Tying Down The Lion (29 page)

“
Petticoat
,” I tell her in a respectful tone.

“Well, they would not appear in there. But not being professional makes them very natural,” Ilse points out.

It’s true. They have Tuesday’s awkwardness, but with style. And they look as free as it’s possible to be.

“
Sybille
sells out fast. I’m lucky to have this copy,” Ilse says. “I so wanted the dress pattern. I can now unite fashion and politics. When I sew, every stitch is a small protest.”

“But can you buy the material?” Mum asks.

“No, Birgit. Not in the shops. We have to make it up as we go along. The young mother on the ground floor made a white pleated skirt with nappy cloth. And Karin’s family has an allotment so they gave me some plastic sheets for protecting strawberry plants. I can make a raincoat from those.”

“A plastic raincoat?” I yell. “They’re in fashion in England. I’ve been wanting one for ages. Not the fold-up type for men on bicycles. A snazzy sort.”

“Well, there we are,” Ilse says. “This is the proof that I am a secret fashion expert. Just don’t tell the Stasi I’m snazzy.”

“I’ll keep it under my hat,” I promise.

Being in East Germany is like swimming in an underwater world. Everything is distorted by its own atmosphere. For Ilse, this is just the way she lives. She is not disturbed by it, just amused.

Even Karin’s trousers have their own obstinate style, a sense of belonging here, and she wears them with her own hard-chinned flair, not quite willing to view this life as entirely normal.

I swear I can hear her match striking every half an hour upstairs while she irons all her friends’ factory overalls.

“She takes on the ironing to stop her going mad,” Ilse tells us. “Karin is being watched, you see, followed by cars that creep behind her when she walks to work. And the manager at her factory has moved her to a boring job in a different section. Just to keep her in line.”

Ilse suspects the hearty Uwe of being a possible informer, although she doesn’t think there’s much to tell. Karin toes the line, even though she is outspoken.

“But Uwe is Karin’s friend.”

“Eyes are everywhere, Jacqueline. On the streets. At work. Even in your own block of flats,” Mum reminds me.

“It is so. Exterior eyes. Interior eyes,” Ilse whispers, her eyes serious for once. “None of us are truly alone. I watch myself all the time. My own eyes see more of me than anyone else’s can.”

While the goulash simmers we have time to visit the supermarket.

“Meat here takes a long time to cook,” Ilse says, taking a string-bag from a hook by the door as we leave. “No tender cuts, I’m afraid. Mystery meat, I call it.”

Mum smiles. “The meat we ate as girls fell from the bone,” she tells me, linking arms with Ilse. “The veal moulted in our mouths.”

“Melted, Mum.”

“I remember the strong smell of the butcher even now. And the cooked meats in the next shop, smoky and peppery.”

Ilse breathes in hard. “Oh Birgit, I can smell it now, even here.” And for once she doesn’t break into peals of laughter.

Victor and I go shopping with Mum during the school holidays. At two o’clock we walk to the parade and weave in and out of the shops, filling our basket with loaves and chops and iced buns and shampoo. If Dad hasn’t pilfered Victor’s piggy-bank, he uses his pocket-money to buy yet another kit for making stuffed felt creatures. He isn’t all war comics and Messerschmitts. His collection is almost complete, with only a stern-faced kitten and a demented-looking zebra to go.

In summer, Mum buys us ice-creams if she has a spare shilling. I think she goes without the Brillo or the soft toilet-paper to make sure of it. In winter we huddle in the warm bakery before braving the rain or the ice again. Victor moans about wearing a balaclava, but if Mum lets him take it off, he whines about his freezing ears. He is such a square.

But East Berlin is nothing like Oaking Parade. In Ilse’s district, queues grow out of the shops and take root along the pavements. Older women stare and shift their weight from one leg to another. Mothers try to ignore the tedium and heat, their children tugging at their hands. If the shelves cannot be restocked, everyone has to come back in the morning.

“Sold out for now,” Ilse explains as we pass a long line of people breaking up and heading home.

At least we are going to the supermarket, rather than waiting for loaves or fish. I imagine it will be like Mace’s, but with peculiar brands. At least it will be cool inside. Mace’s is cold even in summer, especially the refrigerated section.

