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they divided the sky 134 papers full of the stuff you were asking for then? I wouldn’t even answer him. He’s the one who forced me to become more and more like the false image he had deliberately created of me.” Manfred was very tired. He was already regretting this conversation . This is my issue, he thought. Why drag her into it? Rita laid her hand on his shoulder. I ought to contradict him, she thought. But what can I say? I’m no use to him. I really should be older, she thought unhappily. 22. These days Rita smiles when she looks at the painting of the meadow. She will miss it, she thinks. Then she gets the letter. Two letters actually, in one envelope, with Martin Jung’s handwriting on it. But this one is the one that counts. She can feel herself grow cold and heavy. It’s a letter written by Manfred. A crazy flash of hope—still, after all these weeks! How could she have thought everything was over, forever … She has to wait before she can read it. She looks at the painting. Please don’t abandon me now, God, not now. The delicately pale woman smiles at her blankly. Oh, what do you know, Rita thinks scornfully. The letter, recently sent to Martin Jung from West Berlin, begins without a salutation. Rita reads: Just to be fair, I want to let you know that I actually met Braun from S— in one of the many government offices here. You guessed right. And you are still right. And I want you to know that I know, because why should my distance destroy the fair play between us? But I really don’t care anymore. You know I felt like killing him then. Now, I don’t even want to talk to him. Why should I try to find out what was really going on there: was it deliberate? Or were they just incompetent … It makes no difference. I’m not one to make regular pilgrimages to the Wall for cheap thrills, but I still listen to your radio stations, and I haven’t been away long enough to forget everything. The sixties— Christa Wolf 135 remember our discussions? Do you still think they will go down in history as one of humanity’s great moments? Of course I know that you can deceive yourself about many things (and that you have to, in order to stay alive). But after the disclosures made at the last party congress in Moscow you must all be horrified by human nature. How can we go on and on about social order when history’s bottom line is the despair of the terrorized individual … I can hear you say “not very original or very grand.” Like you always used to. And I don’t want to start all over again. What could be said has been said, a long time ago already. I wish you luck. Manfred It’s not over yet. The pain can still touch her. She has to hold still. She reads the letter until she knows it by heart. She stays in bed and asks the others with whom she would otherwise be going for a walk to leave her alone. She feels better as the room empties and the sounds in the corridor grow fainter, and the whole building is quiet. After a while, which she has spent lying there with her eyes closed, and outwardly calm, she also reads the letter from Martin Jung. Dear Rita, It took me a long time to decide to send you this letter—the only one Manfred has written to me (he’s no exception to the rule that everyone who goes away writes to those left behind to justify their decision because there is something dishonourable about it). I think it is more appropriate for you to have this letter. “Just to be fair” … that was a kind of slogan between the two of us. It came up in S—. Every morning we went off to battle with that in mind. I don’t know how much he told you about all that. But believe me, it was very hard. The opposition was vicious, intangible, and impenetrable. Especially this man Braun, whom he’s now run into in West Berlin. An expert in our area. He opposed us out of pure malice. But we couldn’t get anyone to see that. He went over...
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