Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [43]
In the GDR people were required to acknowledge an assortment of fictions as fact. Some of these fictions were fundamental, such as the idea that human nature is a work-in-progress which can be improved upon, and that Communism is the way to do it. Others were more specific: that East Germans were not the Germans responsible (even in part) for the Holocaust; that the GDR was a multi-party democracy; that socialism was peace-loving; that there were no former Nazis left in the country; and that, under socialism, prostitution did not exist.
Many people withdrew into what they called ‘internal emigration’. They sheltered their secret inner lives in an attempt to keep something of themselves from the authorities. After 1989 Dieter retired from teaching as soon as he could. He was depressed, and required medication. ‘I think one could count him too, as a victim of the regime,’ Julia says. Living for so long in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state had broken him.
Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds. Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring those realities in order to stay sane.
Ever since she can remember, Julia was interested in languages. Before she could read she was fascinated by the Roman and Cyrillic letter systems she’d find around the house. At school they were taught English (‘very badly’) and Russian. Julia won first prize in the state Russian competition: a trip to Moscow. Curious about the world, she had penpals in Algeria, the Soviet Union and India. Her spare time was spent formulating letters in French, Russian and English, and sending them off to the outside world.
Julia wanted to be a translator and interpreter. ‘I was growing up in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War. People really thought that the US and Russia might start a nuclear confrontation, and in the GDR we were on the front line. It was sort of naïve, but I thought that by facilitating, even in this small way, communication among peoples I could make a contribution.’ She shakes her head at herself, as if embarrassed by the extravagance of her hopes. But I don’t see why a talented linguist who believed in her country should be embarrassed by this goal. Then again, I don’t see in front of me a talented linguist who believed in her country. I see a woman who leaves her past in a box but then comes to collect it; and whose part-time study and part-time rental agency work keep her only part-attached to the world.
Like her father, Julia believed in East Germany as an alternative to the west. ‘I wanted to explain to people overseas about the GDR—that Communism was not such a bad system.’ She didn’t want to leave. ‘We watched a lot of western television and I knew about unemployment, about homelessness, about hard drugs. And prostitution—prostitution! I mean how is it people think they can just buy a person? That was incredible to me.’ She doesn’t seem bitter about her belief in the GDR now. She seems, somehow, nostalgic.
She shivers. I go down to the cellar for more coal to feed the heater. When I come back into the kitchen Julia has not moved. I’m relieved: I half-expected to find one of the yellow sticky-notes she sometimes leaves for me in her fine handwriting: Just remembered an appointment. Sorry. J.
But she wants to keep talking. The edge of the linoleum table has come loose and without thinking she is stroking it flat. The memories do not come in the right order. As I listen, I think this is because she has not voiced them much before. But there may be another reason: something her mind keeps returning to which she veers away from telling.
10
The Italian Boyfriend
When