they divided the sky 106 old regime, others the new one, and all equally dangerous. When they got home their feet were bloody, but they were as happy as children can be who have made it home after all. He spent one night in his old bed—that was some night! At dawn the house was searched. Not because of him. The Soviet patrols were looking for bigger fish. But they found the pistol on him, the one he’d pulled out of a ditch along the way and had intended to throw away the minute he got home. He’d forgotten! Damn! “Come along, you!” “So,” Wendland said, “I spent three years in a mine in Siberia. Hardly logical, eh? I can tell you that’s what I thought too! I took a nail and scratched a phrase into the chalk wall by my bed: Is this why I got away? Of course, I have no idea what I would have done here. At the end of my three years there, I was sent to antifa6 classes. When I came back I went straight to the FDJ.7 By the way, my friend, the guy I walked home with and who threw his pistol away in time, went over to the other side long ago … Maybe the logic of an event can’t really be distinguished from above or below, maybe just from your own position?” Manfred thought: I know what’s next. The usual political line. He got up to go. Maybe the other man knew more about him than he wanted and was being clever. But what exactly could he know? Did he have anything to hide? “I have to go,” he said. “Your problem is really very interesting.” Wendland looked at him, disconcerted. Manfred impulsively gave him his hand—let’s set aside all this damned distrust!—and he said again, with more warmth, “It really is interesting. And now, let me congratulate you after all.” They stepped out into the street; the sun was still there, pale and powerless. They squinted, said goodbye at the door, and went their different ways. 19. The year has been moving on. Time is no longer slipping away; that flow has stopped. Long nights, filled to the brim with dreamless sleep and short days scheduled according to the doctor’s orders—that’s the Christa Wolf 107 way things are now. That inexorable flow of time, the images rushing past—that was then. And the moment everything stood still and you looked at each other and you both felt you wanted to stop your watches … Wasn’t that at the reception, that one evening, remember? At the end of the reception held at the home of Manfred’s professor. “The one with the carefully parted hair?” “As if that were the most important thing about him.” “Of course not. But I need something to remember him by.” “What about his wife.” “That slim blond woman, who was much younger than her husband and who gushed about him, wherever she was?” “Oh, god, yes, I’d forgotten all about that … ” They’d stayed in town over Christmas for that one evening. I was longing for the village. Maybe those big twinkling winter stars don’t really exist. Maybe I never saw them. But I thought they always stood over the village and the woods in the nights between Christmas and New Year. Memories are deceptive, and cannot really serve as objective evidence.ButtherewasthatincrediblyhighwindjustbeforeChristmas that attacked the city from all sides. Broke into the sea of houses as though it were nothing. And then—where did it come to rest? The silence of those holidays. The boredom that poured into the streets along with all the well-dressed people! Was this what they’d all spent weeks preparing for? It wasn’t easy to hide one’s disappointment. They would not be driving to the reception at the professor’s house, at least not in this particular car that they owned. It could not be seen parked in front of the house beside the others’ shining automobiles. It was better to go on foot. “Of course, fine with me. But how do the others have that kind of money to spend on cars, at your salaries?” “They’re more interested in appearances. Just look at Dr. Seiffert’s and Dr. Müller’s wives. How much time they must spend on every little detail.” “That’s something I will never learn...