The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,131

already mentioned Biermann. I took the whole thing very hard.

And you know what—the fact that your mother was Jewish, or her mother was Jewish, or whatever it was—that was really something. The love of a Jewish woman! A damn interesting thing for a German man of my generation. A Jewish woman—never touched, never tampered with, family intact—there’s only one way to look at it: it’s a sort of exoneration from the inheritance. I mean, that’s how personally we took things. And with fathers like ours, well especially Christoph’s—why not personally? Oh, that Venus of a mother of yours, that Sarah, was the light flooding into the backseat of the Trabi after the rain. I was shy with women back then, but I kept glancing over my shoulder at her, and she would smile at me, although God, I admit it, Christoph and I were both kind of snubbing her; what can you do, she didn’t know German, and she didn’t know Russian.

Christoph, to hell with him, he’d reach into his bag and pull out such riches—poststructuralists, deconstructionists, all these big names. Books I could have sold a kidney and not managed to rustle up for myself in the GDR, not at that time. And then we’d be at a stoplight and he’d do that thing of his—he’d turn his face away but put out his hand, and he’d be pushing deutsche marks at me. It was great, he was a grand soul, but there was this part of me that wanted to bash his head in. How the deuce did he get the upper hand? When we were in school, I was the one with friends. My grades were even better. So how did he have the power of the gift? Who appointed him?

Oh, your mother was lovely. The thing about me is: I’ve never been entirely indifferent to the wives of my friends. There’s something delicious about them. Women I find on my own can’t possibly be as alluring. You might say there is no cathexis there.

I’m talking in circles around the hot broth. Here’s what you need to know: for a few weeks that summer, while Christoph was busy with his big, important research at the Stabi, I waited outside the checkpoint at Friedrichstrasse for your mother alone. I drove her in my father’s car to the apartment in Friedrichshain. Part of me would pretend she wasn’t Christoph’s wife. I never quite understood her English, for example. Man, she could talk to let the sow out! But at the same time, secretly, I liked her precisely because she was no stranger at all; she was like a sister to me, she was the wife of my brother-friend, Christoph (which, to be entirely honest, is part of why I got started with you too.)

As for your mother—I don’t know why she did it. She said something once—about Christoph. Since the wedding night, apparently, he had been lying in bed with his back to her. Wouldn’t even turn around. He said he was tired. Christoph was not thriving in New Jersey, for obscure reasons, but maybe precisely because so obscure, all-powerful. That’s my sense at least. Later she told me that Christoph was in love with me, things like that. I don’t know. Better let sleeping dogs lie. Let dead dogs lie. Ha-ha.

What this means for you, Margaret, I can’t say. I realize I should never have gotten involved with you. What’s done is done, and there are some pretty ticklish issues here, although—no—I am not your father, not unless your mother carried you for fifteen months. But still, I hope you’ll stay away from me, and from my wife, for that matter, and handle the matter of the pregnancy as you know you must.

Friendly greetings,

Amadeus

THIRTY • The Return of the Tundra

There was a time that followed Margaret’s communion with Regina Strauss. It was a time in which she knew only two things: One, she had once loved a man named Amadeus. Two, the redemption she felt in loving the Family Strauss was a relief.

She continued to give tours under flowering spring trees, and at first it was a warm time. Then, as if riding the waves of her love for the Strausses, memories began to come at an accelerated rate. Margaret remembered short, bright films, dreams from the missing time.

Vodka, subway rides, waking in strange beds, doctors’ appointments, clothing she had once owned, and vodka again.

She began to sink deeper; she began to remember the sorts of things that