Stealing the Future (6 page)

I was already feeling ignorant and ungracious, arriving empty handed and not knowing anything about what I was meant to be doing here. I had the feeling that if I stayed much longer my ignorance could only become more obvious, so I made my excuses, shook the major’s hand again (which he didn’t seem to be expecting, becoming flustered and red faced), and exited, bottle in hand.

18:36

Three trains and a short walk later I was back in my corner of Berlin, between Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg. Walking slowly down the middle of the cobbled street in the last light of the day. My mind was still in the West, on Katrin and Major Tom. What did he mean by what he said about the Stasi, the Westgermans and the Russians getting together? Did he have any useful information, or were they just empty words? It didn’t make any sense to me—the Stasi had been disbanded three and a half years ago, and why would the Westgermans want to work with the Russians? I couldn’t think of any way of finding out, short of asking Major Sokolovski.

Round the corner, and there was my building, one of the last of the old tenement blocks, standing proud against the sea of new-build flats that had washed down from Lichtenberg. Heaving open the solid wooden door, I went past the letterboxes without thinking; trying to switch off and glad to be home, working out what music to put on the record player, whether and what I could be bothered cooking for dinner, whether I’d make do, again, with bread and sausage with beer. David Bowie on the stereo with some sausage and beer sounded about right.
Ashes to Ashes
would fit the bill, I thought of the lyrics, and had to giggle at the idea of the terribly English major on drugs.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I caught sight of the row of metal boxes, just out of the corner of my eye. It was enough to make me hesitate. And the hesitation was enough to make me turn back and look in my letterbox. There wouldn’t be anything in there for me, and if there was, it would be a bill. I poked my fingers through the slit, exploring, checking for a letter. The tip of my index finger brushed paper, something scraping my fingernail, another rough surface pushing against the pad of the finger. Not the smooth wall of the metal box; two letters! Between index and ring finger I fished out first one letter: Westberlin postmark, Westgerman stamp. Handwriting unfamiliar. Fingers of the right hand pushed back in through the slit, this one a little more difficult—a small package of some kind—requiring more care and effort to manoeuvre it through the narrow slit. I recognised it before I even had it out of the letterbox—another of Katrin’s tapes. I smiled as I held it in my hands, looking forward to another musical journey courtesy of my favourite and only daughter.

The other letter was intriguing though—who, other than Katrin, would write to me from the western half of this ghost town? Absent mindedly climbing the stairs, I looked at the address of the sender, up in the top left hand corner of the envelope. A postbox number in the Westberlin postal district 61—was that Kreuzberg, over towards Schöneberg? Letting myself into the flat, I dumped my bag and the letters in the hall, went into the kitchen and put a pan of water on to boil, then went back and picked up my mail. I opened Katrin’s package first. A cassette, marked
Seduction
, and just a slip of paper with the words: “Don’t be cross with me! K.” scribbled on it.

Turning my attention to the other letter, I ripped open the brown envelope. Inside was another envelope, addressed to:
Chiffre
“Alone in the East”, c/o Zitty Stadtmagazin. There was no stamp on this second envelope, and “Alone in the East” was written in English. I turned the envelope over in my hands before opening it: cream coloured, made of expensive cartridge paper, the kind we so rarely saw here in the East. A faint smell of Western scent came off the thick ribbed paper, heavy musk, mingled with lavender and the lighter notes of rose. No name, but an address, also in Kreuzberg in Westberlin, was written on the back of the envelope. I opened it up and unfolded a single sheet in the same thick, creamy cartridge paper as the envelope. The scent was even stronger now, very feminine, but not light.

Dear “Alone in the East,”

I was touched by your lines in the lonely hearts column. Perhaps you’d like to meet? I’m 39, no children, looking for adventure and a fresh start in these exciting times. I enjoy cooking, going for walks in the forests around Berlin. I’m looking for someone to read me beautiful books, enjoy the bronzes and reds of autumn, and watch the sun go down over the river. Sounds like we’re made for each other.

