Authors: Paul Dowswell
Kohl had re-read his Stasi training documents – especially the
Dictionary of Political Operative Work
. It was not enough to merely monitor and chastise asocials like the Ostermann brats; the instruction manual put great store in reforming them – or, as the instruction manual had it, ‘shaking and changing the perspectives of oppositional negative elements and even forcing a differentiated, political-ideological recovery’.
That would be the desired outcome in this case. The Ostermann children seemed lost to the Party, but they came from good stock and their parents’ loyalty had never been questioned. Kohl decided he would pull out all the stops and do whatever he could to bring them back to the straight and narrow path of the Party.
He inserted a blank sheet of paper into his typewriter and began to peck at the keys with his index fingers.
Operational transaction
• Container to be opened on Geli Ostermann with immediate effect.
• Container to be opened on Alex Ostermann with immediate effect.
• Request VSH index cards to be created for operationally substantive information on aforementioned subjects. Institute for Technical Investigations to be informed and radio counter-surveillance and clothing and vehicle technology prepared.
• Variable base B 1000 Swallow to be made available for surveillance.
• Incriminating materials and visual and aural evidence to be collected.
• Specialists to carry out non-violent conspirative opening of Ostermann household to facilitate inspection and fulfilment of task.
• Key to be obtained via school search for reprehensible literature. All bags to be checked and suspect keys copied.
CC: ZAIG Central Evaluation
Dept.14 Detention
Dept.M Postal Surveillance
Directorate 7 Observation
ZKG Illegal Emigration
Dept.26 Telephone Surveillance
Alex took a deep breath and knocked on the door of Sophie’s apartment. He’d only seen her once or twice since they’d walked home from school with Geli. Everyone knew about Holger at school. Maybe she was anxious about being friends with someone who was so closely associated with a ‘border violator’. Then Alex had begun to worry that she’d asked him out to annoy her parents. He really liked Sophie, and hoped she wasn’t toying with him, but didn’t want to meet her parents.
The first thing Alex noticed when he approached her fifth floor apartment was the mat outside the door. It was red, with a black outline of the interlocking handshake that was the centre symbol of the SED party logo.
Sophie answered the door and gave him such a big smile his anxiety vanished in an instant. She ushered him in to the living room where her parents were standing by the window, Frau Kirsch with hands clasped tightly before her, Herr Kirsch with hands behind his back.
A wall-hanging celebrating the industrial achievements of East Germany sat above the fireplace and even the tray on which Frau Kirsch brought the coffee and cakes had a marquetry inlay of electric locomotives and chemistry works above the DDR’s flag. On the mantelpiece were ornaments of Lenin and the Red Flag. Alex wondered if Herr and Frau Kirsch had a bedspread with Lenin on it and tried not to laugh.
‘And what do you want to do in life?’ said Herr Kirsch, who was wondering what Alex was smirking at.
‘I think I shall follow my mother into teaching,’ he said. ‘Perhaps music, perhaps German, I can’t decide. I go to a school in Schöneweide for my work experience.’ Everyone in his year at school had to go one day a week. Most of his fellow students had been sent to power stations or factories. Alex had landed a cushy number in a school two stops down on the train. He enjoyed it though. He was a good teacher and the younger kids all liked him.
‘Well, you need to make up your mind soon. And you will have to have a haircut if you are to be accepted into higher education.’
The conversation flagged. Herr Kirsch asked if Alex was keen on sport. He wasn’t. What had he done recently with the Free German Youth? He wasn’t a member. Had he heard General Secretary Honecker’s recent speech on the importance of factor utilisation on economic growth? He hadn’t.
Sophie drank her coffee so fast it scalded her throat and announced they were going to be late for the party.
‘But it’s about to rain,
Mein Schätzchen
,’ said her mother.
‘I have a headache,’ Sophie said. ‘I need some fresh air.’
‘How d’you think that went?’ asked Alex as they walked to the tram stop.
