Read The Berlin Crossing Online
Authors: Kevin Brophy
The Berlin Crossing
Kevin Brophy
Copyright © 2012 Kevin Brophy
The right of Kevin Brophy to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2011
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 9780755380879
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Kevin Brophy has told the story of his childhood in the Army Barracks in Galway, Ireland, in the memoir
Walking The Line
. Educated locally, he later obtained an MA at Leeds University. In 2009 he was Writer-in-Residence to the city of Langenfeld (NRW) in Germany. He has taught in England, Ireland, Poland and Germany.
for Elisabeth Wölk
I’m a pen-and-paper writer. Throughout the various computer versions of this book, I was guided and helped by my daughter,
Georgia Brophy; typesetter, Helen Geary; my elevenses buddy, Paddy Lydon; my neighbour, Lorcán Mannion; my colleague at Lodz
University, Andrew Tomlinson. My thanks to all.
I’m happy to acknowledge, with gratitude, the friendship and support of my writing guru, Christopher Murray, through all my
endeavours.
Lastly, and certainly not least: my characters and I negotiated this Berlin crossing with the help of two consummate professionals
– my editor at Headline, Claire Baldwin, and my patient agent, Caroline Montgomery. Sincere thanks to both.
What need you, being come to sense
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence . . .
W. B. Yeats,
September 1913
December 1962, The Berlin Wall
The vast sea of lights on the Western side drew your eyes from the grey darkness of the Wall. You tried to keep warm in the
high watchtower, tried to keep your eyes on the killing zone below, but the Western lights were too bright, too warm. An ocean
of lights, red and orange and green and gold, shimmering in the snow, across the night.
Across the Wall
.
Corporal Hans Keiler tried to wriggle his toes inside his rubber-soled boots. His wife had knitted him extra-thick socks for
his nights in the watchtower above the Wall. The socks kept his feet from freezing. His wife’s back was warmer, in their narrow
bed.
Night duty
. Still, the pay was better, it would pay for a bigger bed, a new table, maybe a sofa. Greta knew how to warm a man on a sofa,
not just in bed.
Enough of that
. Wriggle your toes. Blow on your fingers. Flex those fingers around your rifle. Remind yourself that it was your expert shot
that got you this assignment on the Wall.
If it moves, shoot
.
Corporal Hans Keiler shivered – and not from the cold. He’d never trained his weapon on anything other than a cardboard
target or a plywood silhouette swinging on a cable at the end of a shooting range. He’d never looked down his rifle sights
at a man or woman.
His friend Jurgen, runner-up in the regimental shooting competition, had never been the same since he’d shot that student
in broad daylight a month before. A big, genial farm boy from south of Rostock, always ready for an unmalicious laugh, that
was Jurgen. Until he’d trained his sights on that idiot student who thought he could sprint his way across the zone in the
middle of a quiet afternoon. One shot, that was all it took, and the fellow dropped in the middle of the zone. Hardly twitched;
Jurgen just clipped him in the back, right through the heart.
Jurgen won a citation, was awarded a bonus, honoured at morning parade. But he never did Wall duty again.
The last Corporal Keiler had heard, Jurgen was spouting rubbish in a loony bin outside Magdeburg.
Concentrate
. Shut your eyes to those seductive lights to the West. Follow the path of the searchlight as it orbits the killing zone of
the Wall. Concentrate on your field of fire.
And hope you have another incident-free shift.
He narrowed his eyes, squinted through the falling snow. Heavier now, big soft flakes floating in the translucent beam.
A sound below him, slight, a rustle in the night.
The beam paused, lingered on the forbidden space, was swung back by the operator.
A figure caught in the lights, rising to his knees. Corporal Keiler watched the figure stand upright, tall, a peaked cap above
a young face, stubbled.
Halt
! The command barked in the night. Another spotlight, the fellow transfixed between the crossbeams.
A siren screamed.
Lights flashing now on the Western side, voices raised.
Corporal Keiler went through the motions. Weapon to his shoulder. Marksman’s eye trained on the figure in the lights. So young,
younger than me, Keiler thought, in the split second before he pulled the trigger.
The figure in the lights blinked, took a step towards the West.
The bullet caught him in the shoulder, spun him round to face East Berlin.
The second shot was better, lower.
The fellow was dead before he hit the grey surface of the killing ground.
