The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  He would plonk himself down in his personal “Ezee” chair as if lord and master, switch on the TV and tell them how they should learn from the westerns, especially about how civilising the American influence was.

  ‘Look,’ he would announce during a western adventure series: ‘where there had been desert and savages, now there is a great nation of homes and gardens and towns and cities that is today the biggest and most prosperous nation in the world.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ Peter would whisper under his breath in German. Joe never heard, or if he did he pretended not to.

  Worst of all, Joe insisted they watch an American TV series called Combat because, in his words, it captured the “reality” of the war he’d been in and “demonstrated the American ability to triumph over the evil of the Nazis”.

  In their apartment, Heike and Roland feared that they had to be the only ones listening to the English language stations and if anything was going to get them into trouble then it was this habit. But it was a habit they couldn’t break.

  Week after week, day after day, they were beginning to learn about the neighbourhood they inhabited. It seemed an irrational fear at first, the realisation that they were coming under scrutiny from all sides – from the state itself and from the West.

  They had assumed that the West had no interest in the communist East other than it blocked free movement for their citizens. To the contrary, they learned that the BBC had little interest in Western Europe but considerable interest in the Eastern bloc. It dawned on Roland that the average Briton probably knew more about the citizens of East Germany than they ever did about the citizens of France, Belgium, Holland or Denmark.

  Every day they would pass Westerners on the street – often Americans and British who came across to gawp at the “poor” Easterners going about their business – locals clearly identifiable by their drab, old-fashioned clothes; visible by their very reserved demeanour; visible because they so patiently waited and demanded nothing from anyone.

  Roland didn’t give a second glance to any of the tourists, though Heike despised them. ‘I’m not an inmate!’ she barked at one woman who was glaring at her and clearly paying her too much attention.

  *

  Thirty years later, she felt guilty about that flash of temper, the very thought of it made her squirm.

  She knew the small town that Hanne was staying in but keyed in the address to the satnav as it might be difficult to find.

  Fed up of hits from the ’70s, she pressed “Search” and there, as if on cue, was Erik Satie’s Gnossienne. You couldn’t make it up. Maybe God is a DJ?

  Should she mention politics to Hanne? If this conversation were to go ahead, what would Hanne think about her cousin’s politics? ‘You defected? We were told you fell in love with Roland in West Berlin and went to live with him in the East! How could you have been a card-carrying communist? How could you give up what you had in the West? Were you mad?’

  It would be an impossible conversation. Most of the family didn’t know the truth. They believed that Heike had gone to work in Berlin, fallen for a visiting East German and decided that she couldn’t live without him and so joined him for love in the East. That’s what all the cousins, aunts and uncles believed because that’s what Kirsten had told them.

  Heike would tell Hanne about Joe; his eventual separation from her mother was barely noticed by anyone in the family, particularly Kirsten. He just went off one day and never returned; never said anything or left a note – just didn’t ever come back. He never so much as filed for divorce. As far as anyone could guess, he was most likely living bigamously somewhere in some log cabin that he’d always talked about building. That’s all he ever talked about if he was in a talkative mood, but no one ever believed he would because there was nothing in his multi-mixed lineage to suggest that he could use an axe let alone build with it. It was more likely he was holed up in some trailer park and most likely in the southern Midwest where guns and ropes were still allowed to dictate the course of local disputes. That’s the sort of man they believed him to be.

  For a few years, cheques would arrive in the post for small amounts, nothing substantial but regular payments. No message was ever attached and Kirsten showed no care whatever.

  Hanne would have no such secrets. She would be dumbfounded – dumbstruck. Hugo had been such a success. He hadn’t even renounced his German citizenship, yet the Queen had honoured him. How proud could a child be of their father?

  Concentrate on the road. Forget about saying anything. People have their secrets for whatever reasons – good reasons, often. Nothing need be said or at least ventured. Yet she did want to talk. She wanted to unburden herself. The years were moving on swiftly and the war generation was all gone. They couldn’t be hurt. What did it matter now?

  She practised how she would begin this. She would start off by saying: ‘You won’t think bad of me, Hanne, will you if I tell you everything? Tell you the truth. Tell you what I was, what I did. How my first son died and…’

  She pulled the car over to a field entrance, turned off the engine and put the hazard flashers on. Sobbing, she fumbled around for a packet of tissues from the glove compartment and dabbed at her soaking wet face. Sniffing back the tears, she fixed her stare in the mirror and continued her rehearsal.

  ‘You see, I thought I knew better. I thought it would be a better life, and for a time it was. The fact that I lied does not sit easy, I can tell you. You loved your father, but I hated mine – hated him with a passion. I’m not sure that he was my father.’

  It occurred to her that this field entrance might be a good place in which to turn around. She had Hanne’s mobile number, so she could ring and come up with some excuse, but that didn’t solve anything. She thought of the visit to the grave – Oma’s grave – with all the family in attendance.

