Out of the Line of Fire (26 page)

Arriving in Berlin by air is a bizarre experience. The Wall runs through the city like a huge scar through a beautiful face. One side is expressive, vibrant, alive; the other is inert, pale and vacant. Or so it seems. West Berlin is an elegant city, self-conscious, chic and vital. There is a sense of energy, an energy that is fuelled by the manifest absurdity of its partitioning. People seem to be aware of living their lives at the very cutting-edge of the East–West conflict. It is a city where tomorrow doesn’t exist, where the only moment is NOW.

So much for Berlin.

As the conference dragged on, I realized I had merely used it as a pretext to get myself back to Germany. Now that I was actually here I was more interested in the reality of finding Wolfi than in discussing endlessly subtle questions of narrative technique.

I had been sitting in the conference for two days, bored and fed up, when suddenly something in my brain locked instantly into the words of the speaker at the front of the auditorium. He was quoting from a sheet in front of him:

Sie erinnerte sich, wie die Strassenlaternen die platten Pflastersteine in schimmernde Lichtbögen verwandelten, Lichtbögen die, als sie sich ihnen näherte, wie Hunderte von winzigen, glänzenden Flügeln zu flattern schienen. Sie hatte den Eindruck, nicht mit dem Boden verbunden zu sein, sondern zu schweben.

I could not believe my ears. I flipped quickly through my conference programme until I found:

Kleist: Unver
ö
ffentlichte Fragmente.
A discussion of a recently discovered
unpublished manuscript by Heinrich von
Kleist.
Speaker: Dr T. Hatzenbühler

I could not have been mistaken. It was almost exactly the same image Wolfi had used five years earlier:

She recalled how the street-lamps transformed the polished cobblestones ahead of her into shimmering arcs of light, arcs which seemed to flutter like hundreds of tiny radiant wings as she moved towards them. She had the impression that rather than walking, she was floating over them.

I listened stunned as I heard what was essentially a recapitulation of Wolfi’s account of the Bessermann trial, except that this account had been written in 1810, just eighteen months before Kleist’s death.

At the first opportunity I slipped out of the conference and took a taxi to the State Library. Here I went through the microfilmed back issues of the
S
ü
ddeutsche Zeitung
for the period March to May 1981. The only report I could find that in any way resembled the Bessermann story was the pathetic account of a man who had abducted his daughter as a result of a custody dispute. But the resemblance between what Wolfi had told me and the Kleist story was indisputable. All the major details were there: the parents, the fiancé, her disappearance, the baby, her grief, the subsequent calamitous recognition, everything. It was extraordinary.

When I walked back down the steps of the library, I was too agitated to go back to the conference. I decided to hire a car and drive around Kreuzberg. I spent the next four hours just driving round and round the crumbling old tenements. My intention was not so much to find the building in which Wolfi had lived—this had more than likely been demolished years ago—but to feel myself into part of what had been his world for a time. As I drove I kept saying to myself—perhaps he had walked down this street, waited at this bus stop, sheltered under the eaves of that shop one cold day in the rain, saw this section of skyline in the twilight. Perhaps the same faulty neon sign or cryptic piece of graffiti had caught his eye. ‘Happy Birthday Dad, love Dave’, I saw scrawled in English on the grey expanse of the wall near the Bellevuestrasse viewing platform. Maybe Karl had modelled himself on an old woman I glimpsed making her way down one of the side streets with an odd rocking motion, her plastic shopping bags held strangely away from her body.

The next afternoon I went to Maximilians. I tried to imagine which seat it had been that Karl had been sitting at when Wolfi saw him through the window. I imagined them arguing, watched as Karl stormed out, heard the coffee machine hiss. Ja, bitte?

That same afternoon I made my way down to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche which overlooks the plaza where Wolfi and Karl had waited that fateful afternoon. I too sat in the sun watching people come and go. My eyes kept returning to the blue U-bahn sign above the stairs leading down to Zoo Station. It seemed to beckon me. I got up and began walking towards it. This was not a wholly conscious decision and as I neared the top step I became aware that for some completely irrational reason my heart was pounding. It was as though I had stepped into another dimension, as though Wolfi were there standing invisibly beside me. I had never experienced anything quite like this and, quite literally, the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. Down I walked.

