The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  *

  My God! Am I going to tell Hanne all this?

  In the original copy that Roland wrote, Heike claimed not to be an affiliate of any organisation; she had no criminal record, though she joked that she might have had, had she killed her father. It was a nervous joke and not really appropriate for a GDR Berlin readership. In all, she really did believe she was in a better place than rural Bavaria or a USAAF base.

  She asked for these words to be emphasised: ‘America has used the atom bomb in anger – the only country to do so! We must all defend ourselves.’ Then insisted that this be stated, believing it would impress her panel.

  Naively, she talked about her debriefing and that it had seemed interminable; that she was genuine in her resolve to be a good East German and that she would not break under any circumstances. Nor would she run home to the West crying her eyes out.

  Heike was not free to roam. She was offered a job immediately, a post she couldn’t turn down as freedom of choice was something she’d left on the train in West Berlin. Her role: full employment as an interpreter, making best use of her bilingual skills. Her office: within the same acreage as her incarceration.

  She’d passed countless checks with the security services, she was free to enter the system, but they were convinced she was a “plant” so they assigned a mentor – a tall, slim, charming Prussian gentleman with an aristocratic background. He would oversee her work and lodgings and anything she might need. She would know him simply as Herr Comrade Frederick Wendt, a seemingly harmless, kind individual who bore no resemblance to the stony grey panel members who’d been her jailers and interrogators for the last month.

  Wendt had been assigned because, like her, he was a defector. The only difference being that he had been a big fish in the pages of mid-twentieth century European history.

  Wendt had been known in pre-war years as Norbert Weber – Germany’s champion tennis player. He had won Olympic gold, shaken Hitler’s hand and beamed into the Führer’s smiling face.

  In 1941, he’d held the rank of Obersturmführer as a famed member of the National Socialist Party, but the end of war brought his glory days to an abrupt end. Captured, interrogated and imprisoned briefly by the Allies, Weber was released into a defeated land of raped women and fatherless children. “Kicked out into the pitch blackness of hell!” he later recalled in his autobiography. By 1947, he was a celebrity has-been without purpose, rank or money, so leaving reinvention as his only saviour.

  His talent, however, was purely limited to knocking a tennis ball across a court, yet he tried on several occasions to forge businesses, but failed disastrously each time. The year that Heike was born, 1953, saw him emigrate first to Argentina and later to Brazil and Ceylon, before eventually returning to Hamburg in 1957 where he was arrested for embezzlement and various tax irregularities.

  Narrowly escaping a prison sentence, Weber defected to the East that very year where he was soon employed on East Germany’s newly formed Olympic Committee. The famed athlete who had won Wimbledon and shaken the hand of King George VI was to find a new appreciative audience amongst the communist nations of the East.

  For his services to sport he would later be awarded the Olympic Order, and his new nomenclature of Frederick Wendt ensured his former Nazi past was never questioned again.

  Heike knew nothing of his past, nor did she suspect. He was simply the tall, slim, erudite gentleman with white hair who spoke softly and extended his hand in friendship. He was the gift for her month of cold isolation.

  Afraid that her mother Kirsten would see the Berlin newspaper article, she wrote a letter that would explain something about the past month.

  … the stern faces I’d expected initially, but I began to fear the worse after the monotony of each day of interrogation was leading me to believe they considered me a spy and would either incarcerate me for good in a Gulag or even shoot me. I would disappear and no one would be any the wiser. No one manhandled me during my questioning. The food was okay, and the guards kept their distance. They seemed neither to like nor dislike me. They made no reference to my name, just: ‘Come with us now!’ or ‘Stay there until we say otherwise.’ And: ‘Don’t speak until you’re spoken to. Understand?’ But now the awful transition is complete, I’ve been assigned to a good man who treats me as if I were his own daughter, and I so badly need a father. He is my ideal of a surrogate parent, sometimes speaking fluent English to me in an attempt to gain my full confidence I think, suspecting that something I utter just might reveal some hidden agenda or identity.

  Please don’t be offended, Mama. I’ve wanted to be here for so long…

  She never sent the letter, and for a while Kirsten remained oblivious as to her daughter’s true whereabouts.

  The Sandman was absolutely right – things got off to a great start. Yes, the job was monotonous, her colleagues not particularly friendly and the “DDD” (Dirty, Draughty, Dank) accommodation was less than appealing, but there was Roland – her first East German friend.

  Not that they became friends instantly; or rather, Roland tried a little too hard. The professional interview was fine. Roland was experienced enough to treat the assignment as he would any other – put the subject at ease, ask the right questions, place the subject in an appropriate setting for a photo. For this, he used the backdrop of the Wall itself and a tower, his angle being that Heike was now safely on the “right side” of the Wall.

  Heike, for her part, was a willing interviewee only too happy to express her side of things, blissfully unaware that her individual thoughts and needs counted for nothing here.

