Sektion 20 (25 page)
Authors: Paul Dowswell
In the dead of night, when the traffic was quiet, he could still hear the guard dogs howling by the Wall. One day, he promised himself, he would move away from this scar on the landscape. The future had no boundaries.
May 1973
Sophie Kirsch found the wide avenues by Treptower Park quite disconcerting. The occasional car that sped past startled her in a way it never used to. She supposed that feeling uncomfortable in the great outdoors was an inevitable consequence of ten months’ confinement in the Youth Detention Wing at Hohenschönhausen. It was a warm spring day but she would not dream of going out without a hat. It would take several months for her prison haircut to grow out.
They did not usually shave the heads of the girls – that was too reminiscent of photographs in their history textbooks of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps. But there had been a particularly tenacious outbreak of lice in the prison and drastic measures were called for. Actually, lice had been the least of Sophie’s problems. The frequent isolation had been the worst part of her incarceration. Sophie had tried to keep sane by attempting to remember poems and stories. After days alone, broken only by the arrival of meals pushed through her cell door, she discovered she was able to recall whole pieces of music in great detail. It was almost like listening to them. She missed her cello and she missed her grandma’s contraband records. But most of all she missed Alex Ostermann and the thought of what had happened to him was a daily torment.
The Stasi had come for her three days after Alex had told her he was going. All the gawpers in her apartment block had twitched their net curtains as she was taken away, and her parents had gone white with shame.
The knock at the door had come just as Sophie was scanning through the local paper. She read, with mounting alarm, that the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier had been breached and two human traffickers, Albert Metzger and Heinz Amsel, had been shot dead. She was sure Alex and his family would have been caught up in all that. Had they been killed? Were they in prison? How would she ever find out? She remembered too clearly how Holger Vogel’s family had been treated when he went missing.
‘Why have you not reported the intentions of the border violator Alex Ostermann?’ asked her interrogators as soon as she arrived in police custody. Hadn’t it been made transparently clear to her that the only reason she had remained at liberty following the incident at the House of Ministries was so she could provide intelligence on negative-decadents at Treptower Polytechnic School. Sophie stuck to her story. She had no idea Alex Ostermann was going. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, but she was fearful of betraying herself with a slip of the tongue. Besides, whatever they told her would not be true.
In the weeks since her initial arrest at the House of Ministries, Sophie had been making an effort to please them. But she had been careful to say nothing that would make Alex’s life more difficult. She told them his trip to Hohenschönhausen had shaken him badly and provoked a dramatic reappraisal of his life. In his conversations with her, she imparted, he showed every indication of wanting to reform and become a useful member of the Republik. To keep them happy, she occasionally fed them titbits about Anton, and his disrespect for the Socialist Unity Party and the teachers at school. She hated herself for doing it, but told herself what she told them was harmless enough. She didn’t know Anton was of no interest to the Stasi. He worked for them too.
Sophie spent her time in Hohenschönhausen wondering how she was going to make contact with Alex when she got out. If he was still alive. Maybe they’d all been murdered and the newspaper was keeping quiet about that? After a few months, another thought occurred to her. Alex had confided in her just before they went. It was too unlikely, surely, that the incident with Albert Metzger and Heinz Amsel would not have been connected with the Ostermanns. How did the Stasi know they were going? Would Alex think it was her who had betrayed them?
Posting a letter was out of the question. Even if she knew where to send it, she was sure the Stasi would read it before the end of the day. Then she remembered Grandma Ostermann. She had gone to see her once with him. If she could remember where she lived, perhaps Sophie could persuade her to take a message out for her.
And now, here she was, three days out of prison, trying to remember which side street of Treptower Park would take her to Alex’s grandma’s apartment. The corner of Klingerstrasse looked familiar so she walked down it to Leiblstrasse, and there it was. The dingy white block with the balconies. His grandma, she remembered, lived just above the main entrance. It seemed half a lifetime away, when they had last been there.
Sophie walked up the red lino staircase and, heart in mouth, knocked twice on the door. She heard shuffling and a bolt being drawn back. The door opened a crack.
‘
Ja
?’ came an impatient voice she recognised at once. ‘What do you want?’
‘Frau Ostermann, it’s me, Sophie. Alex’s friend. Can I talk to you?’
‘Go away,’ she said and closed the door. Frank and Gretchen had told her they thought she might have betrayed them.
Sophie leaned towards the door and begged. ‘Please. I promise I will only keep you a moment.’
Grandma Ostermann relented. The door opened again.
‘Can I come in?’ asked Sophie.
They stood in the hall. The apartment was fusty and needed a good dusting. ‘Are you managing OK without Frank and Gretchen?’ Sophie asked.
‘What do you want?’ said Grandma impatiently.
‘I want to know what happened to Alex and his family?’ Sophie blurted out.
Grandma Ostermann was instantly wary. ‘I know you are not to be trusted.’
Sophie’s face lit up. They were alive; they must be. There was obviously no bad news. And ‘I don’t know’ would have meant she had not heard and there had been no contact. She must have been able to talk to them. Otherwise why would she say that?
Sophie took her hand. She could barely contain her glee. Tears were brimming in her eyes. She was grinning madly. ‘Grandma Ostermann, I will ask you no more questions!’ She pulled a plain white envelope from her pocket. She was so frightened of the Stasi finding out what she intended to do she had not addressed it. ‘Can I leave a letter here for you to take to Alex?’
