Stasi 77

by David Young

  ‘I’d like you to leave my apartment now, please. Immediately.’

  *

  Müller tried to ask more questions, but any trust had been broken. The woman just shooed her out, reminding her that a call to the Ministry for State Security would land Müller in hot water if she failed to leave. Her assertion about the answer lying in the past seemed to be borne out by the fabric paratrooper badge, despite the question mark still hanging over her husband’s apparent hidden love life, and whether that might have provided a motive for his murder. Nevertheless, Müller’s own view was that the connection between the victims was something historic. Probably something to do with the Nazi period, although Frau Ronnebach had succeeded in placing a doubt in her mind about her husband’s Nazi affiliations.

  27

  11 April 1945

  Mieste, near Gardelegen, Nazi Germany

  All the time we’ve been here, we’ve watched the skies, expecting an air attack to come at any moment. It came the day after our misery was partially relieved by the insubstantial meal.

  There is no air-raid warning. We hear the drone of the planes first, then the whine of the bombs, and we scatter – running as fast as we can away from the train. Marcellin and I dive into the ditch to take cover. He’s been partially revived by that one meal. We flatten ourselves to the bank. I see Marcellin’s wounded arm has been soaked with ditchwater. That can’t be a good thing.

  The prisoners run in all directions. One of the bombs scores a direct hit on the railway yard, sending dirt and debris flying into the sky. It rains down on us like a dirty hailstorm.

  Some prisoners try to escape. I think it’s some of the Russians. I watch them running across a cornfield, willing them to reach the cover of the trees. I know Marcellin cannot run like that. He cannot run at all. The will to live gave him the adrenalin to escape into the ditch, but it hasn’t done him any good.

  Then comes the sound of automatic gunfire.

  We watch the Russians mown down, one by one.

  Two of them are still running. One reaches the woods, and safety.

  The other gets tangled in a fence, and we watch the bullets shred him apart.

  Life is like that. One minute you’re there, the next you’re not.

  I don’t believe in the afterlife. I never have. So no matter how desperate our situation, I want to survive.

  The Kapos and guards round us up again, and we’re soon sitting back on the bank where we have been for days, slowly wasting away. But something has changed. There are frantic shouts among the guards. One of them has heard the Americans are nearly here. Little more than ten kilometres away.

  Surely now we are safe?

  Surely the Germans will now lay down their arms and give up?

  *

  We are being moved, that becomes obvious. We’re divided into three groups of a few hundred people each. At one point, it looks as though Marcellin will be taken on the horse-drawn carts with the others who are unable to walk any more. I plead with the guards to let me stay with my brother. For some reason, my pleas are listened to. But instead of both going on the carts, we are pushed into one of the marching groups. I immediately regret my actions. I should have let Marcellin go with the carts. He will not be able to walk far, and if he collapses, that will be it. They will shoot him. I’ve seen it too many times already.

  One group leaves, a picture of abject misery. They are human skeletons in rags, with thin blankets wrapped around their shoulders. It is beyond shocking what man can do to man in times of war. I must survive, we must survive, in order to tell our story – to make sure that this can never happen again. But over the years, despite what terrible acts have been committed, people forget. They want to forget. It’s human nature.

  We are in the second group. We’re marching north, not east as I expected, as we head for the woods down a narrow lane.

  Suddenly, out of the skies, Allied aircraft bear down. Machine guns open fire, scattering us into the fields. I’m half-running, half-dragging Marcellin. Is this finally our chance to escape?

  Flat to the earth, I scan the horizon. The woods aren’t far. If I can help Marcellin, we can get there.

  ‘Leave me, Philippe,’ he says. ‘I won’t make it. Save yourself.’

  But I cannot do that. I force him with what little strength I have in me to try to hurry. I am weak, he feels so, so heavy, but I know that he is not. There is little flesh left on his bones.

  A shot rings out over our heads.

  We freeze and put our hands up, but for Marcellin, that is just one hand. He cannot raise his other arm.

