Thoughts Are Free

by Max Hertzberg

  “Let us put it this way: Miss Hagenow seems to believe that she was serving her country, and wishes to continue to do so. She has suggested to me that you and she may be able to work out what she termed ‘a deal’. She explained that you may be reluctant, and asked me to mention what she phrased certain problems in Weitlingstrasse.” He looked at my startled face for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction.

  “What did she mean?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. But I can see that it means something to you. So, Captain, what’s it to be?”

  I had no suggestions, and my immediate reaction was to refuse her this chance. What was she after? Forgiveness? Redemption? But what was happening around the fascist headquarters in Weitlingstrasse was a big issue, big enough that I felt I should talk to my colleagues, in fact we should refer this matter up to the Ministerial Committee.

  But first I had a question for the presiding judge.

  “What happens if we don’t want to do a deal with her, or if we can’t?”

  For the first time the judge was visibly less than sure of himself. He glanced down, cupping his chin in his hand for a moment before answering:

  “I don’t know. Within the judiciary we are proud of the fact that we no longer have political prisoners in the GDR. But what are Hagenow and Hartmann if not precisely that? They are being tried for a political crime, treason, if you will, although that is not what it says in the charges. Their guilt is plain, their agitation and intrigue against the revolution cannot be condoned. If I find them guilty they will become prominent political prisoners, yet if I find them not guilty … I’m sure you see the difficulty. This is why I agreed to investigate a somewhat unorthodox course of action.”

  I could see his point, but I was damned if Evelyn was going to get off the hook that easily.

  Judge Kirchherr was keen for me to talk to Evelyn. In fact State Prosecutor Henschel had already arranged for her to be brought over from the prison next door. Which explained why we were in Lichtenberg rather than at the Supreme Court. I’d been backed into a corner, and I would be meeting Evelyn Hagenow, like it or not.

  Evelyn and I had known each other for years. We had never been good friends, but had moved in and out of each others’ lives with a regularity which suggested we were close. But last year I’d had her arrested for treason, and she’d been on remand ever since.

  I had been left alone in the robing chambers, but didn’t have long to wait before I heard a discreet knock on the door.

  “Enter.”

  Evelyn came in, followed by a warden. Her wrists were held in front of her, bound with choke cuffs, and she waited patiently while the guard unclipped the handles and unwound the chain. She didn’t say a word the whole time, she just stood there, looking at me.

  “Evelyn, please sit down.”

  She sat down slowly, smoothing the blue tracksuit bottoms over her thighs, then she looked up, her eyes closing for a moment as she slipped into her role. Behind her the guard left the room, gently shutting the door as she went.

  “Martin,” she started, her voice warming with every word. “I knew you’d come. I knew you’d be the one to see that I can help-”

  “What do you want?” I asked. My voice was hard but unsteady. I wasn’t ready for this, but you could bet that Evelyn had been preparing this meeting for weeks, if not months.

  She didn’t answer immediately, she just looked me in the eye for a heartbeat or two.

  “I want to help.”

  I tried not to show any reaction, but I knew that no matter how hard I tried Evelyn knew me well enough to see right through me.

  “You know I want to help, otherwise you wouldn’t have agreed to see me. And you know that I really can help.”

  “I wasn’t given a choice. The judge just told me to wait here-”

  “And of course Martin Grobe always does what he’s told, doesn’t he? You can tell that to your hat, I know you better. You were intrigued, weren’t you? Go on, admit it.”

  I didn’t admit it. I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs, pretending to admire the fine wooden panelling. I suppose I wasn’t very convincing.

  “What’s it like? Outside, I mean. I know it’s sunny, I can see that much through the glass bricks in my cell. But what’s it like?” She knew my weak points, she knew exactly what to say.

  “You know what it’s like outside, they just brought you along the road.” I struggled a bit, trying to get off her hook.

  “No.” Evelyn shook her head. “They brought me here through a tunnel, I haven’t been outside, not properly. Not since last September.”

