Jonathan Franzen - Purity

Two further weeks of waiting followed. Now even on dark days the crowd on Normannenstraße was large, and then suddenly, one miserable raw afternoon, it was enormous. Near the main gate of the compound, Andreas stepped up onto the bumper of a truck to gauge it. People were massed as far as he could see. Thousands of them. Banners, pickets, chanting, TV crews.

Stasi RAUS. Stasi RAUS. Stasi RAUS …

People were pushing on the plate-metal gate, scaling it by the handle and hinges, shouting at the guards within. And then, inexplicably, and to his horror, the gate swung inward.

He was still standing on the bumper of the truck, many layers of body away from the gate. He jumped down and joined the crowd pressing forward, keeping his hand on a leather jacket ahead of him, preserving some space in case of a crush from behind.

A young woman to his left spoke to him affectionately. “Hey, you.”

Her face was sweet but only vaguely familiar, maybe not familiar at all. “Hello,” he said.

“My God,” she said. “You don’t even remember me.”

“Sure I do.”

“Yeah.” She smiled, not nicely. “Sure you do.”

He hung back long enough for another forward-pushing body to replace her at his side. The voices around him were subdued, maybe with reverence, maybe out of old habit of submission, but after he’d squeezed through the gate and entered the courtyard he could hear rowdy shouting in the building ahead of him. By the time he made it inside, there was already broken glass on the floor and spray paint on the walls. The trend of the crowd was up the central stairs, up to the floors where the offices of Mielke and other senior officers were said to be. Papers were falling from above, the single sheets floating lazily, the bunched ones plummeting. When he reached the stairs, he turned back and looked at the faces coming at him, faces so vivid they seemed to be moving in slow motion, faces red or gray with cold, faces of wonder, triumph, curiosity. Near the front door, uniformed guards were observing with stony indifference. He bucked the flow and approached one. “Where are the archives?” he said.

The guard raised his hands and spread them, palms up.

“Oh come on,” Andreas said. “Do you think you’re going to undo what’s happening here?”

The guard shrugged again with his hands.

Outside again, in the courtyard, through which citizens were continuing to pour like pilgrims, he considered what was happening. To appease the crowd, someone had made the decision to open the main administration building, which had presumably been cleansed of anything compromising. The entire action was symbolic, ritual, maybe even scripted. There were at least a dozen other buildings in the compound, and nobody was trying to get into them.

“The archives!” he shouted. “Let’s find the archives!”

Some heads in the crowd turned to him, but everyone kept moving forward, intent on the symbolic penetration of the inner sanctum. In the light of TV cameras and photo flashes, papers were drifting down from broken windows. Andreas went to the fence at the south end of the courtyard and looked at the largest and darkest of the other buildings. Even if he could somehow lead a charge into the archives, his chances of locating his files on his own were close to nil. They were in there somewhere, but the opening of the gate hadn’t helped him in the slightest. It had only weakened his friend, the Stasi.

Twenty minutes later, he was pressing a button in the vestibule of his parents’ building. The voice that crackled over the intercom was his father’s.

“It’s me,” Andreas said. “Your son.”

When he got to the top floor, an old man in a cardigan was standing at the open door of his parents’ flat. Andreas was shocked by the change in him. He was shorter, frailer, stooped, with hollows on his cheeks and throat. He extended a hand to shake, but Andreas put his arms around him. After a moment, his father returned the embrace.

“Your mother is at a lecture tonight,” he said, ushering Andreas inside. “I was just eating a blood sausage. I can boil you one if you’re hungry.”

“I’m fine. Just a glass of water.”

The new decor in the flat was leather and chrome, with overly bright older-person lighting. A purplish pool of sausage matter was congealing on a lonely plate. His father’s hands trembled as he poured from a bottle of mineral water and handed him a glass.

“You should eat your sausage while it’s warm,” Andreas said, sitting down at the table.

His father pushed his plate aside. “I can boil another later if I’m hungry.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m physically well. Older, as you see.”

“You look great.”

His father sat down at the table and said nothing. He’d never been an eye-contact kind of man.

“I take it you’re not watching the news,” Andreas said.

“I lost my appetite for news some months ago.”

“They’re storming Stasi headquarters as we speak. Thousands of people. They’re in the main building.”

His father merely nodded, as if in assent.

“You’re a good man,” Andreas said. “I’m sorry I’ve made life harder for you. My problem was never with you.”

“Every society has rules,” his father said. “A person either follows them or he doesn’t.”

“I respect that you followed them. I’m not here to accuse you. I’m here to ask a favor.”

His father nodded again. Down on Karl-Marx-Allee, cars were honking in what sounded like celebration.

“Did Mother tell you that I need a favor?”

His father’s face became sad. “Your mother had a lengthy file of her own,” he said.

Andreas was so startled by the non sequitur that he didn’t know what to say.

“Over the years,” his father continued, “she has had repeated episodes during which she behaved irresponsibly. She’s a committed socialist and a loyal citizen, but there have been embarrassments. Quite a number of them. I suspect that you’re aware of this.”

“It does me good to hear it from you.”

His father made a demurring gesture with his fingers. “We have had, for some years, issues of command and control with the Ministry for State Security. I’ve been fortunate in my dealings with it, thanks to my cousin and to my oversight of its budget. But the ministry has considerable autonomy, and a relationship is a two-way street. I’ve asked many favors of it, over the years, and I now have very little to offer it in return. I’m afraid that such goodwill as I still had was exhausted when I obtained your mother’s file for her. She still has many years of professional life ahead of her, and it was important to her, going forward, that no record of her past behavior come to light.”

However much Andreas had hated Katya in the past, he’d never hated her more than he did right now. “So, wait,” he said. “You’re saying you know what I’m here for.”

“She mentioned it,” his father said, withholding eye contact.

“But she didn’t care about me. She just cared about protecting herself.”

“She did intercede on your behalf as well, once we had her records.”

“First things first!”

“She is my wife. You need to understand that.”

“And I’m not really your son.”

His father shifted uncomfortably. “I suppose that may be correct, in a technical sense.”

“So I’m fucked. She fucked me over.”

“You chose not to play by society’s rules, and you don’t seem to have repented of it. When your mother is her true self, she repents of what she’s done when she was not herself.”

“You’re saying there’s nothing you can do for me.”

“I’m reluctant to go back to a well I fear is dry now.”