Stealing the Future (8 page)

“But that’s really complicated! And what are you going to do if your Round Table tells you something you don’t like about your
Volkskammer
representative?”

“It’s simple. If anything goes wrong, say our representatives aren’t keeping to agreements, or aren’t checking in with us on important or controversial stuff—we can require them to come to a meeting, or even recall them and elect somebody else.”

Annette had to think about this for a while, then: “OK, I can see that’s better than the system we have in the West, but it is really complex, isn’t it? And do people actually care what’s happening?”

“Yeah. They do. Since 1989 people have been really engaged. And it’s not like the parliaments are doing their thing and nobody knows or cares what’s going on. The issues get debated in the Works Councils and in the neighbourhood Round Tables. And that gets passed on to the Round Table delegates who are working with the elected representatives.

“But you know what, I think the biggest change is that we’re distributing the decisions and the resources as far down the chain as possible. So the national
Volkskammer
parliament and the administration in Berlin aren’t even responsible for that much any more—mostly foreign affairs, tidying up the legal system, debating constitutional changes, stuff like that. Things that matter on a day to day basis, like transport and food, are decided on a Regional, District or even Neighbourhood level.”

Annette smiled at me, and her eyes danced, sparkling with amusement: “I’m sorry, this is meant to be a date, and here I am, asking you all these boring questions.”

“You know, it’s kind of nice to talk to someone who isn’t involved. At work, at home all we talk about are details, but you and I are talking about the bigger picture—the structural stuff. I don’t get to think about that too much,” I smiled back.

“But there’s something else that I’m curious about: Katrin says you like the Puhdys?”

I grimaced. I definitely had to have words with Katrin…

Görlitz:
It has been confirmed that the body found in Nochten open cast mine last Wednesday is that of Johannes Maier, the Party Secretary of the West Silesian Union. There has been speculation about the whereabouts of Maier since he failed to speak at a WSB rally on Thursday evening. A spokesperson for the Westgerman Interior Ministry described his death as ‘suspicious’. Meanwhile in West Silesia, the Regional parliament has agreed to a WSB sponsored directive dissolving formal links between the Round Tables and the Region’s political structures. The West Silesian Round Table has announced a protest rally later today in the capital Görlitz.

09:25

I woke in a positive mood—the date with Annette had gone well, and it was nice to feel that the future might hold something more than just work and meetings. I decided to allow myself a lie in, staying in bed, reading a book and drinking
Mocca-fix
, soundtrack courtesy of Panta Rhei and Engerling.

Just before midday the phone rang, so I levered myself out of bed and went to answer it, wearing only socks and an old pullover.

“Grobe,” there was no answer. I tried again, “Grobe here, hello?”

A couple of clicks then the line was dead. Nothing surprising there, the telephone system had been overstretched for years and had never worked particularly well. Still, it was good that I was up, it was time to head over to the weekly neighbourhood potluck. Every Sunday afternoon residents of the block would bring a dish and meet up in the
Kulturbund
rooms next door. It gave us a chance to have a chat about any issues without making a meeting out of it. The idea was that if we could sort things out face to face then petty grievances and requests wouldn’t need to be discussed formally at the block plenary. It was also a chance to get to know each other, spend a bit of time building trust and friendship.

I usually enjoyed these get-togethers, despite not being a particularly gregarious person—the food was generally good, and if we hung around for long enough, sooner or later the Skat playing cards and
Kornschnaps
would make an appearance. Unfortunately, I was quite often working, even on a Sunday afternoon, or too knackered to be bothered to show up. It was nice to be able to turn up, not just in a good mood, but with enough energy to look forward to the event.

I arrived with a bowl of potato salad. There would probably be at least two or three other bowls of potato salad there, but I had leftover potatoes already, and it seemed the simplest and quickest dish to prepare. Besides, you couldn’t go far wrong with potato salad.

Margrit from upstairs was talking with the old ladies from the ground floor. I greeted Margrit with a hug, and the ladies with a handshake. They cooed over me for a bit, telling me how they hadn’t seen me for ages. I asked after their cats, not actually interested, but knowing that the cats provided these ladies with their main distraction between the Potlucks. After a few minutes the ladies started swapping knitting pattern tips, forgetting that I was standing there. I felt my social duty had been adequately fulfilled and went back to Margrit who was deep in conversation with Dirk from the top floor. Dirk seemed unusually friendly, in a good mood, slightly hyper.

“Hey Martin, your Bärbel’s coming along today,” Margrit turned, including me in the discussion.

“Who? Do you mean my secretary from work?”

“I’m not
your
secretary, Martin, and you know that. I’m the departmental secretary.” This from Bärbel, who had just come in through the side door.

