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Kobalt
“But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.”
-- Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Chapter 1: Yellow Stain Land
East Berlin
1962
Spring
Katerina Bergmann woke early, her unsatisfying slumber disturbed by a nagging sense of purpose. She burrowed down into her covers, intending to go back to sleep, but was immediately distracted by the persistent yellow stain on her low bedroom ceiling. It had appeared less than a week ago, and in that time it had doubled in size. Sleep would be impossible now that she had been reminded of the stain. She’d only spend the next hour seeing it behind her closed eyes.
She gazed up at the stain as she waited for her mind to return to full consciousness, watching the details of it come clear in the dim light of her street-level window. Because it resembled the shape of some unknown country, Kat had christened it Yellow Stain Land. Each morning she tracked its progress, watching the greedy damp borders slowly expand. With each passing day it developed new salients and frontiers, marching towards total domination of all four corners of her dingy ceiling.
This morning the invasion seemed it would finally outrun its supply lines. Kat didn’t relish the idea of waking up under a pile of rotten plaster, so she bypassed the useless building superintendent and limped down to the public call box to put in the work order herself. When the promised technicians failed to arrive, she went down the next day and called again, this time showing less patience as she listened to excuses.
Yes, there was a ministry order to fix the leaking plumbing in the apartment above hers, but the people living upstairs were never at home when they came. She didn’t think much of this, and explained through gritted teeth that it was trouble for her to go down to the public call box in the plaza. Fix it, she told them. I’m tired of looking at it. It’s going to fall in on me while I’m asleep.
We understand, miss. We will try again. We have a work order, miss. A plumber is on his way. A contractor is on the way. We’re waiting to hear from the upstairs residents.
The upstairs apartment had been empty for over a year, but Kat hadn’t troubled to enlighten them to her awareness of this fact. In truth, she enjoyed the way they lied. They weren’t coming today, which was just as well, as Kat had other business. That business had weighed on her sleeping mind, and soon she would have to give it her full attention.
She got in line for the shared washroom early, so the water was still hot. Even so, her shower was brief — just long enough to scrub cheap shampoo through her hair and rinse it out. It smelled a little of laundry detergent and left her shoulder length curls coarse and chemical scented. Later she would comb a little coconut oil through her hair to restore its lustre and texture, but for now it went into a short wet bun.
She shaved her legs at her own bathroom sink, sitting on top of her toilet and working quickly and efficiently. She had long ago learned to work around the challenge of her scarred and twisted right foot, but it had taken some practice before she could manage it without cutting herself. She still nicked herself occasionally, but her trimmed nerve endings did not register the pain, so she usually didn’t notice unless someone pointed out the red stain. She did not like drawing unnecessary attention to herself, but especially not to the condition of her right foot. It raised questions she wasn’t interested in answering. She’d taken to wearing dark socks to avoid comment.
She bent slightly to look into the mirror, and set about applying her mask with studied indifference. Her cosmetics were of high foreign quality, but for the appearances’ sake she kept them stored in the packaging of inferior local brands. She took her time as she applied the dark lipstick, the soft dark pencil for her eyebrows, a little powder for her cheeks. It wasn’t much, just enough to lift her features, to distract from a few premature lines at her eyes and around her mouth. The effect was to just fail to beautify, instead creating a face that was specific, and yet not distinctive.
In the full light of day, Kat was unquestionably beautiful, but felt that beauty had long ceased to be useful to her. A keen observer might perceive the aristocratic cast of her fine cheekbones, her full mouth, and her wide eyes, but she was practiced at concealing these things by misdirecting the viewer with unflattering details. Her penny-coloured hair washed out her skin, counteracting much of her attractiveness. Her eyes, an intense pale blue, were striking and memorable, but their colour disappeared behind tinted gold-rimmed glasses that aged her by ten years.
Kat relied heavily on this accessory. She didn’t like the way strangers looked at her eyes rather than into them. It created a sense of artificial intimacy, and made her feel like taxidermy. In fact, all excessive notice went against her deliberately constructed presentation. Everything about her appearance, while ordinary and not completely unaesthetic, was designed to make her recede into the background of memory. She had cultivated and guarded this invisibility for over a decade, partly as a necessary expedient, and partly because she found the attention and society of other people inconvenient.
She emerged from the low slung apartment block upright and tall, unornamented except for her tortoiseshell-handled cane. She’d chosen conservative brown slacks that were faded from too many washings and an equally conservative starched white blouse to go under her shabby tweed coat. Her gait had a slight roll to it, but she made it graceful with practiced dignity. This flaw drew the eyes of her fellow citizens, but never for very long. It was her most effective camouflage.
