Stealing the Future (4 page)

I had to admit, that was true. When the singer-songwriter Stephan Krawczyk was arrested along with several others for trying to join a demonstration on Rosa Luxemburg day, his wife Freya Klier, who’d already been released, went on Western TV to appeal for support for him and the other interned activists. Lindenberg was one of those Westerners who put pressure on the Communist government to let them go.

“But the
Puhdys
?” Katrin would never let go of what she considered my poor musical choices. “Have you still got that album,
Das Buch
? God, it’s dire!” She pulled a face, then changed tack. “No, the point is. You were doing all that stuff for me, for us, for all of us here in the Republic, I mean, over there,” a gesture, through the window, vaguely eastwards, and I wonder whether this is the point to break in, defend the Puhdys, but I’m glad I didn’t, because:

“And here I am, I’m at uni, meeting all these people, finding out about all these things, hearing all this music. And I feel you missed out, and, yeah, I know, music isn’t such a big thing, but it kind of is too.” Another pause, then: “So, it’s my way of saying thanks.”

I wasn’t sure where to look. I’m not good at public emotion; too many years of not wanting to give the state a way into my life, not wanting to give the Stasi a clue to my weaknesses. But I could feel a tear begin in my right eye.

“Thank you too,” I manage, blinking rapidly and looking away from my daughter.

Katrin smiled. Genuine, not frustrated. A little nervous still, experience telling her to keep something back.

“But, is it your Republic, still?” I ask, without thinking. Now I’m sort of looking at my daughter. “I mean, there you are in Westberlin, with all your new friends, your new clothes, your new money. Your West student’s grant from the West government…” A pause, what I’ve just said sinking in. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. It came out wrong. Sorry. I meant, when are you coming home?”

But that, too, was the wrong thing to say.

“Papa, I’m just the other end of the city! You can come out here any time you want!” But, seeing my face, she stopped. It wasn’t about the physical distance. It was about the symbolism. The Wall is still there, no matter how many holes we’d punched in it. She was in the West, I was in the East. Same city, different countries.

“Papa,” she said slowly, “maybe I should have come back that winter. Things were changing, but all I could think about was that the system was breaking you. I didn’t want to go the same way. I wanted to study, but they wouldn’t let me. You know all this.”

Her face pointed at the table, but her eyes turned upwards, checking how I’d react. I think my face had gone hard, immobile—the calm look I’d been trying to keep up had definitely gone. Katrin was drawing circles with her fingertips on the dark wood, as if the Zen that had slipped off my face had landed on the table in front of us, a pool of viscosity that she could dab her fingers in. It was obvious to us both that we were each thinking of the day she left. The furtive goodbyes, nothing said aloud in case the Stasi were listening. The knowledge that once she crossed the border into Czechoslovakia, on the way to Hungary, and from there to the West, once that first frontier had been crossed there would be no return. We would probably never see each other again. I remembered the desperation, the claustrophobia that had driven her away. I remembered my feelings that day: crushed, hurt, betrayed. Don’t shed any tears for them they told us, ordered us, on the TV and radio.
Don’t shed any tears
for those who couldn’t stay in this stagnant land. But I still cry when I remember that awful day four years ago. And I know Katrin does, too.

“Do we have to do this every time, Papa? We always do it.”

I could hear the frustration, the pain, the anger in her words. And I could feel answering emotions rising up inside myself too. It was the state she was angry at, that old GDR, run by pensioners. Stalinists. But she was angry at me, too. The daughter of a known dissident had not been allowed to stay on at school after 16, not to do her exams at 18, nor go on to university. She’d never said it aloud, but that was my fault. It was my choice to do the things I’d done, and she had been made to pay for it.

Were families always like this, rubbing each other up the wrong way, accusing each other without words, the past a ghost that is always present? Having the same arguments again and again, hurting each other in the same places time after time? We always said, and left unsaid, the same things. Katrin was the only family I had left, I didn’t want this.

