Authors: Paul Dowswell
‘Why do we have to sing in English?’ said Heinz, who didn’t understand what Alex was on about. ‘That’ll be another black mark against us.’
‘English is cool,’ said Anton. ‘All the good groups sing in English.’
Heinz shook his head and muttered, ‘I’ll never get that snare drum . . .’
Anton was behaving particularly badly that day. He had a cold and was snorting horribly instead of blowing his nose. In the breaks between songs he would take a slug from a bottle of cola and let out a long, malodorous burp. Alex had noticed he quite often behaved like this when Sophie was there. She had giggled and told Alex she thought he was quite shy around girls and maybe he thought it made him look tough. ‘After all, we girls can’t resist a lout. Especially one who’s a bit fat and sweaty.’
Sophie hung about for a few more minutes, looking increasingly distracted. Then she glanced at her watch. ‘I have to tear myself away from your charming company,’ she announced, looking pointedly at Anton.
His eyes followed her out of the room. When the door slammed, he said, ‘She’s a bit stuck-up, isn’t she?’
Alex laughed. ‘She likes you too, Anton.’
But Alex was pleased she had gone. Asking her along was a mistake. The others obviously felt awkward having her around listening to their stumbling efforts.
Unterleutnant Kohl was finishing a report on two students at the Humboldt-Universität who had been taking an unhealthy interest in the East Berlin uprising of 1953, when Colonel Theissen appeared at his door. ‘Come and have a drink at the end of the day,’ he instructed.
Kohl spent a restless few hours wondering if there was an ominous explanation for this meeting. Theissen was one of the few people in the world who frightened him. He had survived six years as a political prisoner in the infamous Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. When you spoke to him, his eyes bore right into you. They said he could sniff out secrets like a bloodhound. Kohl didn’t like the idea of drinking with his boss. He thought it was a ploy to loosen his tongue. Theissen was usually so stiff and formal with his staff.
Kohl knocked on Theissen’s door at the end of his shift. The Colonel was already relaxing and beckoned him to the padded easy chairs around a low table. He took a long drag on his cigarette and poured himself another whisky – a particularly nice bottle that had been confiscated from a consignment of foodstuffs and spirits some West Berliners had sent over to a relative in the East. He poured Kohl a generous measure.
‘This is a challenging time for the Republik,’ he told Kohl carefully. ‘The Prague uprising has been a concern for the Politburo for the last four years. Comrade Minister Mielke tells me it has shaken them up more than they like to show. And the steps they’re taking to ensure it does not happen in East Germany are far-reaching. We must be particularly mindful of Western influences – especially in the cultural sphere. Western rock music is corrupting our youth as surely as the CIA and the Voice of America.’
Kohl nodded. ‘Today’s youth walk a thin line – they flaunt their decadence. Even the children of the Party high-ups – they like to dress in the Western fashion. It’s not right. They should be setting an example.’
Theissen nodded in agreement.
‘The ones who are really out of line are easy enough to spot,’ he said. ‘And here, you are doing a valuable duty for your country – as important as your former placement in the International Section.’
He took out a press cutting recently confiscated on a record shop raid. ‘Have you seen this lot?’ He passed Kohl a photograph of Led Zeppelin. ‘What was it Stalin said about the duty of the artist? To be “engineers of the human soul”. I certainly wouldn’t want these perverts corrupting the souls of our young people.’
‘I feel unclean just looking at them,’ said Kohl. ‘Their parents must be the laughing stock of their district.’
Sophie and Alex sat on a bench by Museum Island in the centre of Berlin, eating
Bockwurst
rolls. Alex’s transistor radio – tuned to the West German pop station WDR1 – was playing quietly in his pocket. Sophie carried one too, and when a song they liked came on, they would plug their little earpieces in so they could listen in secret, turn up the volume, and tap along to the rhythm on each other’s hands.
