07:13
The number 13 tram was rattling down the hill as I reached the corner, and I sprinted over the road to the stop. It was fairly empty, the early shift at the factories along the river would already be at their machines, the office and shop workers still at home having their breakfast. I slumped down into a seat, keeping half an eye on the world around me, but most of my brain and body just switched off. I got off at Marktstrasse, and swayed for a moment. I ought to go to the office, report back at the morning meeting. But my flat was closer, and the thought of a dark room and a cup of coffee was too comforting. Time to go home.
I put the pan of water on the hob as soon as I got in, and stared out of the window as I waited for it to boil. Clouds of steam brought me back, and I hurriedly spooned some ground coffee into a mug, pouring water over it. The round smell of coffee rose to my nostrils, familiar, soothing. I absently stirred the grounds which were still floating on the top of the water. Going through to the living room, I sank into my chair, putting the coffee on the floor. The curtains were open, but the sun was low and hazy, I didn’t need to get up and close them.
The doorbell woke me. Not a great way to wake up, and certainly not after this morning’s experiences. I put my hands on the chair arms and pushed myself up, pulling my feet back so that I could stand up, knocking the mug of cold coffee over in the process.
“Shit!”
The doorbell rang again: loud, long and insistent. I left the coffee, and went to the door, opening it.
“Katrin!”
“Papa, hi! God, what’s happened to you? Have you been drinking?”
“What time is it?”
“It’s about eleven. You have been drinking, haven’t you?”
I trailed back to the living room, picked up the cup, then went to get a cloth from the kitchen. No harm done, just a bit of coffee on the wooden floor. I wiped it up, aware that Katrin was making more coffee.
“Are you OK, Papa?”
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. All the better for seeing you.”
She grinned, but it was true: a couple of hours sleep, and the smiling face of my daughter—that’s what good medicine is all about.
“So what’s up? You look awful.”
I thought about our last conversation, and the chat I’d had the other night with Nik, and I decided to tell Katrin about my morning. The edited version, no need to go into the gory details.
“The guy you were looking for wasn’t even there? So this whole raid was for nothing, barging in on people while they’re asleep, shouting at them–”
“Yes–”
“It’s no better than the bad old days, is it?” Katrin was on a roll.
“It wasn’t my idea, and anyway, these things happen in the West too, don’t they?”
Katrin softened, “Yes, suppose so. Doesn’t make it right though. Anyway, how do you know this guy is the one you want?”
“I don’t. That’s just what I was told, by the Minister.”
“What? No evidence, just his word. Do you believe him?”
“Of course. I’m sure it’s all right.” But was I? “But to what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
Katrin blushed, then, in a mischievous way: “How are you getting on with Annette?”
I grinned back. “I ought to be cross with you—interfering in my life like that! But, it was… interesting.”
“Mm-hm?”
“Yeah, we seem to get on well. It’s been nice. It was good to think about something different for a while. I doubt anything will happen.”
“But you’ve met her twice already—of course something might happen!” Then, more quietly: “Thanks for not being pissed off with me.”
“Well, like I said, I ought to be. But it’s good to know someone cares enough to do something like that.”
“I thought you’d blow a gasket—that’s what I wanted to talk to you about last Friday, but we didn’t get round to it. And I hadn’t expected Annette to respond so quickly to the advert. In fact, she’d spotted it even before I told her about you. But she’s great, I really like her—she’ll be good for you.”
“I don’t know if it’ll get that far. And just because I’m not too annoyed with you doesn’t mean you can carry on interfering in my life!”
“Yeah—sorry,” Katrin did at least manage to look a little contrite. “But I hate to think of life passing you by.”
“It isn’t. And it’s not as if there’s never been any others, you know?”
Her eyes widened: “I didn’t know—I never noticed.”
“No, you wouldn’t have—it was after you went. I was here, alone, it was a crazy time, that autumn. Everyone had so much energy, we were all so frantic, busy, tired, excited… things happened.”
“But nothing lasted? I mean, was there anything serious?”
