The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  ‘Is that something you’ve read in the West?’

  ‘Maybe I did. Perhaps I was stupid to walk around like some spoiled brat. I know I should be more discreet. I’ll find something more fitting.’

  ‘We’re not China,’ he snapped; ‘we don’t wear uniforms or sackcloth and ashes.’

  There followed a brief, slightly awkward silence in which Uncle Frederick sought to change the subject to something lighter. Over the next two hours he talked of many things, all of it mundane, while she listened, nodded, then instantly forgot because her mind was back on that wretched street.

  Just as he was leaving, he muttered something about having found a new department for her. She almost didn’t hear him; it came out of the blue – a giveaway statement, along with: ‘It’s turned cold again. Don’t let the draught in.’

  Odd that they’d talked about so much that evening, but nothing about her job. This was suddenly tossed into the black night air like an afterthought with no care as to where it landed. She wondered whether it was actually the reason for his unannounced visit that evening, but her condition had diverted him and he’d almost forgotten until he was leaving.

  At the new office doing the new job, not everyone was unfriendly, or rather, standoffish. There was a would-be friend – a young woman who introduced herself simply as “Melissa”. Melissa was only too keen to share her own experiences.

  Ten years older than Heike, Melissa was for all to see a mature and worldly young woman who seemed out of place in the deep, vast bleakness of the canteen. Her aristocratic bearing would be more likely found in Vienna’s marbled halls than here amongst the mildew of East Berlin; her soft tones drowning in the cacophony of base, sweary chatter, she was an exotic fish poured into a stagnant pond.

  Elegant in her approach, she wore her cigarettes like a glamour model, her roll top and skirt caressing her long, slender form. Heads turned for Melissa’s entrance. Now, having observed her subject over many weeks, she sought to become a canteen buddy occupying the always-vacant seat at Heike’s regular table.

  ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘I’ve seen you from across the room always sitting alone. You’re the girl from Bavaria – the American sector – yes?’

  Determined to show her peasant credentials, Heike continued chewing, answered with her mouth full – most irreverently. ‘I’m here to be a good citizen.’

  ‘Of course you are!’ Melissa reached for her cigarettes in order to graciously offer her friendship. Heike shook her head: ‘No thank you. I don’t.’

  ‘Do you think that it’s important we have a philosophy in life?’

  ‘I think we should have something to believe in.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Communism.’

  ‘Communism? You say all the right things.’

  ‘Then what should I say?’

  ‘You should say what’s in your heart. That’s important, isn’t it?’

  ‘Then, I think communism is in my heart.’

  Melissa leaned back, her easy smile as charming as that of a TV host adeptly interviewing a member of the dim-witted public, her broad pouting lips sucking the fire out of her West Berlin cigarette.

  ‘Communism is in my heart, too. But there is more… How shall I say? There is more to communism than Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or Mao.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Melissa leaned forward across the table. ‘Communism is in the heart and soul of the citizen – the worker – like you and me. But the leader is beyond such naivety; he is open to contamination. All leaders are open to contamination regardless of their naïve, original stance.

  ‘Capitalism corrupts because it is based on power – the power of the few. Let me explain… Let’s say that Fidel Castro sees the President of the United States in his Cadillac. Idealists are like children; they must possess what they see. They must have a Cadillac. Then Castro sees that the President has a wife and numerous mistresses. So he must have a wife and mistresses. Then he sees the White House. So he too must have a palace.

  ‘A castle is always a castle whether it’s a capitalist castle or a communist castle. The building remains the same; its inhabitants are the powerful. We are always the weak, the subservient ones maintaining the status quo.’

  ‘Are you testing me?’ Heike demanded.

  ‘Testing you? Why would I test you?’

  ‘You want to see that I am who I say I am. You want to see that I am a committed communist. Don’t you see? I came through all your tests. I will always come through your tests whatever you throw at me.’ Heike glanced away toward the large canteen clock in an effort to disengage her new “friend”.

  ‘Now, I’d be happier eating alone. I don’t need your friendship. We have that freedom at least.’

  ‘Of course you do. I didn’t mean to impose.’

  Gracefully, Melissa retreated, but only for a while.

  That sentence, “We have that freedom at least”, haunted her for many days and weeks after its utterance. Why did she say that? She was in Utopia, wasn’t she? But here was proof of an inner admission that freedom wasn’t here. She hadn’t found freedom and, realistically, nor did she expect to find it. She’d exchanged a controlling “father” – if that’s who he was – for a confinement in an alien place where she had no family connection whatsoever.

  Melissa, having made an introduction, continued to court her with beaming smiles if they passed in a corridor, or with a cheery wave from a distance. She never passed up an opportunity to greet Heike, acting as if they were really soul partners who were on the verge of reconnecting for yet another life together.

  Perhaps she’s mistaken my sexuality? thought Heike. Better get me a boyfriend!

  She consulted her dinner guest list. There was only one name – at the bottom in brackets – a name without any ranking, but unlike Lennon, Harrison or Marx he stood a real chance of making a difference in her life – Roland.

