Another Kind of Country (36 page)

Rosa shivered. She led him inside without speaking.

No bird sang in the winter garden.

Sunday, 5 November 1989

East Berlin

Sunday morning, the trees bare under the low winter sky. Somewhere in the leafless branches over their heads a rook cawed.

‘He sounds lonely,’ Miller said.

Rosa looked at him, said nothing. Miller saw the way she walked with arms folded under her breasts, the way her body seemed to lean forward into the chill air, searching for purchase.

She’d barely spoken since they’d left the house, walking along the winding road. Miller
knew that her mind was wandering some other road where he couldn’t reach her. He sensed that he shouldn’t try to reach her but his own loneliness was too hungry.

The bird cawed again, hoarse, yearning.

‘Maybe it’s a she,’ Miller said.

She didn’t smile at his attempted joke, just half turned her face to him, half raised the dark eyebrows.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘No,’ Miller said. ‘I’m just happy to be with you.’

All morning she’d seemed absent, withdrawn into some shadowed corner of herself. When he’d reached for her in her narrow bed in the early morning, he’d felt her go rigid under his touch, sensed the way she’d seemed to shrivel into the mattress. ‘Please, Patrick.’ The words gulped into his shoulder and he’d sensed the terror of that windowless, stinking room, Dover’s breath on her uncovered body. Delayed shock, he told himself, but what did he know? Have you forgotten the smell – the
taste
– of shame in the private surgery of Dr Roger Miller?
The deed another’s, the shame yours?

He’d held her close in the early-morning gloom. Even in the silence he knew that her terror was still awake beside him in the narrow bed.

The coffee that he brought her was left untouched on the locker beside the bed.

When she came downstairs, her skin innocent from the shower, her dark hair shining and lustrous, he wanted to tell her she looked more beautiful than ever but he held his tongue. He fried some boiled potatoes he’d found in the fridge, cooked an omelette, coaxed her to eat a little.

A walk, he’d said, when she moved back from the barely touched food, a walk might do them good. He might have said more, might
have dribbled on like his mother, but he saw the emptiness in her bruised face and told himself to shut up. As in a trance she put on a duffel coat, a red woollen scarf; she sat on the bottom step of the staircase and drew on the black knee-high boots that closed around the black trousers, flexed her fingers in the leather gloves. There had been a sadness in the smile she gave him, standing in the hallway inside the front door, waiting for him to tell her it was time to go.
You have to give her space but you have to let her know she’s not alone, that no wall divides you
.

‘Baked beans and chips,’ Miller said now.

A pause in her stride, a small frown.

‘I just got a longing for them – that’s why I was going to West Berlin when they took my passport.’

‘Baked beans?’ She stopped, arms still folded, staring at him.

‘You know, beans in a tin, lathered in tomato sauce, sweet as sugar, haute cuisine for the English working classes.’

‘Yuk.’ But she was smiling.

‘Best enjoyed in one of England’s greasiest greasy spoons.’

‘A greasy spoon?’

‘A superior London caff. Fatty food obligatory. Uncleaned tables normal. Crumbs and slops from previous customers supplied free of charge.’ Her face wreathed in a smile now. ‘Tea poured from huge, swan-necked kettles, too bad if you don’t like milk in your tea.’

Rosa laughed. ‘And this is what you yearned for?’

‘I can’t explain it. A sort of beans-and-chips longing just seemed to overwhelm me.’ He stood close to her in the middle of the road. ‘All these years I’ve been here I’ve hardly missed the place, I came to think of here as home and,’ he swallowed, ‘since I met you it feels more like home than ever. But,’ he looked at Rosa, at the winter trees, ‘it was a very real feeling. Imagine, chips
and baked beans!’

Something unfroze in her. She unfolded her arms, reached her hand for his.

‘It’s all this uncertainty, this not knowing. It’s natural to reach out for what we know best.’

They walked on, closer now, hips touching.

He figured the question wouldn’t bother her, took a chance on asking. ‘D’you ever think about home – I mean, the home where you were a little girl?’

‘Santiago is always with me.’ He felt the pressure of her hand, was glad he’d asked. ‘Always, but this is home now and,’ she hesitated, ‘I’m worried about my father, he hasn’t phoned.’

‘He doesn’t trust the phones,’ Miller said, ‘and he did say he might be away for longer than the weekend.’