  I brace myself, expecting the next shot through my back. Expecting it all, finally, to be over. There is little liquid left in my body, but what there is is expelled now down my trousers.

  The shot doesn’t come.

  Instead, there is shouting in German. Someone in civilian clothes, armed with what looks like a hunting rifle, prods us back towards the column of prisoners, now reformed after the air raid. The man isn’t a soldier and isn’t a Kapo. He’s just a farmer. All of them are doing their dirty work together. But I suppose we should be thankful; at least he didn’t shoot us.

  From the other sounds of gunfire we heard, others weren’t so lucky. We see the evidence first-hand, their bodies piled by the side of the road.

  *

  We reach a village; Breitenfeld, according to the road signs. Here, we turn off the road and are marched due east through the woods again. If the Americans are advancing, if they are only a few kilometres away, surely they will reach us soon?

  At some point, possibly because Marcellin cannot keep up with the others, we become separated from the main group. At first I think it’s just us two, then I look behind us and realise that there are perhaps a hundred or so of us, the weakest. Then I realise something else. There are no guards. We are free. We are free, but we have no food, no shelter, no water. And no idea where to go or what to do.

  Someone makes a decision. We will wait here and camp for the night. Wait, and hope that by morning the Americans will be here, and we will be saved.

  *

  The next morning, we’re on the move again. Still without guards, still all together. We’re going east. I try to tell the others we should go the other way, towards the Americans, but they won’t listen. Most of them are Poles. Perhaps they are under the mistaken belief they can walk all the way back home. None of them will make it.

  I have a decision to make. Do Marcellin and I strike out on our own, or is there safety in numbers? I chose the latter. It’s a decision I will always regret.

  Just outside the village of Estedt, a German car overtakes us. Nine soldiers get out. German soldiers. Fallschirmjäger – paratroops. Once the elite of the German fighting force, now about to be defeated. But before their final defeat, they are going to deal with us. Their eyes look murderous. This is different. These are not Kapos. These are trained soldiers out for revenge.

  For some reason, they march us back to the west, towards Breitenfeld, up the same track we’ve already been down when we were on our own, without guards. On the way it was easier, downhill. On the way back, it is more of a struggle as we are going up the incline, towards the woods where we camped overnight. One of the other prisoners who still has some strength left helps me with Marcellin. Otherwise he would not make it. And I know the Fallschirmjäger troops will have no mercy.

  We reach a clearing in the woods, just to the north side of the track. The sun has come out, and it shines like a torch, highlighting the grassy area. On one side of the clearing is a giant boulder moved there by some force of nature thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago.

  We are all told to strip naked.

  I know now what I suspected when the car overtook us on the road, and these troops – with their evil, wolf-like eyes – took us under their control.

  We are not leaving this clearing alive. None of us.

  Six of the stronger-looking amongst us are handed shovels that I now reali
se the troops brought with them. This was all planned.

  At gunpoint, we’re ordered to dig a trench.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see one Polish prisoner prostrate himself in front of a German guard, kissing his boots, begging him not to shoot him. I want to feel disgust, but I cannot. If I wasn’t having to wield a shovel at gunpoint, digging what is certainly my own grave, I might do the same.

  Life is a precious thing. I have enjoyed it, despite these last couple of years.

  When the trench is little more than a metre deep, we’re told to stop, and lay our shovels aside.

  We are told to stand back. We’re not going to be the first.

  Instead, a group of weaker prisoners are lined up facing the trench, the guards behind them. One of the prisoners is Marcellin.

  The guards raise their weapons.

  ‘No, no!’ I shout. ‘He is my brother. Please let him live.’

  The guard turns his gun on me. ‘Silence,’ he barks.

  I see his gloved finger resting on the trigger, about to squeeze.

  But my mind is back on the Celestine, sailing out of Loix’s tiny harbour, with Marcellin and Grégoire riding the waves. Then lying with Marie-Ange amongst the vines, with the sun beating down in a blinding white light. Her caresses on the side of my face. The exquisite taste of the fresh herbs in Maman’s marsh mutton casserole.