They were enjoying their Saturday. After the usual morning session at school, they had taken Grandma Ostermann shopping. It was a task Frank and Gretchen were increasingly reluctant to do. Grandma always complained about the quality of goods in East Berlin. In the grocer’s that lunchtime she had announced that the food was better under the Nazis, even after the war started. And you didn’t have to queue for it – at least not until the end.
The other shoppers tutted and Alex and Sophie had had to pretend they were shocked. ‘That told them,’ grinned Alex as they walked back to her apartment carrying her shopping.
‘Did you see the look on their faces?’ laughed Sophie.
Grandma looked smug – like a naughty school girl with a secret. As they left she slipped them a couple of Marks to thank them for their help and pinched them both on the cheek.
They were still laughing now, until Sophie decided it was time to break some bad news.
‘Mutter and Vater have told me I am to stop seeing you. It’s been very frosty at home recently – not that it was ever that different.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Mealtimes are the worst. Making conversation, it’s like wading through treacle.’ Her tone was matter of fact.
Alex looked at her with alarm, wondering what she was going to say next.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve been quite the delinquent about it. We’ve had some terrible rows. I’ve told them I’ll leave home. Go and live with Auntie Rosemarie. Stop going to the Free German Youth meetings. So they relented. But they still want me to see less of you. Concentrate more on my schoolwork and cello lessons.’
Alex wasn’t surprised. They froze him out on the rare occasions he visited her apartment now. He had started to call them ‘The Grims’. Sophie understood. Fortunately, Alex’s parents didn’t mind her coming round to their home. They liked her. And Frank thought she was a good person for Alex to know – what with her parents’ high standing in the Party.
‘So, to keep the peace, perhaps I should not come to your rehearsals,’ she said. ‘If they’re going to ration us, I’d rather see you on your own.’ She reached for his hand. ‘And maybe a
bit
less often?’
Alex nodded. He was relieved. He thought she had been going to dump him.
A couple of tiny sparrows arrived to pick up the crumbs from their lunch. Alex dropped a morsel of bread and one of them hopped beneath his feet to pick it up.
‘Wouldn’t it be great just to take to the sky and fly away,’ said Sophie. ‘They can have their breakfast in the West, lunch in the East and supper again in the West. Imagine that.’
It seemed such a simple, reasonable thing to do. But Alex could no more hope for that than he could wish to be Sandman and take his dinner on the Moon. He was stuck here on Planet Stasi, overseen by the evil eye of the TV Tower.
As they wandered through the streets on their way home they heard the rumble of the U-Bahn and felt a rustle of wind through a ventilation shaft, as a train from the West Berlin network rattled by beneath their feet. Stations on the lines that crossed from West to East were called
Geisterbahnhöfe
– ‘ghost stations’. They were blocked off and manned by gun-toting guards.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ said Sophie as the train rumbled by. ‘Just a few metres down below there are people who are free to travel where they like and think and say whatever they want.’
As they walked home, Sophie told Alex about her new job at the House of Ministries. The place had a sort of notoriety. It was in one of the Nazis’ most famous buildings – the head office of Herman Goering’s
Luftwaffe
. It had survived the war almost intact. These days it was a government administration centre. Sophie’s Auntie Rosemarie worked there as a cleaner.
Alex was intrigued by her. Sophie had told him she was a bright woman but she had fallen foul of the regime in some way. It was considered impolite to even raise the subject. Sophie’s aunt didn’t like her job, but it paid the rent and kept her in bread rolls and schnapps. She had managed to get Sophie work there from time to time, when she wanted to make some extra money. Now they were asking Sophie if she wanted more regular work – Saturday afternoons mostly, but some evenings as well, if one of the women was ill.
‘I hate being there in the evening, when everyone else has gone home,’ she told Alex. ‘Down in the basement, where the soldiers’ barracks used to be, you can almost smell the sweat and the boot polish. When it’s quiet, I sometimes think I can hear shouts from the parade ground and marching feet. It’s haunted, that place. I’m sure of it.’
She paused. Alex knew she was dying to tell him something. ‘What?’ he said, elbowing her in the ribs.
‘When you climb to the upper floors, you can see right over the Wall.’
