The History of History Read online

  His general aggravation with the girl had led him to do something he would normally never do: he had read the contents of some of her discarded mail. He learned that she worked as a guide, gave historical walking tours, and although she considered herself an intellectual and read a great deal (or made a great deal of photocopies) of Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt, and for a while took a close interest in Rosa Luxemburg, otherwise, for the most part, she was merely interested in the Third Reich. You know: who was guilty here, and who was guilty there; the Auschwitz trials; how many died here, how many died there. To judge by the papers that went into the recycling, she seemed to make all sorts of photocopies related to gossip about whores like Magda Goebbels, Geli Raubal, and Eva Braun, and he had once peeked through her door as she went in and seen a bookshelf with the complete diaries of Joseph Goebbels, with their distinctive spines. Erich thought it was a most unpleasant business—foreigners who sensationalize or even think they can call Germany to task. Where had she been when he had taken a stand against his own father, the old Nazi who didn’t like his (Erich’s) leather pants (that was a laugh!), been partially disowned and had to make a new life for himself? Not even a glimmer in her grandfather’s eye, that’s where.

  That Margaret Taub!—she was so sympathetic at first glance, such a soft-looking girl, almost clownish, as if she were ready to be touched, ready to feel pain over anything. After a while, though, you saw that she was soft enough, but so dreamy as to be almost criminally oblivious. All in all, Erich thought, the impression was of a poisonous cobra that believes itself, very genuinely, to be a small dog.

  But Erich kept saying Guten Tag. The trouble was this: although she never seemed surprised at his presence in the courtyard, she never seemed to recognize him either, even after six years in the flat. Yes, she didn’t seem to know him, and although she never withdrew that half-smile, she also never looked at him. Her eyes always found something to rest on off to the side. Perhaps it was for this reason that he continued to say hello: there would be no satisfaction in withholding his friendliness if she wouldn’t notice him doing it.

  Today he watched her. There was something more distressing about her as she locked up her bicycle, more wild-eyed. (Recall: this was the very day the city turned to flesh.)

  Erich said Guten Tag and Margaret gave a kind of cry, as though she had been about to scream but quickly suppressed the noise before it escaped. She turned her head and took a few swaying steps toward her stairwell, paused as if to regain confidence, and then darted away like an animal into its burrow.

  Erich took off his gloves and went in his own ivy-covered house. He opened the file cabinet in the downstairs room that was black with weeks-old cigarette smoke. Without much trouble, he found the heavy notebook he was looking for, thick with several paper clips holding in loose pieces of paper.

  It was a diary. He had found it once in the trash, along with a number of Margaret’s other belongings. He had held on to it only as evidence, should it ever come to that: evidence of the outrage! Some people in this building, they threw reams of paper matter thoughtlessly together with the general trash!

  (The irony—that Margaret with her obsessive privacy, her self-isolating ways wanton in their thoroughness, would be hounded by precisely such a busybody as this. She had thrown the journal in the general trash expressly because the paper receptacle was dry-looking and odorless—it seemed a comfortable place to dig through and steal from. The general trash, the foul-smelling option, appeared to be a roiling abyss that swallowed up far more conclusively. Little had she known!)

  Erich thought, now, that he would read the diary. The English would be a struggle. It was the English that had stopped him from perusing it before. There had been, however, reasons to learn English once, reasons having to do with international anarchism. And, Erich told himself consolingly, he liked a challenge.

  And then it happened that Erich the Hausmeister read several long passages Margaret Taub had once written. He became quite interested; he encountered a Margaret very different from the Margaret he knew. The American, it seemed, had not always been as she was now.

  February 18, 1999

  (Ah!—Erich thought—an old diary then, from when she first moved in. Not a bad thing at all.)

  My dearest diary,

  Why do I write to you? Why do I write!!! I’m in love, you see. And I’m too proud to really talk to anybody about it (not that I know anyone here anyway) because honestly, I’m afraid I’m in love in the most terrible way—the way of taking oneself and one’s situation too seriously, of the mind brushing over the same sad fibers of conversation one had with the beloved with such loving repetition that if it were alcohol, I’d have passed out long ago.