Hope to meet soon,

Yours affectionately,

Annette Ruhle

Katrin! She’d only gone and put a lonely hearts ad in a magazine! And a Westberlin magazine at that! I stormed to the telephone and dialled her number. Down the line I could hear her phone purring, but nobody picked up. She’d still be at her lectures. Slamming the receiver down in its cradle I turned round, looking out of the window. The sun was setting, and although I couldn’t see the sun itself, the little corner of sky that I could see was turning pink and purple, as if it had been beaten up. My lips curled upwards as I realised what a stupid simile my mind had delivered, and I looked at Annette’s letter again. Katrin had meant well, I conceded to myself, as my ire died down, and, well, perhaps I could even meet up with this Annette? I had no time to spare, and I couldn’t imagine that someone who could afford such expensive writing paper would be interested in an Ossi with no access to convertible currency. I held the paper up to the light and admired the watermark, noticing the writing—clear, regular, well formed letters, slanting slightly forwards, written with a decent fountain pen. The scent made its way again to whichever parts of the brain were responsible for smelling, and registered as pleasant, interesting. Yes, even sexy. Perhaps? Perhaps I would write back? I knew I wouldn’t, but the thought entertained me. Looking at the letter again, I turned it over—there was the address again, the same as on the envelope, and under that, a telephone number. What did I have to lose?

I read the short letter again, went through to the hall, put the letter on the table next to the phone, lifted the receiver, and dialled.

19:01

After the phone call I went back into my living room, sitting down in my favourite chair. I thought about Annette and the strange week I’d just had. I was glad it was Friday now. It would be at least Monday before the Minister could give me any new tasks.

But in the meantime I could do with a drink. I thought of the whisky that Major Tom had given me, and getting up with a sigh, I fetched a glass from the kitchen, putting Bettina Wegner on the record player as I went past. Sinking back into the chair, pouring myself a measure, I toasted the living room at large: “
Drushba!
” To friendship.

Berlin:
A demonstration has been called for this afternoon in the capital of the GDR. The protest has been called by several environmental groups, including the Umweltbibliothek and Grüne Liga, with the support of the Central Round Table. Speakers from both the GDR and Westberlin are expected to talk about the impact the Silesian crisis is having on electricity supplies.

09:26

Saturday. A day of rest, of enjoyment—even in this hard working little Republic of ours. But I went into the office this morning to write up the report on my trip to West Silesia; it was a dull morning, overcast, the window spotted with rain—I wasn’t missing anything outside. Opening the outer door to the office I could see a light burning. Erika was sitting at her desk.

“Morning Erika—you here again?” I propped myself up in her doorway, looking at the pile of papers she had in front of her.

“Speak for yourself! Are you planning on doing a bit of
subbotnik
too?”

“I’ve got some catching up to do—I’ve hardly managed to do any proper work this week, and I have to write up this report for the Minister again.”

“What happened to you yesterday afternoon? I was wanting to ask you about this stuff I’m working on.”

“Yeah, the Minister’s secretary phoned. She told me to go and see the British.”

“That’s odd,” Erika was surprised. “How did it go?”

“Oh, same as with the Russian—he didn’t have much to say. I wasn’t really sure why I was there. But the British liaison officer and I did have a chat about economics, well, to be honest, I had a bit of a rant and he was polite enough to listen to me. He compared what we’re doing with something called ‘Hertzka’.”

“Yes, that makes sense—but it was a someone, not a something. He wrote about an economic utopia. It’s an old book. He outlined ten principles, including free association, profit sharing and democratic control. A bit like the small workers’ co-ops that are being set up here. He had a fetish for transparent economic information—accounts, trade movement, stuff like that. Terribly patriarchal and imperialist though.”

I looked at Erika in surprise, maybe she was the one who should be talking to Major Tom, it certainly sounded like she knew more about economic history than I did.

“The thing is, after this chat about economics he said something strange, I can’t work it out. Something about the Russians, the Stasi and the Westgermans being behind the problems in Silesia. He didn’t drop much more than a hint, then he changed the topic before I could ask him more about it.”

“Do you think he knows anything, or is he just playing games?” Erika was looking out the window. The clouds were breaking up now, and the rain was easing off. “I’ve been thinking more, about Maier. Maybe you and Klaus were right. Maybe there is something fishy about the whole thing. Do you still feel the same way?”

“Yeah, you could say that. I mean, first of all I get sent down to West Silesia, then the Minister seems to want to distract me and keep me off the case. Now we’ve got some British officer dropping hints about the situation down there, talking about an international conspiracy. Now if I thought the Minister had someone working on it, that’d be fine, I’d get back to my usual work. But why is he trying to put me off? I mean setting Frau Demnitz on me, and this liaison stuff, it doesn’t make sense to ask me to do it: I can’t speak Russian, and my English is nearly as bad. Klaus speaks both languages, and both you and Laura are way more diplomatic and clear than I’ll ever be—any of you would do the job far better than I can.”

“Did the British guy have anything else to say?”

“Not much, just that hint about the Russians and the Westgermans. I guess he might have been joking.”

“Not really a joking matter. But a scary thought nevertheless—something to think about. Which reminds me, I was thinking of going to the big demonstration this afternoon—there might be a link to where they found Maier’s body. Bit of a long shot, but it might help to clear things up in my mind. You fancy joining me?”

“Yes, you’re right about the possibility of a link. I got a message from the Saxon police yesterday.” I told her about the scrap of paper with Fremdiswalde’s prints on them. “No idea who this Chris Fremdiswalde is, but I think it might be to do with this demo.”

“When did you get this message? Didn’t you think to tell us?”

“We agreed we weren’t going to do anything about all of this, so I just put it to one side and forgot about it.”

Erika pulled a face. “Right that’s settled, I’m definitely going to the Alex this afternoon. You coming with me?” Erika had her legs crossed, one foot tapping the air. Excitement, if I knew her at all.

“Mmm, love to, but I’m going with someone else…”

I must have blushed or stuttered, because Erika was straight in there.

“Really? Who’re you meeting?”

“Oh, nobody, really. Sort of got a date.”

“A date? Great! That should take your mind off things. Who is it? Where are you meeting her?” Erika’s eyes were shining, and it made me wonder why she was so interested in my private life all of a sudden.

“It’s a woman from Westberlin. She said she was coming over for the demo, so we agreed to meet up there.”

“You’re taking her to the demo? What kind of date is that?” she teased me. “Well, might see you there then!”

I needed to make a start on the revised report for Frau Demnitz, so I headed over to my office, thinking about Erika. We were very different kinds of people, but out of all my immediate colleagues, I think I liked her the best. Like all of us here at the
Republikschutz
she was from the ranks of the old opposition, chosen mostly for our scepticism of the security services, and first hand experience of being on the receiving end of the Stasi’s tactics. I hadn’t had much to do with Erika in the old days, being thrown together only in the last year when the
Republikschutz
was expanded. Before 1989 we’d seen each other at various gatherings, and maybe a couple of times on some of the bigger actions, but she’d been active in one of the women’s groups so we’d never had the chance to work together on anything. That was a shame, because I enjoyed her company now. She was easily flustered, took her time thinking things through, but she was dependable and thorough, both qualities I appreciated.

Sitting down at my desk I stuffed some paper into a typewriter, winding it through until the top of the page was in the right position, then started typing. I left out Major Tom’s hints and the Saxon police reports, just describing, in laboriously overblown detail, my trip to West Silesia and my impressions and initial conclusions. I typed it up, making the usual two carbon copies for our own records, then took it in to Erika.

“Here, have a look at this. I’ve kept it basic still, just padded it out with useless detail. What do you think?”

“Yeah,” said Erika, frowning in concentration as she read through the report for a second time. “Makes sense to me to keep it simple. The Minister knows that you’ve been getting reports directly from the police in Saxony, but probably won’t appreciate hearing that you’ve been drawing conclusions from them. You’ve got to get it to him by the end of Monday? In that case I think we should check in with the others at Monday’s meeting. There’ll still be time to change it if needs be.”

It seemed a little overcautious to me, but I shrugged agreement and put the report and the carbons in an envelope and left it on my desk for Monday.

Back home I put water on to boil and stepped into the shower. Like most people living in pre-war buildings I didn’t have a bathroom, just a shared toilet on the landing. The only place to have a wash was at the kitchen sink, so I’d rigged up a shower cubicle in the kitchen. It worked well enough, but it did take up a lot of space.

I was quite excited about meeting Annette and wanted to look my best for her. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had a proper date, but it was certainly years ago. After a quick wash I got out of the shower and poured the boiling water into the sink for a shave. Looking at myself in the mirror, I smiled. No longer a spring chicken, but plenty of life in me yet. It felt good to be going to meet a woman, even if our first date was a demo. Perhaps we’d go for a coffee afterwards… My mind wandered, taking in all the possibilities that this afternoon might bring. What would she look like? She sounded really nice on the phone. Self assured, perhaps a little bossy, taking control of the conversation early on. Typical Wessi. But it felt nice to have someone directing the conversation—a little businesslike perhaps, but if it had been left to me I would have stuttered and stammered and said ridiculous things. Yeah, it felt like it might be a good one.

