smiled.
‘So am I, but what has any of that to do with Marxism?’
This time Karl almost screamed in dismay.
‘Finished. Finished. Finished! A utopia flushed down with the rest. How can Marxism exist, when it has been abandoned by its subject – the heroic proletariat? Can’t you and Helge understand? Marxists are nothing but flecks of foam on the dark blue ocean.’
He, who had once been so close to them, now wanted to disremember his parents. He was building his own career. He had a time plan. Success, he told himself, was the quickest way to erase DDR memories, which still haunted him. Karl intended to be a member of the Bundestag in 2000 and Chancellor by 2010.
This was ironic, given that he had never revealed any real interest in politics. His addiction was very new. He had chosen the SPD like one chooses a football team. There is a simple rule. If you stick with your team through bad times, there is a reward sooner or later. When he was young he had simply ignored the endless chatter about history and politics. He had loved his grandmother Gertrude. She had spent a lot of time with him, but not like the others. She always put him to bed with adventure yams, stories of heroism during the last war and the resistance to Hitler in Germany. Perhaps some residue from that time had made him prefer the SPD to the Christian Democrats. Perhaps.
Karl wanted to start life afresh. He had seen an advertisement for a researcher’s post and applied, never imagining that he would get an interview, let alone the job. The Ebert Foundation had advertised for graduates. They wanted bright young things in their twenties, whose brains could be attached to computers which would then churn out documents for the policy staff at SPD headquarters on the Ollenauerstrasse.
He had interviewed well. His cold-blooded critique of the DDR had impressed the two women who interviewed him. Unlike those of some of his competitors from the old East, Karl’s presentation was emotionless. No grandiose proclamations of freedom had spouted from his mouth. His approach was clinical. He had concentrated on the inability of the state-ownership system to deliver the goods. For him, the collapse was due to material shortages, an insolvent economy which exposed an impoverished ideology. It was this, he told them, that triggered the Fall, rather than any great yearning for abstractions like democracy and freedom.
The women were impressed. They looked carefully at this tall young man in his dark-blue suit and grey bow-tie. He was clearly intelligent. His instincts were conservative. Everything about him – the way he took notes, the meticulous filing system in his briefcase – indicated a neat and systematic approach to work.
They kept him talking for nearly two hours, but the only time he had shown any trace of emotion was when they asked whether he would have been equally happy working for the CDU.
‘Of course not!’ Karl’s voice was a note higher. ‘I am a Social Democrat.’ The older of the two women, Eva Wolf, a veteran of the sixties’ student movement, would have preferred it if this young man had displayed just a tiny sign of rebelliousness, but he did not, and she had shrugged her shoulders. These kids were different.
In her written report on Karl to the Foundation, in which she recommended that he be given the job, Eva described him as the archetypal new model Social Democrat. She noted that he was ‘a complete slave to power, obsessed with one idea: how to propel the SPD into power. If it means developing ideas that are acceptable to the Bavarians, he is ready to prepare a draft; if it means ditching old party shibboleths, even at the cost of annoying our friends in IG Metall, he is strongly in favour.
‘When we asked him if he was prepared to move to Bonn within a few months, he smiled and said he was prepared to leave Berlin tomorrow. I think Tilman should have a long session with him and then we should make a final decision. Karl Meyer would be wasted as a researcher at the Institute. He should be given a position immediately in the Party apparatus. He thinks quickly but is not the sort who leaps to intuitive conclusions. Everything is thought out carefully. I am enclosing a copy of the speech he wrote when we tested him. You will notice a few original phrases. If Scharping can deliver speeches like this, who knows but we might even win.’
Eva’s intuition on these matters was greatly respected by her friends at Party headquarters. Within a month of joining the Foundation, Karl was safely settled in the research bureau of the SPD.
One outcome of his move to Bonn was a strong personal friendship with Eva. Twenty-five years his senior, she had partially replaced Vlady and Helge in this crucial transition period of his life. She was the only friend with whom he could talk about his past. He told her about Gerhard’s suicide, which had upset him a great deal. Gerhard, who understood him, but was worried by Karl’s indifference to Marxist politics. Gerhard, who had taught him a song that began: ‘From the devil’s behind blows unrest/From God’s backside only boredom …’
There were moments, Karl told Eva, when he used to wish that Gerhard had been his father. Perhaps it was Gerhard’s closeness to Vlady, the fact that they were political siblings, that had created the confusion in Karl’s mind. He had written to Helge several times about Gerhard, and she had responded warmly. To Vlady he had written nothing, and Vlady was the parent who really needed to talk about Gerhard. Karl sometimes wondered why he was punishing his father, but no satisfactory response was forthcoming.
Eva always listened sympathetically. She was startled by the contrast between her young protégé’s emotional confusion and his political confidence. Last night, during dinner, she had both comforted and confronted him.
‘Everything has its limits, Karl. Everything. What a couple does for each other, what a father does for his son or the daughter for her mother. The fact is, you love your father much, much more than you ever acknowledge. Gerhard’s death has forced you to admit this to yourself. Yet you hesitate. Why? You’re hurt that your father didn’t help you when you needed him the most, but did you ever help him?’
‘Does Matthias ever help you?’
Eva smiled. She often discussed her family with Karl. Even though she had separated from Andi, her film-maker husband, when she was appointed Head of Research in the German section of the Foundation, they remained friends. Matthias, her son, was a lead singer with an anarcho-Green rock band in Berlin. He was the same age as Karl. They had nothing else in common. Despite his awkwardness, Eva adored her son.
‘No,’ she said in reply to Karl’s question, ‘but then I don’t need him so much. Matthias is very close to his father. They have many defects in common. Their financial condition is never stable, but they manage somehow. I am never permitted to send either of them any money. They help each other. Both of them regard me as a traitor. Matthias has written a new song about a once-radical and uncontaminated mother who joined the SPD and now thinks impure thoughts. I’m told that Stefan Heym’s supporters were singing it in the streets during his campaign. Unlike you, Karl, my Matthias hates Bonn. Hence my monthly trips to Berlin. Soon you’ll be back in Berlin, too. I’ll be left all alone. Will Monika accompany you?’
Karl blushed. How the hell did she know about Monika? The SPD headquarters were relocating to Berlin. Karl was dreading the move. Monika was only one reason, but how had Eva found out? He asked her.
‘There’s no mystery. I tried to reach you a number of times. Your colleague said you were on the phone to Monika. Is it serious?’
‘I don’t know … She’s very big in her bank, you know. They’re fearful that she might be headhunted and taken away by rivals.’
‘Is she on our side?’
‘I don’t know. She’s not interested in politics.
