Another Kind of Country (35 page)

‘What I know is that you cultivate some strange bedfellows, Redgrave.’ Miller looked beyond Redgrave, saw the light rain falling outside, tiny drops glowing like white pearls in the street lights. Berlin was on its way home, on both sides of the Wall. ‘These are just people living their lives, Redgrave, or trying to, and it doesn’t matter much which side they live on.’ He knew from Redgrave’s wooden expression that he might as well be talking to the Wall.

Redgrave buttoned his overcoat, picked up his briefcase. ‘Do what you’re supposed to do, Miller, and we’ll make sure that any record of your activities is snow-white. Persil-clean, in fact, as the Yanks used to say about the Germans they’d cleansed of a Nazi past after the last little disagreement. Are you clear?’

‘You’re scum,’ Miller said, ‘just like Dover.’

‘Remember which side you’re on,’ Redgrave said. ‘And don’t forget,’ eyebrows raised, ‘we have a situation in Wolverhampton also. I’ll be in touch.’

Miller watched him pass by the window, an overcoated bureaucrat on his way to the station, maybe a visiting businessman hurrying through the rain to his hotel. He wondered who it was that looked back at him from the mirror under the television. A journalist whose
career had been hijacked by grey functionaries of what was called ‘British intelligence’? The only offspring of a lecherous father and a drunken mother? Or just someone trying to live his life?

Miller paid, turned up the collar of his anorak as he stepped out into the rain.

Whatever else he was, he was Rosa Rossman’s lover and he didn’t want to lose her; nor did he want to lose his place, his own place, in this divided city.

Redgrave didn’t know it all.
Soon
, General Reder had said in the kitchen of the house in Pankow. This world, this city of softly falling rain, might change in ways that Redgrave and Dover and the forces beyond the night could not imagine.

The rain felt
clean on his face and there was a spring in Miller’s step. He was heading for the Wall. For home. For Rosa.

Friday, 3 November 1989

East Berlin

November in Berlin. Not yet five o’clock but the evening already drawing in under the lowering sky. Collars upturned against the cold in the queue on the East side of the crossing point. Gloved fingers clenching, unclenching. Shoes and boots stomping against the cold.

But quietly
.

The border guards looked edgy, their barked commands sharper in the November air.
Grepos
, the Berliners called the border police, to distinguish them from the regular force of Vopos.

Something more than winter in the air, Miller thought. At the front of the queue a backpacker’s rucksack was upended on the tarmac and Miller watched as the bag’s owner, his pimpled adolescent face reddened by what Miller took to be a mix of indignation, anger and fear, retrieved his scattered belongings while the Grepo urged him to get a fucking move on.

For a moment or two the foot-stomping stopped entirely.

Four Grepos were checking IDs, passports, one-day visas. The windows of the prefab control hut were lit. Although he strained to see, Miller couldn’t tell if Heinz-Peter was among the uniforms moving behind the
Venetian blinds. Not that it mattered, no messages to carry today. And yet a friendly face – or at least a face that was not unfriendly – would be welcome. Miller couldn’t have explained even to himself how he was feeling. When he’d stepped out after work on to Wilhelmstrasse he’d felt suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of unbelonging. Faces of passers-by were alien. Snatches of overheard conversation were hostile.
You know these people, you speak their language like your own
.

And yet he felt suddenly lost, frightened.

He wanted Rosa but Rosa was busy with a postgrad student’s thesis consultation.

On the spur of the moment he had decided to go into the West of the city. He needed his old touchstones. There was a small cafe behind the Zoogarten station which occasionally produced baked beans and chips; if you wanted to go the whole hog, the elderly English expat owner might serve you up a fried egg and even a slice of fried bread. It was the kind of dish Miller had been glad to leave behind in the greasy spoons of London; once or twice, in the cafe behind the Zoogarten, he’d watched in fascination as half-cut Brits tucked into the greasy offerings. And yet on the Wilhelmstrasse pavement, outside the offices of the Secretariat for Socialist Correctness in Publishing, while East Berliners eddied around him, Miller had recognized, admitted, his own longing for the greasy taste of home. Maybe tomato ketchup was thicker than socialist water.

So here he
was, waiting in the queue, his GDR ID – his
Personalausweis
– ready for inspection by the Grepo. The line was moving again, shuffling slowly forward. He’d have yesterday’s
Guardian
, or maybe a two-day-old paper, with his great English repast. He might even find a
Telegraph
in the station kiosk; its homage to all things Tory would remind him why he hadn’t resisted Redgrave’s blackmail too strongly.

Then he was beside the Grepo, the fellow’s hand outstretched for his ID.

The Grepo was of medium height, blue-jawed, keen-eyed. You had to be keen-eyed to be selected for membership of the border police, with its higher pay and better conditions.

Now those keen eyes looked from Miller’s ID to Miller himself. The usual, Miller told himself, although the pages of his ID were being examined with seemingly extra care.
Thank Christ I’m not carrying anything
. He concentrated on the hands holding his ID, short stubby fingers, nails gnawed to the quick.

The Grepo folded Miller’s ID shut but held on to it. Miller felt himself being scrutinized by those narrowing brown eyes, as though the guard were wondering if he knew Miller, had met him somewhere.

Something seemed to click in the Grepo’s mind; Miller saw the pupils grow in the brown eyes, watched – with the first inklings of alarm – as the guard drew from the pocket of his greatcoat a grubby, much-thumbed sheet of paper. The guard unfolded it and half turned from Miller for a better look at the page under the crossing-point floodlights. Over the guard’s shoulder Miller got a glimpse of typed names and serial numbers.

A kind of grunt, perhaps of satisfaction, from the Grepo. The stubby fingers refolded the paper, stowed it again in the overcoat pocket. The brown eyes more alert now, their stare hostile.

The Grepo pointed at the control hut with Miller’s ID.

‘
Bitte?
’ Miller tried to sound confident, his hand held out for his identity card.

The guard was having none of it. He nodded towards the hut. ‘
Jetzt. Schnell!
’ Now. Quickly.

The Grepo’s hand on his shoulder was firm.

The air in the control hut was clammy with the
smell of paraffin heaters. Naked fluorescent tubes on the low ceiling buzzed like tireless flies.

‘Shut the fucking door.’ The shirt-sleeved guard at the desk nearest to the door barely looked up from his typewriter.

The corporal at the facing desk laughed. ‘You’re in Germany, Michi, not in fucking Greece, put your fucking tunic on.’

The guard called Michi grunted but went on tapping slowly at the keys.

The corporal looked at Miller, went back to the handwritten pages of the book on his desk, some kind of ledger, maybe a log.

A finger in the back prodded Miller towards the captain standing beside an untidy desk in the corner. The captain’s tunic hung unbuttoned, a cigarette smoked in one hand, his other hand held a sheaf of papers. Between his chin and shoulder was clenched a telephone into which he was talking quietly.

‘Right,’ he said. The captain looked at Miller over the shoulder-held phone. ‘Right. Goodbye.’ He replaced the phone amid the shoals of paper on the overwhelmed desk.

‘What have you got for me, Sergeant?’

He handed Miller’s ID to the captain.

Once more Miller felt himself inspected, his face compared to the mugshot on the ID card. He felt the sweat trickle between his shoulder blades, knew it wasn’t just from the clammy heat in the hut. Smoke trailed from the cigarette hanging from the captain’s lips; he stifled a cough as he trawled with both hands in the sea of paper on his desk.

‘Gotcha.’ He sounded almost amused as he flourished a single typed page. ‘Today’s list.’ A glance at the list, another at Miller’s ID. ‘Thank you, Sergeant, you can go.’

Another ‘Fuck’ from
Michi as the door was opened and the bitter November evening burst in.

‘Oh, shut it, Michi.’ The captain laughed.

Miller didn’t feel like laughing. The sweat between his shoulder blades felt like ice.

‘You are Herr Patrick Miller?’

Miller nodded.

The captain waved the ID card. ‘
Haben Sie auch einen Reisepass?
’ Do you have a passport as well?

Relief flooded Miller: an extra check on those – not so many – who hold not only an ID card but also a passport. He fumbled with gloves, with the zip of his anorak, drew out the black-covered
Reisepass
from an inside pocket.

Another mugshot, another comparison.

