Another Kind of Country (6 page)

Hartheim croaked a
kind of laugh. ‘They’re not relevant, Herr Miller. What we expect of you is your usual assessment of how the general’s book might be received in the Western media. We both know how our enemies distort and murder the truth in the West. We simply don’t want to present them with opportunities to do so in our own publications.’ An attempt at a smile on the round face. ‘Nobody knows better than you, Herr Miller, how a word or a phrase can be seized upon and twisted into an untruth. It is that expertise of yours which has been so helpful to us over the last few years. Just do your usual job of applying your expertise to General Reder’s work.’

‘General Reder?’

‘Yes.’

‘General
Hans
Reder?’

‘Which other General Reder is there?’

‘I mean . . .’ Miller swallowed. ‘I didn’t realize that the general was still – still with us.’

‘Perhaps not for much longer, which may be why he wishes to see his story in print.’ Hartheim pushed the file across the desk to Miller. ‘General Reder has cancer but is presently in remission. His daughter cares for him. The daughter is also looking after the general’s manuscript and has asked if she might be told personally of any changes we think necessary. Of course, we wouldn’t normally agree to any such thing but, in view of the general’s standing in our country, I have agreed to this. I have therefore arranged for his daughter to call at your office on Thursday.’

‘But that’s the day after tomorrow.’

‘Which means, Herr Miller, that you and I will have time to discuss your written comments on General Reder’s manuscript tomorrow.’ There was no attempted smile now on Hartheim’s face.

‘Of course, Herr Direktor.’ Hartheim pushed his chair back another inch. The interview was over.

The file under
Miller’s arm felt like a ticking bomb as he made his way back to his own office. Commenting on the memoir of a retired general, a hero of the German Democratic Republic, was a task to be avoided. Miller knew that he would have to be at his most bland: this required fence-sitting of the highest degree. It was a truth he had learned quickly after arriving in East Berlin: the truth was a movable feast. General Reder might be today’s hero but he could also be tomorrow morning’s scoundrel.

The phone on his desk rang.

It was Frau Siedel.

‘The Director wishes you to know that General Reder’s daughter’s appointment is for three o’clock on Thursday afternoon.’

‘I’m sure I’ll have everything in order for Frau Reder.’

‘Actually it’s his stepdaughter, Frau
Rossman
– Frau Rosa Rossman.’

Miller didn’t realize the secretary had hung up. He didn’t hear the buzz of the dead line in his ear. He was hearing, seven years ago, Redgrave’s hee-haw tones telling him that his arrival in East Berlin would be ‘a match made in Communist heaven’. For good measure Redgrave had thrown in a handful of plummy ‘old chaps’.

Miller put the phone down, crossed to the window. If he stood on tiptoe and craned his neck, he could see a tiny stretch of Unter den Linden.

East Berlin was going home in the September evening. His father would be in the Wolverhampton surgery, rheumy eyes still ogling his private patients. And soon Miller himself would be lodged in his functional flat, turning the pages of General Hans Reder’s typescript.

It was going to be a long night in Berlin. But he had to get something suitably non-committal ready for Hartheim.

He didn’t give a
second thought to Frau Rosa Rossman.

Thursday, 14 September 1989

East Berlin

German Democratic Republic

On Thursday afternoon Miller was asking himself how he would ever get Rosa Rossman
out
of his thoughts.

The woman waiting for him under the watchful eyes of the porters in the entrance hall of 64A Wilhelmstrasse was of medium height, slim, with straight, jet-black hair that hung below her shoulders. Her rucksack sat on the small bench that was the institute’s grudging concession to waiting visitors; Rosa Rossman herself stood beside the bench, arms crossed, looking almost puzzled, as though she had been placed there by mistake. Vulnerable, Miller thought, a porcelain figurine, eminently droppable, breakable.

And then she moved, unfolded her arms, extended her hand to him, and what Miller was aware of was the overwhelming physicality of her, the electricity of her smile, the very
presence
of the body stirring beneath the simple white T-shirt and the navy pencil skirt.

Open your ears as well as your eyes: the woman is talking to you
.

Frau Rosa Rossman was introducing herself, saying how good it was of Miller to see her.

