The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  ‘All around there was chaos and carnage everywhere you looked. I was in a nightmare only it wasn’t a nightmare and I wasn’t asleep. My hearing was shot to pieces, my eyes, my mouth full of dust and dirt. I was numb and I was dumb – no more feeling, no love, no fear, nothing. The devil had stroked me and here I was in Hell and I hadn’t even been outside of Berlin in my short life! Hell had come to my home – opened up like some hungry cavernous monster that was devouring the city. You children cannot believe what we saw. Hell was here – right here!’

  ‘Tell us about Mother. What did you do? How did you help her?’

  ‘You must understand I was lost and nowhere was safe. All the buildings in the street I knew were either destroyed or coming under attack. So, I was drawn to this sack of coal and I went to grab it thinking it could be useful because I might need it for keeping warm. I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Anyway, the black, dusty sack moved and groaned. Your mother was hiding under it. I jumped and my heart went through the ceiling. I tell your mother now that my heart jumped when I first laid eyes on her, but it wasn’t love then, it was shock. She knows, she understands. I fell in love later – two seconds later!’

  ‘Two seconds? What took you so long?!’

  ‘I put my coat around her then got her out of that basement and just in time because no sooner were we out on the street than a Russian flamethrower burned that house to the ground and we would have been in it. I made her run. I had my rifle in one hand and your mother in the other hand and we ran for our lives. Little did I know that she had a bullet in her.’

  ‘Did you shoot a Russian with your rifle?’

  ‘I don’t know. I fired it in their direction and they fired back; but that’s when I broke my vow with the Devil. I now had a reason to live! I needed to get your mother to safety, and I knew that if the Russians were to catch us we would be killed – I would be killed.’

  ‘Were you a Hitler Youth?’

  ‘No, I was a Berlin schoolboy given a hat, an armband and a lot of bullshit.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘We ran out of the city as fast as we could. The Russians surrounded the city on all sides. We were trying to get to the countryside where we could eat berries or even grass because we were so hungry; you wouldn’t believe how hungry and thirsty we were. We could drink from a stream if we could find one. Pinch some eggs from a farmer or some apples that he might have stored. That was our greatest dream – our goal. There was nothing in the city except the spectre of death for everyone.’

  ‘Did you reach the countryside?’

  ‘Eventually, yes.’

  ‘Did the Russians try to stop you?’

  ‘We came across two uniformed men with pistols. They weren’t Russians but SS, and they drew their pistols from their holsters and demanded to see our papers and to know where we were going. I said I had to get the lady to the hospital because she was dying, and I thought they might let me go because we were Germans and Berliners, but no. They would have shot us both but luck was on our side. An almighty explosion went off just metres from where we stood and we all hit the ground from its force. BOOM!

  ‘When the dust settled and I looked up, the two SS men were gone and so we got up and started to run again. Minutes later I heard shots ring out behind me and I think now that those two men took shelter then tried to shoot us as we ran, but it was our lucky day. We were never stopped again.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘We ran and walked for days and days trying to head for the West, keeping the sunrise behind us and the setting sun ahead of us. We thought we could get to Austria, even though we really didn’t know where Austria was.’

  ‘How far did you walk?’

  ‘I don’t know how far. Probably a week or more we walked, keeping to the fields and woods. The Russians were everywhere. We saw soldiers and avoided them as best we could. They weren’t looking for us I don’t think. They had bigger fish to fry. If you want my opinion, I think it was a miracle we escaped. Then one night, deep in the countryside, we came across American soldiers.’

  ‘Did you have your gun?’

  ‘As soon as I saw them I threw it on the floor and put my hands up. I’d left your mother lying under a tree out of sight. She was so tired and sick, you could not imagine. I thought she would die without help. But the Americans helped her. I told them I was her brother and that we were escaping and meant no harm.’

  ‘How did they understand you?’

  ‘One of them spoke good German and said his name was Dekker.’

  ‘Did they put you in prison?’

  ‘They put me in a lorry that took me to a doctor and I was examined. They patched up all the silly little grazes I had. Do you know, that was the first time I’d ridden in any vehicle? In my life! I was so excited! That ride was like some sort of reward. I didn’t even have a bicycle before the Russians came. You children have it so easy!’

  ‘Were you a war criminal in prison?’

  ‘I was with the POWs in a camp. I was never a soldier, but I wasn’t in there long. They checked that I wasn’t a Nazi and they put me with a farmer and his family, and they were nice people who looked after me and adopted me with official papers. I tried to get word back to my family, but it was a long time before I knew.’

  ‘What did you know? What did you find out?’

  ‘That my family were dead: mother, father, Paul my little brother. He would have been your uncle. I was the only one left so I worked on the farm and kept smiling because no one loves you when you are sad.’

  ‘What happened to mother? Was she on the farm, too?’

