Wolfgang Hilbig - 'I'

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In the dark streets swollen with filth and erosion the thought struck me that this was my mission for the immediate future: to shadow the woman I called the student ! — The idea came to me in the peculiar situation of huddling in a doorway and gazing down the pavement until she had regained a sufficient lead. . and at once I felt equal to the task. I had this feeling for perhaps the first time in my life. .

(He’d first had the idea even before spring began, one evening when he’d left Feuerbach standing there on the S-Bahn platform at Alexanderplatz — an affront! — and rode back. . it was possible that when the train stood too long at Warschauer Strasse — or Ostkreuz — he had got out and wandered through the streets. . through the rain again, which let up only gradually. And each time he’d encountered a woman, he’d followed her cautiously for a stretch — until he knew it wasn’t the student. But he had felt the appeal, the obscene appeal of the self-destructive hubris that lay in taking up such a chase. . and when he arrived at his house, drenched and filled with a base gratification, and saw light in his windows, his watch told him it was late at night. .)

And even the appellation under which I filed her in my mind — and in at least one of my reports — was impeccable: she came over to pursue her studies, as a journalist, as an editor, more probably still at her own behest. . from West Berlin at its dullest, perhaps the pampered hatchling of a wealthy family in ritzy Grunewald, her head full of left-wing manifestos and the notion that salvation lay, absurdly enough, in the East. . and so she came, with a pack of 25 HB cigarettes in her handbag, and sometimes perhaps with a crumb of hashish, and a slew of ideological words in her head: immanent-elitist-authoritarian-antiauthoritarian-spontaneous-nonimmanent. . and much more of that ilk, and she was hoodwinked by the so-called Scene and thought she could learn a bit about the GDR as alternative ; she’d never stray into Wagner’s. If she’d had the guts to get to know me, she might have been quite surprised — I didn’t care if the country was an alternative or not, it was fine with me that our Republic existed the way it was, its footing among nations stronger from year to year, but I still wanted a travel visa for the West, albeit merely temporary, unlike S. R. I signed every petition unconcerned about the risks to my freedom or possessions, and I was game for every vigil, as long as I didn’t have to stand there myself, but they had to be held, absolutely. . Demonstrations, an excellent idea, I was all for getting together and spontaneously contemplating their concrete realization, I was always a fan of organization, noting every relevant date, though otherwise I was at odds with all time schemes. — Unfortunately she never showed any inclination to get involved with me, she clung to S. R.; now the two had had a falling-out, and I hoped it would last. . it only seemed to bind her to him all the closer.

Feuerbach barely held me to my duties any longer; without a clear task I was left even more in limbo, his ‘keep at it’ was a weary phrase. — Thus I was able to track her; it had grown clearer and clearer to me that in the coming weeks, months. . in the upcoming quarter I was to be her shadow. And wanted to be. . and so she walked on ahead of me, never quickening her pace — my own private operation! And when I thought about it, I’d sought out Operation: Reader myself as well — Reader was a step ahead of me too, in literature. .

And of course there was a sense of wonder at the ‘value placed on literature’ she’d discovered in the East. Weren’t the lefties from the West all interested in these values in one way or another? Of course they were, for alternative reasons. . in the West you heard about this high value all over the place — she’d had to discover it for herself, yes indeed, in East Berlin literature was valued more highly than a new, alternative shampoo. . incredible! And the Party’s ideologues tormented literature with all conceivable means, just to maintain its high value. . in every respect the East was the alternative. — What would she have said if she’d met a literature lover like the boss in A., capable of sabotaging entire factories just to secure the existence of a few literati in his town, and not the best ones at that?

It was time I mastered a certain repertoire of speakable phrases about literature, as I still had the intention of talking to her one day. . if we got into conversation, I’d have to demonstrate some opinion on literature, and not just hold my own against S. R., either. Ultimately literature’s raison d ’être (and, still more, its value) was a matter of utter indifference to me, except regarding my own texts. But I had no texts of my own. . if they had existed, I would have needed paper and pen, nothing more. I wasn’t even thinking of the experts, or publication opportunities. . oh, I even had a typewriter, on permanent loan from the experts, but all that was not enough. I’d have to have more to show for the student. . the neostructuralists came to mind! I could reject them, but I had to know something about them! — I had time, though (I said these words just as slowly, with just as sunny a smile, as every Firm employee did at least once a week: We have time. . we have lots of time!). . I had taken on the task of following her the whole prospective summer, and while completing these routes I could think about literature. . until now I’d merely sat around, in what was perhaps a prenatal position; now I had awoken and could start to walk. I could have phrases at the ready if things got serious. One of them was: The effusions of the writer S. R. always had struck me as elitist . They presupposed knowledge of a whole slew of books that weren’t even available in this country. He, for instance — M. W., author of seventeen poems published left and right of the Iron Curtain — suffered greatly from his inability to engage with certain works. . — Is that so? she’d have to reply, what books do you need? — And the contact would be forged.

At Storkower Strasse Station I had let her go her way. I’d recalled the downright sadistic route along the endless pedestrian bridge leading across the tracks to the platform. A pursuer in this dead straight glass-and-concrete tunnel, which smelt of dust and urine as though this were the smell of eternity, and where steps echoed as though in a horror film, was bound to give her a fright after all. . and perhaps she would have run to seek help from the people at the rail station. I would have spoilt things for myself. . it was just barely eleven, she was travelling towards Berlin’s nocturnal tumult, she would have forgotten me by the time she changed at Ostkreuz. And I went in search of a bus stop to head out to Frau Falbe’s.

Thinking back on that evening, I couldn’t deny a certain uneasy feeling. The notion of pursuing a young woman through the night was a dubious one, to put it mildly. . and dubious it remained, even if ‘I’ was the pursuer. I told myself I’d never known this side of me before. . and I didn’t know what it might have led to. No thought that I could have attacked her. No thought? There were moments on that path when I had pictured exactly that.

It was impossible not to think thoughts like that in the course of such an activity! It would have been a dead-certain means of losing my beloved job (even if they would have covered for me to avoid discrediting the entire Firm). . but there were certainly less troublesome options than that, and ones which didn’t lead to a several-year ‘training course’.—Nonetheless I had woken up the next day (to the finest spring weather, far remote from depression and the Hong Kong flu) with the memory of this idea. . and I know the thought would remain. Nothing could happen to me as long as it was just the thought; you could think anything, in fact you had to. . but what did I know of the capacity for escalation that lay in that ‘I’, that shadow on the student’s paths? I almost began to dread the next opportunity. . fortunately it was not so soon to come; she stayed in West Berlin, the quarrel with Reader must have gone deep.