Must You Go? by Fraser Antonia

Author:Fraser, Antonia [Fraser, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

10 February

Frantisek Fröhlich takes us up to the Cathedral which Harold is anxious to see in connection with his projected screenplay of The Trial. He points to the soldiers patrolling the Castle grounds as he drives us up the hill. ‘Before, they patrolled with big dogs. Now, no dogs, by order of the President.’

Like all our friends here, he emphasizes the dream-like quality of all that has happened. ‘No dogs’ seem to stand for a lot, that and the singing students.

11 February

We arrive in East Berlin from Czechoslovakia for a film festival: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, for which Harold wrote the screenplay, is part of it. We take the opportunity to go to the Brandenburg Gate, reaching it in fact by a muddy little path beside the blackened Reichstag, German flag flying, and saw the wall. Holes in it grilled over. Later we noticed an orderly procession of East Germans on foot coming in as pedestrians through a wicker gate. Also we see a double-file of very young, soft-faced, sweet-looking Russians soldiers in fur hats marching on their way somewhere or other; I feel rather sorry for them in this rapidly changing world.

Only one soldier guards the gate. But: ‘I hear the sound of hammering,’ says Harold, in a puzzled voice. And looking to the left, we see this amazing sight of people of all races and nationalities busily bent down towards the wall and hammering away with huge hammers in order to hack their own pieces off. For all the world like the Seven Dwarfs in the film, something comical at any rate, not the Nibelungen in Rheingold. Meanwhile in front of them were ten or so trestle tables on which lay pieces of the wall of all colours (bright blues, greens, as well as pinks, blacks) with enterprising lads selling them. Capitalism, quick off the mark! Harold bought me a pink-and-black piece looking like a jellied eel for about £6. Then I decide to do better myself and borrow a hammer from a dark-eyed energetic girl and hammer away. We photograph each other cordially.

Scrawled at the highest bit of the Gate were the words: ‘Vive l’Anarchie!’ But it was far from being anarchy we saw here, a new kind of order rather.

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