Wolfgang Hilbig - 'I'

I refused to believe that his suggestion had been serious; and by the time we’d reached the Frankfurter Allee Station he already seemed to have forgotten it. Without a parting word he got into a taxi and slammed the door. I was left behind on the pavement. . See you tomorrow! I called; maybe he’d heard me, the sunken shape behind the back window. Then I took a second taxi to my flat. . behind the fifth-floor windows the light was burning.

The city’s depression seemed to spare no one, only I gradually stopped sacrificing to it, my head began to clear, even the weather seemed inclined to turn warmer. — Incidentally, depression was not a native Eastern term, it came from the Western part of the city, but there, too, it had found its way in by chance, its original manifestation had to stem from Western Germany, from sated regions; when I tried to pin down its source, I thought of autobahn-ringed Nuremberg. In East Berlin the term had been established by the Scene (it was a cultural asset), and we at the Firm, not wanting to lag too far behind the times, used it as well.

I had heard the word in a pointed voice from a tiny mouth that from time to time was painted blood-red, a dark-clothed boyish person’s sole adornment; it hit me from the side, from two or three yards away: Soon she wouldn’t be coming any more, depression was already raining down in this chaos here (meaning the polis of Berlin, Capital of the GDR). — Her addressee was silent, it was the writer S. R., and he left her standing there, having already geared up to go.

Feuerbach didn’t show; bored (with the Hong Kong flu abating) I took up my aimless travels through the city again. . yet again I hit upon the idea of travelling to A., and even tried it twice; in Leipzig the depression seized me (it was here, too, and maybe even worse) and I turned around again. . then I hung out in the pubs, increasingly bored by the Scene’s meet-ups; far too often I encountered the view that the readings by the writer S. R. (who had a code number for us, alongside the appellation IntelOp: Reader) used to be a big deal. . it was true, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d had to hunt for the IntelOp in the archive by now, a dead file. .

It almost gave me another bout of depression. . I thought back wistfully to the time when the entire Berlin underground had anticipated his readings, and I anticipated them as well (though not just because I wanted to hear him ). . lots of female guests always came. . he had an especially strong effect on women. . and maliciously I thought that this was exactly what caused the neostructuralists’ secret envy of totalitarian literary leadership cults, this eternal dark-varnished timbre of voice and clothing. Of course it wasn’t like that, I just wanted to see it like that, Reader was a guy who had built up the image of a literary neurotic, who had managed to create the impression that he was compelled to flood the world with his work (I had got nearly all my ideas from him), while at the same time there was always a mysterious helplessness about him, something remote-controlled about his eyes behind the Isaac Babel glasses; he was always dapper, his outer shell consisting of a collarless black Russian-cut shirt with a slight glitter, it must have been some extremely expensive fissile fabric, and down below probably black trousers that draped over black shoes (usually I only saw him seated, hidden behind the audience); on the whole he was a perfect creation. And I was after the student who always stuck by his side, with her contrasting lily-white face. . by now, due to certain of Feuerbach’s insinuations, I was more inclined to take her for a journalist. That side-line made the lady in the soft leather jacket (Feuerbach would have said lady in English) even more interesting. I was already happy when she wasn’t unfriendly. . I adopted nearly all Reader’s quirks.

As his impact in the Scene waned (and my impact in the Firm along with it), I considered whether it was possible to find out or invent anything that could harm him (and benefit me) — the Scene offered no leads; I would have to penetrate his private sphere, and first I’d have to establish where he lived. Hadn’t I practically been challenged to do so. .? What do we need with this eternal lit crit? That was effectively such a challenge, if I wasn’t mistaken. But suddenly a story involving the Permanent Mission struck me as too ticklish, maybe there were other things that would be awkward for us to know: minor to middling money issues, currency offences, cheques. . things which none of us could avoid, but which, tackled from the right angle, could be disruptive and neutralizing. Disruption was what we doted on, we didn’t even want to think about court proceedings and other crudities. . Disruption, however contradictory it might sound, was the true creativity.

It wasn’t hard to find out where he lived; he wasn’t from Berlin, he had moved here, of course not quite legally, which was why he occupied a flat in a rear wing — amid pre-war buildings, which, in my experience, had an abundance of basements — in a rather out-of-the-way area near Storkower Strasse which I could almost have reached by foot, fit as I was. Now I began to haunt this heavily industrialized district, where the mud lay so deep on some streets that you thought you were in the countryside. — One evening in his back courtyard I was lurking in an especially dark corner, behind the garbage bins, worried that the location, in conjunction with its temperature, would treat me to a relapse of the Hong Kong flu. The object of my gaze was a lit third-floor window; I was bent on seeing the student again, who I believed had passed the window an hour ago. I knew that she regularly used the Friedrichstrasse border crossing (and very rarely spent the night in the East. . with Reader!); that was quite a long way, she’d have to leave soon: I was wearing the Japanese quartz watch, not because it made me feel honoured but because Feuerbach had relieved me of my usual chronometer. She came down at last, accompanied by Reader (who wore perfectly normal slippers); as they appeared in the door I witnessed a rather heated altercation between them, of which unfortunately I understood very little. She was the main instigator of the argument, speaking in a muted hiss, while he, almost whispering, merely admonished her to be quiet; she accused him of elitist behaviour for refusing to sign a petition ; he justified his refusal with the fact that the statement was to be published in the West. It was one of those standard conflicts we were already tired of. . I thought of the whole series of petitions that had made the rounds lately, all of which I’d signed on my strolls through the Scene; just minutes later I couldn’t remember which causes they had championed, probably I didn’t even read them through (if I wasn’t mistaken, there had even been a Letter to Gorbachev or Shevardnadze ).

He wasn’t a coward in her eyes, the altercation continued, but objectively speaking his elitist behaviour led to cowardice and opportunism. . He said that he knew the score here better than she; apart from that I only saw him shake his head so that the lenses of his glasses flashed, giving the whole thing a vehement appearance. Finally she turned away, aggrieved, and headed across the yard towards the street; he made no attempt to hold her back, vanishing into the building so quickly that I thought he was glad to be rid of her. She walked right past me; I held my breath, and when I heard the front door slam shut, I followed her.

On the street, I looked around for her: it was astonishing, the confident stride with which she traversed this district’s deserted, poorly lit streetscapes — she really didn’t seem very fearful. — Maybe she felt worse things could happen to her in West Berlin. . I walked a considerable distance behind her, as quietly as possible at first; when I thought she was about to turn around, I ducked into a doorway. . but then I followed her more and more openly; finally, moving behind her at a constant pace, I resembled an automaton which she herself steered. . I learnt very quickly to match her gait, and I didn’t feel the need to hide from her, though I dimly sensed her listening to my steps. .