Stealing the Future

by Max Hertzberg

  On the other hand, if the KGB had for some reason drawn up plans against us it could be much, much worse. The Russians weren’t too happy about the way we were heading, but they were a lot more relaxed about it than the Americans, the British, the Westgermans or the ever suspicious French.

  I was still chewing on this thought when Nik pulled a crumpled envelope from his pocket and passed it over to me. Yellowish, thin paper, Russian. It was sealed, and there was no name or address written on it.

  “From Dmitri,” was all Nik had to say about the letter.

  I put the envelope in my pocket for later, wondered whether to ask Nik about it, then decided that he would have already told me more if there were more to say. I brought the conversation back to the new KGB contingent that had turned up.

  “They might just be in town because of the negotiations around the demilitarisation of Berlin and the GDR?”

  “Yeah, they might,” Nik drew thoughtfully on his dark cigarette, which was burning unevenly down one side, glowing strands of tobacco were floating down to the table. “And my name might be Erich Honecker.”

  He was right, a peaceful and honourable KGB mission in our town was about as likely as me sitting in a dingy bar with the former leader of the Communist Party.

  “These days I’m feeling more like Erich Mielke than Erich Honecker,” I sighed, referring to the general who had been in charge of the Stasi for over 30 years.

  Nik looked dubious. “Why’s that?”

  “Oh, nothing really. Just feels like we’re creeping around in shadows, spying on people. This isn’t what we worked for years to achieve.”

  “What’s brought this on?”

  I told him about what Katrin had said a couple of days before, how she’d called me a spy, no better than the Stasi. Nik was quiet for a moment, and to his credit he didn’t try to theorise about Katrin’s motives.

  “OK. I know what you mean. It’s sometimes… sometimes uncomfortable, isn’t it? But we’re nothing like the Stasi. Nothing at all. We’re worlds apart. Honourable.”

  “But that’s what the Stasi said too, ‘we’re honourable’. I mean Mielke, right at the end: ‘I’m a humanist, I love you all, I did it for you’, wasn’t that what he said?”

  Nik didn’t answer immediately. He was staring into the dark smoke curling upwards from the side of his cigarette. I could tell that this was a subject that had been bothering him too.

  “Oh yes, yes. I know what you mean. But the Minister said…”

  “The fucking Minister!” I broke in, “Yes! I’ve heard it. Exceptional circumstances, social experiment under threat, blah blah blah,” I was speaking in a low hiss, but I could tell that the anger in my words was affecting Nik, who was still looking at the smoke.

  “And there’s stuff happening,” I continued. “Like West Silesia, like in Moscow, like what your Dmitri’s been telling you about. So maybe the Minister is right. But at the same time… Oh—I don’t know! I’m feeling very uneasy about things. It feels like we’re crossing a line. And I’m not actually sure exactly where that line is! Or what that line even means. I just know I’m not happy about it.”

  Now Nik was looking at me instead of his cigarette. His intense face probably mirrored my own.

  “Listen—you, me, thousands of others. We worked hard over the years. At the end we were hundreds of thousands, even millions. And each one of us risked our jobs, our homes, our freedom, even our families. All to stand up and say what’s what. To say what we believed in.

  “Me, you, all of us in RS, even the Minister. All of us. And we know about solidarity. We helped each other out in the old days. OK, we didn’t expect the Autumn Revolution. Fine, it took us as much by surprise as it did the Party Bonzen. But we kept going, we never stopped. The Bonzen tried to jump on our bandwagon. The people threw them off again. The Westgermans tried to pinch the wheels off our wagon. But we fought them off with sheer bloody determination. And I’ll tell you this now: no bastard Russian or American is going to stop us. Because if they want to stop this… this piece of humanity that we’re creating, this Grassroots Democratic Republic that we’re piecing together with our own blood, sweat and tears, if they’re stealing our future, Martin, we won’t let them.” His voice lowered, almost a growl: “We. Won’t. Fucking. Let. Them! The Russians stole our past. If they get hold of our future, then all we have left is the present. And that’s not enough. It’s got to feel worth it. All that work, the fear, the worries. All this hard work now. What else have we got left to fight for, if not the future?”