‘He’s not young any more,’ Rosa said, ‘and we both know that wherever he is, whatever he’s doing—’

‘Yes,’ Miller said. They both knew that General Reder was playing a dangerous game. ‘We just have to accept that he knows what he’s doing, he’s a soldier who has lived through dangerous times.’

Ahead of them a small convoy came round the bend in the road, led by a military jeep. The jeep slowed, then stopped as it came abreast of them. Behind the jeep a grey military lorry and a Stasi van came to a halt.

The army captain in the passenger seat of the jeep eyed Miller and Rosa warily.

‘What are you doing out here?’

Miller could hear the unspoken words:
in the vicinity of Wandlitz
.

It was Rosa who answered. ‘I live nearby.’

The captain glanced at the ID she handed him.

‘Frau Rossman.’ A hint
of a smile on the captain’s face as he read out Rosa’s name. ‘And you live nearby with . . .’ A questioning look at Miller.

‘With my father, General Reder,’ Rosa cut in.

‘Ah, General Reder.’ The captain’s face inscrutable, he might have been saying what the time was. He returned the ID card to Rosa, turned to Miller. ‘And you are?’

‘Patrick Miller.’

‘Ah, Herr Miller.’ The captain barely looked at Miller’s ID. As though my name is not unknown to him, Miller thought.

‘My advice to you,’ the captain said, ‘is to find another road for your Sunday-morning stroll.’

The dark eyes, almost hidden beneath the captain’s cap, gave away as little as the bland, speaking-clock voice. A gloved finger to his cap, a nod to the driver, and the jeep pulled away.

Rosa put her hand in Miller’s as the lorry followed, then the familiar Stasi van. She looked at Miller when the convoy had passed out of sight round the next bend.

‘You noticed?’

‘He recognized both our names,’ Miller said.

‘You’d expect him to know Papa’s name.’

‘But you’d wonder how and why he knows the name of Patrick Miller.’ He looked at the bend round which the convoy had disappeared. ‘I’m on a list, Rosa.’

‘Maybe it’s a friendly list, Patrick.’

‘And maybe not.’

‘We just don’t know,’ Rosa said. She tried to smile. ‘At least we know where we are.’

‘Yes,’ Miller said, ‘where we were told not to be.’

He put his arm round her and they began to retrace their steps along the twisting road.

Monday seemed
to Miller like a day spent in no-man’s-land. He was glad to be with Rosa but he missed the familiar touchstones of his own flat. There was nowhere else he wished to be yet he felt literally stateless without the comfort of his passport.

‘Don’t worry, Papa will know what to do,’ Rosa said.

There was no word from General Reder. Nor from Dieter. Their absence, their continuing silence, seemed to fill the house. Rosa was looking out of the sitting-room window but Miller felt sure that she was seeing little of the winter garden. She touched her swollen face, gingerly.

‘They both know what they’re doing,’ Miller said. We speak now only in whispers, he thought; we are afraid not only of what others might hear but of what we ourselves may hear from our own tongues.

Rosa said nothing, nodded to him from the window.

Soon
, the general had said. But ‘soon’ was not enough now. Miller needed more than ‘soon’; for good or ill he had thrown in his lot with General Reder and he was entitled to know how and where and when his ass might be on the line.

The ugly American phrase reminded him of Dover and the assault on Rosa. He reached for her hand, saw how the discoloured skin darkened when she smiled tentatively at him.

‘We should go to the hospital,’ Miller said, ‘and let the doctor take a look at you again.’

She shook her head. He knew it was pointless to ask again.

‘Then come with me to the office,’ he went on, ‘I need to check a couple of things.’

He knew that she could guess that there was nothing that needed checking at the office – she’d heard him phoning Hartheim to say that he’d been asked by General Reder to keep an eye on his property for a few days – but she nodded again. Maybe, Miller thought, she
needs to get out of the house too.

Rosa drove. It was lunch hour, the streets of East Berlin seemed almost deserted. The car put-putted along to its usual Trabi soundtrack. The low sky seemed to hang close above them, heavy with the promise of snow. For all the quietness of the roads, what traffic there was seemed slow-moving, as though the drivers were on edge, fearful of making a hasty or unexpected move.

It seemed to Miller that the whole city – drivers, pedestrians, traffic police – was waiting, as if the changes in the Politburo, especially the departures of Honecker and Mielke, had left Berliners holding their breath. Snow was not the only threat in the air.

