Another Kind of Country (23 page)

Kulakov looked up from his desk. His hair was thinner, his jaw more lantern-like. He sat upright behind the leather-topped desk, his uniform buttoned up to the neck.

‘The prisoner Reder, Colonel,’ the NKVD agent said, laying a folded piece of paper on the desk.

Kulakov nodded. ‘Thank you.’

He waited until he was alone with Reder before he spoke.

‘So we both made it to Berlin, Reder.’

Reder tried to forget his rags, tried to stand to attention.

‘I have to thank you, sir.’

Kulakov took his glasses off, put them on again. ‘You look awful, Reder, and you smell even worse.’

‘I’m sorry, Colonel Kulakov.’

‘My sergeant will show you where to wash and shave and get you some clean clothes,’ a half-smile around the thin lips, ‘unless you’re terribly attached to those for sentimental reasons.’

‘No, sir, thank you, sir.’

‘And the sergeant will get you something to eat.’ Kulakov stood up. ‘After that we have work to do, Reder, that’s what I’ve brought you here for. Are you ready for that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’m putting a team of trusted men together to run the city, to wipe out the criminal elements that would prevent us restoring this city to some kind of normality. I need men I can trust, men who are not afraid to make decisions and not afraid to take decisive action. You were able to do all that in the war, weren’t you, Reder?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Gunfire
in his ears, fire and gun smoke in his nostrils, mixed with the tang of blood.

‘Think you can still do it, Reder?’

‘Yes, sir.’ But a whisper, so he said it again, more loudly. ‘Yes, sir, I can.’

‘We have a country to build here, Reder,’ the colonel said, ‘a socialist democratic country and we need good socialist Germans to build it with us.’

Reder tried to stand more erect in the heavy, ill-fitting clogs. He was sick of war but the faint echo of a bugle seemed to rouse him.

‘Yes, sir, I want to serve.’

Kulakov nodded. He smiled, more fully now, before he shouted for the sergeant.

October 1989

East Berlin

Whatever
reservations the candle-lighters
and the kohl-eyed punks might have
about their walled-in city, Unter
den Linden was thronged for the march-past by the Volksarmee of East Germany. Even the sun came out for the GDR’s celebration of its forty years of existence.

The army’s brass band played a marching tune. Hundreds of boots beat time as the soldiers marched past. The massed crowds waved familiar flags, the black-red-yellow horizontal fields with the divided compass in the centre. Some waved the flag of the Soviet Union. Maybe in honour of Prime Minister Gorbachev, Miller thought. Or maybe in fear of him. The Soviets had sent their tanks into the streets of Budapest in 1956; they’d descended upon Prague in the spring of 1968. Maybe if you showed them you loved them, the Russians might keep their tanks at home.

Gorbachev had come to share in the celebrations but nobody was quite sure what his presence meant. He’d let the Hungarians open their border with Austria. He’d been quoted as saying that countries in the Eastern bloc must decide their own future. Or so Miller had read in the
International Herald Tribune;
such pronouncements tended to be overlooked in the GDR’s own
Neues Deutschland
.

Now
Gorbachev stood in the centre of the reviewing platform, taking the salute of the marching soldiers alongside the leader of the GDR, Erich Honecker. Between the marching rows of the Volksarmee Miller caught interrupted glimpses of the two leaders. Gorbachev looked as if he was enjoying himself; Honecker looked like somebody who’d just been given bad news by his doctor. Or maybe somebody who was expecting bad news from his doctor.
The Wall will last a hundred years
: this pronouncement by Honecker had not been overlooked by
Neues Deutschland
.

Honecker himself looked as if he might not last even one hundred days. There had been rumours that he was suffering from cancer. Beside the burly Gorbachev, surrounded by his generals in uniform, Erich Honecker looked small, frail.

He looked even frailer when he stood – or tried to stand – to attention, hat over heart, as the band played the national anthem of the GDR. Miller wasn’t sure why this unmartial, almost mournful, melody always moved him. The composer, Hans Eisler, had fled Nazi Germany; years later, although a successful, Oscar-nominated, Hollywood-based composer of film music, Eisler had been deported from the USA for his Communist sympathies. Eisler made his way to East Berlin, collaborated with his friend, the dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Now Eisler’s composition swelled over Unter den Linden to mark the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the GDR.