I didn’t really know Bärbel, despite having seen her nearly every day for months. She didn’t actively take part in meetings at work, she’d usually just sit quietly in the corner and take notes, pretty much invisible to us all once we’d got involved in discussing work rotas and cases. I hadn’t really reflected on this strange relationship before, and it made me feel a bit uncomfortable now I was encountering Bärbel in an informal setting for the first time.

“Hi Bärbel, of course. That’s what I meant. Departmental. Errm, good to see you.”

She gave me a tight smile, and turned to Dirk, giving him a hug, and offering Margrit her hand when Dirk introduced the two. Dirk then ushered her away towards the side table, offering her an
Apfelschorle
; mixing apple juice and sparkling mineral water for her. I could hear him explaining that the apples were from trees along the nearby railway embankment. It sounded like he was trying to impress her, and she looked like she was prepared to be impressed, or at least pretend to be.

I turned back to Margrit, who had been quietly observing how I was watching Bärbel and Dirk, an amused twinkle in her eyes. I had always rather liked Margrit’s eyes. One was hazel-green, the other blue, although I was never one hundred percent certain that they were always the same colour. I often found myself wondering what eye colour was entered on her identity card. Her hair was frequently dyed, a dark red or black which really showed her eyes up even more.

“Nice shoes,” I said, looking down at the brown tooled leather.

“Yes, my aunt sent them from the West. You don’t really know her, do you?” she asked, looking towards Bärbel who was smiling over her glass of
Apfelschorle
at Dirk.

“No, I guess not. Is it that obvious?”

“Mmm,” Margrit murmured, nodding absent mindedly. “But she’d like to get to know you.”

I looked over towards Bärbel, who was giving Dirk a lot of attention, nodding and smiling coquettishly at whatever he was saying. I’d never noticed Bärbel showing any interest in me, and there was certainly no evidence of anything now.

“Nah, don’t think so, I mean look at how she’s flirting with Dirk.”

Margrit didn’t say anything, just looked at me with those remarkable eyes of hers. She was good at this, making me feel uncomfortable, and I was relieved when five or six more residents crashed through the front doors, carrying trays and plates and bottles. I saw Eli, Robert, Steffen and a few others, but they were all milling around and laughing too much to make identification from this end of the room easy. They had obviously been drinking, probably been in the park or the small bit of grass in the yard at the rear of the building, where the washing lines were. They were in good spirits, and hungry. Without much ado the plates were first stacked on the table, then were doled out and everyone dived into the food. Pea soup, soljanka, roulade, red cabbage, a leaf salad, potato salad (only one today, apart from mine), a couple of loaves of dark rye bread and even some bread rolls from the day before, rock hard inside, the crust shrivelled, anaemic and rubbery.

We tucked in, conversation dying down for a few minutes while we all tried out the various dishes. There weren’t too many of us today, so we fitted around one table. The young families of the building weren’t represented at all.

“They’re all at the
Pionierpalast
,” said Frau Lehne, one of the cat ladies. “There’s some event going on, little Steffen was so excited about it.”

Frau Lehne was interrupted by the door opening, and a tall, thin man, with longish curly hair and dirty blue denim work-clothes came in. He looked around the table, and, his eyes directed somewhere above our heads, put his hands behind his back, as if he were about to recite a poem.

“Good day, Comrades. And a good appetite. How does it work here? I mean, with the food?”

He had a Thuringian accent, and looked hungry, slightly desperate. Dirk stood up, and gestured towards the table with the serving dishes.

“Are you hungry, brother? Join us, we have food.”

The man looked hopeful, but avoided looking either at us or the food, even at Dirk, who was now well within the stranger’s field of vision.

Dirk crossed over to the table where the food was laid out, and cast about, wondering whether to serve the man’s food on a plate, or find some disposable receptacle for the man to take with him.

Around the table, people were exchanging embarrassed looks, unsure how to react, when Bärbel suddenly piped up.

“But a contribution towards the costs would be appreciated!”

This was unexpected, Bärbel was as much a visitor as this man, and as far as I knew she hadn’t brought a dish, nor vegetables or any other kind of donation. At Bärbel’s pronouncement Dirk dithered even more, he had been about to take a plate to serve the food onto, but now looked around the table uncertainly. The stranger’s face had hardly changed—he seemed unsurprised by Bärbel’s interjection. He still looked hopeful, but the desperation showing around the eyes was now unmistakable.

More looks were exchanged around the table, the old ladies looked slightly shocked, but I couldn’t tell whether it was by the man’s begging or Bärbel’s protest. All conversation had ceased, everyone was looking shifty, uncomfortable.