“It’s just, some of us are trying, Katrin. Some of us
stayed
,” there was an emphasis on the word stayed, as if I had pushed my emotions into those letters before forcing them out of my mouth. “We pushed the
Bonzen
out, we kept the West out, and we’re making a real, independent, democratic state. Probably the first in the world! You know this! You know we need people. Young people. We need people like you, Katrin! You can study at the Humboldt University in the East. We lost tens of thousands of young people that autumn. You should have stayed. We need you.”

I should have kept my mouth shut, I knew it as soon as I’d said the words, I knew it before I’d even said those words. At times like this, I feel like I’m my own angel, hovering overhead, watching, seeing everything, my own face, her face, hearing my own words. The angel could see how I took a bite out of my own daughter with each syllable. I see it, but I always seem powerless to stop the mess I’m making.

Stayed?
Like you? And what are you doing now?” She was angry, her words sharp with barbs. “What’s your contribution to the glorious revolution? Get off your fucking high horse. You, you spy! That’s what you are, creeping around, look you even have a sad trenchcoat! A spy, no better than the fucking Stasi!”

This had to hurt. The angel watched my face become hard, my eyes glaze as I absorb the shock.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? They got rid of the Stasi, and they realised they still needed it, so they asked the sheep to put on the wolf’s clothing, didn’t they? The Minister of the Interior himself, good old Benno, he was the one who asked you! Didn’t he?”

“No! You know that’s not how it was. How it is. You know!”

“So if it’s not true, what exactly is it you do? I mean, I have no real idea what my own Papa does!”

“You do know, I’m with the RS.”

“Yeah, but I mean, it’s just another of those weird combinations of letters that could hide anything! Tell me, tell me what it is you do? What have you been working on this week, yesterday, today?”

I could have told her about the Russian major, made her laugh about the Stalin toast and my summary dismissal from his presence, but my mind seemed stuck on the Maier case. I recalled that feeling of fear that I’d experienced on the way back from West Silesia. It was a fear that I hadn’t had to feel for a few years—I used to know it so well, this extra sense, almost anticipating it, welcoming it. An old friend. You knew where you were with that fear. It was from the days when we didn’t know whether the Stasi were listening, whether the Stasi were watching, whether the Stasi were coming to get us. It reminded me of why I was doing stuff, back then. Daring to disagree, to find out about stuff the state didn’t want us to know. But nowadays it just made me feel sick.

“It’s… It’s confidential. I can’t tell you. Sorry,” it sounded lame, even to me, even without my angel’s ears listening to my own words. But I couldn’t share this with Katrin. She was safe now. Here, in Westberlin.

“You know what, it’s all rubbish. All shit. You and your new society, based on
trust and openness and honesty
,” this last bit in a different voice, sarcastic. “And there you are, in your secret job, doing secret things for the secretaries in the secret ministry!”

I just sat there, head sagging, face inches from the table.

“Shit. Look, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got a lecture in half an hour.”

I didn’t look up as Katrin stood up, put her coat on, gestured to the waiter and paid. She looked at me, I could tell, even though I was still glaring at the table, shoulders hunched inside the trench coat. Without another word she turned, and left the café, swiftly negotiating the chairs and tables, away from where I was still slumped, fingertips just brushing the cassette on the table.

I nudged the cassette round so that I could read what was on the label. It said simply:
Thanks
, with a smiling acid face drawn next to the word. Sliding the tape off the table and into my pocket, I moved towards the door. Nowhere near as elegant as my daughter in completing this manoeuvre, bumping into tables and the backs of chairs, drawing questioning looks from the chattering students. I was no longer at home in a young persons’ café. When did that happen? Or was it my clothes, my hairstyle, my smell; identifying me as from the East? I made it to the door in one piece, and hoping to make an exit without causing any further scenes, I pulled the door open. Too hard: it slammed against the coat stand behind it, and I slid out, not looking back to see what the students thought of my awkward exit. There, to one side of the door, stood Katrin.

“Katrin! Oh–”

“It’s OK, I’m going already.”

“No! I mean, please. Wait. You’re right. I should share more. Open up a bit. One more chance?”