  I knew she would have been outside, but only in those exercise cells—small rooms with wire mesh instead of a ceiling. An armed guard looking down on you from the catwalk above. If you stopped to look at the sky he’d tell you to keep moving.

  It was no way to keep a person, no matter what they may have done.

  “It’s spring,” I said, feebly.

  “Oh, silly Martin,” laughed Evelyn, “I know that. But what’s it like? In the parks, the woods, on the streets?”

  The laugh was false, an act, but the questions were serious. I decided to humour her.

  “It’s warm. Very warm. The crocuses finished last week, the daffodils are starting to go brown. The plane trees are budding, you know that sticky, glossy bud they have? I cycled down Puschkin Allee the other day, and the trees are still dark and wintry, but when you look, you can see they’re just waiting to burst out. There’s willow catkins along the river Spree-”

  “So early, it’s all so early!” Evelyn laughed again, and this time it sounded real. “Oh Martin, I just want to get out of these buildings, I want to run through the Treptower Park, I want to see all the grass growing, the Prussian garlic pushing through the soil next to the river, is the dog’s mercury out, are the cherry trees in blossom? Just imagine, I’d hear the cuckoo and the woodpecker, if we were there early enough in the morning the blackbirds would be singing. If you took me away from here right now we’d go down to the Rummelsburg Lake and we’d look down the river—we could see for miles and miles, we could watch the cormorants and the herons, see the gulls soaring through the blue sky!”

  For Evelyn the walls of the court house had disappeared, she could see the woods of the park, the open spaces of the wide river. Her eyes danced with the joy of her vision.

  I couldn’t meet her eye. I was the one who’d put her in jail, I was the reason she couldn’t see the blue skies and the growing spring.

  Day 5

  Friday 18th March 1994

  Berlin: Striking workers from the Chemical Triangle will today call for hard currency investment in their industry. The workers from various plants in the Leipzig-Halle-Bitterfeld area, who have been on strike for over a fortnight, will hold a demonstration in the capital this morning.

  Martin

  There was no morning meeting today—my colleagues were at the Ministry, having a pow-wow with some big cheese. I’d managed to get out of it, arguing that we couldn’t leave the office completely unattended. That’s why I was here when Nik came calling. I was typing up a report on yesterday’s confab with the President of the Court and Evelyn. The judge had asked me to make a choice, but I didn’t feel it was a choice for me or my colleagues at RS, it was one for the Ministerial Committee. I was pecking away at the typewriter, wishing I didn’t have to write all these reports all the bloody time—pages and pages of them, most of which would probably go straight into the archives without even being read. A peculiarly German disease, I was telling myself, just as Nik tapped on the door frame.

  I got out from behind my desk, and plugged in the kettle, placing two cups on the table and looking around for the sugar.

  “No need for sugar,” said Nik, patting his waistline.

  I shrugged, and poured the hot water over the grinds, the warm aroma of coffee filled the office. I passed Nik his cup, and waited for him to tell me why he’d come calling.

  “I was on
my way over here when I ran into a demonstration on the Unter den Linden. Chemical workers, you know, the strikers.” He lifted a few files off the visitor’s chair and looked around for somewhere to put them, before giving up and plonking them on top of another pile. “There were lots of them—at least a couple of thousand. But really, what’s the point? Who are they demonstrating to?”

  The area around Leipzig, Halle and Bitterfeld, usually called the Chemical Triangle, had been devastated by open cast mining and the chemical industry. With the fall of the Party in 1989 this process had been reversed. Several mines had been shut and chemical production had been cut back while the plants were renovated. This came as a relief to the local population—air quality had already improved, the water coming out of their taps was once again safe to drink—but it came at a cost: jobs.

  For some workers the only option was to move elsewhere to take up other work. And who wants to do that?

  To be fair, they weren’t the only ones in such a situation, lots of people were having to relocate as the economy restructured and industry was repurposed to cater for domestic needs rather than the Soviet dominated international market of COMECON. Sometimes this worked well—factories could be refitted and workers retrained. But at other times it was associated with real social upheaval on a regional level, such as in Bitterfeld, Espenhain and Leuna.