“I’m always serious when it comes to things like that. But, no, nothing lasted. It was like… nothing could ever come close to what I had with her.” I didn’t say her name, I rarely do, but we both knew who I meant. “When the cuddling ended, when whoever it was had left, or when I came home again afterwards… that was it. Then I’d feel so alone. More than before. You hold someone, and you feel safe. Your thoughts are quiet, you can feel your heart beating. For a change it’s not hurting. But then afterwards, I knew that I was by myself, and it just hurt all the more.”
I’d never had this kind of conversation with my daughter before. In the time that Katrin was gone she had grown up. The few short weeks between her going and the Wall opening, when we could see each other again; they had changed her. She was no longer my little girl, but an adult. Our relationship had been redefined, and we were still working out how to communicate with each other, these two new people. It felt good to talk to her about these things; as grown ups, as equals.
“What was it like, y’know. When Mum…” Katrin didn’t finish the sentence.
“It was…” I looked at her, my mouth spelt the word: terrible, but my breath wasn’t strong enough to say it. Her eyes glanced off mine, then slid down towards the table, her hands cupping the mug of coffee, her face wreathed in the rising steam. My own eyes slipped down to the table too. My hands were mirroring Katrin’s, cupping my own mug of coffee. “Just…”
Silence overtook us.
“I was so young. I don’t know if I was too young to remember, or just blocked it out somehow,” she whispered.
My lips shaped that word again: terrible. My mind wandered back to those awful days. I don’t think about it too much now, it still hurts. But I couldn’t forget that time, even if I wanted to. How could I forget how, in the morning, I’d get up, functioning without being. I’d put a pan of water on to boil and go and wake up Katrin, make sure she got out of bed and got dressed. I’d take her halfway to the school where she’d meet up with friends. We would hardly exchange a word, both lost in our individual battles for survival. I must have been a grim sight in those days. I wasn’t sleeping. Wasn’t eating. Just tired, running on empty.
After dropping Katrin off I should have gone to work. But I didn’t. I don’t know how long that phase lasted: days, maybe weeks. I couldn’t be around people. Instead of getting on the tram to the factory, I’d head back to the flat. As soon as Katrin was out of sight I could feel tears drip down my cheeks, gathering in the corners between nose and upper lip. I’d stumble along, head bowed so that passers-by, hurrying to work or waiting at the tram stop in the grey, slushy snow wouldn’t see my tears. Letting myself back into the flat, the tears would flow freely. I hated Katrin’s mum. Loved her. I missed her so much, and felt betrayed by her absence. I was imploding with the weight of the love I still felt for her, that I could no longer give her. The years we would no longer share. The times we’d no longer laugh together, argue together, make love together. She was no longer there to hug, so I’d hit the walls with my bare fists. I had to feel a different pain. The bloody knuckles gave me a physical pain that I could deal with. It wasn’t long b
efore I’d open another bottle of schnapps. It would dull the pain in the knuckles but not the agony of my corroding soul. It didn’t stop me from thinking either. All the times together, the three of us. All the good times, all the fights. All the times when we had enough to be happy, and the times when we struggled to keep our little family going. I’d stare out of the window, the snow flying past, landing in dark heaps on the road, blocking the pavements. The flat would steadily cool down as the morning’s ration of coal burnt up, the wind would whine while I sat and shivered, making not a sound. I’d used up all the chances this life was going to give me. There was nothing left, no other reason to continue the struggle of this life. Except Katrin. For her I’d sober up, light the stove, wash the coal dust off my hands, wash the tears off my face, wash the blood off the wall, try to make things OK for when she got back from school.
“I’m sorry Katrin, it must have been really hard for you. I did my best, but I know it wasn’t enough. It must have been really shit for you.” I was still looking at my hands, clasped around the mug, the fine tracing of scars, picked out by coal dust under the skin of the knuckles. I’d slid off into the past, my mind tracing the contours of years-old pain. I looked up at Katrin. On the other side of the kitchen table a cold mug sat in front of an empty chair.
A tune wavered through the open door from the living room. Low and reedy, sonorous. Familiar. My heart stopped, the whole world froze in a moment of ecstasy and anguish, the notes summoning an imprint of memory that faded away at the edges, leaving a silhouette of the woman I had lost.