  It’s Amadeus. I’m in love in the way I thought only thirteen-year-olds could be and I haven’t felt anything close to it for such a long time and the terrible thing is that I don’t think he loves me back. It’s ridiculous, this kind of full-blown sweet torture, that the poets know so well and is so utterly ridiculous, where one vacillates between intense ecstasy and intense agony throughout the day, because one feels as if one were walking a tightrope where falling one way will mean waves of joy unknown to humankind and falling the other way will mean the darkest hell. Your mood simply depends on which possibility you take most seriously at the time. Meanwhile, you attempt to stay on the tightrope, because that way at least you preserve a chance at the ultimate beauty. For instance, you would never attempt to force the beloved with an ultimatum even though that is obviously 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 a
nd 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 type of intelligence (and believe me, not everyone recognizes my intelligence). What he is doing with all these women is the same thing I do with my multiple men, you know so well: trying to gain a secret power that won’t have any risk, trying to put a wall up against disappointment—the dominating pleasure of the juggler, the clandestine thrill, the sense of quiet self-congratulation. And oh, the way he responds differently to me every time I talk to him is so suspenseful; the way his personality changes. His obvious vulnerability and cravenness, but also his endless sweetness. The way he loves his books. After only a very brief time I felt like I knew him extremely well, also the bad things about him—what trouble it would be if I were his beloved. But also what joy, to be with someone who is so similar, so familiar. We can’t lie to each other because we are too much alike—we both lie about the same things and for the same reasons. For example, once during an intimate moment, when he was above me, I said, “If there’s anyone who deserves a harem, it’s you.” And he said, “If there’s anyone who deserves to be queen of my harem, it’s you.” We were lying through our teeth, both of us. He knew I thought he was rotten, and I knew he had a great ability to crown a new woman queen of his harem every single night. The momentary truce, though, that was glorious.

  Oh, this is horrible. If only I could quickly fall in love with someone else. I pray that it’s a product of my loneliness and as soon as I start classes at the university it will dissipate. (I’ve transferred to the history department!) Please let it be so. That much is clear at least, that even my endless joy at his nearness would not be if I could actually possess him, because he would never stay faithful to me, so it would be an endless torture. Oh please let this infatuation pass quickly.

  Erich leafed further through the book. The entries were not regular, altogether just twenty or thirty pages for a three-year period. He skipped forward to 2001.

  June 20, 2001

  I must tell you, poor journal, about my extraordinary good fortune. I have no one else to tell! Of course it is regarding my happiness about Amadeus. And somehow, maybe—don’t jinx me!—I’m actually having an effect on him and he seems to be starting to love me. (Oh God, let it be so!) When we were in bed and had both had something to drink, I said, “Well, if I can’t be your girlfriend, can I at least be your Schatz?” and he hugged me and said, “How about my sister?” and I objected on the grounds that then we couldn’t sleep together. So he said I could be his Schatz but that I already was his Schatz anyway, and that I was a Tier and he liked Tiere, and that he liked me even if I weren’t a Tier. Then the next day he dawdled at breakfast, and said he felt relieved that he wasn’t having affairs with multiple women anymore and pulled me onto his lap and kissed me and told me he liked me and said I had a right to be jealous, that I could call him anytime I wanted because he didn’t mind if I behaved as if he belonged to me, and that his wife still thought I was just an overzealous student and wasn’t suspicious. Then the next day we went to bookstores together, and we had lunch and he talked further about the possibility of making a trip to Prague together, and he seemed slightly hurt when I acted like I would go somewhere alone in August instead. If you only knew Amadeus, you would see what progress this is.

  Let it go, let it go. If there is anything I’ve learned at this point in life it is not to ask for everything immediately and at once. Getting things from Life, and from people, is like trying to catch an animal: if you run after it, it will flee; if you are still, it will come to you. If only I can be completely still!

  Erich flipped through the book. He came to a very short entry over six months later.