  Visualising her own demise, her grandchildren gathered at her graveside might say something like: ‘Oma Heike the communist. Where so many escaped she walked right into the thick of it. But you know the worst thing about Oma Heike? She couldn’t tell anyone the truth. Everyone was fooled into thinking they knew her, but they didn’t. Oma Heike took the truth with her – to her grave.’

  This vision shocked her. She must carry on to Hanne’s rented house, tell her whatever had to be said even if it took all night. She would tell her about Roland’s involvement with the opposition movement that would put them all in jeopardy and that her own brother may well have betrayed them to the Stasi.

  *

  Old acquaintances

  Unknown to Heike at the time, Roland had renewed a friendship with an old school friend: production worker, Mikael Zech. They had been close at school – enthusiastic Young Pioneers of the Socialist Youth Group – but had drifted apart as adults.

  Zech had been a talented electrical and technical engineer but had come under suspicion and was arrested on more than one occasion for “unpatriotic behaviour” that included posting anti-government leaflets. Correctional time in various prisons had done nothing to blunt his determination to challenge the state authorities, despite losing his qualification so that the only work he could get was that of a production worker.

  Zech had a prophetic sense of his own destiny, convinced that he was to play an important role in bringing down the state and reuniting Germany. He was a member of an underground network that had been growing in number over the past eighteen months – a group that sensed that the time was drawing near when they would be able to “storm the Bastille” without fear of recrimination. The age of Gorbachev’s “glasnost” had dawned and it would only be a matter of time before the Wall came down and, as “revolutionary movers and shakers”, they would be at the forefront of history.

  Why Zech chose to approach and confide in an old school friend was something of a mystery. Roland had never given the slightest indication to anyone that he was anything other than a
model citizen of the GDR. Zech was taking an enormous risk in approaching his old chum, but something about Roland suggested that he would be open to considering, at least, a subversive role within the network.

  Zech’s group needed a journalist – someone with the creative ability to write and disseminate anti-government literature that could be circulated discreetly to interested parties. This was the PR that the underground movement needed to gather momentum.

  Had he approached Roland two weeks earlier than he did, then he might have met with a polite refusal. Roland adored Heike and Bruno and he wasn’t about to risk their future happiness by writing anti-government propaganda.

  The incident that was to change Roland’s mind was the shooting of a young woman and a man little more than a kilometre away from the apartment. It had been a particularly cold evening, not quite dark, the inevitable finale to another dull autumn day that had not shone for anyone in East Berlin whatever their status.

  Roland was nearing home having trudged from the tram stop (he took the car only when an assignment called for it). He passed, as he always did when walking, a short section of chain-link fence – a section that had never been blocked in by concrete probably because it was generally out of sight to those passing by.

  The fence acted like a trap to anyone fool enough to attempt a crossing at this point. The border guards knew it as “The Spider’s Web” based on a catalogue of attempts where people were either caught or killed when making an escape. It was a tempting spot, with the deep, black canal beyond. Roland, as a local, also knew it well, and whenever a shot rang out – though such incidents were getting rare – he and Heike would look knowingly at each other: The Spider’s Web has claimed another victim.

  Throughout his life in Berlin, he’d heard many an incident. Shots rang out from time to time accompanied by shouts and screams; it was not unusual, but such incidents were out of sight for the most part, hidden behind the ever present, ever more fortified Wall.

  He didn’t see the couple at first, the fence being some metres away from the pavement and screened by bushes that had run wild through deliberate neglect. There was a patchy trail of a muddy path where the grass didn’t grow, evidence of some regular footfall created mostly during the summer. You could walk along the district canal at this point, and some did, though it was nothing scenic, just a shortcut.

  Roland paid scant attention to the couple who, out of sight, seemed to be arguing, and so he continued to walk, thinking little of it. It was only when he heard shouting that he stopped to peer through the scrub in case the shouts were directed at him.

  Before he could see clearly, he heard what sounded like the shaking and pulling at the fence as if someone was attempting to climb it; then the woman screamed with ear-splitting pitch. There followed the inevitable crack of a rifle shot then another and then a rapid burst of fire from a machine gun. Instinctively, he dived for cover as rounds hissed past him. He could hear a male shouting from what seemed to be across the canal, coupled with the hopeless screams and weeping coming from the other side of the scrub.

  Horrified and unsure of how to react, Roland lay rooted to the damp tarmac as if paralysed. His blood chilled. What was best? Get up? Walk on? Walk home – get the hell out of it! No! Don’t be so stupid – he was in the line of fire. If he suddenly stood up now the guards would open fire on him or at least associate him with the attempt to escape; yet there was a person moaning just a few metres from where he lay.

  He had always wondered that one day he might be caught up in something, be a witness to a shooting and that when it came he would act in a truly brave manner and assist as best he could. Now, come the moment, he couldn’t. The female voice cried out as if she knew someone was close by. ‘Help me! Help me, would you? I need help! Don’t leave me here, I beg you not to leave me here.’