He fell on his back and the snow fell on the flowers of blood blooming on his chest, on the peaked cap lying beside his outstretched
hand.
Corporal Keiler shivered, knew he’d have to deliver a lengthy report to his commander. He knew he wouldn’t mention the smile,
the damnedest thing, he could swear to it: the fellow seemed to smile as his body fell to the ground amid the falling snow.
BRANDENBURG
1993
Frau Winkler said that, yes, she knew I had an appointment with the Director but that she’d check, anyway, just to make sure
He (you could hear the capital letter in her voice) was not engaged. I was afforded a full view of the shapely Winkler figure
sheathed in a taut, black skirt that seemed designed more for display than modesty, as our new school secretary got out from
behind her new desk and knocked on the Director’s office door. I’d overheard staffroom whispers about the Director’s more
detailed knowledge of Frau Winkler but I kept my own counsel on such musings. Old habits die hard – never more so than in
these post-Reunification days.
Frau Winkler opened the door and as it closed behind her I was left to study the immaculate emptiness of our secretary’s desktop.
Only the new Siemens phone, all buttons and lights, was permitted to stand on the veneered surface. It was all part of the
new
Wessie
outlook – all clean lines and no clutter. Especially in our hearts and minds, which obviously needed sanitizing, delousing
and Western streamlining.
When Frau Winkler re-emerged from the Director’s office, her well-chiselled, mid-forties face gave no indication as to whether
her nether (or upper) landscape had enjoyed any brief exploration. She stood aside to usher me into the Presence; I caught
the scent of something cool and musky and was
reminded that I hadn’t had sex for over a year now, since Stefanie had asked me to leave and I’d gone back to my mother’s
flat near the railway station—
‘Herr Doktor Ritter!’ The Director’s voice was fulsome. ‘How good of you to come!’
I didn’t point out that I had no choice, that the victors wrote the history books.
‘You wished to see me, Herr Direktor,’ I said as we shook hands.
Dr Wilhelm Frick motioned for me to be seated. My chair left me looking slightly upwards at our new Director, across the vastness
of his desk. Like Frau Winkler’s in the outer office – and like all the other furniture in both offices – it was new. While
the Director busied himself with a yellow-bound plastic folder – I could read my name on the taped tag – I took a quick look
around. Not a trace of the old Director’s office – nor indeed of the old Director himself – remained. Martin Stork, the Director
who had run the school even when I had been a student here, had been swept away, along with his old metal desk and matching
grey cabinets, in the great
Wessie
tide of Reunification. I’d sensed Martin’s imminent departure on the last day of summer term –the diffident handshake had
been uncharacteristic, unlike the firm grasp which had always marked our holiday partings and our start-of-term renewals.
We’d never been friends, Martin Stork and I – in the GDR even the coin of friendship had to be tested between your teeth before
being put under the microscope – but we had both known that our loyalties belonged to the same flag. On that blistering July
day when we had wished each other an enjoyable summer break, I think we’d both known that Martin Stork’s tenure as Director
of Brandenburg Gymnasium No. 1 was coming to an end. The city of Brandenburg, like all the other towns and cities of the old
German Democratic Republic, was
already showing the results of West Germany’s Chancellor, Helmut Kohl’s promise to make the fields of the East bloom again
with flowers: carpetbaggers from the West were sprouting everywhere in the East, their purses and pockets gaping open for
whatever windfalls they could engineer for themselves. Their cars were beguilingly monstrous, their accents disconcertingly
strange, as they sat in our seats and took over the running of our lives.
Just as Dr Wilhelm Frick was now running mine.
‘The Social Review Committee has been studying your case, Herr Doktor Ritter.’
The Director paused, making space for me to comment, perhaps, on the wondrous nature of the Social Review Committee, but I
had no intention of making it easy for the balding bastard. The full-colour, framed photograph of Cologne Cathedral on the
wall above the Director’s head just about summed up the absurdity of the fellow’s appointment: what did we want, here in the
heart of the old East, with a Director who took off for Cologne every Friday at noon and did not see fit to return to his
desk in Brandenburg until mid-afternoon on Monday? Was it for this that Martin Stork had been found wanting? Was it for this
I sat in silence opposite this balding, bespectacled interloper who couldn’t even be bothered to set up a home in our city?
To facilitate this shit who spent four nights a week in our newest hotel while he presided over a long-established secondary
school that many of us were devoted to
?