Go, Went, Gone

The novel opens with Richard wondering about a man who drowned in the lake several months earlier. He had been in a swimming accident. While he was drowning, he had waved to people on the shore, but they thought he was just waving hello because he was not close enough for them to hear or see his distress. The drowned man begins to invade Richard’s thoughts every time he looks at the lake, which is hard to avoid since the lake is visible from nearly every one of his windows and also from the garden. When the lake freezes, Richard imagines the man trapped below the ice, trying to get the attention of someone above who could help him escape. He compares the man to someone waiting in purgatory prior to being moved along to salvation. Similarly, the refugees are both present in peoples’ thoughts, but also invisible to them. At Alexanderplatz, one of them holds a sign that reads: “We become visible” (174). They are not part of the country, just as the drowned man is not a part of Richard’s life, but they cannot be ignored any more than Richard can banish thoughts of the drowned man—who called for help that he did not receive—from his mind.