Authors: Paul Dowswell
He watched Alex leave with a mounting sense of impatience, then reached for a progress form and began to scribble rapidly.
Alex walked back to the school canteen hoping to catch up with Anton and Holger. He was not worried about his future. He might not be in his local Free German Youth group any more, but he was always doing the things they were supposed to do – taking newspapers for recycling, going to the local nursing home to sing with his guitar. When the time came to find a job, his father knew all the right people. And how could he really know what he wanted to do for the rest of his life at his age?
Anton gave him a cheery wave. ‘Holger’s not in today,’ he said. ‘Probably decided to stay in bed and dream up more names for the group.’
Geli had not had a good morning either. The new photography tutor, Herr Fuhrmann, kept telling them their art was a tool to perfect the socialist state. ‘After all, when all your needs are met – that’s socialism,’ he told them.
What had that got to do with photography? thought Geli.
At breaktime she got out a copy of the fashion magazine
Sybille
and sat on her own with a coffee. They never published enough of them and Geli had been waiting for weeks to borrow it. She turned to a series of shots by Ute Mahler, which had a powerful, melancholy feel. A beautiful model was standing thigh deep in a lake at dawn, her hair and clothes drenched with chilly water. Nothing in this photograph said anything great and glorious about the DDR.
Geli’s class project was also subversive, in its own quiet way. She was fascinated by the ruins of old buildings – the ones that had survived the Industrial Revolution, the First World War and then the rise of Hitler. She wondered what these buildings had seen. Who had lived in them?
‘Na und?’
– Who cares? – said Jan-Carl. But Geli did.
One she photographed recently had caught the eye of Herr Lang, her old tutor. She had shot this grand wreckage of the past at first light one frosty December morning. Snow had fallen in the night and a mist hung in the air. The snow settled on the bare struts of the ruined roof and the entire building looked damp and decayed.
That house held so many stories – which was why it made such an evocative picture. Herr Lang told her it was the best photograph she had ever taken.
She suspected Herr Fuhrmann would not like it very much but she had an explanation lined up for him.
‘It portrays the decay of the old system,’ she told him.
‘Ach, Ostermann,’ he chided. ‘You need to do something that lifts the spirits, not wallow in the past.’
He lowered his voice and tried to sound avuncular, although his advice was too bald to be anything other than a warning. ‘I detect harmful tendencies in your work, Fräulein Ostermann. You must think more carefully about the subjects of your photographs. Your work should celebrate the socialist spirit.’
She tried to hide her disappointment and wondered what else she could get away with doing. Perhaps she could photograph the triumphs of the socialist paradise. The Trabis, the concrete wastelands of the new estates, the windswept shopping centre at Alexanderplatz. She would need an especially overcast day for that.
Alex asked Geli to drop by his school at the end of the day and meet him in the canteen. He had told her about Sophie and wanted to introduce her. As the three of them wandered out of the entrance hall, they passed a table covered with leaflets. Nadel and some other eager students were handing them out. This was how you got to be one of the leaders of the future, thought Alex. He wondered how he’d feel about having someone like Nadel or Stefan lecture him about the need for greater asphalt production one day.
Alex read out the title of the nearest leaflet:
The Marxist-Leninist Blueprint for a New World.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking one from Nadel with a cheery smile. ‘I’ll read it if I get insomnia!’
As they walked home, Alex was pleased that Sophie and Geli seemed to be comfortable with each other. As they passed by Treptower Park, Geli saw a familiar face among a group of kids in tracksuits. She called out. ‘Hey, Lili!’
‘Who’s that?’ said Sophie. ‘I think I recognise her.’
‘This is the famous Lili Weber,’ said Alex, as Lili came over to greet them. ‘Lili – star of stage, screen and swimming pool!’
Lili blushed. ‘Hi, Alex.’
‘You’re the swimmer, aren’t you?’ said Sophie. ‘I’ve seen you on the television. So how do you know a rowdy like Alex?’
Lili looked a little affronted and Sophie realised she had said the wrong thing.
‘Geli and I were at school together,’ Lili said. Her voice was unusually gruff and Alex wondered if she had a cold. ‘They are my friends.’ Then she smiled. ‘It’s been ages since we met.’
They talked about her training and the sports academy she had been going to for the last couple of years. ‘Swimming, swimming, swimming,’ said Lili, ‘politics, and then more swimming. I feel like I’m turning into a fish.’
Her voice had a touch of anger although she tried to pass it off as a joke. ‘But it’s the Olympics this year. All very exciting!’
The others were waving at her and calling her back. ‘All right,’ she called out. ‘I’m coming.’ Then she turned to her friends and smiled apologetically. ‘I’d better go or I’ll miss the coach back. Let’s meet up soon!’
They carried on walking home. ‘We’ve known Lily since we were tiny,’ said Geli. ‘She’s always been a brilliant swimmer.’
Meeting a sports star had made Sophie feel quite excited, even if Lili had been a little brusque with her. She enjoyed being with Alex and Geli. She felt like she could say what she wanted to them. ‘Look at this,’ she sniggered, as they passed an ill-lit clothes shop window. ‘East Berlin, fashion capital of the world!’
The shop had done its best to make the most of their display, but the window was far too big for the goods they had on offer. Three flimsy nighties made from some scratchy man-made fabric in a dull pastel blue sat on spindly, headless mannequin torsos. A pale pink corset with conical protuberances at the bust made up the tableau.
Further along the street there were a few parked cars but as the winter evening drew in everything was empty and still. There was nothing going on, thought Alex. Nothing at all.
Alex trudged carefully through a light snowfall to drop by Holger’s apartment on the way to school. Alex hadn’t seen him since the band had last played together and he wanted to know if he was coming to the next rehearsal. Holger’s mother answered the door and Alex could tell at once something bad had happened.