Sophie sniggered. ‘Marvellous.’ Then she paused and said, ‘It could have been worse. They let me go, didn’t they?’ She hooked her arm round his. ‘I think they think you’re all right.’ She didn’t sound very convincing. Then she perked up. ‘I told them you were friends with Lili Weber. That impressed them, at least! She’s a fine role model for East German youth.’
She leaned closer and whispered, ‘Have you heard any more about Holger?’
‘It doesn’t sound good,’ he said. ‘Holger’s sister told me they’ve been going to the police station every day to try to find out what’s happened to him. Now they’re being told they’ll be prosecuted for slandering the State if they carry on making a fuss. Holger’s sister says they don’t know whether he escaped or is in prison somewhere. No one will tell them.’
‘Let’s hope they find out soon,’ said Sophie. ‘It must be horrible not knowing.’ They both shrugged. There was nothing more to say.
Their tram took them down Karl-Marx-Allee. Looking out of the window at the shops, cafés and workers’ apartments, all built after the war, Alex thought its creators had lost the plot. The buildings were too hefty and the avenue too wide and empty.
Sophie instinctively shared his thoughts. ‘I always feel like an ant down here.’
The tram trundled towards Alexanderplatz and the TV Tower. They got off to walk to the café bar where the party was being held. Alex shivered in the dark winter night. He was glad he had brought his pullover – the black one his mother had knitted for his birthday.
Away from the grand architecture of Karl-Marx-Allee and Alexanderplatz the buildings looked more dilapidated. Many were caked with soot or had cracked plaster peeling away to reveal the brick and timber beneath. Three cars sat in an almost empty car park – huddled together as if for protection or company. Two were ubiquitous Trabis, the other a black sedan from before the war. Alex looked at its lovely curves and sleek aerodynamic design and wondered why they didn’t make cars as beautiful as that any more.
Alex and Sophie passed a tall, distinguished-looking man who was busy cleaning the street with a sturdy wicker broom. When he saw Alex, he looked away. It was only when they were some way down the road that Alex realised the man was Geli’s old photography tutor, Herr Lang.
The venue was called Café Wolfgang and you reached it by climbing a flight of stairs above a furniture shop to a large first-floor room. Several of their friends were already there, sitting in the corner with Emmy, the birthday girl. The plan was to have a meal and then a dance.
The waiter looked very dapper with a smart black suit and blue spotted bow tie. Alex wondered why he’d bothered. Perhaps he was trying to make up for the rest of the café. It was so dreary. Shabby carpet, wallpaper that hadn’t been changed since 1950, and a bar counter that was so worn the pattern had faded to a grey scuzz.
Emmy’s friends were OK but there was too much talk of the Free German Youth for Alex’s liking.
They were about to order a meal when Nadel arrived with Beate, another girl from their class. Alex didn’t like Nadel and noticed at once he was wearing the green and yellow enamel badge of the Free German Youth group leaders on his jacket. Much to Alex’s discomfort they sat immediately opposite him and Sophie.
Beate was wearing a polyester fabric design that was everywhere that winter – a violent zigzag pattern, like a regular longitudinal wave on an oscilloscope, in bright reds and blues. Everything from trouser suits to mini, midi and maxi skirts were made out of that material. Beate had made a pair of trousers and a matching waistcoat from hers. She and Sophie fell into conversation about the difficulties of making your own clothes, leaving Alex and Nadel to make polite conversation.
They were all drinking bottles of
Radeberger
Pilsner. By the time the
Jägerschnitzel
s and noodles arrived they were getting rowdy.
Nadel was singing the praises of the Trabi, and saying how it was a better car than the West German equivalent, the Volkswagen Beetle. Alex wasn’t so sure.
‘The Beetle is tainted by its Nazi past,’ said Nadel loftily. It had originally been designed for the Nazi ‘Strength Through Joy’ organisation, as Hitler’s ‘people’s car’.
‘Yes, it was cheap and mass produced,’ said Alex, who knew all this, ‘just like the Trabi. The Volkswagen goes faster,’ Alex continued. ‘A whole 30 kph faster.’
‘And how do you know that?’ said Nadel.
‘Come on,’ laughed Alex. ‘Don’t tell me you never watch the West German TV? It’s there in the adverts – a top speed of 130 kph.’