  While I was thinking about the workers of the Chemical Triangle Nik had gone into the reception area to fetch his briefcase.

  “Here’s something to cheer us up.” He pulled out a paper bag, put it on my desk and ripped the side open, revealing a couple of slices of cake. “I’ll brew more coffee, shall I?”

  I went into the front office to get plates from the cupboard and when I got back Nik was standing by the bookshelves. He was looking at a little plastic yellow box.

  “Is this what I think it might be?” he asked.

  “Guess.”

  “Socialist Work Award?” He opened it up and chuckled, pulling out a cheap alloy medal. “When did you ever earn a Work Medal?”

  “I didn’t. One of the punks gave it to me last year. Said it had been his mother’s. She’s dead, but he reckoned that she’d have wanted me to have it.” I shrugged. “It would have been rude not to take it.”

  Nik sat down again, still smiling, and slid a slice of cake onto his plate.

  “You know, they impressed me today on their march.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him, but Nik was too busy finishing off his second cup of coffee to respond immediately.

  “Some skins turned up,” he finally carried on. “About twenty or thirty of them. They tried to join the march, but the chemical workers weren’t having any of it, they didn’t want the skinheads marching with them. Scuffles broke out. The police intervened. They were trying to pull the skins out of the march, after all, the skins had no chance: thirty against two thousand! And instead of being grateful, the skins started bawling about their constitutional rights, freedom of expression, all that stuff. Hypocrites! Then one of them started singing, and as soon as that happened all the skins stopped fighting, they stood in a line and sang. Every last one of them sang.”

  “They sang?”

  Nik shook his head at the memory. “You’d never rate it, really. They just stood there in a line, as if they’d rehearsed it. They sang that old song: Thoughts Are Free.”

  I sat there at my desk, sipping my coffee and feeling angry.

  “Yeah, exactly. That was my reaction too,” said Nik, reading my mind.

  We both finished our coffees in silence, and between us hung the image of a gang of skinheads standing in the middle of a demonstration, singing a song of revolution and freedom.

  “Anyway, what was it you came in for?” I asked eventually. “You seem to be spending more time here than at your own offices.”

  “I told Laura that I’d come and have a look through some police reports—she said they’d be on her desk.”

  I watched him go over to Laura’s office, then got on with my own work.

  Karo

  COMMUNIST SCUM!

  I couldn’t see anybody on the street but the red paint was still wet, dripping down the wall of the offices where Martin works. I shrugged and rang the doorbell.

  One of Martin’s colleagues let me in, some old dude I’d never seen before, about the same age as Martin. I was going to ask him about the paint job but the guy just looked so grey and tired that I didn’t bother.

  When I knocked on Martin’s door he had his irritable face on, as if he was expecting someone else and wasn’t too happy about it. But then he saw me and chilled out.

  I sat down in front of his desk but felt embarrassed. I’d come here to apologise, but I wasn’t much good at that kind of thing.

  “Do you want a coffee? Or there’s a bit of cake here-”

  “Martin, shut up a minute will you?” I was looking at my feet, but told my head to look at Martin. He’d stopped blethering and was waiting for me to say something.

  “I wanted to say sorry. Y’know, for shouting at you the other night.” I looked at Martin. Now he was examining his feet. Or his desk because his feet were hidden somewhere underneath.

  “No, no. I actually agree with you,” he said. “And anyway, it was the wrong time to talk to you about something like that.”

  “I was pissed.”

  “Yeah. So was I. A bit.”

  My fingers were doing that knot thing, you know, when they sort of start squeezing each other and you wonder whether they’re ever going to come apart again. I stopped doing it.

  “But I’m glad you came to the concert. Even if we did argue. Did you enjoy it?”

  Martin looked a bit lost for a minute. “Yes, I did,” he fibbed, his eyes sliding off over the desk.

  “You liar!” I grinned. “Are we OK then?”

  “We’re OK.”

  “But what you were talking about—look, I’m against the Wall,” I couldn’t really stop myself blurting it out, and now I’d started I couldn’t stop again. “This time round we’ve got to stop the power structures from becoming established. We don’t need things like ID cards, like the Wall. We can’t give the state that kind of control over us!”