  Roland could see her quite clearly from his hopeless position. He was about to reply; he drew breath, opened his mouth but the words of comfort wouldn’t come. A fast car, siren blaring, tyres screeching and spraying gravel like it was all some stunt out of a Hollywood movie, stopped within feet of where he lay.

  A plain-clothes officer jumped athletically out of the marked car, bent down to Roland still lying prostrate and lifted him from the ground as if he were a broken doll discarded at the roadside. ‘What’s happened here?’ he demanded.

  ‘They were arguing… a man and a woman. I was walking home – I live on Held Strasse. Then shots rang out.’

  ‘What were they arguing about?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t really hear what was being said. They were just arguing… I thought they might have been addressing me for a moment. So I stopped and looked but they were hidden from view. I wanted to help… you know.’

  The officer told him most sternly that ‘traitors can’t be helped’ and that once he’d given his details he would be free to continue but could expect someone to follow up if need be. That was all.

  ‘The girl will be alright?’

  There was no answer to that question. Questions are never answered; he should know that.

  That evening, he recounted everything to Heike: ‘She was a beautiful young woman… Is a beautiful young woman. She was wearing this tight skirt and jumper and I thought she looked like a film star when I eventually saw her. I felt like a character from a film stumbling onto a film set. That’s strange, isn’t it? Cue my walk-on part character!’ He smiled, trying to make light of it, but he wasn’t fooling anyone least of all himself.

  ‘You see, it was such a dirty, scrubby piece of rubbish ground to… lie in and cry for help!’ With that his anger broke and he hammered the tabletop with his fist before collapsing his head into his sobbing chest. This wasn’t the Roland Heike knew. She gripped his arm tightly.

  Lifting his head again, his vision blurred with tears, he focussed his mind on what he was trying so desperately to share: ‘Just lying in the mud calling out for someone. She wasn’t like a local – that’s what I don’t understand. It was like what she was wearing had been saved from another era and treasured, and she must have felt that if she wore this combination she would fit into the West. Does that make any sense?’

  ‘What happened to the boy she was with?’

  ‘He was dying at that very moment – it wasn’t instant. I’ve never seen anyone die before. I’ve never even seen a dead person – and I’m a journalist – you’d think… but it was like his soul was departing right in front of me. I think a bullet ricocheted near to where I was just metres away. Ping! I was that close, you know. I think… I think he wanted to get across there and she didn’t. She was trying to stop him – that’s what they were arguing about and he wouldn’t hear of it. Maybe she never wanted to cross in the first place.’

  ‘Why don’t they block that place up?’

  ‘Because the canal drowns them and the government likes that. Better they drown trying to swim because if they reach the other side they get shot and that means paperwork. How many times have we heard shots ring out from there, eh?’

  It was a long, sleepless night. He tried to sleep, tried to relax, but the Sandman just wouldn’t come. Where was the Sandman when he was most needed?

  At half past midnight, she encouraged him to sit down at his typewriter and write it all out by way of purging it from his system.

  So the typewriter became the “angry machine” as he hammered out everything he could remember, everything he could still feel. Writing without constraint this time for a readership that would never be.

  Come breakfast, he was exhausted.

  Stupidly fatigued, he had to go to work because it was likely that the Stasi would want to talk to him and better that they find him there than come to the apartment. Heike comforted him with hugs and kisses, and coffee, holding his trembling hand across the table, but even this gesture just seemed to exasperate his condition.

  Roland the gentle pa
cifist; his mother, Greta, shot and raped by Russian soldiers. She had kept the rape a secret from her children and from her Berlin-born husband, Niklas, who at thirteen had looked the Führer right in the eye and sworn that he would protect Germany with his life just as the dictator stroked his skinny, pale cheek with the back of a cold, “loving” finger.

  Niklas would joke to Roland: ‘Son, stroke my face with your finger. Go on, stroke my cheek right here – my left cheek.’ And Roland would stroke his father’s stubbly, gaunt, ashen-grey cheek, knowing exactly what was coming: ‘There! You stroke the same cheek that Hitler stroked. What do you think of that, eh? Your old man touched by the devil himself!’

  The old man was still a young man then, when Roland was small.

  As a boy in 1945, he’d found Greta lying in a basement, and every year he told his children the story of how he found her close to death. They thrilled to hear it over and over again until such time as they’d grown too old and there was nothing new to add. Not one to be put off tradition, Niklas would always recount the story with immense pride, as if he’d fathered children for this very reason.

  ‘I was sent out into the street to defend our city. Führer’s orders. All hell was raining down on us. I was just a boy of fourteen handed an old rifle by a dying man – an old soldier left over from the First War, he and that gun of his. He couldn’t get up, like some old mule that had collapsed and was breathing his last. He insisted I take it and then kaput, I think for him. Poor old beggar dressed for his demise in the very same uniform he’d worn as a young man for the Kaiser!