herself.
Jana settled into the bed, hooking her finger around the plastic bracelet on her wrist. Tell me about the scene on the lake. Was it good?
Superb, he said.
Karl?
Karl was fine.
I thought so, too. He’s a real actor.
The scene upset him.
Why wouldn’t it? I hate what she said to him.
You played it wonderfully, Dix said.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
That’s acting, he said.
Playing someone else’s life, she said.
There was some of you in it.
Not enough, she said sharply, and turned her face and closed her eyes. The nurse guided him from the room.
Dix went to work at once editing Wannsee 1899, episode 145, astonished at how economical he had been with film—or tape, as they insisted on calling it. Willa came by to see the results and pronounced herself delighted, and he admitted to himself that what he had was good. He believed he had an ear for the German language, at least when it was spoken softly, at slow speeds. He was depending on the patience of the audience.
He returned to the hospital the next day but they said Jana was sleeping. And the day after she was not feeling well and receiving no visitors. Dix missed a day, and when he arrived on Tuesday, eight days after the demonstration, the receptionist looked at him in surprise and said Frau Jana had been discharged. Yes, she has gone home. To her apartment in Kreuzberg? The receptionist looked in her book and said, No, not Kreuzberg. Frau Jana gave her address as Mommsen House, Wannsee.
But I have just come from Mommsen House, Dix said.
Nevertheless, the receptionist said. That is her address.
But I have a film she must see—
Frau Jana said nothing about a film, the receptionist said.
Did she leave a note?
No note, Herr Greenwood.
On the street again, Dix began to walk south toward Wannsee. The distance was only a few miles and the day was mild. The time was near noon and he was thinking of lunch at Charlotte’s or the Imbiss on Koenigstrasse. He took his time, strolling listlessly like any flaneur, and when the traffic began to build he feared another demonstration. The line of cars barely moved, and then in the block ahead he saw the cause of the obstruction, a giant McDonald’s, its parking lot full and the cars waiting for a space or in line for the drive-through. He suspected a school holiday; many of the cars were filled with children.
Suddenly he did not want lunch at Charlotte’s or at the Imbiss, or anywhere in Wannsee. Dix hurried in the direction of Zehlendorf, where he could board the S-Bahn for Potsdamer Platz, and a few blocks away, down the squalid alley, he would find Munn Café, a glass of beer and a schnitzel, and Frau Munn’s warm smile to take the edge off things. He did not like to think of Jana alone in the world. Yet that was what she preferred.
The café was not crowded. Frau Munn set him up at the far end of the bar. He drank two pilseners and ordered the schnitzel. While he ate the schnitzel he read the newspaper, a London paper, one of several that hung from well-worn wooden racks. There was news of Russia but little from America and nothing at all of the Industry. Then he remembered the Academy Awards and wondered who won. Certainly at the end Ada Hart was mentioned in the necrology; perhaps one of the presenters had a word also. He read the paper slowly but without interest, then put it aside and ordered another pilsener. When Frau Munn brought it, he asked her about the Vietnamese waiter, nowhere in sight. She said he had gone to visit relatives in Haiphong and was due to return to Berlin at the end of the week.
Dix said, Why did he come to Berlin to live?
She said, I believe he was dodging the draft. He arrived many years ago as part of a cultural exchange. He came to East Berlin to read his poetry and one night he slipped through the Wall; and he came to me.
And stayed on, Dix said.
Yes, but he misses his homeland.
So many do, Dix said.
Frau Munn looked at him sharply. His situation is not amusing, Herr Greenwood. Not at all amusing. At the time of the Vietnamese New Year, Nguyen was often in tears. When you saw him the first time, his New Year had just ended. He was not himself. And you, Herr Greenwood. You do not seem yourself either.
Comes and goes, Dix said.
You have the sad face, she said.
A friend has gone away, he said.
I am sorry, Frau Munn said. Was she a special friend?
We were collaborators, Dix said.
And your film? Completed?
Yes, completed.
Well then, Herr Greenwood. Allow me to buy you a schnapps in celebration.
If you will have one with me, Dix said.
Frau Munn went to the refrigerator and returned with a bottle, pouring icy schnapps into tiny flutes. She raised her glass and said, Prost.
Dix said, Your very good health.
Frau Munn smiled indulgently. You never learned our language, Herr Greenwood. It’s just as well. German is a difficult language, often unpleasant in its sound, hard to hear correctly. Few foreigners speak it fluently, yet there are advantages. Our language gives us some privacy. We are able to say things to ourselves that we would never say to outsiders. It is a blunt language, as you know. It’s my opinion that our difficult language gives us a measure of exclusivity. Our German exceptionalism, our particular spirit. The French are always complaining that no one speaks their language. They impose it on others as a matter of national pride. They are so busy protecting it from outside influences they neglect to use it creatively. They are taken up with their struggle to preserve it, is this not so? They feel they are humiliated when they are obliged to speak English, as they often are. But isn’t it a strange emotion, humiliation? You cannot be humiliated unless you choose to be. Humiliation is a self-inflicted wound. We Germans are intimate with our language, and it is never a source of humiliation. How could it be? Speaking German when others cannot makes us feel superior.
I wouldn’t think superiority comes into it, Dix said. It’s a language like any other. Perhaps more difficult than some.
It is the language of Goethe, she said.