  The new job had many advantages: one of which was that it took her each week to Roland’s newspaper offices. She could now add to her resumé not just the title of translator but also that of courier, picking up financial information and handing over translated newspaper cuttings from the world’s press that could be used for an East German readership. After all, there were no East German correspondents in any English-speaking country – not official journalists anyway – so her job was to translate certain English language news stories for East Berlin.

  She was, in effect, a writer of bylines, but the credit was never going to go to her. The byline was always credited to “our foreign correspondent”.

  Each afternoon between 4 and 5 pm, Monday to Friday, she would pull a large four-wheeled trolley loaded with boxes and packages to the basement entrance where she would exchange her load with that of outgoing documents held by the storeman and his security officer. It was an opportunity to try to peek in beyond the loading bay, but it was impossible to see anything or gain access to the inner sanctum.

  Then one day she was given special permission to hand deliver a package to a sub-editor. This was the opportunity she needed and had hoped for.

  ‘Follow me.’ She could barely contain herself. The security officer was opening doors for her, doors that led to the future.

  ‘That’s his desk,’ said the officer, pointing to a bespectacled, perspiring young man of barely twenty who was carrying the world on his narrow, hunched shoulders. His desk looked no more important or busy than her own, she thought, yet for some reason she felt most inadequate.

  She handed over the package before brazenly asking for a pen and notepaper upon which she hastily scribbled a note. ‘Do you know a journalist called Roland?’ she asked.

  ‘Roland? Yes.’

  ‘Would you give him this note please?’

  The sub wasted not a
moment in reading it first: “Hello Roland! Hope you are well? Haven’t seen you in a while. Did you know I come by every so often in my new job? Maybe see you sometime? Regards, Heike.”

  How embarrassing! Was nothing confidential here? Scanning the vast newsroom she thought she could see the back of Roland’s head.

  ‘That’s him over there.’ The sub pointed to the head she’d already recognised. ‘Give it to him yourself. He won’t mind.’

  She couldn’t leave now without completing her objective – a mission for which she had to be resolute or forever embrace the idea of spinsterhood. This was her chance to redress their so far silly relationship. Navigating the maze of desks and swivel chairs, avoiding the busy bees on their feet – who paid her no heed at all – Heike soon lost her momentum, juddered to a shocking halt.

  Within a breath someone had beaten her to it – an earnest young woman who playfully ruffled the tan-brown hair of Roland’s nape as she bent forward across his desk. Grabbing a seat to draw up next to his, the interloper was engaging Roland in business with no idea that the girl who haunted his every waking thought had anxiously parked a mere couple of metres behind him.

  Hopelessly turning in retreat, Heike determined to put the “idiot Roland” to the back of her mind. For now, she needed to get her trolley back to base packed with a new consignment of information. Her bosses would be wondering what was keeping her and this was a position she didn’t want to lose.

  She was within a door’s swing of walking out of the newsroom forever. ‘Wait! I’m glad you’re still here. I need you to take something back to translate.’ It was the sub-editor.

  He fumbled for some minutes looking for something important that she couldn’t begin to imagine. She felt awkward – angry. How stupid to think that Roland was waiting around for her to make up her mind. Dummkopf!

  Now in a panic, the sub mumbled whilst urgently pulling out every drawer and evacuating every pigeon hole in his otherwise meticulous open-plan office space trying to locate the all-important document that had to go back with Heike that evening. She wasn’t going anywhere until he found it. Patience was not the easiest of virtues for her, but this afternoon it would pay off. A looming shadow behind her caused her to turn. ‘Hello! I thought it was you!’

  ‘Hello Roland!’

  “Uncle” Frederick was particularly encouraging of Heike’s relationship with Roland and even urged them to tie the knot sooner rather than later as it would be easier for him to find them an apartment – his gift. ‘Perhaps in Rheitzenstrasse?’ he suggested. He would even take the place of her father and give her away on the chosen day. Since her defection, she had come to adore her adopted uncle, little knowing that he was recording her every move (of which I played a significant part) and reporting daily to his masters. Not that there was much to report. From day one she had confounded her Stasi hosts by appearing to be just who she said she was – a committed communist.

  This did not cause them to look away; they were not fooled. She was clearly biding her time, putting them off the scent. It would only be a matter of time before she would be heard or seen contacting her CIA controller.

  To the Stasi, she was clearly a new generation – well schooled in the art of subterfuge. The Americans had obviously learnt from past mistakes and were now more careful in their selection of just who they would send in. And what could be better than a German-born idealist under the cover of being an ardent communist? The Stasi were convinced this would be the outcome; and when it surely came, they would fall on her like a ton of bricks.

  Uncle Frederick greenlit her communications with the West – encouraged them wholeheartedly: the photos she took and wanted to share so naively with her distant relatives in Cornwall of all places. He positively encouraged her freedom of expression by encouraging Heike to post frequent letters. ‘Don’t forget your poor Mama, Heike. She’ll be fretting. Write to her. Call her.’