  Martin didn’t say anything, and his eyes went glassy.

  “Of course,” he said after a bit. “The ends shouldn’t ever justify the means you said. But if we keep the Wall we can control who comes in, who goes out, what goods are coming in and going out. It’s a practical thing, an economic thing. That’s the whole point of it. Without that Wall we won’t have the chance to do what we need to do to keep our country going.”

  I heard what he was saying. He was saying that if we got rid of the Wall then the GDR would follow soon after.

  “But so long as we have a Wall we can’t be free!” I was almost shouting now.

  Something moved behind me, a swish of clothes, it was Martin’s colleague. He must have come to check what all the shouting was about.

  “But if we can’t have a GDR without a Wall, and we can’t have freedom with the Wall then there’s no answer is there, young lady?” the colleague said.

  “Who the fuck asked you, anyway?” I snarled at him, and he backed away, giving Martin a look as he went.

  “Welcome to real life,” I heard him breathe as he went.

  “Who the fuck’s that?” I asked Martin.

  “That’s Nik. Leave him alone.”

  “Nosy twat!”

  I took a deep breath, Martin and this Nik had really got on my wick. I needed to calm down.

  “Yeah, I know all of that,” I told Martin, “What you and your Nik said. But we’ve got to do what we think is right, haven’t we? Give me some credit, will you? It’s not like I was born yesterday.”

  “How about that coffee?” asked Martin, getting up when I nodded. “It’s good that you came round, I wanted to ask you a favour.”

  “Give me the coffee first and I’ll think about it. Can I have that bit of cake too?”
/>   Martin

  When my colleagues came back I went home. An earworm was playing like a broken record in my head—the tune wouldn’t let me go. In such situations I usually just listen to the song, several times over if needs be. Most of the earworms that invade my conscience are from my own music collection so it’s just a case of finding the right LP.

  But Thoughts Are Free wasn’t in my collection.

  I was in the kitchen, looking out of the window, down to the S-Bahn tracks below. A red signal glared at me from further along the embankment. Thoughts are free / Who may guess them aright? How did it go after that?

  I left the flat again, going down the stairs to the cellar, opening the flimsy padlock on the wooden trellis that guarded my corner. I looked around the small cubicle: shelves stacked with boxes, preserving jars, empty beer bottles, an old cuckoo clock. It was the boxes I was interested in, and I moved them around, trying to read the faded pencil scrawled on the sides and tops. Coughing in the dust, I pulled a box down. It was heavy, almost slipping through my fingers. Opening it up I looked inside. At the very top a big, hardback book: Vom Sinn unseres Lebens. Beneath that, school books, exercise books, a pencil box, a wooden ruler. This was the right one. Pulling the books out, glancing at covers and spines before placing them on the floor. There it was. A yellowish-brown cover: Songs for the JG. I opened it up, pausing for a moment at the rounded, childish writing on the flyleaf. Katrin Grobe, 14 years. Turning to the last page I scanned down the contents list. There it was—flick back through the book until I got to the right page.

  Our thoughts are free,

  Who may guess them aright?

  They pass fleetingly,

  Like shades in the night.

  No-one can know them,

  No hunter can shoot them

  With powder and lead:

  Our thoughts are free.

  Reading the words, my finger tracing the notes up and down the staff, my mind went back to a damp day in the woods. Saxon Switzerland: a holiday, just me and Katrin. Her mother had already gone, it must have been the summer after. We were walking through the woods towards the Bastei, one of those fantastical rock stacks that the wind has carved from soft sandstone. It was raining, a light drizzle that collected and coalesced on the close beech canopy before dripping down into the thick mist below. We couldn’t see very far, our world was made up of emerald light, pewter beech trunks and the bronze of last year’s leaves covering the earth. We walked hand in hand along the path, gradually becoming aware of the sound of singing—deep, slow yet joyous. By the time we could make out the words of his song he was in sight. Standing beside the path, bare-headed, hands behind his back, face raised to the verdant roof above him.