The captain laid the passport sideways against the overflowing ashtray on his desk. ‘I am instructed, Herr Miller, to retain your passport.’ He handed Miller his ID card, nodded. ‘You are free to go.’

‘But what – why . . .’ Miller looked at the captain, at his passport propped uncertainly beside the cigarette butts. ‘I need my passport, Captain.’

‘You have your ID card, Herr Miller, like every other citizen.’ No humour in the voice now. ‘It is all you need for travel within the German Democratic Republic.’ The captain drew on his cigarette. His next words came veiled in breathy smoke. ‘Today you are not permitted to enter West Berlin.’

You learned quickly how fruitless it was to argue, to plead.

‘And my passport?’

‘You will be contacted, Herr Miller, in due course.’ The captain hooked his foot round a chair leg and dragged it closer.

Miller watched him flop into the chair and pick up the phone.

You learned also when you no longer existed
.

He felt the eyes following him as he
stepped out of the hut into the Berlin night. He waited until he heard Michi spluttering about ‘the fucking door’ before he drew it shut behind him. It was, he knew, a petty, meaningless gesture.

The Grepos gave him only a cursory look as they went on with their inspection of identity cards, visas, backpacks. Those waiting in line looked at him more keenly as he made his way back into East Berlin.

Fucking Redgrave. Or was
it Dover?

Saturday, 4 November 1989

East Berlin

Rosa phoned at about nine on Saturday morning. ‘Please come,’ she said to Miller. ‘Papa wants you to.’ A tinkling laugh. ‘So do I.’

General Reder had already left by the time Miller got to the house in Pankow. The general had left a note, written in a neat hand, the envelope formally addressed to Herr Patrick Miller:

‘My father is a bit of a Prussian,’ Rosa said when Miller handed her the note. ‘But he’s also sharp and he’s also kind. He’s telling us both that you don’t have to sneak around here while he’s away.’

They were in the kitchen again,
the room bright with watery November sun. Miller touched the yellowing bruise around her eye.

‘He trusts me to take care of you,’ Miller said. ‘I hope I don’t let him down.’

‘I can take care of myself, Patrick.’

He heard the anger in her voice, saw the honeyed South American skin darken.

‘I know, I didn’t mean . . .’ Miller stopped.
Who am I to protect you from Dover and his like?

They were sitting side by side at the kitchen table. She laid her hand on his.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

He told her how they’d taken his passport from him the day before.

‘They were waiting for me, my name was on a list.’ Miller was whispering. He reached behind him, turned the radio on loud, turned the dial until military music almost drowned his words. It was the general’s house but you never knew. ‘They were waiting for me,’ he said again.

Rosa took his hand, led him out into the winter garden.

‘Papa could sort it,’ Rosa said, ‘or—’

‘Or Dieter,’ Miller said. ‘The creator of Janus.’ He looked at Rosa, longed to ask, knew he mustn’t.

She could read him anyway. ‘Papa didn’t tell me where he was going and Dieter hasn’t been here for days.’ She leaned closer to Miller. ‘But he’s been on the phone to Papa, I’m sure he’s still in Germany.’

Still in Germany
. Miller didn’t know what the general and Dieter were up to. And yet he
did
know. Assignations inside or outside barracks. Instructions to or from men in uniform, men with braid on their collars, insignia on their epaulettes. Maps to be consulted,
timetables checked. And weapons too.

Whatever dream the general and Dieter and their unknown conspirators harboured, Miller knew it would not be born without weeping. And of weeping he’d had enough. The house in Compton had shed enough tears for a lifetime.

But still, what could you do but dream? How could you not dream when Rosa took your hand and said, ‘Dance with me, Patrick Miller’? The military march had finished, the strains of the ‘Blue Danube’ floated through the morning air from the kitchen. He took her in his arms and they giggled as they waltzed inexpertly on the grass.

The ground beneath their feet began to shake violently and they both knew it wasn’t from the rhythm of Strauss’s music. They stopped their spinning, stood staring at each other, listening to the rumble of heavy machinery on the road beyond the garden. They knew it for what it was: military on the move, trucks, maybe tanks, heading for the Politburo compound at Wandlitz again.