  All the while he was her censor and he, more than anyone, was the reason that Hanne and other distant relations had happy photographs to put into their family albums. However, neither Hanne nor Hugo ever noticed that they too were the subjects of occasional observation: the car parked in the farm lane; the happy couple with a picnic basket enjoying their holiday, enjoying the Cornish scenery.

  Kirsten was watched from a distance. Working as a doctor’s receptionist in her newly adopted home of Xanten, in reality she knew very little. Not one of Heike’s letters had reached her. Convinced that Heike was punishing her for marrying GI Joe, taking whatever advice she could find she registered with various organisations that specialised in finding relatives in the East and keeping those family members in touch with one another. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  Heike, oblivious to all these observations, remained naive and innocent, a willing participant in a land of suspicion.

  Now that Roland was on board, sharing a bed, sharing meals, Melissa became easier to deal with. Heike, with a ring on her finger, was less reticent and would now respond to the greetings with a smile, or a wave at a distance, and eventually friendly exchanges: How are you? I’m fine! Do you fancy a coffee?

  Lieber Melissa. Turns out, that in getting to know her she wasn’t bad at all. She was, in fact, remarkably good company. Her smile lit up the coldest of East Berlin rooms; her gentle laughter warmed the soul. Her luminescent beauty enchanted all those who fell under her spell. She could talk with authority on almost any subject: history, maths, science, religion, philosophy, Oriental religions, even international politics. It was Melissa who claimed to the point of insistence that the man behind President Kennedy’s assassination was none other than his successor, President Lyndon Johnson.

  ‘He stood to gain most. He hated the Kennedys; they hated him. JFK had placed him in the impotent position of Vice President, a position you give to your closest enemy and rival. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer still.

  ‘In Texas, Johnson was on his home ground when Kennedy was shot. He was surrounded by friends and associates, who together sewed up the whole bloody affair, murdered those who knew too much and were about to blab – Oswald, Ruby and many others who disappeared and died in mysterious circumstances.

  ‘They pointed the finger at Khrushchev and Castro and anybody else they considered a legitimate enemy, and they didn’t stop with JFK. They killed Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

  ‘By the close of 1968, Johnson’s mission was accomplished. He’d got his war in Vietnam; he’d got rid of the family he hated most in the world. In time, the West will acknowledge Johnson’s guilt, but it won’t be for a while yet.’

  It was a theory that Heike was only too pleased to hear. She remembered clearly the evening of 22nd December 1963 when GI Joe had cheered like a maniac on hearing the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

  ‘Serves that effing son of a bitch right!’ he’d balled at the TV screen while stamping his feet in glee. He even threw his beer can at the living room wall and Joe was not one to waste beer – such was his ecstasy that evening. He was also a Republican by nature who thought Johnson the only decent democrat, and now the way was clear for the USA to rule the world and destroy communism once and for all. Undoubtedly, it was Joe’s happiest day in what was otherwise a thoroughly miserable life.

  The Johnson/Kennedy subject opened a door that Heike had not expected to open again, not since those days of primary interrogation in Stasi Headquarters. She’d laid Joe to rest, but yet again here he was bursting back into her life and demanding attention.

  Melissa’s questions came thick and fast:

  ‘Is your father still in the army?

  ‘Where was he based?

  ‘Did he ever confide in you?

  ‘Are you still in contact with him?’

  ‘Who cares? He never cared for me! He never cared for my mother or my brother, and he probably isn’t even my father.
’

  Melissa backed off immediately. ‘I’m sorry, Heike. You’re right, I shouldn’t be so inquisitive.’ She paused theatrically, taking a long drag on her cigarette. ‘It’s just… you see, I think my father was a GI, too. I didn’t know him, but I’m curious as to who he might have been, where he came from, what he did in the army, and there’s no one I can ask. My mother is dead; my adopted parents are not approachable in that respect. They won’t talk about my real parents.’

  ‘What happened to your mother?’

  ‘She was killed in a road accident when I was a baby. Silly! Survived all the horrors of war only to die in 1946 crossing the road. That’s death, you see. Always busy; always on the lookout for souls.’

  Roland summed it up with consummate ease, surprised that Heike hadn’t also made the connection.

  ‘Melissa sees you as a sister – that’s what the attraction is. You’re both German on the maternal line, but American on the paternal. It’s a tribal thing and that’s the attraction.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! I’m not even Joe’s daughter! My father was a Russian.’

  ‘Melissa doesn’t think so. She sees you as she sees herself – a lost mongrel in need of an identity.’

  ‘There’s nothing “mongrel” about Melissa.’

  ‘Maybe she’s just lonely. And you’re another loner.’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s more the truth of it – two loners – two outsiders. There is, however, a difference between us.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I may be a loner, but I’m no longer alone.’

  She sank back into the arms of Roland as if he were a big comfy mattress in which she could at last sleep the sleep of the saved.

  At least Melissa was friendly. Many people weren’t. They kept themselves to themselves, carefully keeping their own counsel because in a closed society people were watching one another and making notes for higher people in higher places whose jobs relied on compiling those notes.