  I hadn’t experienced this side of Nik before, passionate, determined, caring. But he was right. I looked at him, face lowered over the table, the cigarette burning down between the fingers of his left hand, loosely hanging over the edge. He looked tired, as if it were only his spirit that kept him going. Once we’d had an intoxicating sense of empowerment and optimism, but now there was no longer any fizz. The giddy roller coaster of events in autumn 1989 and spring 1990 had given way to lots of talking, lots of arguing, too much hard work. OK, maybe I no longer felt the heat of the revolution coming off every single person I met on the street. But there was still a sense of can-do. The whole country was rebuilding itself. The economy was getting back on its feet after years of stagnation and alienation in the workforce. People were coming together to organise and run their own workplaces, their own living spaces. Yes, Nik was right, nobody could take this away from us. Not without a fight.

  “But you’re right, of course,” Nik had lifted his head, and was studying the smoke from his cigarette again, his voice almost back to normal. “You’re right,” he repeated. “There’s a line. There has to be. We can’t cross that line. If it ever gets critical, meltdown stage, with the Russians, or anyone else for that matter, we have to go public. We can’t leave it up to the Minister.”

  It was good to know that Nik was having doubts about the Minister’s abilities too, that I wasn’t alone with my vague worries.

  “But how?” I knew the answer, but wanted to hear Nik say it anyway.

  “The Round Tables. We’d get word to them, get them to spread it out in their areas, so that everyone hears about what’s happening.”

  It was a simple idea. But I wasn’t sure how easy it would be in practice. The Round Tables were only as strong as their members—they were made up of representatives of local Neighbourhood and Works Councils—ordinary people. Some were savvy, others inexperienced in dealing with difficult situations, never mind real crises. Some were dominant, seeking power, most wanted to share power, find solutions together. But direct democracy is only ever a step away from dictatorship: it only takes one determined bastard to spoil it all. If just one of us crosses that line we’ll be back to where we started.

  “Maybe it’s us who are stealing the future,” I said.

  “Then we better fucking hope we get away with it,” Nik was growling again, “because this is the only chance we’re ever going to get.” He looked over to Jens, holding up two fingers, and then pointing at me and himself. Another beer and a glass of Kornschnaps each were on their way, and, thankfully, would probably get here before the lentil soljanka did.

  Day 6

  Monday

  27th September 1993

  Görlitz: Over ten thousand people protested against the exclusion of direct representation in the political process in West Silesia. The demonstration was called by the Regional Round Table yesterday. Meanwhile the Westgerman Federal Ministry of Intra-German Relations has described the death of the WSB politician Maier as ‘alarming’. West Silesian police investigating the death are being assisted by officers from Saxony.

  Moscow: The Russian Orthodox church has offered to mediate between the Soviet President Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation. Yeltsin is believed to be behind the Soviet of the Republics’ attempts to impeach Gorbachev, who is still under house arrest in the Crimea.

  06:55

  I was lying in bed, nursing my hangover
, trying to persuade myself there was no need to go into the office today. I needed water, but water was two whole rooms and two narrow doorways away, and I knew that if I moved, the ball bearing that was currently pressing against the inside of my skull would go rattling all the way down to my legs, taking all my soft organs with it. My stomach was already unsteady—it really didn’t need an oversized steel marble passing through it. On the whole I felt it was just fine to suffer in bed.

  The telephone had other ideas. The phone was still a relative novelty—it had only been installed after I started working for the Ministry—and this was my first encounter with a ringing phone whilst in the first stages of a hangover.

  So far I really wasn’t pleased with the experience.

  I moved, more to shut it up than out of any sense of duty. The ball bearing kindly stayed up high, in my head, pressing against my skull, but upsetting my sense of balance. Two more, smaller, ball bearings had materialised somewhere in the lower body, but still being slightly drunk from my meeting with Nik, I couldn’t work out exactly where. I stumbled, crawled and lurched towards the screeching phone in the hall.

  “Yeah?” I didn’t even answer with my name, no longer sure I could manage to pronounce it.

  “Oh Martin! It’s you! How lovely to speak to you again!”

  It was a soft voice, a northern accent, from somewhere along the coast. Warm, inviting. Flirtatious even. And youthful, lively. Despite the pitiful state I was in I straightened my back, attempting to project a positive image of myself down the phone line, even though I still had no idea who was on the other end. The result wasn’t pretty—I slid down the wall, my head feeling like there was riveting work going on inside it. Perhaps someone was busy closing up the hole left behind by the lobotomy I had doubtless acquired the night before.

  “Martin, are you OK?” A sensitive voice, again warm. A cuddle on a winter’s day sort of warm. I wished I was in a better position to appreciate it.

  “Eurch. Long night,” I managed.

  “Oh, really sorry, dear Martin—I’ve caught you at a bad time! Look, it’s not important, I’ll call you later.”

  This person was causing me to visit new tortures on my brain. I pushed some energy into my shrunken grey cells, asking them to come up with a name to match this gentle voice that seemed to like exclamation marks rather a lot. Come on, a name, any name to fit this voice!

  “But I’m glad I spoke to you, speak later!”

  “Evelyn…” I said, but I was too slow. Evelyn had taken her voice and gone.

  Feeling strangely better after these painful efforts, I allowed my desiccated tongue to feel its way round the corners and curves of her name: Evelyn. I said it again.

  Since I’d already got as far as the hall, I decided my bed was now just as far away as the kitchen where the mirage of taps beckoned.

  Glass of water in hand, sip, swallow, grimace as the ball bearing banged around my head. Try the soundscape of Evelyn’s name out again. The thought of her made me smile, which did something awful to my facial musculature. Grimace again.

  Trying not to move my mouth, I concentrated on the magic lantern show provided by my mind. Individual scenes were flickering past my internal eye, Overexposed and crumpled by frequent handling and time, some details in clear focus, others just a suggestive shading. Evelyn’s blue dress the first time we met. Her smile, her penetrating but soft blue eyes, her pointed chin.

  It had been an outing to the State Opera, on the Unter den Linden, my work-brigade plus husbands and wives. It had been during the interval when I first saw her, holding a tray of drinks for the Party Bonzen sitting upstairs. I could see her from the bottom of the stairs, where we’d been hemmed in by the crowd. She glanced over, and that’s when I noticed her eyes, framed by a blonde bob, her dress matching their exact, impossible hue. Katrin’s mother noticed me looking up the stairs and followed my gaze towards the young woman. She gave her one of those disapproving, assessing and thoughtful looks that wives and girlfriends seem to reserve for other women who might sleep with their men.

  I took the cue from my wife’s reaction to the existence of this waitress, and sheepishly looked away. Knowing me, I probably blushed, even though there had been absolutely nothing significant in the fact that I had noticed Evelyn.

  In fact, had it not been for the way my wife had assessed the situation, I probably wouldn’t even have recognised the woman the next time I saw her. It was winter: I remember picking my way across the snowy yard in front of the factory, trudging through the wet sawdust put down over the grey snow when I noticed her at the gatehouse talking to the works security. She glanced towards me as I passed, and waved me over. I changed direction to see what she wanted, still not sure who was beckoning to me. I was concentrating so much on not slipping on the slush that I didn’t pay any attention to the figures at the gate. When I got close enough, I looked up and saw her eyes. The woman from the opera house. She was wearing a red parka—she must have dyed it somehow, because I hadn’t seen one in that colour before, even though it was obviously made here in the GDR. The bright colour lent the cheap fabric an elegance it didn’t deserve. Under the parka she had on a brown woollen skirt or dress, woollen stockings and decent brown boots, stained by the snow.

  “How nice to see you again! It’s all right Comrade, this Gentleman will see me to the BPO offices.” She said the word Gentleman in English: tschändlmann, and even though I had no idea how the word ought to be pronounced, the soft G and the feel of the word rolling over the high D and the low M and N gave her such an air of charm and grace that even the surly security guard was confused, and let her go with me.

  “So it’s the Works Party Organisation you’re needing?” I asked, using the familiar form of you, as if we were both Party comrades or close friends, but I was neither a Party member, nor a close friend of this intriguing woman. Even as I said it I realised my mistake, and blushed. I hoped she would put my red face down to the cold wind blowing over the yard, but then realised that she too had used the familiar form, du, when she’d greeted me just now. By this time we were halfway across the yard, and the security guard was still standing there, staring after us. He shouldn’t have given this woman access without a reliable chaperone, and I certainly wasn’t counted as reliable.

  “Thank you for saving me from waiting in this cold,” she said, still using the familiar du, “I believe that guard wasn’t even going to let me into the gatehouse: the brute would have made me wait out here!” She threw a deprecative look backwards. “And may I ask you your name? I’m Evelyn,” she held her hand out before adding her surname: “Hagenow.”

  “Martin, Martin Grobe. Pleased to meet you.”

  I showed her my right hand, hardened and dirty from the workshop. She looked at the hand, raised an eyebrow slightly, bit her bottom lip, then gave me a broad grin while she firmly took my dirty paw. Taken together, all of these actions were enough to make me blush again.

  “Where do you work?”

  “Over in building B4, in the assembly hall,” I gestured with my chin, so that I wouldn’t have to look at her while my blushes subsided.

  “Well I do hope to meet you again! It’s a shame—we’re like ships passing in the night!”

  “Well, Evelyn, your ship is brightly lit,” I heard myself saying. As the words came out of my mouth and reached my ears, my neck and cheeks reddened yet again. Even by my poor standards of flirting, that was a clumsy attempt at a compliment. In my embarrassment I turned brusquely away, mumbling a short Tschüss. But I still caught Evelyn’s answer a split second later.

  “How sweet! Well, I look forward to seeing you again, Martin!”

  After Katrin’s mother had gone, Evelyn turned up again. One day she appeared at the church where we were holding our meetings, down in the crypt. She quickly became involved in our work, bringing supplies of paper, stationary and even a newish typewriter. On one occasion she managed to get access to an Ormig copier—not at all easy in those days when all
reproduction and printing was strictly controlled by the state.

  Despite our semi-flirtatious early acquaintance, nothing had ever happened between us. No doubt she was as charming and attractive as ever, but I was stressed and exhausted—working all day, queueing up outside shops every lunch break, trying to buy enough food to feed myself and the young Katrin. At home I was cooking, cleaning, trying to sort out coal deliveries in the winter. The daily grind of life in a broken economy was tedious and tiring. A dirty, dusty and depressing business, even without a child to look after, not to mention the involvement in the group that met in the crypt. And I was still hurting over my wife’s absence. I doubt I would have noticed if Evelyn had danced for me, naked, on the rickety tables of the cold church hall.

  And here she was again. Evelyn. I had no idea how she had got hold of my number, or what she wanted. I hadn’t seen her for about five years—I think she must have disappeared after the mass arrests in the wake of the Rosa Luxemburg demonstration in January 1988. It was a depressing time, we were all disheartened, and a lot of people dropped out. Although I’d seen pretty much everyone from the old group at irregular intervals, Evelyn never came into my life again. I hadn’t really noticed it until now, even though I’d heard all sorts of rumours: she’d moved south, to Saxony, or to Westberlin, perhaps even to the Federal Republic. But now she was phoning me up.