podium, he read his puzzle poems because they were short and didn’t betray their secrets to a listener, only to a reader. After the reading, an editor from Weimarer Beiträge complimented him on the poems and said she could fit a few of them into the issue she was closing. And why did he say yes? Maybe there really was something suicidal in him. Or maybe it was the looming of his military service, which it was already a small scandal that he’d deferred, given his father’s lofty position. Even if, as was likely, he served in an elite intelligence or communications corps, he couldn’t imagine himself surviving the military. (Poetic discipline was one thing, army discipline another.) Or maybe it was just that the magazine editor was about the same age as his mother and reminded him of her: somebody too blinded by self-regard and privilege to recognize what a total tool she was. She must have fancied herself a sensitive advocate of youthful subjectivity, a woman who really understood young people today, and it must have been inconceivable to her and her supervisors that a young man even more privileged than they were could wish to embarrass them, because none of them noticed what everyone else did within twenty-four hours of the magazine’s distribution:
| Muttersprache / Mother Tongue | |
| I | Ich |
| connected | |
| her | danke |
| es | |
| with | deiner |
| inappropriate | immensen |
| desire, | Courage, |
| made | allabendlich. |
| every | Träume |
| ermächtigen. | |
| enthusiastically | Träume |
| unnatural | hüten |
| response | eines |
| entirely | |
| mine. | Muttersöhnchens |
| ohnmächtigen | |
| She | Schlaf. |
| observed | Träumend |
| zealously, | |
| if | gelingt |
| a | Liebe |
| little | ohne |
| irritably; | Reue: |
| she | In |
| made | Oedipus’ |
| up | Unterwelt |
| such | singt |
| droll | ein |
| excuses; | jauchzender, |
| nobody | aberwitziger |
| Chor | |
| had | uns |
| ever | Lügen |
| really | aus |
| relished | Träumen |
| lying | ins |
| if | Ohr. |
| correct | Nur |
| hypocrisies | |
| sufficed | tags |
| to | offenbaren |
| evade | Yokastes |
| negativity. | Obsession |
| und | |
| She | Rasen |
| allowed | |
| me | sich, |
| everything; | ordnungshalber, |
| not | charakterlich. |
| every | Ich |
| radically | aber |
| grotesque | liege |
| upbringing | im |
| so | Schlaf, |
| succeeds. | Mutter. |
The hullabaloo that followed was delicious. The magazine was yanked from every shelf and trucked away for pulping, the editor was fired, her boss demoted, and Andreas speedily expelled from the university. He left the office of his department chair wearing a grin so wide it made his neck hurt. From the way the heads of strangers swiveled toward him, from the way the students who knew him turned their backs at his approach, he could tell that the entire university had already heard the news of what he’d done. Of course it had—talking was pretty much the only thing that anyone in the Republic, except maybe his father, had to fill their days with.
When he went out onto Unter den Linden, he noticed a black Lada double-parked across from the main university entrance. Two men were in the car, watching him, and he gave them a wave that they didn’t return. He didn’t really see how he could be arrested, given who his parents were, but he also didn’t mind the thought of it. If anything, he’d relish the opportunity to not recant his poems. After all, didn’t he adore sex? Didn’t he dearly love coming? And so, if you took him at his literal word, what more heartfelt tribute to socialism could he offer than to dedicate his MoST gLoRIOUs orgasm to it? Even his wayward dick rose to attention and saluted it!
The Lada tailed him all the way to Alexanderplatz, and when he emerged from the U-Bahn at Strausbergerplatz, a different car, also black, was waiting for him on the Allee. For the previous two nights he’d been hiding out at the Müggelsee, but now that his expulsion was official there was no point in avoiding his parents. It was February, and the day was unusually warm and sunny, the coal pollution mild and almost pleasant, not throat-burning, and Andreas was in such sunny spirits that he felt like approaching the black car and explaining to its occupants, in a lighthearted tone, that he was more important than they could ever hope to be. He felt like a helium balloon straining skyward on a slender string. He hoped he might never in his life be serious again.
The