So maybe you like his music because he, too, was forced to come here. At least Eisler did something, left a legacy of music that will not die, while you play useless games with useless scraps of paper in a country that is not your own.

He could just make out General Reder on the platform as the anthem ended, and the review party clapped, turned to one another to shake hands, chat, do whatever dignitaries did after reviewing a march-past.
Some of the old faces smiled, most looked grim. It was the first time Miller had seen Reder in his uniform. He looked shrunken in his general’s outfit. Like an old man with cancer. About a year, the general had said. The book contracts had been doctored. If plans were already underway to buy and sell a country’s books, Miller reasoned, the faceless vultures were sure to be setting about the sell-off/rip-off of even more valuable assets.

You can’t write music, memorable or not, but maybe you can at least make it less easy for a crime to be committed. Even if it’s not your country.

The crowd was milling around him. He could hear people chatting about the parade, about getting home, about going for a beer. It was noisy, cheerful, shouting at kids, lighting cigarettes. Maybe the general was wrong: this march-past and these milling crowds did not seem like the elements of a country that might have only a year to live.

Miller moved slowly through the crowd. He hoped he’d be able to find Rosa.

Rosa found him.

He was drifting towards Friedrichstrasse when she seemed to step out of a wave of bodies rolling towards him on the wide pavement. Amid the swell of jeans and zipped-up jackets she was a vision in colour: knee-length woollen coat, wine-red, belted round a tiny waist, a glimpse of a plain dark dress, soft knee-high boots gleaming darkly.

A touch of hands, a brush of cheeks.

The formality didn’t matter, he knew there was nothing formal about her smile.

‘You look . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Stunning, yes, stunning.’

Rosa laughed. ‘Papa expected this.’ A grimace that was as lovely as her smile. ‘I couldn’t very
well turn up among all the dignitaries and the medals in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, could I?’

‘You could for me.’

‘You’re too easy to please.’ She put her arm through his.

How did we get to this easy place? And who has ever told me I’m easy to please?

‘So Gorby made eyes at you? Honecker gave you the once-over?’

‘I saw them but I doubt if they even noticed me.’

‘You were up close?’ Miller stopped on the pavement. ‘You
met
them?’

‘Not likely.’ A shake of her head, her hair swung like dark silk. ‘I delivered Papa to the People’s Palace, the army took over from there, they’ll see he gets home OK.’

They turned on to Friedrichstrasse. The trams were running; the shops, though closed, had their windows lit up.
So it’s not as bright as the Kudamm on the other side of the Wall and there’s not a lot on display in the windows – who cares?

Miller felt he had all he ever wanted, strolling with her arm in his on Friedrichstrasse.

‘There’s a place there.’ She pointed to a cafe on a side street.

It wasn’t much of a place, not much better than an
Imbiss
: half a dozen small tables, non-matching rail-back chairs, some kind of vinyl floor covering, a mix of blue and grey squares and triangles. The fare on offer seemed limited to tea, coffee, beer, sandwiches with cheese or what might be ham.

The thin-faced woman behind the counter finished her cigarette before she approached them but even that didn’t matter. Miller smiled at the woman, didn’t stop smiling when the woman’s face refused to lose its scowl.

They ordered beer, touched glasses, said, ‘
Prost
’, to each other.
And afterwards Miller couldn’t remember very much of the rest of their conversation. He knew they’d each talked about themselves but was clearer about what he
hadn’t
said to Rosa Rossman. His father was a doctor – the knighthood, the absurd title of
Sir
, had come in one of Thatcher’s lists, a bauble tossed to one of her own. And what could he say about Lady Miller? She was his mother, that was all; to speak of her drinking, of her attempted suicide, would have seemed cruel, a betrayal.
Blood is thicker than alcohol
. Yet over two hours passed while they talked across the small table; outside, the October night came down, the lights came on, the woman behind the counter went on not smiling.

None of which mattered. The woman opposite him was listening to him, speaking to him, smiling at him. Which was about all that Miller could afterwards recall.

The little cafe was busy. Men came in for beers, couples came in for coffee. None stayed as long as Patrick Miller and Rosa Rossman.

‘We should go.’ She turned to look outside. ‘My father will wait up, worrying as usual.’