  My life is over, but I have memories to cherish, and they flicker like a well-worn newsreel in front of my eyes.

  28

  August 1977

  Oberhof, East Germany

  By the time they neared Oberhof – the large village, or town Müller had grown up in and the next leg of their family tour – Jannika and Johannes had started to fret about the journey. Müller had needed to stop a couple of times so she and Helga could calm the twins’ crying. Nevertheless, Müller took a short detour so that they approached Oberhof from the north. She wanted to be reminded of the magnificence of the Interhotel Panorama, the modernist structure whose two main buildings were supposed to look like twin ski-jump slopes, echoing the winter sports theme for which Oberhof was famed. To Müller, in the summer, it looked more like a giant ocean liner that had broken in two and was slowly sinking beneath the waves. Today, in the bright sunlight, its multitude of windows glittered with reflections – much as they had on her last visit to see her adoptive family some two years previously. It had been a turning point in her life. She’d finally discovered the reason why she’d always felt ‘different’ from her brother Roland and younger sister Sara, and why the woman she’d always assumed was her natural mother had seemed – to Müller anyway – to treat her less favourably. It had been the visit where she had finally discovered that she was adopted, nearly thirty years after the fact.

  The anger she’d felt at her adoptive family had dissipated now that she’d met Helga, now that she had a real family of her own. She knew she wanted to at least stay friends with them. She owed it to her adoptive brother and sister – and, yes, even her mother – to let them be a part of the twins’ lives, if only peripherally.

  She took one last look at the hotel in the rear-view mirror, and the top of Haus One – where she and Tilsner had climbed up to challenge her childhood friend, and save her baby son’s life. She glanced at him in the mirror. He was oblivious now, finally asleep again with a bottle of juice lolling from his mouth. One day she would take him up there, and tell him the story.

  *

  Müller pulled up in front of Bergpension Hanneli, killed the Lada’s engine, and then – for a few moments – let the thoughts and memories wash over her. Her last visit had been almost exactly two years earlier, in the summer of 1975, while she was working on the missing babies case in Halle-Neustadt.

  Then, as now, she’d felt a level of apprehension, a tightening in her stomach when confronted by the gloss-red painted log cladding of the lower floors, and the black slate of the sharply sloping eaves containing the guest rooms above. It still had the look of a witch’s house – almost like the little sister of the witch’s castle of a hunting lodge in Hermsdorf. The window boxes in the lower floors were still filled with golden hyacinths – the gold of the flowers, red of the logs and black slates above mimicking the colours of the German flags, both the Republic’s and that of the West – the BRD.

  Müller turned to survey her passengers. They were all asleep. She’d been careful to bring the car to a gentle halt so as to try not to wake them and to give herself a few moments to collect her thoughts. She looked at Johannes. He was such a cute boy. So unlike his namesake, Johannes Traugott – the childhood friend she’d felt she’d abandoned. The awkward, bespectacled boy who’d turned into a half-deranged man, and nearly robbed her of her happiness at being a mother. She was never going to let that happen again, never let her own job put them in danger. If anything like that ever happened again, she knew what she would sacrifice. Her career. Never her children.

  *

  After playing up earlier in the car journey, predictably Jannika and Johannes were both as good as gold for Rosamund Müller – her adoptive mother – her sister, Sara, and brother, Roland. Perhaps they’d been refreshed by their long sleep.

  ‘They are darlings, Karin,’ said Rosamund. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

  The genuine joy on Rosamund’s face brought tears to Müller’s eyes. She’d have liked to hear the words I’m so proud of you a little more as a child herself. She always felt Sara and Roland got more favourable treatment – although at their last meeting Rosamund had denied it. She felt more affection for her mother now, however. The woman who had given her a home and raised her, despite the fact she wasn’t her natural child.

