In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge Read Free Book Online Page B

clearer than it had been for a long time ... If only the paper had said, the new state secretary ... She almost chuckled with pleasure to realize how well she had learned to distinguish these fine nuances. The new state secretary; that would imply that there was an old one around somewhere ... but there wasn’t any old one. He didn’t exist. They were the protégés of a man who didn’t exist. They were as good as nonexistent themselves. There’d be men in black leather coats standing at the Berlin East rail station, and Charlotte would follow them without resistance, making no fuss. Would sign confessions. Would disappear. Where to? She didn’t know. Where were the people whose names were never mentioned anymore? Who not only didn’t exist, but who had never existed?
    She stood up, removed her hat. Rinsed out her mouth. Looked at herself in the mirror. Idiot.
    Took the nail scissors out of her purse, cut the little veil off her hat. She would at least spare herself that.
    The man was standing in the corridor, smoking. She squeezed past without touching him.
    “Where’ve you been all this time?” asked Wilhelm.
    Charlotte didn’t reply. She sat down, looked out the window. Saw the fields, the hills, saw them yet didn’t see them. Was surprised by her present thoughts. She thought she ought to be thinking of something important. But she thought of her Swiss typewriter without the “ß” character. She thought of whoever would reap the benefit of those fifty cans of Nescafé. She thought of the Queen of the Night that she had had to sell back to the flower shop (at rock-bottom price, too). And she thought, while outside the train a film without any plot was showing, while a tractor was crawling across a field ...
    “A tractor,” said Wilhelm.
    ... while the train stopped at a small, grubby station ... “Neustrelitz,” said Wilhelm.
    ... while the landscape became flatter and bleaker, while monotonous rows of pine trees flew past, interspersed by bridges and roads and railroad crossings where there was never anyone waiting to cross, while telephone wires hopped from pole to pole in pointless haste and raindrops began to slant across the windowpane—she thought of Wilhelm sitting on the deck chair in Puerto Ángel almost a year ago, thought of his thin, pale calves sticking out of his trouser legs ...
    “Oh, you’ve taken the veil off your hat,” said Wilhelm.
    “Yes,” said Charlotte. “I’ve taken the veil off my hat.”
    Wilhelm laughed. The whites of his eyes flashed in his sun-tanned face, and his angular skull shone like polished shoe leather.
    Oranienburg: a signpost on the road. Memories of outings, of cafés where you could buy coffee for a few pfennigs, sit in the shade of a chestnut tree and eat the sandwiches you had brought with you; of bathing beaches, of people in their Sunday best, of the voices of street vendors with wooden trays slung in front of them, of the smell of hot bockwurst. Now, passing through it, she thought for a split second that this was another Oranienburg, a town unknown to her: a collection of buildings scattered pointlessly around the place, buildings that, if they had ever been fit to live in, all looked deserted now.
    A broken telegraph pole. Military vehicles. The Russians.
    A woman with a bicycle was waiting at a railroad crossing with a dog in her bicycle basket. Suddenly Charlotte knew that she couldn’t stand dogs.
    Then Berlin. A broken bridge. Facades damaged by gunfire. Over there a bombed-out house with its interior life revealed: bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom. A broken mirror. She almost thought she could make out the mug for toothbrushes. The train rolled past the building—slowly, as if going on a tour around the city. Charlotte almost felt sorry for the people of this country. It would be so expensive!
    Nothing looked familiar. Nothing was anything to do with the metropolis that she had left at the end of the thirties. Stores with makeshift, hand-painted