“Of course you should eat, brother,” said Margrit, finally breaking the awkward atmosphere that had settled over us. She gestured at Dirk to give the stranger some food.

At this the man moved over towards Dirk, pulling an army mess tin out of his bag. Dirk filled it with soljanka, with some of my potato salad on the side, placing one of the dry bread rolls on the top, so that it soaked up the sloppy stew. Within seconds the beggar had left, murmuring thanks, and wishing us a pleasant Sunday.

When the door swung shut behind him, there was a moment’s silence, until Margrit broke it.

“If people are hungry, we feed them. We have to. The revolution doesn’t stop at that door,” she gestured towards the door through which the stranger had just disappeared.

There were murmurs of agreement from around the table, but Bärbel wasn’t cowed by the strength of Margrit’s statement.

“But we can’t feed everyone. We’re still struggling to get enough food for ourselves. And this guy, I mean, if he was part of a work collective then they’d see that he got food, even if he didn’t have money.”

Most foodstuffs were still subsidised, at least the staples were, meaning that anyone who was in work, or receiving an old age or disability pension could afford to both eat and pay their rent.

“So this guy,” Bärbel continued, “he can’t be working. He’s probably going round begging food from different neighbourhoods and projects. It’s not socially acceptable, it’s selfish and profiteering behaviour.”

“But, obviously, if someone is hungry, we feed them. I don’t care where they come from. We don’t know why that man’s not working, or even whether or not he’s working,” one of the young men who lived on the floor above me joined in.

Dirk had moved back to the table and sat down. He still seemed uncomfortable, but looked up and began to speak.

“I’ve seen that guy before. He was at our works canteen a few weeks ago.”

He spoke slowly, deliberately, but gave no indication about what he thought about the man who had been begging.

“I agree with your guest,” Eli chimed in, looking at Dirk. “Food isn’t free. It might be one day, but at the moment we pay for it, we work for it, and we don’t have much money, none of us do.”

“I’ve seen him before as well,” said Robert. He’d been looking thoughtful the whole time. “He was at our factory too. He was asking around for work, but the co-ordinator turned him down, sent him packing. Apparently he was in the Firm—the co-ordinator recognised him, he said he was one of the guards at Hohenschönhausen prison.”

This gave us all food for thought, and there was silence for a while. Bärbel broke that silence.

“So he should go to the Reconciliation Commission. We set up procedures for this, we all know the score. Confess, apologise, work out how to make amends, ask a neighbourhood to take you in.”

Things weren’t quite as straightforward as this, and Bärbel knew it. I wondered why she was being so hard on the man. The Reconciliation Commission wasn’t uncontroversial. It wasn’t even universally accepted in this little Republic of ours. There were plenty of people who wanted revenge, not reconciliation, and there were plenty from the ex-security services who felt hard done by. The whole thing was a huge mess, and I for one was worried it may get worse before it got better.

“But he’s human. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of.” This came from Dirk, who was looking pensive. That surprised me, not just because I’d had the impression he’d been trying to impress Bärbel, and by disagreeing with her he was probably ruining any chances he had, but also because I knew that Dirk had been in the Stasi prison in Hohenschönhausen, and in Cottbus as well.

“We have to move beyond this, otherwise we’ve got no chance of succeeding in this revolution of ours.” Again, Dirk had surprised me. I hadn’t heard him talk about the revolution before at all. He had gained the attention of the Stasi not for opposing the State in any real political sense, but for
Republikflucht—
trying to flee the GDR across the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless he had clearly suffered badly at the hands of the Stasi. We had all seen, but not mentioned, how he limped when the weather was cold or wet.

“It’s like 1945 again. We can’t just give out Persil certificates, granting clean vest status—these people are dirty. Some of them are downright evil!” Frau Lehne said, cupping her hand behind one ear in order to better follow the discussion.

Another surprise. I had never heard Frau Lehne talk politics either.

“But we can’t send them to concentration camps—we can’t fill the Stasi jails with Stasi agents. It’s a cycle, a cycle of malice, of violence and fear. And it’s up to us, it’s our responsibility to break it,” Dirk was less hesitant now, more sure of his position.

The discussion had slowed; this was an old argument, yet one that still had no answer. It was something that we all had to deal with, one way or another. Too many people had been victims of the Stasi, or working for the Stasi, or informing for the Stasi. Many of the informants were unaware that what they said was going into the Stasi files, and now those files had been rescued from destruction and opened up it was proving virtually impossible to tell who had deliberately informed, of their own free will, who had been blackmailed, and who was innocent of any wrongdoing, despite being named in the files as an informer.