  January 22, 2002

  I don’t know what to think, but I am certain that for all the travails, the heartache, the intimate acquaintanceship with Amadeus’s worst qualities, how he and the passion he arouses in me bring out my worst qualities, for all of that—I do want to try. I rejoice in him endlessly, when we’re together the smell of him drives me crazy with pure love, just like in the very beginning. I’ve always known that Amadeus will bring me pain—and maybe it’s for later years to examine why even the pain attracts me. And yet, I don’t think it’s to be condemned, my love for him, because in the end, I have won. My life is not so much a happy one as one that gets zapped full of bliss over and over. Amadeus is the zapper, whether I like it or not. I’ve gotten more from him than he has from me, although I would give him everything I have.

  EIGHT • Don Quixote of the SS

  The days since the city’s transformation—they passed Margaret by. And although when she emerged from Number 88 the city was still burlesque and untamed, Margaret was jaded now. She was not surprised that the city appeared fleshy, and she walked past it all, half blind. Let the city’s bosoms spill out over the top of its dress—what did she care!

  But while the sight did not disturb, the sounds still sometimes exhausted. When she heard the doors and windows drawing in breath all at once, making a reverse hissing sound up and down the avenues, she braced herself. The groaning and symphonic sighs sure to follow, as thunder follows lightning, rattled her still. The city meant it vindictively, she thought, knew she was its wind instrument with a reed calibrated just to its melodizing breath.

  It had a message, too.

  Something would breathe at her, whisper in her ear: Magda was not the only one, it would say at first, more on the quiet side. But then louder, with a slight sneer: And what about the stupid ones?

  For reasons Margaret could not quite understand, her mind would run with this instantly. When she heard the question she would begin to ask herself again and again: but what about the stupid ones?

  And inexplicably, the question would expand in her mind in the following manner: should stupid people, she would ask herself, be called innocent? And then she always thought of Hitler’s consort, Eva Braun, as exhibit A. It was Eva Braun and her almost successful suicide attempts at the altar of her desperation for Hitler that suggested themselves to Margaret as the purest idiocy. And then the little matter of her mania, her crazy love.

  Was Eva Braun, Hitler’s mincing little girlfriend, innocent or guilty?

  The stupid could not be called incontrovertibly guilty, so Margaret’s ratiocinations went. In the case of Eva Braun and Hitler’s other concubines, their womanliness held them aloof from activity, like the fatness of larvae. Eva Braun’s three suicide attempts during the years of her affair with Hitler might even be interpreted as resistance, albeit of an exclusively self-referential kind. By no means, however, could these plump larvae be called innocent either. Their coarse minds were complicit by default in any crime offered to the
m. Margaret had a picture in her head of Eva Braun with her broad, girlish face and swelling hips, her chamois underwear, driving her Volkwagen Beetle, that chubby little car.

  The question of how to judge Eva Braun seemed terribly important.

  More than once, Margaret read over the few surviving diary entries of Hitler’s mistress.

  March 11, 1935

  There’s just one thing I wish for: I would like to be seriously ill and to know nothing about him for at least eight days. Why doesn’t anything happen, why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him! I’m in despair. I’m going to go out and buy sleeping powder again and go into a half-trance state, and then I won’t think about it so much.

  Why doesn’t that devil come and get me? It must be much nicer at his place than it is here.

  I waited for three hours in front of the Carlton and had to watch him as he bought flowers for Ondra and invited her to dinner. (That was just my wild imagination. March 16.)

  He needs me only for certain purposes, it’s not possible otherwise. When he says I’m dear to him, it only means: at that particular instant. Just like his promises, which he never keeps. Why does he torment me like this, instead of ending it at once?

  February 18, 1935

  Yesterday he showed up altogether unexpectedly, and we had a lovely evening. The most wonderful thing was that he’s thinking of taking me from the shop and—I’d better not get excited yet—of giving me a little house. I must not let myself think about it, it would be so marvelous. I wouldn’t have to open the door to our “honored customers” anymore, and go on being a shop girl. Dear God, let it be really true and become reality in the near future.

  …

  I am so infinitely happy that he loves me so much, and I pray that it will be like this forever. It won’t be my fault if one day he stops loving me.…