  ‘I can see both of you in Jannika,’ said Sara, after hugging her adoptive sister. ‘She’s got your eyes, Karin, but more of your face, Helga.’

  Müller could see Helga’s eyes watering. ‘She’s the spitting image of her mother, really, Sara. I so wish you could have met my daughter, and that she could have seen her grandchildren.’

  Müller tenderly laid her hand on Helga’s forearm. ‘Don’t get yourself upset.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Rosamund. ‘Now, Karin tells me you used to do a bit of flower-arranging when you were living in Leipzig, Helga. I wanted your advice on an arrangement I’m putting in for the town show.’ She dragged Müller’s grandmother away to try to distract her from her sad memories, which seemed to have been prompted by which toddler looked like whom.

  ‘You’re looking well, Sara. You’ve lost weight too,’ said Müller to her adoptive sister.

  ‘Ha!’ laughed Roland. ‘That’s because there’s a man on the scene, now isn’t there, Sara?’

  Sara blushed. ‘We’ve not been going out that long.’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Müller. ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Tomas Jollenbeck.’

  ‘Tomas the butcher’s son?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Müller pictured the boy – round-faced, happy, always helping out his father in the shop. Not exactly handsome, and certainly not Müller’s type.

  Sara got a photo from her handbag and passed it to her adoptive sister.

  The round-faced, spotty boy that Müller remembered had flowered into a strapping, hunky man, who towered over Sara in the photograph, his arms clasped round her as if protecting her. As a boy, Müller wouldn’t have spared him a second glance. As a man, she suddenly felt a pang of jealousy.

  ‘I’m so pleased for you, Sara. You look so happy together.’ It was what she’d imagined for herself and Emil – until everything had gone wrong.

  ‘He’s asked her to marry him,’ said Roland. ‘I don’t think he realises what he’s letting himself in for.’

  ‘Shh, Roland. I wanted to tell Karin myself.’

  Müller stood up, and smothered her sister in another hug. ‘Oh Sara, Sara. I’m so thrilled for you. When’s the wedding?’

  ‘Oh we haven’t set a date yet. We wanted to save up a bit more first. But get your glad rags ready. I expect it
will be next spring or summer.’

  Müller was overjoyed for Sara, and the two women moved into the snug to discuss the wedding and reminisce over their childhoods, as Roland entertained the twins, playing peek-a-boo and roughhousing around. When Sara said she had to check on something that was simmering away in the kitchen, Müller took the opportunity to slide away for a moment, and began to climb the stairs of the guesthouse, past the guest rooms on the first floor, right up into the eaves.

  *

  She’d half-expected the room to have been redecorated, perhaps put into use as another room for paying guests. After all, she was – in effect – no longer Rosamund’s daughter. The fact that it hadn’t been, the fact that it had been left almost as a shrine to the teenage her – as a time capsule, with the fading Beatles poster carefully reattached to the wall – brought a rush of affection towards Rosamund in Müller’s heart. Perhaps her adoptive mother did love her after all. Perhaps she always had. Perhaps it had simply been Müller’s own perception, her own selfishness, which had meant she’d perceived herself being treated less favourably than Roland or Sara.

  She’d done this two years earlier: reached to the top of the wardrobe for her ‘secret’ key. It was still there, and the layer of dust she disturbed suggested that Rosamund had left things well alone. Once again, she used the key to open the desk drawer and pull out her old diary. It still smelt the same; musty paper mixed with Casino de Luxe – one of the Republic’s perfume brands which had been popular with girls of her age. It probably still was, for all she knew. Things changed slowly from year to year in this country. Brands stayed the same, prices stayed the same, leaders stayed the same. But nothing is permanent, she knew that.

  This time, she didn’t look through the diary entries. She knew what was in there: the account of the day when she’d been a young girl of five, and – overnight – almost all of Oberhof’s guesthouses had been nationalised, their owners and families bussed out, hundreds of kilometres away. One of those had been her childhood friend, Johannes. And she had witnessed it with her own eyes, as he’d remonstrated with the soldiers.