Fear of Mirrors. Tariq AliЧитать онлайн книгу.
them soon, but there is something else worrying me, keeping me awake at nights.
More than anything else, I want to repair our relationship, bring some laughter back into our lives. I can see where the danger lies. Unspoken bitternesses and unresolved tensions have become lodged within us both. I want to find an antidote to this poison. I hope you agree, Karl.
Even as I write, it seems ridiculous to go so far back into the past instead of coming to terms with more recent histories. I mean your mother’s decision to leave us, for which you have always blamed me. Perhaps if she had stayed and I had left, you might have censured her instead, though that would have been equally unjustified.
Everything seemed to go wrong after the death of your grandmother Gertrude. Your mother and I found we had less and less to say to each other. With our apartment empty I noticed her absences much more and began to feel that she had lost interest in me. She was spending more and more time in her clinic. Then one day while I was having coffee with Klaus Winter, he said something he shouldn’t have said. You remember Klaus, don’t you? He was a very old friend of Gertrude and was weeping a great deal at her funeral. He’s the one who bought you a pair of jeans from the other Berlin on your fourteenth birthday.
Klaus told me quite casually that he had seen Helge with a friend at a concert two days ago and asked why I had not been present. The point being, Karl, that not only had Helge not told me she was going to a concert, she had explicitly said that she couldn’t attend a meeting of our Forum that same night because of a patient, whose condition was such that his appointment could not be cancelled. Why had she lied?
I left Klaus Winter stranded in the hotel where we were meeting and rushed home. I was crazy with jealousy. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, you were out with your friends. When your mother returned I confronted her with the facts. To my amazement she smiled and called me pathetic. I hit her. I felt ashamed immediately afterwards. I pleaded to be forgiven. She did not speak, but walked slowly into our bedroom and began to remove her clothes from the cupboard. I was paralysed. I could neither say or do anything to stop her. I sat silently on the bed as she continued to collect her belongings and then pack them in her faded green pre-war suitcase, which had once belonged to her grandmother. I remembered the day I had brought her home after our wedding and carried this same suitcase into our bedroom.
‘I did not lie to you, Vlady. I never have. The man with me at the concert was a patient and it was part of his treatment. Your reaction is a symptom of your own guilt-ridden mind. I’m going. We’ll talk next week when you’re calmer, and then we’ll both talk to Karl. Tell him I’ve gone to Leipzig to see my mother. And if you want Evelyne to move in, I have no objection.’
That’s all she said as she walked out of our home. I wanted to scream, to run after her, to drag her back, to fall on my knees and plead with her to stay and give our relationship a last chance, but I did nothing except shed a few silent tears as she walked away.
Perhaps something inside me told me it was no use. We had grown apart and nothing, not even you, Karl, could bring us back together again. The rest you know. She came back and I broke away from Evelyne. The big break came much later and for reasons we both understand.
Helge was wrong about Evelyne. If I’d confessed to her, she would have been angry, but she would have understood. She found out by accident – a stupid letter from Evelyne to me which I should have destroyed. A letter in which she argued that the female orgasm was a male invention and that I should not despair at my inability to satisfy her. I only kept the letter because it amused me. Your mother read it differently and ascribed powers to Evelyne which that young woman, alas, never possessed. I suppose I should begin at the beginning.
This may come as a surprise to you, Karl, but I was a popular lecturer at Humboldt. Comparative literature is a field that permits a great deal of creativity in its teaching. Evelyne was one of the students in my special seminars on Russian literature.
I used to, for instance, talk of Gogol reading extracts from Dead Souls to Pushkin and the students would then write an imaginary dialogue between the two men. Evelyne was quick-witted. We were all smiling at her clever dialogue till it reached a surreal stage. She was allergic to the prevailing orthodoxy and, as her imagined exchange neared the end, she had included some savage references to Honecker and the Politburo. Everyone looked at me. I did not comment, but moved on to the next student.
I had never spoken to her after my classes. Our relationship had been restricted to regular and sympathetic eye contact and the occasional smile, especially when a student trying hard to move upwards in the party hierarchy posed a particularly uninspired question.
That same week it was my fiftieth birthday. Helge had organized a party. To my surprise, Evelyne showed up with a few of her university friends, none of whom had been invited. Helge welcomed them all.
It was a haphazard and disordered occasion. Evelyne alone remained sober that night, observing us all through a haze of tobacco smoke. That was when I first saw her as an attractive young woman. Medium height, slim, short blond hair and exquisitely carved. Her breasts were not voluptuous like Helge’s, but small and firm. Overlooking them was a pair of sharp blue eyes and an intelligent, angular face.
A week later we made love for the first time in a tiny apartment overlooking the old Jewish cemetery. It belonged to her aunt, who was never at home during the afternoon. For a few months we shared everything: experiences, confidences, worries, fantasies and dreams. Our love grew like a wild rose. We would walk to the park and sit on the grass, holding hands and kissing like nervous adolescents. Just when I was thinking seriously of telling your mother, the affair died suddenly. What had pruned it out of existence? On my side, I guess, it was the knife of reason. One afternoon I couldn’t take her. She was mocking and cynical.
‘My stock is clearly going down and yours is refusing to rise. I think we’ve exhausted each other. Time to move on. You look surprised, Vlady. You’re not bad-looking for your age. I was into you because of your acid tongue. You were different from the other robots at Humboldt. You used to make me laugh. I never intended a long stay at your station, you old fool. Anyway your signals need repairing and you need a more experienced engineer than me.’
I thought then that she was driven by pure ambition. Her overriding need to change lovers was determined by which of them could help further her career. I had introduced her to a film-director acquaintance and had seen her at work on him. I had no doubt that he would replace me. He did.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps she had simply outgrown me, moving to a different phase of her life. I had spent a lot of time on her compositions, making critical notes and compelling her to rewrite and rewrite till I thought she could do no better. It was I who had read her short stories and poems. It was I who had noted she had a good ear for dialogue and pushed her in the direction of writing film scripts.
A few days after we had ended our affair, I saw her on the street with the film director. I behaved badly. I disrupted their talk and dragged her away. Her reaction indicated that it really was all over. She poured scorn on me. Hatred flowed out of her like molten lava. She threatened to ring Helge. Then she walked away. I was embittered. I felt I had been exploited. I wanted to confront her once again, but she had disappeared. She and the film director had fled to the West. One of her friends told me she had settled in Heidelberg.
It seemed pointless to tell your mother anything. It was over. But someone had recorded the episode. Unknown to me or Evelyne our summer trysts in the park had attracted the attention of Leyla, a Turkish painter from Kreuzberg who had been commissioned to paint a set of East Berlin landscapes. Her portrait of us had a surrealist flavour. We were buried deep in an illicit embrace in the park. She had entitled her painting Stolen Kisses.
Many months passed. Evelyne was happily ensconced in my unconscious. One day there was a rainstorm. Your mother, desperate for shelter, entered an art gallery. A coincidence, of course, but what wretched luck. She saw the painting, pierced through the surrealist mask, recognized me and questioned Leyla with some intensity.
Helge could not afford to buy the painting, but Leyla, observing her distress, gave it to her. When the exhibition was over, Helge brought the painting