Miller knew he was going to remember the rest of their conversation, as if Rosa’s words had brought into the cafe the world outside, the night, the GDR.

‘At least the whole parade thing went off peacefully.’

‘Papa said the streets would be crawling with plain-clothes officers.’

‘Stasi?’ He whispered the word.

She nodded, shivered, drew her coat closer around her shoulders.

‘At least nobody got hurt.’

‘Not that we could see,’ Rosa said.

‘Maybe there was nothing to see.’ He wanted to be positive, to have this evening
unsullied, unthreatened. ‘Maybe most people were just happy to take part in the celebrations.’

‘It’s different for us,’ Rosa said. ‘I mean, for you and me. You came here of your own free will, to be part of something you believed in.’

He couldn’t tell her. Yes, he’d come to this place with belief but, no, he couldn’t tell her the rest of it.

‘And you?’ He didn’t want the light shining on himself. ‘How is being here different for you?’

‘This country saved me, Patrick, gave me back my life.’ He saw her shiver again, waited for her to go on. ‘Not now, not on this special day, Patrick. I’ll try to tell you another time.’ She laid her hand on his, left it there for a moment. ‘I really have to go now.’

‘And,’ Miller leaned closer to her, ‘the contracts, what did the general think?’

He could read the nervousness in the black eyes.

‘Only that it was earlier than expected.’ She was whispering again. ‘That’s what he said, “earlier than I expected”. He said that maybe they were trying it out on the small stuff first.’

‘“They”?’

‘Not here.’ He felt his fingers gripped in hers. ‘Not on this special day, Patrick.’

‘The day is special because you’re here with me.’

She blushed. ‘It’s special for me too.’

They stood together at the small counter while he paid. He left a couple of Marks as a tip but even that didn’t raise a smile behind the counter.

‘Thank you,’ Rosa said. ‘We enjoyed ourselves.’

Miller watched the woman’s features relax, loosen from a sour grip; no smile but the eyes seemed to light a little.

‘Goodnight,’ the woman said. ‘Come again.’

‘You softened her,’ Miller said
when they were outside.

‘She’s just lonely,’ Rosa said, and for a moment her eyes held his.

She slipped her hand into his as they walked towards Friedrichstrasse station.

The night was dark, moonless; Friedrichstrasse, lit only dimly by the street lamps, was almost deserted.

They were at the entrance to the S-Bahn station when they heard the shouts.

‘Stop! Stop!’ From inside the station.

And the sound of pounding, running, feet. Running towards them from within the station.

Miller didn’t hesitate. He gathered Rosa into his arms, drew her into a recessed doorway beside the station entrance.

‘Halt! Police!’ Louder now, the footsteps hurtling closer.

Rosa gasped, turned in his arms when the bodies came tumbling down the station steps on to the pavement. Miller put his hand across her mouth, hushed her, tried to draw her deeper into the shallow recess of the doorway. The uniformed Vopo had eyes only for his captive on the ground. His gloved fist swung at the young man sprawled beside him; they heard the thump of fist on face, heard the young man’s cry, the Vopo’s grunted panting as his fist swung again.

‘Get the fucker on his feet.’ A second Vopo, older, paunchy, wheezing his way down the steps.

The two Vopos hauled their prisoner upright: dark jeans, dark sweater, in his twenties, close-shaven.

The elder Vopo studied him for a moment. From their hiding place Miller could hear the policeman’s heavy breathing.

‘When we tell you to stop,’ the Vopo panted, ‘you stop.’ He punched his prisoner in the stomach, watched him double up, fall to his knees, puke on the pavement.

‘Dirty fuckers, soiling
our streets.’ The Vopo’s voice carried in the night. ‘No respect for our streets.’

Rosa flinched in Miller’s arms as the Vopo struck the kneeling figure across the face. Once, twice, three times, the blows loud in the night.

On the opposite pavement a young couple looked, hurried by. Two young women coming out of the station stopped on the steps, looked at the Vopos and the young man on his knees, then almost ran from the scene, their heels clacking in the darkness.

A new sound in the night: an engine growling towards them. The vehicle that pulled up was not the box-like Stasi van that took prisoners away; this was a two-door Polski Fiat, lights dimmed, doors swinging open. The driver almost jumped from the car; the passenger was slower, limping on the pavement.