But this shop is no Mace’s. It’s thick with horrible heat and sweat from all the people waiting to pay. The shelves are scattered, rather than filled, with goods. Ilse picks up a packet of dried lentils and the last jar of gherkins. We wait to pay, Mum and I exhausted by the long walk and the longer wait. It’s normal for Ilse. She sets off to work at six every morning. At night she drags out her zinc bath and waits ages for the water to heat. There is always a queue to use the one toilet in her block.

After her shifts, she dashes up and down the stairs from one flat to another with a piece of paper, taking lists and collecting cash from her elderly neighbours and rushing out again to the shops.

“They hand their money to me with great hope,” she says. “But often the shop is empty and I must let them down.”

“I know you drive a tram, but are women allowed to drive cars too?” I ask her. “Because it would save you all this walking.”

“Oh of course, Jacqueline. Women are treated exactly the same. They drive. They earn the same pay. We all work a fifty hour week. But, you know, that has made it harder. As well as having a job and raising families, women must cope with having nothing to buy for the table. The Nazi belief in the perfect family, with the smiling mother roasting meat for everyone and polishing their home, lives on here in East Germany. But we are also expected to be the same as men in a country that has no money and no imported goods. The old tradition has become impossible. And as for my car, I am waiting for one, the same as everyone else.”

“Roy saved for three years. How long will you have to wait?” Mum asks.

“The waiting list is long. It’s not just about saving the money. Trabants are only made here in this country and we do not always have the materials. I expect to wait fifteen years. But I am happy to walk, you know. I like to breathe the air after driving the tram all day.”

I admire her thin legs, the calf muscle standing proud beneath the hand-sewn frock with its red ric-rac edging. Her ballerina feet never move while the queue is static. Mine fidget and Mum’s shuffle about. Ilse has the poise and patience of a statue.

But fifteen years is endless, longer than I have lived. And after all that waiting, not even a choice. Practically every car we see is a Trabant. Clattering and smelly, they churn out clouds of black exhaust.

“The petrol goes into a tank above the engine,” Ilse explains. “There is no pump. Only gravity sends the fuel to the right place. So if the front end crashes into something there’s a terrible danger of fire. Trabant drivers are like doctors with sick babies. They must do some kind of surgery on them every day to help them last a lifetime. But I am still looking forward to mine. My name is on the list.”

“How can you look forward fifteen years?”

“Because that is what we do.”

“Can’t you have cars from other countries sent over? We saw all different kinds in West Berlin.”

“Other countries aren’t interested in our worthless currency, so nothing is imported.” Ilse lowers her voice. “You know, this country does not exist. The West does not recognise it. Nothing and no one comes in. And no one can leave.”

There is no ice-cream cabinet in the supermarket. No Corona in tall bottles. No imperial mints. Nothing much at all. Tiny trolleys that look as if they’re made for dolls rather than people. I suppose they don’t need to be very deep or strong since there’s nothing to put in them.

“My God, the prices,” Mum says. “Are they real? They seem to have frozen in 1936.”

“Yes,” Ilse says. “That is correct.”

Mum shakes her head and stares at the miserable shelves. Not much good having cheap things if there’s nothing to buy.

Ilse spots a man carrying a tray of minced-beef portions at the far end of the shop and asks us to keep her place while she dashes over to him. I wish he was offering iced ginger beer.

Before the assistant can pile his meat onto the little counter, the crowd has taken it all. He can barely hang onto the empty tray as the discs of meat are snatched up. He’s left to gather up the fluttering circles of bloody waxed paper that sandwiched them together.

Ilse is one of the lucky few. She turns away from a bent old man in a sagging checked shirt still holding out his hand on the off-chance someone will take pity and let him have their miserable piece. No one can afford to be generous to him. Hopeful people are waiting for Ilse back at the flats, including a pregnant widow and a woman of eighty in a wheelchair.

As she carries the meat back to us like an athlete with a trophy, she throws it to me and veers to another part of the store like a rugby-player on course for a try, returning with rumpled hair and an armful of toothbrushes.

“Such a crowd,” she says, panting. “No one has been able to get these for so long. The factory caught fire, you see.”