Most of the buildings next to the eastern side of the Wall had been knocked down, but not the House of Ministries.
‘So what does it look like?’ he asked. Like most East Berliners he was fascinated to know what lay behind the blank concrete face of the Eastern Wall. They didn’t know anyone who had an apartment where you could see over it. He wondered if what he’d heard was true.
‘There’s one window with a perfect view,’ said Sophie. ‘Behind the Wall there’s a great wide strip with trenches – to catch vehicles I suppose, and there are runs for the dogs. And there are tripwires which you can only see if the sun is shining in the right direction, and watchtowers and a lot of barbed wire. And on the other side there are buildings right next to the Wall.
‘The other side’s close enough to see people wave if they catch you staring out of the window. We’re told very sternly not to wave back. The other night I spotted a little boy trundling along a side street on a tricycle, without a care in the world. I thought how nice it would be to be there on that side.’
They walked along for a few paces then Sophie’s face lit up. ‘I wonder how easy it would be to escape from that block?’ she said excitedly. ‘There probably isn’t a better building in Berlin. I’ve been thinking about it as I dust and polish. You and me, we could hide in a lavatory after work, go up to the roof in the dead of night and get a rope over to the other side and slide down.’
Alex could not take her seriously. But he was thrilled she had put into words what he had not dared to tell her up on the Ferris wheel the other night. He looked at her and smiled. She didn’t really mean it.
‘I really mean it,’ she said, suddenly serious. Alex felt a flash of fear. All at once he had a vivid image of himself, dangling like a fish on a line, being shot full of bullets as he tried to slide to freedom.
His face gave him away.
‘Maybe it’s too dangerous,’ she said.
Alex held her tight. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Let’s think about it.’
‘There might be other ways to get away,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Maybe on the border rather than through Berlin? I heard the border security isn’t as tight as it is in the city. Then there’s a submarine that takes people through the Baltic . . .’
Alex squeezed her hand. ‘You have been watching too much Western television,’ he said, mimicking her father. ‘Anyway, why do you want to escape? You’ve got a bright future here, haven’t you? And you don’t have to do military service!’
Her face fell and he wondered if he’d offended her. ‘A bright, sparkling future, producing many children for the great Republik,’ she said flatly. ‘All of them exemplary socialist youth in their character and attitude and all of them destined for an identical green and brown apartment. I can barely wait. Do you want to spend the rest of your life living in a country whose politicians think putting different buttons on your jacket is “Western egotism”?’
Frank and Gretchen were wondering what Alex was up to. He had gone off with Sophie after school to visit Grandma Ostermann. He had been gone for hours now. They hoped he was not attracting the attention of the authorities.
They began to discuss their summer holidays. It was the perfect thing to do on a drab and cold spring day. They had their hopes pinned on the
Völkerfreundschaft
vacation ship. Every year, a thousand hand-picked citizens would take the luxury liner to Cuba for a fortnight in the sun. Only the most loyal and hard-working party members were selected. Frank and Gretchen always applied – they were no more or less deserving than any of the lucky few who went.
Failing that, they could go to the Baltic. Spend a week on Rügen Island and hope the weather was nice. Frank and Gretchen were both keen naturists. On holiday, as soon as the sun came out, they went straight to the beach and stripped off. Everyone did. There were few who dared to keep their swimming costumes on. For them it was a political gesture. Frank told his kids, ‘We are all equal in society and never more so than when we are all naked on the beach.’
Alex and Geli didn’t give it a second thought when they were younger, but they minded now. Especially when there were other teenagers about. Frank had taken to telling them they’d grow out of it.
At suppertime, when Alex had returned home, Frank raised the question of the summer holiday around the table. Alex and Geli looked shifty. They dreaded the day the letter would arrive telling them they had been chosen to go on a cruise. It would be great to get to travel abroad and they liked the idea of going to Cuba, but the thought of spending two weeks in close proximity to a bunch of Party robots whose conversation would revolve around the achievements of their plastering brigade on some building site was not appealing.