Miller tried not
to stare at the wide face, the deep, sloe-black eyes, the full lips that seemed to grow fuller in speech.

Miller said it was an honour to be allowed to read the work of her distinguished stepfather.

Frau Rosa Rossman said that she and General Reder would be most grateful for any advice, any assistance, that would expedite the publication of the general’s book.

Miller said that naturally he and his colleagues would be pleased to assist in any way they could.

‘
But don’t offer any dates
.’ Hartheim had been uncharacteristically direct the day before.
‘Remind her that the publication date is decided by the publishers.’

The publishers, housed next door in No. 64, would not go for a piss if the Secretariat for Socialist Correctness did not approve of it.

Miller said none of this to Rosa Rossman as they stood swapping platitudes in the marble-floored entrance hall. Most likely she already knew this. She volleyed his formulaic pleasantries back to him like a pro.

The general, she was saying now, was most anxious to know if any publication date had been set.

The two porters, Miller could see, were hardly bothering to conceal their interest in Rosa Rossman’s physical charms.

‘Forgive me,’ Miller said. ‘We shouldn’t be standing here like this, we should be in my office.’

No. 64A had no lift. Miller knew that the eyes of the porters followed Rosa Rossman all the way up to the first landing, where they climbed out of view. He couldn’t blame the porters. In their place he’d be craning his neck too.

Upstairs, seated in
his office, Miller wasn’t sure how he felt about the grey metal desk which separated him from General Reder’s stepdaughter. It blocked his line of vision to the long legs which were crossed, primly enough, at the ankles; on the other hand, the desk served as a kind of defence barrier against the tangible
womanliness
which emanated from his visitor. Her T-shirt and skirt were the usual nylon material, almost plastic in its hardness, worn by all of East Germany’s proletariat but, on Rosa Rossman, the utilitarian clothing seemed almost haute couture.

Miller was about to offer Rosa a cup of office coffee when Frau Siedel entered his office, carrying a gold-coloured tray laid with china cups, a small metal pot of coffee and cream and sugar.

‘Director Hartheim thought you might like some coffee.’ Frau Siedel’s words and frozen smile were directed at Rosa. ‘He regrets he is not free to welcome you himself but sends his good wishes to you and to General Reder.’

The door fell shut behind her. Miller would have thought he imagined it but for the unaccustomed tray on his desk.

‘Real coffee, I think.’ Rosa Rossman was almost laughing at him. ‘And sugar cubes with a silver tongs.’

I usually make my own mug of black, bitter powdered stuff
.

‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘that our Director knows very well that today we have a very distinguished visitor.’

‘Herr Miller, I am a teacher and not a particularly distinguished one at that.’

‘I didn’t know you were a teacher.’

‘Of English at the university. I wanted to study Spanish but my father said that English is the language of the future,’ the merest hint of a downturn of those full lips, ‘and my father is a hard man to resist. So here I am, teaching English to unsuspecting students at the university.’ She smiled. ‘Where we are not served coffee on a fancy tray.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry—’

‘Shall I be
mother?’ She said the words in English. He stared at her across the desk.
Shall I be mother?
A lifetime had passed since he had heard that expression: usually in jest, often with irony, over teacups and coffee cups in grotty student cafes and bedsits half heated with coin-operated gas fires.

‘I told you, I teach English.’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘The general did a little research on you, Herr Miller.’ She poured his coffee, handed him the delicate, gold-rimmed cup and saucer. ‘He said you sounded like an interesting man – English by birth, East German by choice. He said that you were probably the right kind of person to evaluate his book.’

Miller could hear the question in her words but his years in this office had taught him a little side-stepping adroitness.

‘The general is an interesting man.’ He sipped the coffee, black, the better to savour its richness. ‘You are, I understand, the general’s stepdaughter.’

‘No.’ The eyes looking at him over the rim of the gold-rimmed cup were deeper and blacker than the coffee. ‘I am General Reder’s adopted daughter.’ He felt himself – the plain office, the metal desk, the inevitable hidden recorders – he felt it all being measured by dark eyes that seemed to him to have known a world wider than where they sat. She laid the cup and saucer on the desk and Miller noticed the silent way she did so.

