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Kino Muza A
Novel by Artur Becker, The first question came in Friedland, in the still-functioning border transit camp. The office walls were hung with strange geopolitical maps: here East Prussia, Danzig, Breslau and Silesia still belonged to Germany, even though the maps had been printed after 1945. "Do you know someone you can stay with?" asked an official in a synthetic sweater from C & A. "If not…" Of course he knew someone. But if not… he would have been put in a home for ethnic German returnees. Antek Haack's fate would have been a former rural brothel in Ahausen, Allertal. The brothel owner had moved and taken his entourage with him, said the official in Friedland. But - as per committal No. 2575257 and with a one-time support payment (welcome money from the German government) of DM 150.00 (plus DM 30.00 in bridging money) - Antek was sent to Bremen. He'd claimed he was registered with the police in Bremen, residing there with a certain Lucie Weigert. In reality he still hadn't gotten up the nerve to knock on her door. Instead he'd found cheap lodgings in a former freight depot. The whole sixties-era building complex, adjacent to the main train station, was being used by young artists who regarded Antek Haack with suspicion. "When are you going to show us your pictures?" they asked him. He told them he wasn't a painter and art wasn't his thing, which only made the young artists even more skeptical and curious. "You think you're a genius, huh?" was how they rewarded his honesty. The first three months were an ordeal. One time he pulled himself together and painted a picture with black paint, a Zen picture, a circle with a dot in the middle on a white background. When he got a chance he was going to show it to the young artists to prove that he was one of them. But he was afraid of making a fool of himself, and so he avoided them like a Turkish cleaning lady. At some point - unfortunately he hadn't destroyed the picture - his first and only painting fell into the hands of a twenty-five-year-old girl called Flora. Or rather: at a small party in his flat she dragged it out from under his bed. "You don't have to hide your work," said the girl, and after studying it for a long time she suddenly pronounced: "That's really good. I mean it! You have talent. But - how should I put it - it's too expressive. Maybe you could try to paint a little more biologically, you know: back to the organs!" He promised her to do his best in the future, and was finally rid of the young artists. He had satisfied them: Antek Haack was the guy who painted Japanese circles and dots and lived with no toilet or shower in two rooms that must once have been the tracking station, a kind of control tower from which the loading and unloading of the freight cars was monitored. The quickest way to reach the showers and toilets in the administrative building was with the elevator; the stairs were like the Minotaur's labyrinth. If you got lost in there, it could take you hours to find your way back out. But the hardest question was the one he had to answer at the employment office: "What is your profession?" The Polish word "economist" sent the bureaucrats at the employment office into a state of panic: they thought they were dealing with an economic expert from Brussels. Antek hadn't mentioned the fact that he didn't have a degree. And Germany had ticket-takers like sand on the rivershore. You had to take a ticket with a number on it at every single government office. That kept chaos from breaking out and gave the petitioner the feeling that he wasn't waiting in vain. In vain - never! "Well! What's your name supposed to be?" Ultimately that was the most awkward question in Friedland. "It says Antoni in your passport? You stand out like a sore thumb as it is! I can't change your last name, it's German, after all. Your documents confirm that. But you can spare yourself some trouble by Germanifying your first name. How about Arnold? It's a one-time opportunity - and free of charge!" Antek Haack accepted the kind offer without hesitation and was often addressed as Herr Arnold at the employment office. It doesn't matter, he thought to himself, Herr Arnold isn't as bad as Adolf - though it nagged him that he hadn't been quick-witted enough to suggest Adolf to the official back in Friedland: what of it! Whatever my passport says, it doesn't automatically mean that that's who I really am! he thought later. These days who can claim with one hundred percent certainty to know who he is? Maybe we're all goddamned Klingons! But it couldn't have worked out better. With a new last name it would be harder for Brzezinski to find him. Other questions he had brought with him from Bartoszyce acquired a whole new meaning here in the Federal Republic, the old Reich: Why did I beat up Teresa's poor husband and encourage her to follow me to Bremen? Was it sheer desperation, because it didn't work out with Beata and me? Was it hatred of Brzezinski? Will he really hunt me down? Get rid of me? And will Teresa even manage to get a passport in Bartoszyce? And if she does, what am I supposed to do with her here? Actually the visa requirement shouldn't pose an unsolvable problem; Antek had sent Teresa an invitation and pledged in writing that he would cover all costs incurred by her visit, especially in case of illness. And they would have to get married immediately so that Teresa could get a permanent residence permit. Did he realize what that meant? On the day of his departure for West Germany he had handed Teresa three thousand marks from his share of the sale of the brickworks, which ought to be enough to bribe everyone in Bartoszyce, not just the police officer Zbysek Muracki and his colleagues, who were responsible for passport matters. But would Teresa really spend the wretched money for that? Maybe she was long gone, phoning him from Detroit, and he didn't even notice? With three grand, a bit of luck and brains, a woman like Teresa could be in the USA already, taking language courses and creating a new, American, life for herself. Antek had one consolation left, a slight one, but nothing to be sneezed at given all the pesky questions that kept him awake at night: he didn't have to learn the language all over again. Either at the university or at the Otto Benecke Foundation or at the adult education center. He was a bit handicapped, putting it mildly, but still he belonged to his new people, because he had papers. The only awkward thing was maybe that he had a better command of Polish. Spoken and written. But now, for better or worse, he was here in Bremen, as physically present and photogenic as a naked shop dummy: a man with an accent from the East. The Solidarnosc era was passé, and it was no longer in to be a Pole: all Antek Haack could say for himself was that his name was Arnold and that the employment office had found him quite a good job, even though economic miracles had stopped happening in this country. Antek's first, official workplace was a home for the mentally handicapped in Allertal, an hour's drive from Bremen's main train station: You're neither an economist nor a ticket taker! In other words: We have a job for you! From now on you're a nursing aide - and if you refuse, your allowance will be cut! the employment office wrote him after he had been unemployed for three months. He was happy about the job. All he was annoyed about was the Universum TV set from Quelle he'd bought with his first paycheck. The thing turned out to be a lemon: all the channels featured his old films from Kino Muza. He never turned it on. West German movie theaters were comfortable, and great importance was attached to punctuality, as there was at work. There was one thing he liked: they sold beer in the movie theaters here, and you could even smoke. And the actors' voices were dubbed by Germans, while in Poland there was nothing but original versions with subtitles. So he could have been perfectly happy, if it hadn't been for Brzezinski. At any moment he could be eliminated by his agents, even in broad daylight, in the middle of a crowd in the big city. Brzezinski was a scumbag incapable of letting bygones be bygones. For him every case was always current, even if all the suspects had long since been put out of commission. A good bloodhound never gave up, and that was what Brzezinski was. |
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