  Roland was barely twelve months older than Heike but seemed much more world weary – she thought. Not bad looking, probably married with umpteen children, as he was clearly not single because he had no pride in his appearance whatsoever; drowning in that ratty, oversized pullover, and he even turned up riding an old bicycle that was too small for him. She approved of the bicycle: Communists ride bicycles, or should do was her belief.

  He asked all the pertinent questions, which were easy-peasy because she had graduated straight out of the “University of Inquisition” having spent the last month answering every question that could be put to her about her short life, so this bit was a doddle.

  That was followed by the photo session: ‘How should I stand? Or maybe I should sit?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Do you want me like this?’ she asked mischievously, balancing on one leg her arms outstretched.

  ‘No. You’re not a model. You’re a… You’re a…’

  ‘Traitor to the West?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Defector?’

  ‘Defector – yes.’

  ‘So how would I…?’

  ‘Just turn now to look at the lens.’

  ‘Like this?’ She flicked her head provocatively as if she were Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn.

  ‘No. Just be…’

  ‘Be what?’

  ‘Natural.’

  ‘But you’re taking my picture. I have to do something!’

  Roland was not losing control of the shoot, as he didn’t have command of it. He tried a new tactic.

  ‘Do you like my camera?’ he asked her. ‘It’s a Praktika – very strong, very robust. The results are excellent if you use the right lens.’

  ‘Have you used the right lens?’

  ‘I think so – a wide angle, as I want to include the Wall and the tower behind you. If I want to photograph you close up, I’ll use a different lens – like a zoom, I think.’

  ‘You know about photography?’ Too late! Roland’s gentle smile had crashed to the ground with a bang. ‘Silly question – sorry! You’re a journalist – of course you know about photography.’

  ‘Not that much, actually – I’m a writer first and foremost. I haven’t had the camera long so I’m still experimentin
g with it, finding out what it can do. I’m teaching myself to process film, too, but the lab at the newspaper does most of that. I can use it for my own purposes, which is a rare privilege here in the East.’

  This was better. The more they talked the less Heike posed. He snapped her from all sorts of different angles – profile, close up, ultra-close up, mid-shots.

  ‘Do you know of famous photographers in the West?’ he asked. ‘Like Cecil Beaton? Or Lee Miller? Or maybe David Bailey?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she replied, the keen breeze softening her voice. ‘I’ve left the West behind.’

  Looking back on this episode, she cursed herself for having been prickly with him, not quite trusting what it was all about. She couldn’t know for sure, and the last month had been particularly hard. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In that moment he could so easily have been yet another Stasi man playing with her emotions. All she wanted was to be left alone to be a good citizen; she didn’t need all the crap that went with it.

  Roland promptly shot off thirty-six frames, whilst adjusting focus and shutter speed and making a mental note that the more he talked the better everything seemed to be. She relaxed whenever he talked, and as things were going so well he suggested loading a new film and shooting more with a different lens, that’s if she didn’t mind.

  The only thing she minded was the presence of a heavy-set man sitting on a bench some 25 metres away supposedly reading a newspaper but clearly watching them.

  ‘Who’s that?’ She nodded in the man’s direction.

  ‘Don’t bother about him.’

  ‘Is he your editor?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’s just reading a paper – that’s all.’

  ‘Can’t you tell him to go? Tell him that you’re press – that you’re being put off by him?’

  ‘But I’m not. Seriously, he’s fine. He’s not bothering us.’

  Roland would have loaded a third film had it not started to rain a little. The timing was just right. Seventy frames was more than enough for this piece and he knew it, but the pretty girl from Bavaria was too good a catch to never see again.

  ‘I’ll let you know when we run the piece. It might not be for a day or so, but this is a big story, so who knows. It’s not every day someone walks into the GDR from the West. I’ll be in touch – bye!’

  *

  Wikipedia

  Heike’s Entry

  There was a time when people spoke of having fifteen minutes of fame. Today, people’s actions are immortalised on the Internet; so there was no need to tell Hanne of any of this incredible story. Heike was there on Wikipedia for all to see, along with all the other infamous defectors to the East – all the traitors, spies and terrorists.

  Perhaps it didn’t matter; the memories were flowing freely now.

  *

  Uncle Frederick

  Somebody had left a carefully folded note on her desk. Its spiteful message was this:

  STUPID LITTLE BITCH! We’re all trying to get out and you just wander in. People have died making a bid for freedom. Their graves line the Wall that you walked through to get here. WE WON’T FORGET YOU WHEN OUR TIME IS COME!

  Suspecting that whoever had written the note was watching, she re-folded and discreetly placed it under a paperweight. At least now the chilly atmosphere had a voice, though not a signature.

  Before leaving that evening she smuggled it into her handbag with the intention of presenting it to “Uncle” Frederick when he arrived at her apartment. He was under orders to keep regular contact with her, to charm and befriend, guide and watch over her; his remit was to talk openly, giving her all sorts of information just to see how she might use it. If that information was relayed to the CIA or MI5 and it came back to them, then they had their mole.