‘I lived with General Reder and his wife almost from the time I arrived here. Just before Frau Reder died, they adopted me.’ Her eyes locked on Miller’s. ‘The general is my father now.’

‘I’m sorry if I intruded.’

‘You didn’t.’ She might have been addressing a group of students. ‘Now, what can I tell the general about progress with his book?’

Miller spread his
hands, tried to hold her gaze. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. Here we just read the book and give whatever advice we can to improve the work. The date of publication – and all the rest of it – is the business of the publishing house.’

‘But the Berlin Press must wait for the go-ahead from you. So,’ the faintest of smiles, ‘I think what my father wants to know is whether that go-ahead will now be given.’

‘That decision is, of course, made by the Director.’ Miller gave up trying to meet the steady gaze of those black eyes. ‘It’s the decision of Herr Hartheim.’

‘Who suggested meeting you, Herr Miller, to discuss the matter.’

‘And I’m delighted to do so.’
This is a fuck-up, I’ve only ever dealt with these affairs through the post or – very occasionally – on the phone
. ‘But the ultimate decision is the responsibility of the Director.’

‘Ah, I see.’ The tiniest clink of porcelain, the gold-rimmed cup raised to the cherry mouth, the black eyes widening at him. ‘And how would you describe your responsibility here, Herr Miller?’

Mostly I lie: to my colleagues, to the Director, to the writers whose work lands on my desk. Maybe even the stuff I send to Redgrave and his assorted ‘chums’ is no more than lies. Mostly I lie: even to myself
.

To Rosa he said, ‘I read stuff, I evaluate it, I make considered judgements.’

She leaned forward slightly to return the cup and saucer to the desk. Her nearness seemed a threat, a potent mixture of talcum powder and fresh soap and fresh undergarments that would scorch your skin and trouble your sleep.

‘I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, Frau Rossman.’ He tried to smile. ‘But I’m sure everything will be OK – after all, the general is recognized as a hero of the state.’

Shut it: even the most bland of political statements can be replayed on the listening tapes as a form of treason
.

‘That’s what
everyone says, Herr Miller, that my father is a hero of the German Democratic Republic.’

Miller could hear a ‘but’ coming. It didn’t come, seemed swallowed behind those inviting lips. For the umpteenth time he asked himself why such a fuss was being made by Hartheim over an innocuous book by a retired general. Maybe Frau Rosa Rossman herself knew the answer.

Miller wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Ignorance was almost always the safer option.

Rosa Rossman was getting to her feet, thanking him for his time.

‘You are happy here, Herr Miller? You do not miss England?’

He forced a smile, said something platitudinous. There were topics you did not touch, not even in the most apparently harmless of conversations. Especially not with a general’s daughter.

The general’s daughter, he realized, had something on her mind: he was familiar with that narrowing of the eyes, the glance away, the hesitancy.

Miller waited.

‘I wonder,’ Frau Rossman said, ‘if maybe you wouldn’t mind walking me to my tramstop. The streets these days, you know . . .’

You could talk your way out of any street demonstration, Frau Rossman. Even fight your way out
.

He said, ‘I’d be delighted, the unrest on the streets these days . . .’ He shook his head knowingly.

Rosa smiled.

They were playing games with each other. He wondered if Rosa Rossman was also playing to the unseen gallery. He’d know for sure when they were on the street, if she said yes when he asked her if she’d like to go for a drink or another coffee.

Miller phoned through
to Frau Siedel to advise the Director that he was escorting Frau Rossman from the office. He heard the slight intake of breath as Frau Siedel prepared to speak but he hung up before she could say anything.

Thursday, 14 September 1989

East Berlin

German Democratic Republic

Maybe, Miller thought, Rosa Rossman had been right about the atmosphere on the streets. The tension in the city was palpable. The sky was blue, the air clear, but the September afternoon seemed to crackle with electricity, as though a storm threatened.

Pedestrians on their way home seemed intent on their feet. Even Rosa seemed determined to meet nobody’s gaze as she strode out alongside Miller, her heels beating a steady rhythm on the cracked pavement. He didn’t ask where they were headed, content with her nearness. She said little, just turned her head slightly to indicate that they should cross the wide thoroughfare of Unter den Linden.