‘
Guten Tag, Frau Vogel
,’ said Alex. ‘What’s happened? Is Holger ill? I’ve brought him a bar of chocolate.’
‘We thought you were the Stasi,’ she said. ‘Come to tell us the worst. We haven’t seen him since Saturday afternoon. Nor Effi.’
Alex liked Holger’s girlfriend, but Effi was so outspoken in her dislike of the DDR he didn’t like being seen with her in public. Even Holger would shush her when they were in cafés or the sort of bars that served teenagers. Alex was glad she didn’t go to his school.
‘Have they escaped?’ whispered Alex. ‘Gone over the Wall?’
She stared, unblinking. ‘That would seem the most likely explanation.’
Alex felt hurt. Holger was his friend. He thought he might have told him, even if it was just to say goodbye. He bit his tongue. Holger’s mother had gnawed her nails to the quick and had the ghostly pallor of someone who had not slept properly for several days.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Alex. ‘Can you let me know if you hear anything?’
Alex walked away with a heavy heart. The Wall was close enough to Treptower to hear the guards dogs there howling in the night. They said they kept them hungry to make them vicious. Along with the dogs, he’d heard, there were mines, machine guns, mantraps, and guards who would shoot to kill. The mere thought of the Wall filled him with dread. At school the teachers called it the Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier and told them it had been constructed to prevent an attack from West Germany and to hinder the activities of West German provocateurs. Alex didn’t think many people really believed that.
He had only glimpsed the Wall from a distance. All areas adjoining it were designated
Verboten
– Forbidden. You had to have a good excuse – work or residence – to be anywhere near it. There were always plenty of patrols to stop you and ask questions. If you had no good reason to be there, you were an immediate suspect.
On the other side of the street two men in heavy overcoats were sitting in a beige Wartburg, watching the comings and goings at Holger’s apartment. This was their first bit of action since midnight. One of them wiped the condensation from the passenger window, removed his thick gloves, and pointed a camera at Alex Ostermann as he emerged from the apartment block stairwell. ‘That’s something to show for seven hours of freezing our arses off,’ he muttered.
Across the city Unterleutnant Erich Kohl’s working day was just beginning. Like his freezing colleagues in Treptower, Kohl worked for the Stasi. Unlike his colleagues, he was comfortably warm. As he drove his Mercedes saloon up to the Invalidenstrasse border crossing into West Berlin, the snow was turning to sleet and he was grateful for the efficient heating system the car provided.
He was so used to his excursions into the West he rarely felt nervous about going through a checkpoint. All he had to do was drive over on a fake pass. The West German border guards rarely took much interest in anyone coming over from the East, especially if it looked like they were returning to the West.
Getting back to East Berlin would be no trouble at all. The guards would be alerted. No questions would be asked. There would be no delays and the car would most definitely not be stripped down for a thorough search. This frequently happened to Westerners, to deter them from visiting, and it had happened to Kohl once as he returned from an assignment. The guards got the scolding of their life and their commanding officer was transferred to a catering depot close to the Polish border.
Kohl’s aliases were always well prepared, and he picked a different crossing point every time, so the West German guards would be less likely to get to know his face. Today he was Reinhardt Schoenberg, resident of Charlottenburg, insurance salesman, on his way back from a visit to relatives in the East. They waved him through without a second glance. Kohl was good at aliases. He’d had a lot of practice.
He’d been handsome once – the classic tall dark stranger – but nowadays, whenever he caught his reflection in the window of a night tram, the puffy, double-chinned face that stared back filled him with gloom. He sometimes bought shampoo on his trips to the West that promised to make his lank greasy hair look shiny and full-bodied, but that was beyond even the magic of Nivea.
Today he had a meeting set up in Hannover, in West Germany. It was a long drive but he didn’t mind. He liked the Mercedes they had given him. It was a hell of a lot more comfortable than his Trabi, which pootled along like a lawnmower. When you put your foot down on the
Autobahn
, it really took off. Everything about it was better. It even had an eight-track music centre in the dashboard so you could listen to your own music if you got bored with the radio. That was fantastic. Like having your own radio station where you told the DJ what to play. The Mercedes had the sort of comfort that only top Party officials could expect in the East. In the West it was perfect for his anonymous middle-class-professional persona.
His job was a great game and he was good at it. And the West had all those shops bursting with everything you could ever want, and more of anything than you would ever actually need. But the people he had to deal with filled him with disgust. His current assignment was especially trying – making contact with a group of supposed revolutionaries who called themselves the Red Army Faction. They had started to make the news with some regularity now, although the Western media usually referred to them as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, after two of their leading lights.
So far the Red Army Faction had burned down a couple of department stores, carried out a few bank robberies and killed a couple of cops. The Stasi had funded a visit to Palestinian training camps in the Middle East for them and now the Faction wanted to know if they would provide arms, grenades and explosives so they could take their fight to the streets.
Kohl had already met two of them in Munich – a man and a woman – and had gone back to his commander and recommended extreme caution. They were spoiled rich kids, playing with guns and political attitudes to shock their parents, he reported. He felt vindicated when a contact in the West German secret service informed them that the couple had been arrested a week after the meeting. They had been speeding in a stolen car and were stopped by the police. Their aliases didn’t stand up. Amateurs.
But word came down to Kohl from the boss to forge strong links with the Red Army Faction. Anything that discredited or destabilised the West German state was to be encouraged. So here he was now, ready to meet another bunch and wondering what he was letting himself in for.
He reached his destination in the early afternoon – a residential apartment block in one of Hannover’s smarter suburbs. A young man with a ponytail and a tie-dye T-shirt answered the door. Kohl took an instant dislike to him.