Joseph Kanon: Leaving Berlin

“That’s why you’re leaving? Because you think this?”

“I know how it is. When I saw Roberta, I thought yes, just like that. A coffee, checking in. That’s how it’s done. But not with Markus. Maybe that’s why he’s so angry with you-I’ll have to ask him. He couldn’t get to you, you were already in another league, with the Russians. No wonder Markovsky was so upset when he found out about Erich. Lying to him. You expect better from a source. Especially one you’re sleeping with. Feels like she’s cheating on you. An insult.”

“Stop it.”

“And after? I kept thinking they were going to haul you in for some serious questioning, but no. They never seemed to suspect you. Why would they? You were still cooperating, still one of them. In a small way, maybe, but they’d look after you. A kind of protection racket. How else to get along?”

“Alex, please.”

“I don’t care why you did it. All the usual, what else? Maybe they forced you. They don’t give you much choice. I know how it works.”

“Oh, you know,” she said, eyes flashing. “You think you know.”

“But if you stay here, they’ll never leave you alone. That’s why I thought the West-” He looked up. “Did you? Did you tell them anything about me? It’s important to me to know.”

“Why?” she said, turning her back to him, walking, then back, pacing in a cage. “So you can hate me?”

He took her by the arms. “Did you? Please. Tell me.”

“Nothing. Unimportant things,” she said, wrenching away from him. “That’s all. Unimportant things. They don’t care. Anything. They just like to collect-”

“I know. They asked me about Aaron. Unimportant things.”

“You think I wanted to make trouble for you?”

“No.”

“No. It was just, what does he say? Does he like it here? Unimportant things. So, yes, he likes it here. What’s the harm in that? All good things, what they like. They respect you. You have a position here.”

“Not after tomorrow,” he said.

“What’s tomorrow? Oh, the radio. What do you say?”

“Things they won’t like. I can never come back.”

“So it’s like before. In America. The great gesture. And where do you go this time?”

“I don’t know. Wherever I can see Peter.”

“But not me. It doesn’t mean anything to you, how we are?” She reached for him, drawing him closer. “You can’t just walk away. You can’t. I’m not like her. The one in America.”

“No.”

“This nonsense I tell them. It’s so important?”

He stroked her hair. “No. I just wanted to know. It makes things easier, that’s all.”

“What things? I can stop all that. We could-” She pulled back. “You’re not even listening. It doesn’t matter what I say-” Her voice quivering, then suddenly calm. “How can you leave? You always wanted this.”

“Yes, I always did.”

She stood taller, gathering up her pride like a skirt. “Well, then. And later, how will you feel?”

He looked at her, the same defiant eyes, Kurt’s head in her lap, feeling time dissolve. He slipped out of her arms and walked to the door, then turned.

“What?”

“I just wanted to look.” A snapshot moment, what he’d felt on the bridge.

“Alex, for God’s sake-”

“You used to think everybody was in love with you.”

She shrugged. “So maybe they were,” she said, her face soft. “In those days.”

“Maybe. I was. I wonder-”

“What?”

“How different everything might have been. If you’d been in love with me.”

He walked down Luisenstrasse and over the bridge. In the dusk, moving headlights were lighting up the Brandenburg Gate, the world divided by a few steps. Nobody was stopping traffic. A crude wooden sign. You are leaving the Soviet sector. He passed under the arches expecting to hear a police whistle, pounding feet. But in another minute, East Berlin was just a patch of dark behind him. Out of it. Through the Gate. Where everything would be different. Where he would be himself again. Dieter was leaning against the trunk of the car, smoking, waiting, indifferent to what was inside. What he would become. Maybe what he already was. You’re in this now. You do what you have to do. Then you carry it with you. But he was here, on the other side. He stopped for a second, taking a deep breath, somehow expecting the air itself to be different. But the air was the same.