On the underground platform, this powerful sense of unease seemed to intensify. I could see and hear what was going on about me perfectly, and yet I felt simultaneously cut off from it, as though by some invisible barrier. A train pulled into the station. People got anonymously off and others, equally anonymously, got on. I heard the loudspeaker overhead abruptly announce ‘Zurückbleiben’. Everything
looked
absolutely normal and yet, as I watched people ascending the staircase down which I had just come, I had the overwhelming impression that the moment they had disappeared from view they disappeared altogether. I was sure that if I rushed back up onto the plaza I would find it completely deserted, ominously still, apart from a piece of white paper bounding mysteriously across the concrete. Worse, I would find myself teetering on the edge of a dark and infinite abyss.

I turned and began walking along the platform towards a corridor on my left the arched entrance of which grew larger as I neared it. Then I was standing in front of it. I looked down its long badly lit length.

Jesus! I said under my breath.

There in the flickering light, halfway along the corridor, someone was sitting slouched over, as if reading a train timetable. I glanced quickly up and down the platform, then began to make my way tentatively towards them. I could feel myself beginning to sweat as I tried to make out their features. As I got closer, however, I saw that what I had taken to be someone sitting there in the flickering light was not a person at all but a large plastic garbage bag squashed into the seat. Beside it an old coat spilled onto the floor. I laughed nervously to myself. This was ridiculous. But with this the spell had been broken and as I pushed open the washroom door and saw the graffiti-covered, cracked white tiles which Wolfi must have glimpsed as he ran through to where Karl was, I had completely regained my sense of calm. The feeling that I was being drawn along by some irrational force had gone. Objectively, calmly, I looked around. One of the washbasins had a large hole in it. Its taps had been removed. ‘Fit mit Shit’ had been sprayed in blue paint across one of the mirrors. I pushed open the other door. A row of half-opened cubicles confronted me. Out of curiosity I walked down to the end one. Suddenly something, someone, lunged out at me. Jesus, what the…Instinctively my hands went up to protect my face and I started to duck. I felt a body crash heavily against mine and then whirl around to face me. I stood ludicrously stooped for a moment. A short, dark man who was obviously not German stared suspiciously back at me. He was wearing overalls and carrying a mop.

Jesus, you gave me a fright, I said.

What you want? he said.

Nothing, I replied.

Then what are you doing here?

I shrugged my shoulders.

Nothing, nothing. I just had to see something.

He looked at me closely again, then turned and reached into the cubicle to retrieve a bucket.

You looking for boys? he asked.

No.

You a foreigner?

Yes, I said.

It’s not safe here, he said. You want to shit, go shit some place else.

With this he brushed past me and went out. A few moments later, still a little shaky, I left myself.

I spent the next couple of days searching for other clues which might have helped me find Wolfi. I went back to the State Library and sifted through all the back issues of the local newspapers from June to September 1982 for any reference to a mugging at Zoo Station. I also went through the court reports. There was nothing. I went to Central Police Headquarters, a large and forbidding fortress-like building opposite the Tiergarten, to see if there was any record of Wolfi’s arrest. Initially they refused to help me. The sort of information I wanted was confidential. I insisted on speaking to someone higher up. The young constable I spoke to was clearly unimpressed. He disappeared for a few minutes then returned.

You will please follow me, he said tersely in English.

He led me briskly to a door at the end of the corridor and we began rapidly ascending a long flight of stairs. He was taking them two and three at a time so that I was virtually forced to run to keep up with him. As it was I was barely able to keep his disappearing heels in sight, and to make matters worse the stairway was covered in a fine, choking dust which he kicked up as he went, making it almost impossible for me to breathe. I was on the verge of stopping, furious with his impudence, when I looked up to see him standing composed and utterly indifferent on the next landing. He was holding a door open with one arm and when I reached him he ushered me through with a sweeping, insolent gesture of his hand. I was then led through an unoccupied maze of partitions to a small office outside which we stood for a few moments before he knocked. When we entered I found myself standing opposite a sad looking, bald-headed man in his fifties who was sitting behind a large wooden desk which was absolutely clear except for a single sheet of white paper in front of him.