I don’t mind being on the outside of things, Dix replied.
Frau Munn said, There are advantages of course. I wonder if this is a specific American condition. So much missed. So much ignored. If the thought cannot fit into an American sentence, then it could be said not to exist. This, in turn, would make an uncluttered Weltanschauung. Surely that’s for the best.
Dix looked at his watch as Frau Munn poured a second schnapps.
Do you know, during the war in the Pacific, the Americans used Cherokees to transmit secret messages en clair. No Japanese understood Cherokee. Cherokee was an enigma to them, no better than animal sounds.
It was Navajo, Dix said.
Was it Navajo?
Navajo, Dix said. Navajo definitely.
So many tribes in America, Frau Munn said.
And now I must leave, Dix said.
Americans are happiest with their language! But they do not value it. They do not take pride in it. They assume everyone speaks it. And in time, everyone will.
Do you suppose everyone will be comfortable in it, Frau Munn?
When they are not talking among themselves, they will, Herr Greenwood.
Dix looked at her over the top of the flute. Some American academics say that English is the language of the oppressor and that peoples everywhere would be better off if it were abolished, like thumbscrews and the iron maiden. They view English as a violation of human rights.
They do?
Yes. They are quite insistent about it.
Academics are dreamers, she said.
Dix finished his schnapps and stepped back from the bar. It was a pleasure meeting you, Frau Munn. I wish you the very best.
And you also, Herr Greenwood. Would you send me your photograph for my wall?
Assuredly, Dix said.
And when do you leave Berlin?
Dix thought a moment and blurted, Tomorrow.
So soon? We will miss you. The spring is beautiful in our city.
And I will miss Berlin. The spring especially.
You have enjoyed yourself, then?
I have found my audience, Frau Munn.
In that case, Berlin has been a success for you. I was afraid that you had become discouraged with us. I know we can become strenuous and demanding in our efforts to make ourselves understood. Not everyone approaches us with an open mind. And we, too, are often lacking in objectivity. We have so many shadows, you see, those of us who lived through that time. We have difficulty expressing ourselves.
Dix said, You are my audience, Frau Munn.
She looked at him, holding his gaze with her clear blue eyes. I am flattered you would think of me in that way, Herr Greenwood. It is the way I have often seen myself. I shall try to be a responsive audience.
Dix paid the bill, correct to the last pfennig, and was almost at the door when he heard Frau Munn’s lisp once again.
A friend of yours came by yesterday.
He turned, grinning wildly. He knew who it was.
Herr Blum, the archivist. He said he had a most interesting interview with you.
Oh, yes, Dix said. Blum.
He was looking forward to another.
I’m sure he is, Dix said.
But if you are leaving Berlin—
It will have to be another time, Dix said.
Frau Munn hesitated, and then she said, I want you to have something from me, Herr Greenwood. She motioned him closer while she rummaged in one of the bar drawers. She handed him a photograph, a near duplicate of the one on the wall, Fraulein Munn with two American army officers, circa 1945. In this one she was standing about where Dix stood at that moment, her arms linked through the arms of two civilians, her smile brilliant, a pretty young girl out for the evening. Dix noticed her earrings and nylon stockings, a necklace at her throat, and the wide-brimmed hats and long coats of the men. They were unremarkable men, one with a mustache, the other without, but something in their postures and the disdain of their expressions reminded him of tabloid photographs of Chicago gangsters. He stared at the photograph, more than half a century distant—the date in the margin said 1943—trying to connect that time to this time. He looked at the photograph and thought of the nebula of a long-dead star, a cloud of dust that would diminish but never vanish, an enduring feature of the night sky in Berlin. What seemed to connect Frau Munn then to now was her smile, the same soft smile in both photographs—indeed she wore the same face in both, as if they were trick pictures of the sort found at carnivals, Frau Munn with Jimmy Stewart, Frau Munn with Al Capone. But smiles were superficial. What was not superficial were her eyes, the saddest eyes he had ever seen, eyes that seemed to him filled with unwelcome knowledge.
She said brightly, Look this way, Herr Greenwood—and she took his picture with a one-time Kodak, its flash blinding him for an instant.
Now I have one of my own, she said, and gestured at the wall, her rogues’ gallery, photographs of musicians, comedians, impresarios, politicians, army officers, Nazis, poets, grifters, athletes and actors, bankers and thieves, her regulars.
Auf Wiedersehen, Frau Munn.
Until we meet again, Herr Greenwood.
Dix saluted her, a sloppy hand-to-forehead such as one of the American officers might have given. He stood unsteadily at the door, his hand on the weather curtain, his head spinning from the pilsener and the icy schnapps. In the dusty silence he heard Frau Munn’s radio, dance music, German swing, Kurt Weill’s “September Song,” sung by a sinister prewar voice that was just this side of a growl.
Oh, es ist eine lange, lange Zeit
Dix recollected Sinatra’s three-in-the-morning baritone and Lester Lanin’s society two-step, regret in the first, promise in the second. But this was not that. This was not in the vicinity of that. He looked back to nod at Frau Munn. She had poured a third glass and was snapping her fingers in time to the music, standing behind her long bar as sovereign as the skipper of a great vessel. She nodded back, smiling, her head cast to one side—and then Dix stepped through the door into the late Berlin afternoon.