13:17

I got to Alexanderplatz far too early, nervous about being late. We’d agreed to meet at a quarter to two, under the World Clock. With a half-laugh Annette had said that it was a romantic thing to do, and I didn’t disagree. But here I was, half an hour early, wandering around the square, killing time.

The cops weren’t exactly out in force, just a couple of small groups at either end of the square to keep an eye on things. A makeshift stage had been set up near the
Centrum
department store, and Western media teams were setting up their microphones on the speaker’s stand. It was nearly a quarter-to when I realised that I’d forgotten to buy a
Berliner Zeitung
newspaper—I was to hold a
Berliner Zeitung
, Annette was to have a copy of the Westberlin
taz
paper. That way, even if there were lots of people under the clock, we could still recognise each other. I struggled down into the underground station, swimming against the mass of people crowding up the steps to the square for the demo, along the long pedestrian tunnels, pushed to the side, pressed against the underwater-green tiles lining the walls. I struggled through to the kiosk, then back up and out into the square. This time going with the flow, but slowly, too slowly.

I dashed across to the clock, paper clasped under my arm, peering through the scrum that was gathering. There! A tall woman, reddish blonde hair tied back in a pony tail, holding a
taz
folded up in front of her, the red print of the title contrasting with her light coat. I paused for a moment, watching her scan the crowds, and feeling a smile climb onto my lips, then I dived through a gap.

“Hi—you’ve got a
taz
!”

She laughed, “Yes, I’m Annette. And you have a
Berliner Zeitung
, so you must be Martin.”

She had an infectious smile, broad, welcoming, splitting her face almost in two and showing her strong teeth. It was impossible not to smile with her. She had laughter lines in the corners of her green eyes, between them a nose that was slightly bent to the left as if she’d been a boxer in a previous life. She hooked her arm through mine, her long fingers tickling the inside of my elbow.

“Shall we get closer, so we can hear what the speakers have to say?”

Without waiting for an answer, she set off towards the stage, pulling me along in her wake. I lost the
Berliner Zeitung
along the way, but I noticed that she kept a firm grip on her
taz
. There was a good crowd of people already, many holding banners and placards—the
Watt-eater
goblin from the 1950s energy conservation campaigns was a favoured motif, along with other messages encouraging a reduction in energy use.

“Why did you suggest the demo?” I asked, not particularly interested, being too busy looking at her smiling face and shining eyes, but feeling that it might come across as rude if I stared too much and talked too little.

“Well, it’s something I’m interested in—in West Berlin we get our electricity from you, but air pollution and water pollution are an international problem. Just because there’s still a Wall it doesn’t mean that the pollution stops at the border, or that we have no responsibility for it. Besides, I do part time research for the AL, and energy is my area.”

Annette worked for the AL, the
Alternative Liste
, the Westberlin branch of the Green Party, and currently a coalition partner in the Westberlin Senate. In the past they’d been very supportive of the GDR opposition, but had been less keen to help out since we turned down the offer of merging with Westgermany in early 1990, although parts of the party still had close contact with the Round Tables.

The first speaker had stood up, standing by the lectern. I recognised her—she was part of the
Arche
network, now working with
Grüne Liga
, and had long been involved in researching alternatives to using lignite brown coal for electricity generation. She started with a summary of how, since the early 1980s, the GDR had electrified train lines and converted most power plants to make more use of the domestically mined brown coal in preference to oil imported from the Soviet Union and the non-socialist economies. The speaker then went on to talk about the current use of brown coal.

“321 million tonnes of brown coal were used in 1985. By 1990 this had been reduced to 260 million, and we’re on course to go below 200 million tonnes by 1997. The open cast mines that are swallowing whole villages, and even now are gnawing at the edges of Leipzig—they aren’t our only problem. In 1989 our power stations produced nearly 2 mega-tonnes of sulphur dioxide, but by fitting sulphur filters we will cut this by a third over the next two years. We are overhauling our brown coal power stations to double their efficiency. Conversion of power stations to combined heat and power stations is already providing yet more savings.

“This all sounds very positive, particularly when we add the following facts: rationing of fuel for personal transport decreased transport related smog by nearly 60% this summer; less demand for energy from the military has reduced overall demand by a further 15%; and increased recycling and re-use decreases the embodied energy of products in circulation.

“But the fact is we are still using open-cast brown coal, with its high sulphur and salt content. Our electrical appliances and machinery—at home and in industry—use on average 20% more energy than those conforming to international standards. At current rates it will take up to 20 years to replace these.