Of course W. had heard; there had been isolated incidents for the past year now, and he’d always heard the news with a certain sense of triumph. Now he had to put on an ingenuous look.
Have you ever been inside the Permanent Mission? asked Feuerbach.
W. said he had; it would have been pointless to deny it, since it was dead certain that lists existed of all the people who’d ever seen an art exhibition or gone to one of the poetry readings on Hannoversche Strasse; in the Berlin art scene where W. occasionally moved, attendance at these events was taken for granted.
The first lieutenant said: You know, we were thinking of sending you in there again. Not to see an exhibition. . we might be planning to position you in there, yes, you ought to get into the Permanent Mission too. Is that an idea you could take to?
You mean I should infiltrate the embassy refugees?
Yes. . but don’t put it that way, you’re worse than the Western press! Feuerbach made a pained grimace, then changed the subject: Do you remember working as a stoker on Chausseestrasse, in the branch of REWATEX catty-corner from the Brecht Bookshop? Back then you were still asleep for us, the last few months; at least you were half asleep, you were drunk the whole time! So I guess that’s why you can’t remember?
Yes I do, I remember, it’s not that long ago!
And then when you got off work in the afternoon you went to the Brecht Bookshop to buy books. . they always have a few more copies of the books that sell out right away everywhere else. . remember? And then you took this packet of books to the pub on Hannoversche, right across from the Permanent Mission. Where there was a very good view of who went in and out of the Mission. .
It was unnecessary to remind him of that time (the only thing he’d been reminded of was that you were under constant surveillance here in Berlin); the summer months in the Chausseestrasse branch of REWATEX were quite present in his mind. He had let Frau Falbe persuade him to get a job after all; undaunted, she’d kept coming with offers from that personnel manager, the husband of her acquaintance; finally, worn down, he’d accepted the last offer, perhaps the worst of the choices; he accepted the position due to the promise of good pay.
This time lingered in his memory as a singular concentration of scorching days (now, as Feuerbach reminded him of it, the next summer was not far off. .). — Back then the summer had brought everything to a grinding halt, only the REWATEX branch went on laundering unperturbed and required vigorous stoking. The city clamour flagged and lay fallow, steaming away with smouldering, putrid smells over pavements that glimmered bluish in the sun’s glare. The days were broken only by gruellingly short nights, when a fire-red moon raced at high speed over the urban desert; by day all the windows on the streets were closed and curtained, the heat crept through the city like a sickness with no cure. The cars ceased to move, and the empty streetcars trundled through the maze of houses like obscure iron machines whose function consisted in producing lethal noise, but in the end even it remained strangely muffled between the extinct facades. But on Chausseestrasse, and further down on Friedrichstrasse, the tourists marched along, swathed in gaudy, skimpy bits of fabric, clothing whose fantastical cut immediately betrayed that they came from the West, where the weather had to be still more excruciating. As he was still living at Frau Falbe’s, he had an obscenely long way to work; just a month after starting at the Municipal Laundries he had been transferred to the small unit on Chausseestrasse, where the work was easy, but the hours unconscionably long. The branch consisted mainly of a self-service laundry accessed from the boulevard, but in the back building there was a section for so-called household linen which was dropped off at the front and processed ready-to-use in the back, employing steam-powered wringers and driers. Before these machines could be put to work at six in the morning, the coal-fired boiler had to be pressurized, meaning that W. had to start stoking no later than five. But before that he had more than an hour’s journey with the day’s first buses and S-Bahn trains. And then his work day lasted until four in the afternoon, sometimes longer, depending on the amount of laundry. . with only the minor mitigation of a two-hour lunch break. Due to the long hours, he had abandoned his job at the REWATEX laundry combine that same autumn. And to avoid justifying himself in front of Frau Falbe, in the end he moved to a different neighbourhood.
And on these two-hour lunch breaks you sat in the pub and spent the whole time staring at the gate of the Permanent Mission, said Feuerbach. And what else could you have stared at, there’s only the one window. It was a pleasure to watch the beer flow down your gullet. . what might you have been thinking the whole time? You sat by the window, staring out. . always the same things to see. . is the beer better in West Berlin, you may have asked yourself. Or you asked yourself why there were more and more green-uniformed policemen out in front of the building. What would you say if I told you we really were planning to have you go along into the mission? It would have looked great if you’d showed up right on your lunch break, still in your work clothes, with that packet of books under your arm. That’s the poor poet who never got to publish a thing in his own country and has to work as a stoker for REWATEX. That would have been a terrific legend for you, quite convincing, I think. . Feuerbach waited for his words to have an effect; seeing none, he went on: Of course we left you alone on purpose until you’d acquired that image. . you’ll always have that, anyway, it’ll be a great entrée to the local scene, for instance. But still, I think it’s too bad. . oh, what am I saying!. . that my wonderful plan fell through. I’d almost sold the chiefs on it already. . but then someone came and let the cat out of the bag! I’d had it all figured out. Of course you weren’t really going to go to West Berlin. Just the opposite, you were supposed to cave in at the Permanent Mission. Yeah, you were supposed to go to pieces, what with the long wait and the uncertainty. That would have been understandable in your case, with someone who’s got his decent job and good pay. So you were going to be the first to crumble in the negotiations, and you were going to be the proof that nothing would happen to the people who came back voluntarily. You see, for me you were our chance to take the offensive there. And what would have happened — the other people in there would have peeled off one by one, that would’ve been it for their solidarity.
And when the ones who peeled off came, you could have picked them up one by one and arrested them! said W.
I’ll leave that part open! said Feuerbach. That wouldn’t be our affair any more. But don’t you want to know who came and screwed up my wonderful story?
W. gave no reply, and the first lieutenant said: You know the guy. He plays the big boss in the Podunk town you came from. You know the guy, a namby-pamby type with a salt-and-pepper fur collar, no clue about literature. He went and tipped us off, he let the cat out of the bag, or rather, he had it delivered by some lanky monster from his department. Hands off, he really does want to go West! That was the message. . he really wants to defect, we’ve found him out: source-that-must-go-unnamed, that’s it, period. And of course the chiefs threw up their hands: What, he really wants to go West. . impossible, that’s it, case closed!