They were close to Wilhelmstrasse when he felt Rosa’s hand rest lightly on his thigh.

‘Do you
really
want to go to your office, Patrick?’ Her touch was electric; they’d held each other in the night but they hadn’t made love. ‘Or would you prefer just to have a coffee together?’

He loved this street of tall, gracious houses but the thought of further explanations to Hartheim was not appealing.

He laughed. ‘As you wish,’ he said and she took the next left and he knew where they were heading. ZERO seemed unchanged. The same black decor, the same punkish students sucking on cigarettes, clouds of tobacco smoke clinging to the low ceiling. The same loud music and insistent rhythm, the turning of heads, the frank examination of Rosa and himself as they entered the premises. And yet, within minutes of sitting at a cigarette-scarred table, Miller knew that ZERO too had changed. A couple of students stopped Rosa as she was returning from the counter with two beakers of coffee; he saw the animation in their faces as they spoke to her; he thought he saw apprehension in their expressions as they turned
to stare at himself.

‘Everyone’s nervous,’ Rosa said as she sat beside Miller.

Was there an edge of tension in the mixed jumble of competing conversations? Miller felt it, said so to Rosa.

‘Everyone’s waiting,’ Rosa said.

‘We’re all waiting, Rosa.’

‘Yes.’ The word hung in the cigarette smoke.

‘Yes,’ Miller said, ‘but for
what?’

Tuesday, 7 November 1989

East Berlin

Darkness was falling on Tuesday evening when, unannounced, General Reder came home. To Miller the little general seemed shrunken; he looked, in Rosa’s embrace, like a child that she might carry off to an early bed.

‘Thank you, Herr Miller.’ The general shook hands with Miller in the most formal of German manners. ‘Thank you for helping as I asked.’

‘
Bitte schön
.’ Miller was equally formal. ‘I’m glad I was able to help you and Rosa.’

‘Thank you again.’

They were in the sitting room. General Reder lowered himself, almost painfully, on to the dark leather sofa and Rosa fussed, picking up his overcoat, kneeling beside him to remove his shoes and slip a pair of house shoes on his small feet. The general accepted her attentions as a patient might a nurse’s. Yes, he told her, a cup of tea would be good.

‘I’ll make it.’ Miller went to the kitchen, prepared the tea, set the tray. He saw himself reflected in the darkening window, the tray in his hands:
and this old man with the years carved in his face is going to lead this country to a new tomorrow?

‘You look tired, Papa.’ Rosa was sitting on the carpet at the
general’s feet; she smiled at Miller as he entered with the tray. ‘You’ve been travelling all these days?’

‘I’ve been travelling, Rosa.’ The voice tired, as if the voice itself were still on a long journey.

‘To . . .’ Rosa hesitated, looked at Miller. ‘To many places, Papa?’

A tired smile, an inclining of the balding head.

Once more Rosa caught Miller’s eye: they both knew that it was pointless to pry further.

‘Oh, Papa!’ Exasperation in Rosa’s words, but fear too: all day the nearby road had rumbled under the wheels of trucks and jeeps and tanks.

Reder leaned forward on the sofa, stroked his daughter’s long, dark hair.

‘Everything will be OK,’ he said.

Miller put the tray down on a low coffee table. ‘And everything will be
soon
, General?’ His words whispered but urgent too.

The noise of the key turning in the hall door stalled any reply; all three waited, listening to the footsteps approaching in the hallway.

The door opened quietly and Dieter stood there, dark coat unbuttoned, black gloves in his hands, his face pale, gaunt. Reder rose from the sofa, suddenly energetic, and Miller and Rosa watched as the two men embraced in the open doorway.

‘All is well?’ Reder asked.

The monkish head nodded, something like a smile on the thin lips. ‘And with you?’

‘All is well,’ the general answered.

Rosa crossed the room. Dieter touched her face with his long, thin fingers. ‘And with you, Rosa?’ His fingers
close to her bruised face. ‘You are strong again?’

Rosa shrugged. ‘I’ll live.’

‘Good. In any case,’ Dieter’s voice low, looking at the general, ‘your father and I need to talk now.’ He shrugged, half smiled. ‘Privately.’

‘Please, Dieter.’ Rosa took his hand, her voice as low as Dieter’s. ‘If we could talk to you now – we need your help, Patrick and I. Maybe you can help us – I mean you and Papa.’