Grandma Ostermann was confused. She looked at the joy and relief in Sophie’s face and her hostility melted a little. She liked to think she was a fine judge of human behaviour and unless Sophie Kirsch was a world-class actor, she seemed genuinely elated that Alex was still alive.
But she still wasn’t certain. ‘They think you betrayed them, you know,’ she said.
Sophie nodded. Her elation began to fade. ‘I feared as much but all I can do is swear to you I didn’t. I don’t know what I can do to make you, or them, believe me. But can I ask you . . .’
Grandma Ostermann put a hand firmly on hers. ‘No more questions.’ She shook her head. ‘Why have you not come to see me before?’ she asked.
Sophie pulled her hat from her head, revealing her prison haircut. ‘I’ve just come out of Hohenschönhausen.’
Grandma Ostermann nodded, and squeezed Sophie’s hand. ‘Here is what we will do,’ she whispered. ‘Leave your message in my letter box in the hall. I may or may not pick it up.’ She winked as she spoke. ‘Now off you go.’
Sophie almost skipped down the street back to her parents’ apartment where she had arranged to collect some clothes. She had not felt this happy since the night Alex had walked her home from Greifswalder Strasse. She hoped her letter would reach him. It was simple enough. She told Alex she thought of him often. She had just spent ten months in Hohenschönhausen but she was all right. Auntie Rosemarie had taken her in as her parents had disowned her. She did not want Alex to think she had betrayed him and maybe, one day, they would see each other again. But even if the letter never did reach him, Grandma Ostermann had accepted it. That could only mean one thing. They had got away.
Three weeks later, Alex Ostermann returned home after midnight on the evening he finally got to see Led Zeppelin at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin. They played ‘Black Dog’ three numbers in and Alex thought he had died and gone to heaven. He sat down at the kitchen table to drink a small glass of milk, his ears still ringing from the volume of the concert, and took his beige concert ticket from his shirt pocket. It was tattered and damp with sweat, but Alex wanted to put it somewhere where he would never ever lose it. Among the usual domestic clutter on the table, his eyes alighted on a plain white envelope. His mother had written on it in pencil:
Alex –
Grandma brought this for you
.
In the winter of 2008 I visited Prague to research my book
The Cabinet of Curiosities
and spent an evening in a scruffy bar listening to a Czech rock band. I got talking with a group of locals there who would have been teenagers in the early 1970s. They told me how important rock music had been to them as a symbol of freedom and a way of life forbidden to them by the Communist regime that controlled their country at that time.
I also read
Stasiland
, Anna Funder’s fascinating book about life in the DDR, and watched the brilliant film
The Lives of Others
by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It brought home to me how lucky I had been to grow up in a culture which allowed its citizens to have their own opinions and listen to whatever music they liked.
In
Sektion 20
I am trying to bring to life an era of East German history that many people alive today remember clearly. I have tried to depict the society and the events that transpire here as accurately as possible. Whilst researching the book, I encountered widely differing accounts of ‘what it was really like’ to be a citizen of the DDR. Some people had a rough time, suffered greatly and even died at the hands of the Stasi. Other people regarded the Stasi as incompetent clowns and were allowed to leave the country with barely a murmur of objection. I have also not forgotten that many former citizens of the DDR feel a great nostalgia for the security and sense of purpose the regime offered. The Western way of life has its myriad imperfections too – and I hope this comes over in my story.
For those readers who would like to learn more about the DDR, I can recommend a visit to the DDR Museum on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse in Berlin – a commercial enterprise packed to the brim with East German memorabilia. The magnificent Deutsches Historisches Museum, a short stroll away on Unter den Linden, is a more traditional museum which has a fascinating Cold War era gallery. Captions for all their exhibits are in German and English.
The BBC series
The Lost World of Communism
, available on DVD, has an intriguing episode about East Germany. Margaret Fulbrook’s book
The People’s State
(Yale University Press, 2005) is also a very readable introduction.
The Rainier-Wolfcastle-like line on page 208 attributed to one of Lily Weber’s swimming coaches – ‘My girls have come to Munich to swim, not sing’ – is based on a remark one East German swimming coach made four years later at the Montreal Olympics.
Finally, the early 1970s produced some great rock music. If you don’t know them, you might like to track down the songs that crop up in the story and have a listen. They still sound pretty good forty years later!
As ever, my thanks are due to my valued editors, Ele Fountain and Isabel Ford, who helped me shape and polish the story, Diana Hickman, who proofread, and Dilys Dowswell, who read through my first drafts. Christian Staufenbiel of Cambridge University Library kindly read and commented on the manuscript. Thank you too to my agent Charlie Viney, and Jenny and Josie Dowswell, and Kate Clarke and Black Sheep for the evocative cover.
When I visited Berlin to research the book, I was looked after marvellously by Kati Hertzsch. My thanks also to Dorit Engelhardt and Anna von Hahn for their advice and hospitality. I was also lucky enough to meet Wolfgang Grossman, who spent his childhood and teenage years as a citizen of the DDR. We spent a brilliant day wandering the streets of Berlin together. Although his life turned out quite differently from Alex’s, talking to Wolfgang was a great inspiration.
A former senior editor with Usborne Publishing, Paul Dowswell is now a full-time author. He has written over 60 books, including
Ausländer
, nominated for the Carnegie Medal, the Red House Children’s Book Award and the Booktrust Teenage Prize. Paul lives in Wolverhampton with his family.
Ausländer
The Cabinet of Curiosities
***
The Adventures of Sam Witchall
Powder Monkey
Prison Ship
Battle Fleet
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in September 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc