‘We need to tidy up a little,’ said Gretchen decisively. ‘Grandma is coming to tea.’
Grandma Ostermann was a stout and rather formidable-looking woman. Everything about her was curves – even the round felt hat that fitted snugly on her head over her round wrinkled face.
Alex and Geli had a soft spot for their grandma. She complained about how scruffy they were, but she always brought lovely chocolates back from her trips to West Berlin. Much better than the stodgy chocolates they could get, which tasted like they were made from lard.
The authorities didn’t mind old people going across the Wall to the other side. They didn’t even care if they stayed. It was the young and the workforce who were forbidden to travel to the West.
A loud knocking at the door heralded Grandma’s arrival. She stood huffing and puffing from her climb up the stairs. ‘Um Gottes Willen!’ she said. ‘Why can’t you live in a bungalow?’
She came into the living room, banged down a bag of West German coffee on the dining table, then immediately demanded that they close the curtains so that she didn’t have to look at the Soviet war memorial, which they could see through the window.
She turned to Alex and did what she always did when she came to the apartment: tugged on his hair. ‘You still have your girly locks! No girlfriends yet, I imagine. Especially looking like that!’
Alex laughed. He wasn’t going to take the bait.
Then she asked Geli, ‘And how is Jan-Carl?’
Jan-Carl was Geli’s boyfriend. Frank and Gretchen liked him. He was a project supervisor in the East Berlin machine tool industry. Geli had been more reckless in her choice with previous boyfriends, especially the one a couple of years ago who had distributed anti-Stasi leaflets he’d made on a child’s toy printer, but fortunately the authorities had taken no action against Geli on that occasion. She’d even managed to get into the local Oberschule to study for a place at technical college.
Geli smiled and told her grandma Jan-Carl was fine. Recently though, she’d been having her doubts about him. Especially as he made a habit of referring to her photography as her ‘little hobby’.
After they’d eaten, Frank and Gretchen insisted they miss their usual Tuesday night Star Trek on the Western TV. They would watch the East German channel instead. The family had missed the New Year TV spectacular earlier in the week and it was being repeated that evening. Ein Kessel Buntes – a Kettle of Colour – it was called.
‘More like a kettle full of crap,’ muttered their grandma under her breath. She detested that sort of thing. Alex and Geli exchanged a knowing look. It was their parents’ ploy to get her to go home early.
Before the programme started there was an advert for the Wartburg – the larger and more desirable East German alternative to the Trabi.
‘Can we get one of those, Vati?’ teased Alex. ‘Perhaps it’ll break down less!’
Frank laughed. ‘You have to wait ten, fifteen years for a Wartburg.’
The advert continued to extol its virtues ‘. . . and enough space in the boot for fifty-seven footballs.’
Alex said, ‘Why would anyone want fifty-seven footballs?’ and Grandma chuckled and dug him in the ribs with her elbow.
Ein Kessel Buntes began with the sort of music that had been popular in the mid-sixties – a big brass arrangement with a rock and roll backbeat. Then there were dancers in top hats and sparkly jackets and stockings and high lace-up boots that were supposed to look sexy. They started to prance around in formation, singing about ‘starting something’. It could have been a romance by the way they were making eyes at the camera. But if you listened closely they were talking about starting a better life in the DDR. Then the camera cut from the studio to the same dance company in the great concrete shopping centre of Alexanderplatz, with the TV Tower in the background.
‘Proud of it, aren’t they,’ said Alex sarcastically. His parents ignored him.
Alex hated that tower. A great silver sphere perched on a slender stem, it had been opened last year and hailed as living proof that the DDR was the technological equal to any of the capitalist nations. You couldn’t get away from it. It was visible from every part of the city, east or west. Alex thought it looked like an enormous malevolent eyeball.
Grandma Ostermann understood. She cackled. ‘They couldn’t even get that right. The bottom half looks like a chemical works chimney and the top half looks like it’s been stolen from a power station.’
Frank and Gretchen shifted uncomfortably on their sofa. Grandma continued to needle them.
‘And that cross you can see at sunset. Oh dear . . .’
The tower had a design flaw that caused the sign of a cross to be reflected on the sphere high above the city whenever the evening sun caught it. They had heard the architect had been sent to prison for that. Alex wondered if he’d done it deliberately or if it was just an unlucky accident.
‘Do you want Alex to walk you home, Mutter?’ said Frank.
‘Nein, danke,’ she said with a smile. ‘Alex is a skinny thing. I would have to protect him if we ran into trouble.’ She got up to leave.
‘I’ll come anyway,’ said Alex. He’d had enough of Ein Kessel Buntes too and he wanted to stretch his legs.
‘The Russians aren’t that bad, are they?’ he asked as they walked along the edge of the park. They could see the brightly lit war memorial through the bare trees. ‘They got rid of the Nazis, didn’t they?’
‘They stripped our country bare,’ she said. ‘Whole factories. The rails and sleepers from the train lines. Our best scientists . . . and our soldiers. When your grandfather came back from his Russian prison camp after the war, he was skin and bone. You could hardly recognise him. No wonder he died young.’
Alex liked the way his grandma said what she thought. When they were alone, she would remark scornfully how much the DDR was like the Third Reich. ‘They think they’re 180 degrees apart,’ she snorted. ‘But just look at them. Free German Youth, just like Hitler Youth; the Stasi, just like the Gestapo; Bautzen, just like Dachau. If they hadn’t built the Wall to keep everyone from escaping, there’d just be the Stasi and a handful of Socialist Unity Party Dummköpfs left in the country. You watch how you go, young Alex. You don’t want them to take an interest in you.’
Alex noticed that his grandma was being more serious than usual. You weren’t forced to do things as people had been under the Nazis. Like you didn’t have to join the youth groups, but everyone knew you ought to be in them if you wanted to get on. You’d still have a job, of course, after you left school if you didn’t – everyone in the DDR had a job – but maybe you could look forward to being a shovel store assistant or a broom cupboard monitor rather than head of building projects for the Leipzig urban district.
Alex returned home, hoping to catch the last of Star Trek with Geli. He was disappointed. Their parents were listening to General Secretary Honecker giving a speech about how the DDR was building four-hundred thousand homes a year and that by 1990 every family in the country would have their own home.
Alex didn’t like Comrade Honecker at all. He was like some unpleasant, pompous uncle. The sort who patted you on the head, spoke too loudly and never listened to what you actually said. Just looking at him, Alex could tell he smelled of mothballs and those cough tablets that tasted like they were made out of tar.
Chapter 3
Alex liked Thursdays – that was the evening his band got together to play after school. His parents allowed his friends to practise in their apartment. The Ostermanns lived on the top floor and the neighbours downstairs didn’t get home until after six.
They sat around in the living room. Alex played his Bulgarian electric guitar through an old gramophone. Frank had taken some wires from inside and connected them to a socket for Alex to plug into.
There were a couple of other lads from his year at school – Anton and Holger. Both had cheap acoustic guitars, although they claimed to be saving up for electric ones. Anton was blonde and
stocky. Holger was dark and skinny, and his girlfriend, Effi, said he looked like Keith Richards.
Anton played the bass parts on his guitar. Alex suspected he might be tone deaf – so he was happy to just play the single notes his role required. Holger was as good as Alex, and was always asking to borrow his electric guitar. Although Holger was a good friend, Alex sometimes wished he hadn’t asked him to join. He took too much attention from him.
The drummer, Heinz, was a couple of years younger. Unlike the rest of them, who had the shaggiest mops of hair their school and parents would allow, Heinz had the sort of short back and sides the army would approve of. He played in the trumpet and drums brigade of the local Free German Youth and he was always pestering the youth leader to let him borrow the snare drum he used in parades. But Heinz had been told he was not to use their equipment to play any rock music nonsense, especially with a bunch of rowdies like Alex, Holger and Anton. So for now, Heinz had his own drumsticks and a set of tins and boxes.
‘We need a name,’ said Holger, before they had played a note.
‘I’ve got a couple,’ said Anton. They all looked at him warily.
‘Purple Fog,’ he said, eyes wide with expectation.
The others said nothing.
‘All right then. Troll Matrix.’
‘They’re both crap,’ said Alex.
Anton pretended to look hurt. ‘I suppose you want to call us the Alex Ostermann Experience,’ he teased.
Alex laughed. ‘Well, it does have a certain ring to it!’ Actually, he thought that was pretty cool. It was his group after all. He had got the thing off the ground and he was the one with an electric guitar.
‘How about Freak Power?’ said Holger. It was a phrase he had come across watching West German television – on a placard carried by some hippies at a Vietnam War demonstration.
‘Cool,’ said Alex. ‘I can live with that.’
Heinz snorted with impatience. He wondered why he was so much smarter than these Dummköpfs when he was two years below them at school. ‘I’ll never get to borrow a snare drum for a group called Freak Power. We’ll have the Stasi banging down the door before we get to the first chorus.’
They only needed a name if they did any gigs and they were a long way off that. ‘I’ve got a new song,’ said Alex, changing the subject. ‘Want to hear it?’ They all nodded. ‘No words yet, but I’ve got the tune.’
The rehearsal went OK. They played Alex’s new song until they got bored with it. When they stopped for a break, Anton pulled out a leaflet for a school talk. ‘Here, look at this,’ he scoffed. The talk was called ‘Zuverlässiger Schutz des Sozialismus’ – the Reliable Protection of Socialism – and had a photograph of Honecker to illustrate it. It was an official portrait they all recognised. He had a smug smile on his face, which didn’t quite go with his blank, dead eyes.
‘He looks like he’s just farted in a crowded room and he’s trying to keep a straight face about it,’ snickered Anton. They all laughed and Alex thought he was lucky to be in the company of friends who all trusted each other.
They managed to get through ‘Back in the USSR’ without Anton forgetting his bass line. They even sounded pretty good doing the harmonies. They thought that would be a fine one to do if the Stasi ever came to listen. Then they played ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ – the Rolling Stones song. There was something about this music that gave Alex a visceral thrill. Singing these songs made his heart beat faster in a way the school choir could never do.
The downstairs neighbours came home early and the boys soon started to hear banging coming up through the floorboards. ‘I’d hate to see the dents in that ceiling,’ said Alex.
‘Next week we shall have a name,’ announced Holger portentously. ‘Otherwise we will be called Freak Power.’
The rest of them laughed that off and all agreed to meet again the following Thursday.
Chapter 4
Herr Würfel poured another cup of strong black coffee in a bid to liven himself up. He was using the final ten minutes of the morning break to work on assessments for his year group. The one for Alex Ostermann was taking some effort.
Treptow Polytechnic School
Year 10 Group Assessment
From: Year Group Leader
To: Principal
Ostermann is a dangerously overconfident youth with an inflated idea of his own importance and amusement value. He disrupts the harmony of the group and his behaviour is a direct challenge to the ideal of the new socialist personality.
He refuses to take his political responsibilities seriously and his slyly mocking attitude towards the SED is a cause for serious concern.
Würfel was always looking for an excuse to discipline Alex. But he could never pin anything on him. He always received a polite response but there was a twinkle in the boy’s eyes that made Würfel feel he was being mocked. This anger rose to the surface as he typed.
He has a questioning intelligence and is popular with his peers – but this makes him an even more insidious influence.
Outside in the yard, where the pupils were waiting in the cold for the break to end, he could hear a group of them roaring with laughter. He looked out of the window to see Alex Ostermann surrounded by admirers. Through the open window he could hear Alex singing a song. It was obviously one he had made up – a parody of a drinking song, the sort the older generation would sing when they’d sunk a few beers.