A tram malfunction made her a few minutes late to class. The Templiner Straße campus was small but dense, filled with identical high-rises, each of them resembling nothing so much as concrete waffles stood on end. Mercifully the lecture theatre was only on the second floor, making it a short climb. She limped up the stairs to the lecture hall doors, gaining the inside landing just as the professor stepped up to the podium. She sat down in an aisle seat near the door and waited for the lights to dim before removing her glasses.
Dr. Vann’s inaugural lecture wasn’t new to her — it was the same one he’d given at the beginning of last term. At that time, she had only planned to audit one or two classes, but found that by the end of winter she had sat through every seminar. Dr. Vann was an extremely popular instructor, though Kat didn’t really give a damn about Enlightenment Socialism or any other political theory in his oeuvre. Neither did she care much about the government’s mandated socialist curriculum — and so far it had shown nearly equal indifference towards her.
It was not the subject, but Dr. Vann himself who had captured her interest. Four months ago, she’d recognized him in the street, and had tailed him to this same lecture theatre. She had not then been aware it was the first day of winter term, nor that he was not a mature student as she’d first guessed, but the class’s instructor. A brief, discreet investigation informed her that he was tenured, had been with the university nearly ten years and was well liked by his colleagues and employers.
In spite of her natural political antipathy, Kat had enjoyed his lectures. He had a clever way of using the revolutionary era as a vehicle for criticism of the Ulbricht regime. It was a risky approach, but to the average mutton-headed government auditor Dr. Vann’s warnings to avoid certain texts, certain arguments, very specific banned books, made him seem conformable to the state agenda. In reality, he was providing a shadow manifest that deliberately challenged his own doctrine. Illegally importing those books had been lucrative before the wall had gone up the previous year. Now it was essential economy for many of these students, especially those with foreign citizenship.
Kat leaned in as the professor cleared his throat, though she didn’t register his opening remarks with any great interest. Augustin Vann himself was the primary object of her study. He was approachably handsome — an impressive, rangy six feet tall, perhaps eight or nine years older than herself, with trimmed dark hair going grey at the temples. His soft grey eyes seemed to radiate warmth and understanding, with something considered in his facial expressions — a way of listening and speaking at the same time that served him well in his occupation. He made her think of a kindly wolf, practically domesticated. A second-hand Viennese Gregory Peck.
He was also an engaging speaker with a deep, reassuring voice that carried from the podium without amplification. He spoke to the primary sources wherever possible in his short introductory survey, using Voltaire, Hume and Smith to shore up his obligatory proto-communist thesis. His gestures were expressive and open handed as he invited their attention to this or that school of thought. She could feel the subtle lift in the students around her, the way they engaged with his enthusiasm.
It was a full house, as Kat knew it would be, and she was not the only person over thirty in the class. The latest educational initiatives for the edification of the people had been widely promoted following the recent construction of the wall. She thought it a rather sad attempt to use academia to reassure the general public that their diminished freedoms were a function of liberal progression, but she recognized its accidental merit. She had finished her own education years ago, but still it pleased her to see a few white and grey heads among the young Berliners’ crunchy home perms and stiff crew cuts. She knew from her previous audit that Dr. Vann would do his best by them, as navigating the currents of state-mandated hypocrisy was a particular talent of his. He was also an excellent liar, which was so far the thing that interested Kat most about him.
The lecture was short, just a brief preview of the syllabus. Dr. Vann didn’t need his notes for this, so he spoke directly the audience, his eyes wandering over the little arena, sparkling when the harsh stage lights caught them. As he drew the session to a close, his gaze moved up to where she was sitting and lingered there long enough to make her stiffen. She knew he could not see her too well from behind the lights, but she was also aware in that instant that he had marked her.
He’d never given her any indication he’d noticed her in the past, but now she wondered. She felt an acute desire to get up and leave, to forgo her planned confrontation. Instead she steeled herself, remaining in her seat as the house lights came up. She allowed the press of students to bypass her before rising to her feet, cane in hand. Meanwhile, Dr. Vann waited patiently at the bottom of the stairs with his briefcase, his dark grey silk jacket folded over his arm. Unhurriedly, he ascended the stairs until he was just one step beneath where she stood, his eyes level with hers.
“Well,” he said almost casually, as if they were already acquainted. “Shall we get coffee?”
They undertook the short walk in silence. Kat knew the Adler as a tavern frequented by the university faculty, and had deliberately avoided it for the past few months. In contrast to the featureless modernity of the campus, it was an antique, an improbable survivor of the previous war’s near-apocalyptic bombing campaign.
Dr. Vann studied her with open curiosity, but did not press her for her name or any other information. It wasn’t until they were seated in one of the bar’s tall wooden booths with cups of espresso in front of them that they were ready to begin.
At first she said nothing, watching him through her tinted glasses as she consulted memories from other lives. She studied him in the light of the mullioned window. There was more silver in his hair, but those soft grey eyes were just the same. She was satisfied she had not mistaken him, that he was undoubtedly the same man.
