The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,26

the quickest escape from this terrible state. It’s the best idea nevertheless, because that way, if he says “no chance, not now, not ever,” then you could at least start grieving and move on. But no, you don’t have the courage. You would rather stay on the hideous tightrope.

Amadeus is his beautiful name, and he was a good friend of my father’s. I had the sense to look him up after I got to Berlin. Dad used to get dreamy when he talked about him, as though just because Amadeus was behind the Wall, he was dead. I think he talked that way because Amadeus couldn’t travel and Dad felt guilty for being free.

Here’s what I know so far: Amadeus Vilnius is his full name (no middle) from Magdeburg in Brandenburg. His parents are both of Russian-German stock—ethnic Germans who lived for centuries in Russia and were driven out by Stalin during the war. He’s forty-four, a professor of Russian history. He teaches mostly theory, speaks perfect Russian, also English and French. Needless to say, he’s brilliant. He is not particularly good-looking, although he has china blue eyes with black lashes around them that are wonderful. Christina says that he looks and moves like a snail that has lost its shell, and that’s entirely true. He keeps his shoulders pulled up for the most part, and he is all around slightly higher on one side. He smokes continually, Gauloises Légères. He’s about six feet tall, and his hair is graying rather severely, and he’s very unhappy about that. He laughs frequently and amicably, puts people at ease the way he laughs. He has a wife. He’s been married to her for two and a half years—her name is Asja and she’s as pretty as a picture. I saw her at the library once. Very skinny, with bird-like bones and high color in her cheeks, dark hair that stands up, and lovely clothing—brown and auburn clothing that suits her perfectly, and matches him, actually. In other words, I can’t compete with her physically. Beyond that, he has a girlfriend of a year and a half whom he was with last year when he was on sabbatical. She is nineteen years old (like me—hardly a coincidence?), Russian, from a musical Jewish family; she lives in Petersburg. She is starting to rebel, Amadeus says, and having a rough time of it. He took her virginity. He says that she lied to him and said she had had many experiences before. I don’t know whether I believe him on that count. Supposedly, although her dependence on him has become a burden, he doesn’t have the heart to call her in Petersburg and break it off, because of her precarious position trying to establish some kind of independence from her parents. Many of her childhood friends have stopped talking to her completely and her sister as well, because she quit the orchestra. But Amadeus says, being young, she has to believe in something, and she has made him her new god. So he thinks it would be devastating to her for him to forsake her. Asja (the pretty wife) does not know about Yulia (the Russian girl), or about me. Yulia knows about Asja, but not about me. Obviously I know about Asja and Yulia. Hopefully there are no others.

So I am the idiot. And you know, I suspect that I am the least cherished of the three of us, and not only because I’m the newest addition.

It’s awful. You can see what an idiot I am. If it weren’t for the all-consuming love I have for him, I would never in a million years stand for this kind of degradation. Oh Margaret, Margaret, Margaret! You will read this later and say to yourself, Look at what the loneliness did. I have always said in these pages that it is only the emotionally vulnerable who fall in love. And look at me. I should have taken precautions, knowing that these first months in Germany would be difficult. And I tried my best. I got plenty of books (well, maybe not enough truly stimulating books), and I traveled. I tried. I feel as though falling in love were catching a disease. Because I don’t know how to finish this.

Well, maybe I should help you understand what I do see in Amadeus. The above description makes him sound awful. It’s this: he’s lovely in every way. We recognized each other’s intelligence almost immediately because it’s the same