Alex’s mates roared with laughter. Herr Gersten, the elderly school caretaker, had already complained about him that morning. Perhaps Alex was mocking the old man now? He carried on writing.
Despite his ‘gang leader’ personality there are no recorded incidents of his using his position to bully or humiliate the less popular children. He does, however, make a habit of mocking the school authorities, from teachers to caretaker.
Würfel asked himself if he was being unfair. Did he dislike Alex because he seemed to be having the happy school days Würfel had never had? Most people liked Alex. He didn’t want Herr Roth, the Principal, to start to question his judgement. He knew Roth was a close friend of Alex’s father, Frank. And at least Alex hadn’t been burping the National Anthem, like that wretched boy Anton Brauer. That had earned him a well-deserved visit from the Stasi. Würfel began to feel magnanimous and rewrote his third paragraph.
In mitigation, he has a questioning intelligence and is popular with his peers . . .
He finished with a flourish.
. . . and with the correct application of remedial persuasion and guidance I believe we can still hope he will mature to become a useful and productive member of the DDR.
That would do. There was no sense in ruining someone’s life quite this early in the day.
Alex was really pleased with his design for future housing in East Germany. It had been a while since he’d actually enjoyed a school project. Sitting in the art room before the teacher arrived, he listened to the class discussing their work. Most of them, it seemed, had designed apartments exactly like the ones that were going up on building sites all over East Berlin. Alex’s, though, was a bulbous structure on the end of a great curved staircase. It had an organic feel about it, like a tulip on a stalk. Everyone would have their own space and no neighbours to annoy them.
Fräulein Bachmeier, the art teacher, arrived in her usual brown nylon dress. Although she was quiet and a bit severe, Alex thought she was quite pretty, even in her black-rimmed spectacles, and he wanted to impress her.
Fräulein Bachmeier went through all their work in turn, showing it to the class and passing swift and blunt judgement. Alex’s illustration did not please her. It expressed bourgeois individualist tendencies, she declared. Further work like this, she warned him in front of the entire class, would see him marked down in his exams.
‘How are we going to win our housing battle by 1990 with ideas like that?’ she said.
Alex tried to hide his humiliation with an unconvincing smile.
She turned to Stefan and h
eld up his project with a look of warm approval. Alex always thought Stefan was prime Party material and was careful what he said to him.
‘All the components are the same, so the production will be cheap and easy,’ she told the class. ‘And they are duplicated over ten floors so the minimum space can be used for the maximum number of dwellings. And look how Stefan has created a three-quarter square with all dwellings overlooking a common play area. Here all the mothers can look out of their windows and see if their children are playing safely in the designated area.’
Stefan lit up with pride.
‘Alex, you must think in a more socialist direction,’ she added sternly. ‘After all, when all your needs are met – that’s socialism. And “all your needs” means a proper apartment for all, with hot and cold water and its own bathroom and lavatory.’
Alex could see her point, but that just made him feel even more despondent.
‘When all your needs are met . . .’ Fräulein Bachmeier was relieved to have got that little phrase in. The Principal had told them in the staffroom on Monday morning that this was to be the political slogan of the week. They should try to include it in as many lessons as possible.
Alex’s morning did not improve. Next was a careers guidance tutorial with Herr Walter. Alex had said several times he intended to teach, but recently Herr Walter had been steering him away from that idea. So now Alex said he wanted to be a musician.
His tutor scoffed. ‘Alex, you are a guitar player. There are no guitars in the state orchestra.’
Alex protested. ‘Everyone likes what I play in the school concerts and in the yard at break.’
Herr Walter shook his head. ‘If you could play Bach’s preludes and sonatas, that would be something. But you can only play pop music. That is not a skill that will further the future of socialism.’
Sektion 20 Page 2