  ‘One day, I went shopping with my adoptive mother who said I needed new clothes – especially trousers. I didn’t want to go at first, but she insisted and said I was very ungrateful for their love if I didn’t go, and I apologised and went willingly because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was the best thing I ever did in my life. There, in town, working in a tailor’s shop, was your mother. I recognised her straight away and she recognised me and we became inseparable again. It was wonderful!’

  ‘Why didn’t you stay on the farm? We could have been farmer’s children.’

  ‘Farming wasn’t for me. I was a city boy, and your mother was a city girl. We could only return to Berlin in late 1951 – just before you were born, Roland. It was such a ruin still, but there was something that drew us back to the city of our birth, and we were home. The Austrian devil had gone forever. He’d been banished. That said, there was still the Russian devil to contend with.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘In 1951, walls of once great buildings, shops, houses, factories stood like the jagged teeth of a man who’d had a severe beating. People were still picking belongings out of the rubble. There were some cars at least – American cars, British cars, Russian cars, some Volkswagens, but not for us, of course. People were still looking for their loved ones, their families. I looked for mine, your mother looked for hers. They were all gone. The Russians were everywhere – soldiers mostly. Stalin replaced Hitler. One madman had lost, while the other had won. But it was better than the thunder that had been in my ears when I left. When we ran from the city, the ground shook all the time, there was dust and smoke and stink everywhere. In 1951, at least it was quiet again, the smoke had cleared and the dust had settled and people tried to go about their business. But they were new people – not the people that I’d known. All the people I’d known were gone.’

  ‘Everyone had gone?’

  ‘There was someone I recognised. It was the day when I was walking along Behrenstrasse on my way to work – this wasn’t long ago – a year or so – and there I saw the same man who tried to stop us leaving Berlin.’

  ‘One of the Nazis?’

  ‘The SS man was now a Volkspolizei. We looked at each other and we knew… He was older, I was olde
r, but we knew. We were like two characters in a play brought back on stage again for one last performance. Do you know what I did?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went up to him – square on – shoulders back and as wide as I could make them – I’d been working hard for many years by then – and I went up to him and said, “Will you kill me now?” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because you still have your gun, only you have changed sides. Once you were a fascist, now you’re a communist.”’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘There was nothing he could do. He turned and walked away. I never saw him again, but he’s out there somewhere doing something horrible because someone tells him to do it.’

  ‘Do you hate him?’

  ‘I hate those who create him and others like him – the parents, the teachers, the politicians. It is important you remember this – you must remember that fascists and communists are the same. They are fanatics in need of power. Without power they wilt like flowers in the frost. They strap their guns to their waists like cowboys and they tell nice people like you and me to jump. And we say, “How high do you want us to jump?” And they tell us, and we do what we are told like good people do. And if we don’t jump, they put us in prison as if we were bad, but we’re not bad, are we? No. And if we still don’t jump high enough, they shoot us. So we are always good people, aren’t we? We jump when we’re told. That man was a survivor. He became a Nazi to survive and then he became a communist to survive. People do strange things to survive.’

  It was the only political thing Niklas ever said to his children, and Roland never forgot the warning. He hadn’t ever spoken about politics in the family or to friends. He knew better than to do so.

  Heike the Westerner frequently spoke about politics. She’d spent years and years telling Roland how great the Eastern bloc was and how corrupt the West was; and Roland would nod but say very little, certainly nothing that contradicted her opinion. She’d grown up with the freedom to complain – and complain she did.

  Only now was he becoming political. Only now that death had kicked him in his face, only now was he taking an interest in another language and listening to foreign radio broadcasts; only now was he changing his mind about his place in East Berlin. He wasn’t prepared to “jump” any longer. He would make his own way “out” of East Berlin. Yes, he would help in the subversion. Yes, he would do his bit – willingly. Yes, he would see the overthrow of the corrupt regime. Yes, with his help they would succeed.

  He wasn’t about to implicate Heike in this mission. She wasn’t to know under any circumstances. The less people who knew the better. He had been warned by Zech: ‘Tell no one’, but the warning was overdramatic and unnecessary. East Germans knew from birth how to keep a secret even from their nearest and dearest family members. If Heike asked, then he was working overtime. New pressures at work, improved technology meant extra training.

  The days that followed the shooting at the Wall were the days when Roland struggled most, desperate to make sense of what he’d witnessed. To him, the woman was Heike. In his nightmares it was Heike crying out for help, lying bleeding. He was the man – twitching, draining blood; his protest dying in the mud of a dirty little track that ran beside a polluted canal.

  Whatever the motivation of that couple, whatever had taken them so far, they were nothing if not brave. Roland – a born journalist – badly wanted to know who they were and what their story was; it infuriated him that he knew he could never enquire and get to the root of what had brought them to such a crisis.

  This was the time to be the man he believed his father had been – to get out of Berlin, to flee or at least resist. He wasn’t going to jump anymore, not for any bastard communist or fascist. No devil was going to stroke his cheek and tell him he was “a good boy”. What had been such an entertaining story when he was a child was now inspirational to him. The story might even repeat itself: people might try to stop him and even try to shoot at him; but he’d keep going. And if, in his flight, he had to live on grass and whatever he could find, so be it!

