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All the characters in this book, with the exception of historical figures mentioned
by name, are inventions of the novelist. None of them is identical with anyone
living or dead. Just as little do the episodes described coincide with actual
events.
So, for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator
report on them than that he mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained
possession of them.
—Walter Benjamin, “Excavation and Memory”
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Italics (except for emphasized words and titles of books, movies, and so on)
indicate words and phrases in English in the original.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer
Epigraph
Translator’s Note
To come down to earth
Telling the story from the end
The Blind Spot
Always these ambivalent feelings
To turn everything upside down yet again
To look into my own otherness
The City of Angels, or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
So who could I tell the story to
Sometimes the past reaches up and grabs at you
You were there. You survived
Every line I write from now on will be used against me
Then I started singing
You can slave away at the wrong questions too
I hadn’t started writing yet
Old age is the time of losses
We are strangely designed creatures, aren’t we?
Whether she, the angel, was part of my recovery
Those books sucked me in
Washed with all waters
A journey to the other side of reality
Entrance into a paradisaical world of wonders
Note on Sources
Also by Christa Wolf
A Note About the Author & Translator
Copyright
No writer can reproduce the actual texture of living life.
—E. L. Doctorow
TO COME DOWN TO EARTH
was the phrase that came to me when I landed in L.A. and the passengers on the
airplane clapped to thank the pilot for flying it across the ocean, approaching the
New World from the sea, circling for a long time above the lights of the giant
metropolis, then gently touching down. I still remember how I decided to use
that sentence later, when I would write about the landing and the sojourn on a
foreign coast that lay ahead. Later: Now. That so many years would pass in
dogged attempts to reach the sentences which were to follow, to reach them in
the right way, was something I could not foresee. I decided to fix everything in
my memory for later, every detail. How my blue passport caused a stir with the
wiry red-blond officer who was rigorously and carefully checking the papers of
every arriving visitor; he flipped through its pages for a long time, studied every
single visa, then picked up the invitation letter from the CENTER, under whose
auspices I would be spending the following months, a letter certified and
authenticated many times over; finally he looked straight at me with his ice-blue
eyes: Germany? —Yes. East Germany. —I would have found it hard to give him
any further details, because of the language barrier too, but he decided to ask a
colleague for advice over the phone. The whole scene seemed familiar—how
well I knew the feeling of tense excitement and the sense of relief too when he
finally, having no doubt received a satisfactory answer to his question, stamped
the visa and slid my passport back across the counter with a hand covered in
freckles. Are you sure that country exists? —Yes, I am, I said curtly, even though
the correct answer would have been No and I had to wonder, during my long
wait for the luggage, whether it was really worth it to travel to the United States
with the still-valid passport of a no-longer-extant country just to confuse a young
redheaded immigration official. That was one of the acts of defiance I was still
capable of then, acts which, it occurs to me now, become fewer and fewer with
age. And there the word stands on the page, mentioned in passing, as is only
fitting: the word whose shadow flickered across me for the first time then, more
than a decade and a half ago, and has meantime grown so thick and dark that I
have to worry about its becoming impenetrable before I can fulfill the duties of
my profession. Before I have described, that is, how I hauled my bags down off
the baggage carousel, loaded them onto an oversize luggage cart, and headed for
the EXIT in the middle of a confusing crowd of people. How, having barely set
foot in the terminal, something happened that according to all the earnest pleas
and warnings from experienced travelers I should never have let happen: a giant
black man came up to me, Want a car, ma’am?, and I, inexperienced creature of
reflexes that I was, nodded yes, instead of resolutely refusing the way I had been
told to. Already the man had snatched the cart and set off with it—I would never
see it again, or so my alarm system told me. I followed after him as quickly as I
could and there he was, in fact, standing outside on the curb of the access road
where taxis were rolling up, bumper to bumper, their headlights dimmed. He
pocketed the dollar he was entitled to and handed me over to a colleague, also
black, who had gotten himself a job waving down taxis. He too discharged his
duties, stopped the next taxi, helped me load my bags into the trunk, likewise
received his dollar, and turned me over to the skinny little driver, an agile Puerto
Rican whose English I couldn’t understand but who obligingly listened to mine
and, after studying the letterhead with my future address on it, seemed to know
where he was supposed to take me. Only then, when the taxi started driving, I
remember, did I feel the mild night air, the breath of the south, which I
recognized from an entirely different coast where it had come over me for the
first time like a thick warm towel—at the airport in Varna. The Black Sea, its
velvety darkness, the sweet heavy scent of its gardens.
I can still, today, feel myself in that taxi, with chains of lights racing by on
either side and sometimes streaming into handwriting—world-famous brand
names, billboards in garish colors for supermarkets, for bars and restaurants,
outshining the night sky. Words like “orderly” would be out of place here, on
this coastal road, perhaps on this whole continent. Very softly, and quickly
repressed again, the question came to mind: What had actually made me come
here?—just loud enough for me to recognize it the next time it announced itself,
already more urgent than before. In any case, the scaly trunks of the palm trees
glided by as though they were reason enough. The smell of gas and exhaust. A
long drive.
Santa Monica, ma’am? —Yes. —Second Street, ma’am? —Right. —Ms.
Victoria? —Yes. —Here we are.
For the first time, the illuminated metal sign affixed to the iron fence: MS.
VICTORIA HOTEL, OLD WORLD CHARM. Everything quiet. All the windows dark. It
was a little before midnight. The driver helped me with my luggage. A front