Entschuldigung, Herr Inspektor Schlossmann, das ist der Kerl der mit Ihnen sprechen will [this is the bloke who wants to talk to you].

I was about to protest his use of the term ‘Kerl’ when Herr Schlossmann interrupted me.

Ja, ja. Das weiss’ ich schon! he said irritably. [Yes, I know that!]. Geh’ jetzt [Now go].

The young constable did an about-face and left.

The Inspector turned to me and asked what my problem was. I began telling him my story. He sat there as I spoke, staring impassively up at me, merely swivelling from time to time in his chair. When I finished he remained silent for some minutes.

You like Handke? he said finally.

Well, I started to say, a little startled by his question, amongst the post-war genera…

Nein, nein, nein, he said angrily. Keinen solchen Mist! [No, no, no. None of that shit!]. Just tell me, do you like him or not?

Yes, I said shrugging my shoulders.

He looked away. He brought the fingertips of his hands which rested on the desk together.

Where are you staying? he said eventually.

I gave him the name of my hotel.

Someone will call you.

He got up, wordlessly shook my hand and showed me to the door.

The rest of the afternoon I spent finding out what I could about the experimental theatre groups that still existed in Berlin. I started at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, then called by the tourist information office where I picked up a number of pamphlets on what was being performed at the time, and then finished by dropping into almost every performing arts café dotted along Kantstrasse and the neighbouring side-streets. By the time I finished I had quite a list.

I spent all the next day and most of the night driving from one renovated warehouse or tumbledown theatre to the next. Several of these were in Kreuzberg, but not one of the people I spoke to could remember anyone called Karl Richter or Karl Klebbermann, let alone someone called Wolfi Schönborn.

What about someone called Vladan or Vlad?

No, no one by that name either. Sorry.

I got back to the hotel late that night, tired and more than a little disappointed. I had just called down for some coffee to be brought up to my room when the phone rang. It was the police. They had been trying to get me all day. There was a pause. I could hear a muffled voice in the background. Then they came back on.

Yes, here we are. You were after some information on a Wolfgang Schönborn.

Yes, that’s right.

I’m afraid that our Personal Assault files show no record of anyone by that name.

Nothing?

No, nothing at all. I’m sorry.

Another blank, I thought.

I thanked them and hung up.

I began to think that perhaps the world which Wolfi had created in his correspondence really didn’t exist, and had never existed. I lay down on the bed to think over where I would go from here. The phone rang again. Distractedly I reached out and picked up the receiver.

Hello, I said. Hello…

The line was bad and I could barely make out a voice on the other end.

Kaiser Marine, Kaiser Marine, it kept saying.

I’m sorry, I yelled into the receiver. I can’t hear you…

Then I heard a female voice say clearly: Karl Richter. Karl Richter. You were looking for Karl.

I sat up.

Yes, I yelled. Actually I’m looking for Wolfi. Wolfgang Schönborn.

Wolfi?

Yes, yes. Do you know him?

The phone crackled incomprehensibly. I cursed it.

What?

Do you know him?

Yes. Can you meet me?

When?

Now, in…

When? I can’t hear you. God damn this bloody phone.

Half an hour. At Vivaldi’s.

Vivaldi’s?

Ask the hotel desk.

What’s your name?…Your name?

Marianne. Marianne…Scheysermentsch. In half an hour, okay?

Marianne!…Hang on.

Too late. She rang off.

I stood looking at the phone in my hand.

I grabbed my coat. As I opened the door and hurried out I narrowly missed colliding with a young, uniformed boy with bad skin from room service carrying a tray with cups and a pot of coffee on it. He stood looking at me.

Just put it on the table, I said quickly. I pushed a ten-mark note into his hand and retreated down the corridor.