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There would be an interrogation at Hohenschönhausen, a quick stop at the corner café, where he still held out hope of seeing Lara, then Ketwurst day at the cafeteria. In the evening, Schabowski's press conference, where he was to blend in with the crowd, read the room, take its temperature. International journalists would be in attendance. Broad-shouldered Russians, Americans with sleek, pointed jaws and slim-fitted coats, West Germans in their white socks. A week prior, in his first act as Party spokesman, Schabowski had anesthetized an entire room of journalists with his old Berliner lilt. The conference room at the International Press Center was a hot, teak-walled box with an uncanny lack of air, and even Zeiger himself, positioned inconspicuously in the rear of the room, had caught his head once before it tipped back against the wall. Schabowski's monologue had rolled on at a glacial pace; many words were spoken, little was said. Hungary's leaky borders, riots and protests in the six-digit thousands, the possibility of travel reforms. The journalists' questions had been mild, no glances were exchanged, and Zeiger was left with little to report to the Ministry. Boredom, the great narcotic.
Zeiger had spent his early career creating a Ministry-wide reference work called the Standardization of Demoralization Procedures. SDP Manual for short. A spiffy title, with gravitas. His life's work, a substantial volume, the closest he'd come to fathering. It was a title and responsibility no circumstance or passage of time could take from him, even though the Manual had long taken on a life of its own—often, sadly, perversely so. He pictured Management turning up the heating, closing the windows, and using subchapter 1.1 on "Demoralization through Repetitive, Tedious Speech," instructing Schabowski to put an entire nation, a world, to sleep.
* * *
As he dressed, a crescendo of voices swelled outside. The line at the bakery was growing. The drizzle had stopped, and people were starting to converse. Next time, in the stairwell, if he found the right words, he could try to describe his episodes to Schreibmüller. As a blind man, someone more attuned to atmospheric shifts than people distracted by sight, he would understand. They would sit close, listen to each other, share awe and fear, examine answers to the most dangerous of questions, Why. He hoped he could catch Schreibmüller before he had to turn him in for that music at the Bureau for Suspicious Activity and Class Enemy Progress, on the Ministry compound. Depending on the urgency with which Zeiger furnished his report on what he'd heard through the wall, an officer could seek out Schreibmüller by the end of the day. Whom he really wanted to ask about his episodes was his old friend Held.
In the anteroom, he slipped into his leather shoes and trench coat, taking his time. A few years ago, he would have been asked to consult Management on the use of the SDP Manual for mass-demoralization purposes. It would have been he who took Schabowski into that soundproof room off the Zentralkomitee assembly hall and advised him to go slow at the press conference, strategically employ that fatherly bedtime tone. But this was not a few years ago and they had not asked him to consult. Instead, and there was no explanation as to why, they positioned him in the back of the room like a foot soldier, an infantryman, as if he were a common Unofficial Informant. The comrades in charge were, at heart, good people, the aging sons of plumbers and masons. Not dumb, just simple and easily frightened. Dangerous in that way. This interrogation at Hohenschönhausen—this was a good sign. This was hope. The Ministry had not forgotten him.
He found his reflection in the mirror and straightened his tie. His face looked back at him, flaccid and bloodless. Theory number four, he was dying. With the tip of a finger he pulled down the lower lid of one eye, revealing a sliver of tawny flesh. He felt around his jaw and the back of his neck for lymph nodes. His tongue was a mosaic of pale and gray faults. He closed his mouth and swallowed, wondering what Schreibmüller might know about death.
Excerpted from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Hofmann. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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