Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson

Author:Adam Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

How sweet the sound,

Wie süss der Klang,

That saved a wretch like me!

Die einen armen Sünder wie mich errettete!

I once was lost,

Ich war einst verloren,

But now am found,

aber nun bin ich gefunden,

Was blind but now I see.

War blind, aber nun sehe ich.

They inhale to start another round, and I call out, “Enough with the singing.”

Berta turns to me. “What is the proper response?” she asks. “How should they respond to torture?”

“Stop it with the metaphors,” I tell her. I unbutton my shirt cuffs. “You say you were in this very cell?”

The resolve in my voice changes the look on Berta’s face.

I glance upward, visualizing where the rooftop water tank is positioned four stories above. I follow the old pipes along the ceiling to the cells. Then I flip through my keys until I find the one that opens the valve locks.

“What are you doing?” Berta asks.

It takes some effort, but I manage to work the key into the old lock. Then, with both hands, I grab the valve handle and struggle to crack it open. When I do, a blast of rusty water sprays into the cell. I close it and begin unbuttoning my vest.

“Unpleasant, yes,” I say. “But I will show you this is not torture.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Berta says. “But there’s no need for this. This place is a memorial now. Its capacity to do harm has been retired.”

“I have a question for you,” I say to Berta as I free the last button on my shirt.

I know by the students’ faces that my scars have become visible.

“Please stop doing whatever it is you’re about to do,” Berta says.

“Just tell me,” I say. “Was there nothing of value here? Was there not one good thing to come from your time in Hohenschönhausen?”

Berta studies me as I remove my shoes and socks and place them against the wall.

“There is one thing,” she says. “If I tell you, will you stop?”

I pause to listen to her.

“The prison did something to me,” she says. “It made something in me come to life. My husband and I, even though we were young, we could not manage to have children. We tried for years. Within a month of my release, however, I was pregnant. We have three kids now.”

I imagine these children as I remove my hat, my false hair and my glasses.

“Your honesty is appreciated,” I tell Berta. “Now I’m going to be honest with you. Your whole existence has become a little story that you tell to strangers. And I will show you how this story isn’t true.”

“My story? You mean my life, the thing I was living before the Stasi arrived? Or the story the interrogators wanted me to confess to? Or the story I live now, where everyone tells me to forget the past and move on, yet every single thing leads back to this place?”

“You’re angry, I understand,” I say. “But these things you say about radiation and torture and the dead—they’re dangerous, they really hurt people.

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