  She welcomed him in, happy and somewhat relieved to see his beaming face. Embarrassed that she could only offer him just one hook for his rain-sodden mac, but there was a pastry put aside in the tiny fridge that they could snack on and also coffee, nothing extravagant, but this was the Eastern bloc. She poured him a cup and showed him the note.

  ‘Ah! Well, I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. People are by nature mischievous. Someone is trying to get a reaction from you. Don’t give them the opportunity, my dear. You’ve made the right choice in joining your brothers and sisters in the East. It was the best move you could have made – you must have no regrets. Would you like to work in a different department? I can arrange that, but I can’t promise that it wouldn’t happen again.’

  ‘No, thank you! I don’t want to be seen as a quitter.’

  ‘Good for you! Respect is won and quitters are never respected.’

  Uncle’s words resonated completely with Heike. These were the words she’d been missing all her young life – the rhetoric of a father who advises, praises and guides his children. GI Joe Savers had only ever chastised her. Even at Christmas, if he’d been at home, which was rare, he’d chastised her.

  Over the next couple of days, glancing out of the office window she saw Roland twice – not to speak to, but in the distance, circling the vicinity, stopping his squeaky, rattley bicycle to talk to someone. He looked quite determined; maybe looking for something or someone? Perhaps this was simply his “patch” and he was just going about his journalistic business as always?

  She asked a colleague about him but was brushed off with: ‘I don’t know! Why would I know? We mind our own business here and you’d do well to do the same.’

  He really didn’t look like a Stasi man, she thought, but maybe the best Stasi are clever like that.

  *

  If instead of being in a hotel room she had been at home, she would have found for Hanne the second letter that she wrote to her mother, Kirsten.

  It read:

  Dearest Mama, Having reached Berlin, I decided to cross the border into the East. I know this will come as a shock to you, but I feel I must live by my principles. I could not live in a country that sheltered former Nazis and even gave them positions of power.

  I am happy and employed here in the GDR, though I cannot tell you exactly what I do because it is important work. Maybe one day, when Germany is reunited again as a truly socialist country, we will all be able to talk about many things, but it is better because of the pressure put on us by the West that for now discretion is the key.

  Hopefully we can meet soon – somewhere. For now, please know that I am safe and well and in a happy place.

  This second letter was never sent either.

  *

  Kirsten wasn’t sleeping for lack of news. She would have registered with an organisation that put family in touch with relatives in the East, but she had no reason to suspect her errant daughter was in the East.

  ‘I’ve been looking all over for you!’ he gasped in triumph, propping his lanky stature up against her doorframe.

  ‘I didn’t think I was difficult to find.’

  ‘I was hoping to bump into you.’

  Between laboured breaths, Roland would glance beyond her to the centre of the small, sparsely furnished apartment and particularly at its central light fitting as if he were trying to spot something hidden. This unnerved and offended her, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He continued to scan the flat, staring in turn at a flower vase with the same intensity and then a light switch.

  When he’d finished staring into her apartment he asked matter-of-factly: ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Of course with me!’ He sounded desperate yet also very familiar, as if he’d known her since school days.

  ‘Okay.’ So they walked out into the dull light of an autumn evening that was still quite mild, Heike retaining a respectful sideways distance that would have accommodated a passing tram.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she called across the chasm.

>   ‘I thought that being new here you might like to see some things you don’t know are here.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Things that I know because I’ve always lived here and I’ve always wanted to show an outsider but never had the chance.’ He smiled, but clearly there was another motive and it was writ right across his face.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done this in the West,’ she said, facing him again; ‘not just walked out with someone I really didn’t know.’

  ‘Then you have given me a compliment!’

  ‘I like this time of year when all the leaves are falling. I like spring too, with all its colours and new grass growing. Do you li—’

  Before she could finish her small talk, he gestured her to stop still and listen carefully.

  ‘There! You hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That rumbling below our feet. That’s a train – the Stadtbahn directly below us. It runs all around the city, East and West, but it doesn’t stop in the East anymore.’

  He glanced at her to see if she was paying attention. She wasn’t looking at him at all but staring at the ever-revolving Mercedes star on the Europa-Center, its lofty tower so tantalisingly close, so out of reach in the Eastern sector.

  ‘There are nearly 700 fluorescent tubes that light that star. Did you know that?’ Heike shook her head.

  ‘Funny how we look across at their bright lights whilst they look across at our security towers and factory chimneys.’ He patted his jacket with both hands, feeling for an elusive cigarette packet left on an office desk. She thought he was either so Stasi that he was actually frisking himself or he was trying to locate a hidden microphone.

  ‘How did you get here?’ he asked.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re the only one here, aren’t you?’

  ‘I told you before! I gave myself up at the border. Asked for asylum. Is this what you wanted to show me? The sound of a train and the view of the West?’