  ‘Okay, you’ve got me. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Write something for the Lutherans. Write for the peace movement. Write for the Marxist intellectuals. Tell them… No, give them a message that the new Germany is emerging – the twentieth century is ending and we will not tolerate further militarisation. That we are not cannon fodder or even tin soldiers. You’re the journalist; you’ll think of something.’

  The group met in plain sight – in an annexe of the library for that first meeting, arranged by someone within the group, but never in the same place twice and never in front of the public. Preliminary discussions were coded and brief. If confronted, their cover story was to be that they were members of a chess club. Absolutely inoffensive for sure, but chess was never likely to prevent an arrest and questioning; it was at least a cover. What’s your problem, comrade? This is a chess club – I’m a chess player. Is that a state crime now?

  At home, Roland would work into the small hours tapping away at his Voss typewriter, its keys and mechanism covered in ash, a cigarette between the fingers of his left hand and a glass of vodka or coffee or a mix of the two to keep him awake. Unseen from across the room Heike would glance at him admiringly, though quite unaware of the rebellious content of his seditious articles.

  Roland could “hide” in plain sight at home. Heike had never peered over his shoulder at a single word he wrote. ‘It’s all about the durability of tractors,’ he would say if he thought she was interested. ‘It wouldn’t interest you – it’s sending me to sleep.’ So she never asked, but just liked the way he looked as he sat leaning over his ash-infested desk with tobacco smoke rising, cigarette butts in the ashtray and a half finished drink. She thought he looked like a great novelist grafting at a manuscript that would one day wow the literary world, and so in her head she mentally “photographed” the scene and filed it close to her heart.

  Roland reminded her of Peter, not in any physical resemblance, it was more particular expressions and demeanour. Her brother was never far from her mind. Occasionally she might see him – just the odd, once in a blue moon, distant glimpse. She didn’t approach; he never saw her and he stayed away from their apartment. Roland barely knew his brother-in-law apart from those early days of sharing; at least, that had been the case, but things were about to change.

  Peter Savers

  Peter the enigma they called him. A newly qualified engineer by trade, he was a gifted and experienced man who could repair any machine known to man or build any structure. His debt, he believed, was owed to East Germany.

  *

  She rehearsed saying out loud these words: Do you know how stupid I was with my own brother, Hanne? Can you believe that I never knew him? I never enquired after him or tried to get to know him. I just knew he could fix engines and build things – anything. When I left home he was still a boy riding his bicycle. I didn’t give him a second glance. The world was all about me because I saw myself as some sort of victim, some sort of hangover from the last war – or rather a consequence of it. I was pleased when he joined us in East Berlin – that he’d got away from the West.

  “Where is Peter now,” you ask? I can only say I don’t know. I never did know where he was. “So why didn’t you know?” you ask. I don’t know – I really don’t know.

  *

  “The enigma” had never again imposed himself on Heike and Roland; something they truly appreciated. He was always welcome, but he never came. This wasn’t unusual in the East; people kept themselves to themselves – even close relatives often preferred to keep their own counsel.

  They talked about him on occasion, wondering how he was getting on, whether there was someone in his life. They talked about him just before Roland set off for his first meeting – ‘a journalistic assignment’ he told Heike.

  That night, with the exception of Zech
, everyone in attendance was a stranger to Roland. Just as well, he felt. He didn’t want people recognising him and through association jeopardising his role.

  All was good until some twenty minutes into the meeting; a tall, slim, bearded man with metal-frame spectacles and long thinning hair came into the library annexe apologising profusely for his lateness.

  Roland recognised him straight away – the same fatigued youth handed over by Uncle on their very doorstep. He was in many ways very different in dress and style to the boy who’d been shoved unceremoniously across the threshold that night thirteen years ago; he looked so much older, darker, more haggard; but even if the outward appearance was vastly different, the gait, the sway-back stance, the exaggerated movement of the mouth when he spoke were unmistakeably Peter Savers.

  Tonight there could be no welcome for the errant brother-in-law. It was clear he was not a new hand, and Roland surmised that maybe Peter was actually right at the centre of the circle as evident from the various greetings and hushed tones. He was the hub from which everything emanated.

  For God’s sake!

  Maybe if Roland kept a low profile Peter might not see him and would disappear again. After all, what was he doing here? He’d left the West of his own volition and the Stasi had to be watching his every move as they did with Heike. No way would he be at the heart of a subversive movement such as this without their knowing – certainly not motivated by a desire for political reform.

  He didn’t move for fear that movement would draw attention.

  In the end it didn’t matter; Peter left after a few minutes, barely glancing at anyone else in the room and quite unaware that his brother-in-law had seen him.

  Roland quickly moved on Zech: ‘I can’t help you with this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve recognised someone in your group. I can’t do this – sorry!’