A Bit of Hearsay About Life's Satisfactions

This is what an East German academic told a friend of mine after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She told it to me about 15 years ago.

He said he had lost the thing that gave him the greatest sense of achievement. Living under the DDR, his greatest satisfaction was receiving a book order. Ordering academic books from the West was difficult. Merely keeping up with his field required a lot of struggle through red tape. But when it succeeded, his joy was sublime. His most satisfied moments were walking home with a new book in his arms.

When the Wall fell, he could order any books he wanted. Cost was the only limitation. Receiving new books no longer gave him the same sense of pleasure. He missed that feeling, he told my friend.

It's hard to recount a stranger's story second hand. I've tried not to embellish it. Most certainly, in communicating it to the Internet, I've misrepresented some part of it. Not only is my version hearsay, it isn’t even entirely clear. It would be better if I could ask him some questions. How did this sense of achievement compare to other joys in his life, such as being with his family and friends or even reading the books he received? Did joining the West offer him new opportunities for satisfaction? How did they compare with the one he had lost? To make sense of his loss, we need some relative understandings.

It might be possible to find the man and ask him for clarifications. Maybe I could track him down by contacting my friend. It’s possible that she’s forgotten the story, but I doubt it. One reason it made such an impact on me was her telling of it.   If she knew the man’s name, perhaps we could find him. But then there’s the possibility that this was a story that he’s stopped telling and that in order to confirm it he would have to recreate it. The new telling might have a different meaning than the one that resonated with my friend and me.

I guess it’s really my story at this point, so I’ll explain it. I appreciate the message that the process of acquisition can be sweeter than the acquired object. I like the observation of loss in victory, about nostalgia even after life has improved. I think it’s good to be reminded that people living a constrained life find joy that we might not know. All this in a little tale of a man walking home in a gray city under a gray sky, holding a book wrapped in cheap brown paper, luminous.