‘I don’t pollute my brain with dross from the West,’ said Nadel.
‘Too bad. You might learn something useful,’ said Alex. Sophie kicked him under the table. But Alex would not let it go.
‘And you can get Beetles in all sorts of colours – red, gold, black, white, whatever,’ he said. ‘What colours d’you get with a Trabi?’ Alex held up his hand to count. ‘Blue . . .’ He held up one finger. ‘Green . . .’ Two fingers. ‘Er . . . ? No. That’s it.’
‘Different colours are a waste of workers’ time and a sign of bourgeois decadence,’ said Nadel. He was getting flustered. Everyone had stopped to listen.
‘Go on, admit it.’ Alex was sensing victory. ‘You see Beetles all over the world. If you ever watched the British or American films on Western TV, you’d see Beetles on the streets of London and Los Angeles. I have never seen a Trabi anywhere outside of the Eastern Countries.’
Nadel had no answer to that. Alex moved in for the kill. ‘Maybe the fact that the Trabi has no fuel gauge puts people in the West off buying it?’ he said with a smirk.
‘You just need to keep an eye on your kilometres and remember how much fuel you have put in,’ said Nadel. ‘It’s no problem for anyone with a brain in their head.’
‘A fuel gauge seemed such an obvious piece of equipment on a car . . .’
Nadel huffed impatiently. ‘The simpler the car, the less chance of a breakdown.’
‘I’ve seen our Trabi engine being repaired on the kitchen table enough times to know that’s not the case,’ said Alex.
The others round the table all laughed at that.
Nadel had had enough. ‘That is simply not true,’ he declared with frightening certainty. ‘The Trabi is more reliable and cheaper. What could be a better advert for socialism?’
‘Advert?’ said Alex. ‘Bit of a capitalist word, isn’t it?’
‘Alex . . .’ Nadel leaned back on his chair and replied with magisterial condescension, ‘your frivolity will be the end of you.’ Alex reached his foot under the table and pulled the back leg of Nadel’s chair towards him. Nadel crashed to the floor and his beer toppled after him, covering his head and shoulders. Dripping and humiliated, he scrambled to his feet and launched himself at Alex in a blind fury.
Alex was no fighter. The last time he had come to blows with anyone was in kindergarten. He held up his arms to fend off the blows and waited for the other lads in the party to pull Nadel off him.
A tirade of obscenities followed before Nadel hurried to the lavatory to wash the beer from his hair. The waiter came over to Emmy and whispered in her ear.
‘You horrible boy,’ she cried. ‘Ruining my party. And now we’ve been asked to leave.’
Alex suddenly felt less triumphant. ‘I’m sorry, Emmy. I’ll talk to the waiter. I shall go.’
Sophie was looking at him with open exasperation. Alex knew there were others there who lived close by them. She would not have to travel home alone.
He spoke to the waiter, apologised for the trouble and left.
Alex was so hot and bothered and angry with himself for spoiling the evening that he was halfway to the tram stop in Alexanderplatz when a chill gust of wind blew straight through him and he realised he had left his pullover behind. It wasn’t just the cold that made him go back for it. His mother had made it for him with the best wool she could afford. She would be very upset if he lost it.
When he returned, most of the diners at Café Wolfgang had abandoned their tables for the dance floor. They were moving fairly listlessly to some home-grown pop song Alex half recognised from the radio. In the tradition of East German discos, the song was taken off after a few bars and the introduction to ‘Get It On’ by the British group T. Rex energised the dance floor like a jolt of electricity. Alex smiled at the stupid rule that demanded two-thirds of recorded music played in public places had to come from communist countries. Most venues got round it by playing brief snippets of their own music and Western songs in their entirety.
He picked up his pullover and looked around for Sophie to tell her he was sorry, but he couldn’t see her. Now he had calmed down he was starting to feel embarrassed about his behaviour. He hurried down the stairs but as he came out into Greifswalder Strasse, Alex heard some movement behind him. He peered up the dimly lit stairs to see two figures having a heated exchange. ‘Get away from me.’ Alex recognised her voice at once.