“One toothbrush factory for the whole country?” Mum asks.

“Yes, just one.”

She has six toothbrushes. One is for Silke. She squeals at the prospect of giving her the good news. She will stockpile the rest with her boxes of dried peas and jars of strawberry jam, all the same type, which form a tower in a corner of her bedroom. She has to take what she can whenever it appears, an art she has been perfecting for over twenty years.

War is supposed to end, one way or another. Here, where it has set in cold stone, this is how she will always live.

While we drag our feet forward another inch, Mum says, “I could have brought you a toothbrush.”

“No. You must never worry about me,” Ilse says, squeezing Mum’s arm. “East Germany is the most wealthy and well-equipped of all the socialist states in Eastern Europe. I am very lucky.”

Her clear voice carries, just in case that tired-eyed lady serving at the counter is an informer, or that bent old man clutching his haul of toothbrushes, sweating in his ancient suit and tie, or the harassed assistant with the meat-tray who has just slapped down a pound of shredded liver. Ilse ducks out of the queue, dives towards him. But a throng of old ladies in head-scarves tackle him first. She shrugs and grins as she comes back to her spot.

“Ah, little Ilse,” Mum says, hugging her. “You could almost be English, you know. They accept hardship with good grace. Roy even eats celery if we visit someone’s house for a meal. What is it, Jacqueline, that the English always say?”

“Put up and shut up, Mum.”

Ilse bursts out laughing, winking at me. “Oh, Birgit, in that case, I have much in common with you English. If ever I can come to see for myself, I will fit in so well that no one will guess my past.”

It’s such a small wish.

We walk back to the flat with the toothbrushes and the few other items of shopping. The course of the Wall has made the route longer than it used to be.

“I still expect to walk along a favourite street I’ve known all my life, but as I turn the corner I remember it is not possible now. I must change direction at the last minute.”

“My dear Ilse, I cannot imagine how you manage here.”

“Oh Birgit, never worry about me. Too much sadness would rot me like a fallen apple. And I do not wish for wrinkles. I am happy, you know. I have my good companion, Silke. She understands me better than anyone. We have a special friendship, one that may not be so easy in the West. I have my place in this society. My job is secure. I’m needed. I’m paid. I have more food than in those bad years. If I become ill, the hospital is free. I have friends who all understand how my life feels, because theirs is the same.”

Ilse’s eyes are fixed like two dark fish in a frozen sea. Mum and I pretend not to notice her long silence that follows. We just keep walking, our feet in rhythm until we reach Ilse’s building with its long history and stubborn beauty. The pre-fab blocks we have passed on the way may take a few years to acquire the same soul.

Ilse pauses on the top step, her key in the lock.

“Look, I have accepted this life. I have survived. I helped Beate to survive. Now she is over there and I’m here. Both surviving still.”

“Is that enough?” Mum asks.

“If you had stayed in Berlin after the war and lived here in those times, you would not say that now. The people of Berlin keep this city open, Birgit. And our survival made me realise something. To find happiness after suffering, you must concentrate on the facts, on all that is real and true, even if life is not perfect. Even if a wall appears in the middle of the night. Never concentrate on hope. You will be disappointed. Manage with what is here now. And be glad it’s not that same terrible war.”

She rattles her string-bag of toothbrushes and laughs to show her sadness is parcelled up now. We will never see it again.

***

Ilse’s friends squash into the living-room and flick through
Sybille
. Some of them even admire my clothes. Not with envy, just curiosity. We squat on the floor to eat the thin goulash and a powdery chocolate blancmange. Ilse hands the food through the serving-hatch that is actually a very modern feature and I pretend Peter is standing the other side of it, passing me the braised cucumbers.

It is an age before Ilse switches on her skinny little lamp. She has to be careful about the electric bill. I bet if you wait for the red-print one, like Dad does, you get arrested. The lamplight shines on her prized red telephone and I wonder how often it rings, and who else listens.

Telephoning the West is impossible and mail is checked by the secret police. If the pastry-chef ever writes, his letters wouldn’t reach her, or possibly just one censored page. Saying “I love you” might be code for “Let’s bundle you over the border in the boot of my bread-van.”