Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

by Anna Funder

There is an art, a deeply political art, of taking circumstances as they arise and attributing them to your side or the opposition, in a constant tallying of reality towards ends of which it is innocent.

Does telling your story mean you are free of it? Or that you go, fettered, into your future?

Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds.

I remark that for something so big, that shaped their lives so brutally, it’s hard now to find a trace of the Wall. I am about to say I think it’s odd to let everyone forget so quickly, when Torsten says, ‘I’m happy that it’s gone, and I’m happy too that there’s so little of it left to see. It would remind me that it could come back. That everything that’s happened might be reversed.’ ‘But that wouldn’t be possible!’ I laugh. He looks at me soberly. ‘But anything is possible,’ he says. ‘One can never say that something is not possible.’