Katrin hesitated, a vague smile peering through her tears. She looked towards the bus stop, back at me. Maybe she did have a lecture to go to.

“OK, do you want to go back in?”

“No, it’s true what I just said, it’s confidential. I shouldn’t be telling you, so I definitely shouldn’t be talking about it in a café in the middle of Westberlin!”

Katrin smiled. A grin that reminded me of her mother when we first met, before the care and the worry crept into our relationship.

“Let’s walk a bit, here, this way. And you can tell me why you’re so cagey these days.”

She took my arm, and steered me down a side street, as if I were an old man needing to be helped home after getting lost. It must have presented a strange sight: an attractive young woman, in trendy, Western clothes walking arm in arm with a bulky, grey headed man clad in cheap, nylon-mix clothing. But I guess everyone in Westberlin has relatives in the East, so maybe it was normal. From the side street we turned into another street. The tall buildings—delicate in yellows and creams, stucco patterns and reliefs gracing the façades—looked down on us.

“I’m sorry about before. I shouldn’t have made fun about your coat—I mean, it’s not like you were the only one in a beige trenchcoat hanging around there.” A few more steps, another street corner, cross the road while I wonder where she saw another Ossi, then: “You know, I will come back. I am coming back.”

I looked at her, waiting for her to continue, not wanting to break in on what I hoped she was going to tell me. She’d never before spoken to me about her plans for the future. Not since she’d left.

“But I’m really enjoying being here, at the
Freie Universität
, being in West Berlin. It feels like, after all the years of, of…” she was struggling to find the words: “
suffocation
, I can finally… unfold. I know that amazing things are happening, over there, back home,” again the vague eastwards gesture. “And I want to be part of that. I will be. But this is
me
-time. Does that make sense?”

It made a lot of sense and I wondered, if I were younger, would I be doing what she was, or would I be in the midst of this new society we were building in the East? I was thinking of the endless meetings with the other residents in my tenement block. If I were in my twenties, would I want to sit there and plan everything from the communal kitchen garden to insulation measures? Maybe the answer was yes. There were some younger people in my block and while I could see that they sometimes switched off (usually when Frau Priepert from upstairs was talking about noise levels or cleaning rotas for the communal areas), they were actually really engaged. Without them we wouldn’t have the bike workshop in the cellar, without them we wouldn’t have links with the farm on the edge of the city—the farm that brought us food. Last week when I got home they were hanging off ropes, repairing the rendering on the side of the building—it looked dangerous, the work slapdash and piecemeal, but watching them I felt a sense of pride. And the building desperately needed this attention after years of neglect.

While my mind was wandering, Katrin had continued talking. She was telling me about her course, the other students. I tried to keep up, but I had somehow become fixated on the bike workshop. I made a mental note to take my old bike there, and get it sorted out before the weather turned too cold.

“But you shouldn’t think you can get away with it that easily,” grinned Katrin. “Tell me all your secrets!”

I often had a strong feeling with people who knew me well, particularly ones who cared about me, that my face simply betrayed those thoughts I wasn’t even consciously thinking. Like now, I guess I had been hoping Katrin would be sidetracked by her stories of student life, and that I wouldn’t have to tell her about West Silesia and the dead politician. Had she read that on my face? Was that the reason for the sudden change of subject, back to me.

“Well, I had to go down to West Silesia. It’s all kicking off down there.”

“Yeah, tell me about it! A student in my seminar group is from Görlitz, she says they have guards on the Silesian borders now. They’re wearing West Silesian uniforms, but are actually BGS.”
Bundesgrenzschutz
—Westgerman paramilitary border police.

I was surprised Katrin had heard about this, I’d only heard the rumour last week. So far we weren’t clear whether the Westgermans had actually put their own troops on the Silesian borders, or whether they were just providing training and military hardware. Either way it was a confrontational move, an incursion on our sovereignty—West Silesia was still, officially, part of the GDR.

“So, I go down there, because there’s a dead politician, probably murdered-”