The questions now brimmed on her tongue — did he recognize her? Had he made her in that crowd during the semester she’d spent studying him? She wondered how he had occupied himself in the twenty-two year interval since their last encounter, but refrained, wanting to see what he had to say for himself. Whether it was an excuse or an apology. Whether it was another fabrication to go with the birthdate, diplomas, refugee status and whatever else was contained in the legend someone had constructed for erstwhile Dr. Augustin Vann.
She knew better than to let on, allowing herself a moment of being subjected to those piercing grey eyes before choosing her moment. Trying to remain outwardly calm, she lifted her cup and sipped at the vaguely dirt-flavoured coffee. It was better than most, but like everything east of the wall, not quite good enough, and she regretted not having ordered tea. Not wanting to get distracted, she took a deep breath.
“So you have questions.”
“I feel as though we have met,” Dr. Vann said in that low, cadenced voice. “I don’t mean that you attended my all of my lectures last term, which was quite an undertaking for someone who has never been enrolled in any of my courses.”
“Checked with the registrar, did you?”
He smiled. “I can count reasonably well.”
“All right,” Kat set the cup down with no intention of picking it up again. “My name is Katerina Bergmann, but I generally answer to Kat. I am thirty-eight years of age, and finished my masters in Applied Linguistics about ten years ago.”
She watched him for signs of recognition, but Dr. Vann’s friendly mask registered little more than a slight twitch. He smiled to cover it, and pushed his cup and saucer aside, eyes boring into hers as he tried to place her.
“I can’t for the life of me shake this feeling of déjà vu. Where did you take your degree?”
Kat considered, then decided on a partial truth. “America. The University of Virginia. I returned to Germany to find old friends, but there wasn’t anyone left. I was eligible for a government pension because of my foot, so I decided to wait and see.”
His eyes appraised her. “Why not apply for a professorship? The need for real scholars is pretty desperate here.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Without waiting for an answer, Kat pulled out a pipe and a small pouch of tobacco. It was a western variety, another of the small prohibited luxuries she indulged in.
Dr. Vann watched her in this exercise, seemingly fascinated. “Not at all,” he said, the bright interest in his face completely unconcealed.
“Nepotism,” Kat said after she’d exhaled a cloud of rich, spiced smoke. “Any occupation that requires a university degree goes first to the children of officials, the brothers of officials. I’m half a foreigner — I could apply for a professorship and wind up a secretary. Why lower myself?”
“Well, I admire your strategy,” he said, his smile warming into something a little more self-conscious. “But I somewhat hoped you liked me for myself and not as a means to secure a good reference.”
“I honestly hadn’t thought of that.”
“The former or the latter?”
She didn’t answer, but removed her glasses and began to polish them with her napkin. For an instant, she looked at him, fixing the full intensity of her pale blue gaze on him. Again, she saw evidence of the subconscious reaction, the prickling he must have felt at the back of his neck. It passed, and he settled back into himself, returning her stare for a few heartbeats.
He folded his hands. “May I ask you a personal question?”
She flicked the stem of her pipe, inviting him on.
“Will you go to bed with me?”
She studied him. Perhaps this had been his interest all along, that he truly was oblivious and there was nothing deeper in his covert counter-surveillance of her. From another man, such a question would have been a nervous flirtation. From Dr. Vann it was the frank inquiry of a man who was just interested — but one also accustomed to securing such invitations with little effort. And why shouldn’t he be, Kat thought with amusement. He was an intelligent, handsome man with an attractive job title. A new man for a new Germany, cosmopolitan, educated, and free to discard the old puritanical chains of Western superstition — along with any other inconvenient past encumbrances.
Kat had toyed with this question during her long study of him, had wondered how to balance her operational needs with her genuine curiosity. She had always known there was a possibility she would have to make her investigation along these lines, but she hadn’t expected him to be quite so blunt. She met his gaze, silently inviting him to qualify himself.
“In the near future?” he amended, his smile now a slightly cockeyed. The self-mocking expression of a naughty little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
She paused as she deliberated, reflecting not for the first time that his well-cultivated tan probably went from his forehead to his heels without a single demarcation. She waited for the tension in his jaw to become visible, the subtle pull of his lower lip as he nibbled the inside of it. She took a long, hard drag on the pipe, exhaled through her mouth and sucked it up through her nostrils before exhaling again. Then she dumped the dead ashes into the sludgy espresso.
“I like whiskey,” she said. “Single malt.”
“Will bourbon do? It’s the closest I’ve got.”
She affected hesitation, now a little coquettish as she pretended to weigh the adequacy of this substitution, then nodded in assent. She already knew this. She knew his brand, too.