I followed the traces of vibrating air into the hall. Katrin was standing in the living room, her back to me, swaying with the music that she was playing.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, washed by the sounds. “That was your mum’s.”
The music stopped, and Katrin turned around, holding the alto recorder in both hands.
“Of course… you knew that,” I added.
Katrin smiled, a gentle figure, solid and real, taking the place of a memory. She carefully put the recorder back on the bookshelf, taking her time to line the instrument up with the pattern of dust that outlined its home.
“I didn’t know you’d learned to play,” I said to her back. She slowly turned around, and stepped towards me.
“Yes,” she looked up into my face, her mother’s eyes gazing at me. “It’s one of the few things I remember about her. A friend is teaching me how to play.” She came closer, and with her index finger stroked a tear off my cheek. She put her arms around me, ignoring my stiffness. “Isn’t it time to move on, Papa?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been years. You don’t need to stay here, all alone. Life can offer more than this.” She let go of me, took a step back, and tried to look me in the eye.
“I’ve got my work. And you.” I looked at the recorder on the shelf. Easier to look anywhere than at my daughter. I wanted to tell her that my heart is just too big, I can’t let go, can’t just forget. There was no way to prise that pain out of my chest.
I continued staring at the recorder, the dusty shelf, the books, as Katrin picked up her coat, patted my arm, kissed my wet cheek and left.
13:23
I sat at home for another hour or so, not doing much, just trying to motivate myself to get on with the day. Finally I got my coat on and went to the office. When I arrived, only Bärbel and Klaus were there.
“Laura and Erika have gone over to RS1 to talk about the Nazi nest,” Klaus told me.
“Who’s handling it at the RS1 end of things?”
“Nik’s co-ordinating it I think. In fact, RS1 have been doing most of the work on it. What are you up to now?”
“Dunno. Thought I’d better come in, though. Guess I’ve got a load of stuff I could be getting on with.”
I told Klaus about the raid, leaving nothing out. He was clearly shocked, but didn’t say anything for a while, just sat there, smoking a cigar. Finally, he stirred.
“Wasn’t the state prosecutor there? Or independent witnesses?”
“No, there was no need because it wasn’t a search: they intended to arrest him. But you can be sure they had a good look around while they smashed the place up.”
“You kind of hoped those days were gone, don’t you? But here we are, three years in, and the cops are still bastards,” he said.
“Still the same people wearing the same uniform. I guess it’s naïve to think that things can change that fast.”
Klaus nodded, and chewed on his cigar for a bit.
“Maybe we need to think about taking this to the Round Table. We could suggest some kind of oversight body to be present whenever things are controversial or might get violent,” was what he came up with after a while.
I didn’t disagree with Klaus, just didn’t want to think about it right now, so I cut him off.
“Yeah, sounds good, but let’s talk about it with the others.”
He didn’t reply, just jotted down a few notes on his notepad, then looked up as my phone rang. I was already on my way to the toilet so I asked him to answer it for me.
“Who was it?” I asked when I got back.
“No-one there,” he shrugged. “Bad line. Look, I’ve got to go to my old workplace, get some employment records stamped for the tax office. Why don’t you come with me—it doesn’t look like you’re going to get much done here.”
Erika and Laura had taken the Trabant, but a police patrol car was parked next to a colourful sign advertising a neighbourhood meeting. I admired the vehicle’s green and white two-tone paint job, blue lights and loudspeakers on the roof. Klaus jangled the keys before unlocking the doors.
“How did you get hold of this?”
“You know the Wartburg we have?”
“The one that never works?”
“The only one we have, yes. Well, the cops came down here last week, when you were tootling around in Silesia. They just wanted to drop off some paperwork or something. They drove straight into the back of it. Laura gave them a right talking to, so they towed the Wartburg away and a police mechanic is going to sort it out. Meanwhile, we get to use this mean, green machine,” Klaus grinned.
We got in, and headed off towards Schöneweide. If I’d been in better condition I would have been tempted to play around with the lights and the sirens, but as it was we just sat there in silence while Klaus filled the car with cigar fumes.
We drove down the Wilhelminenhofstrasse. On the left the usual soot stained brown-grey buildings—flats, and some shops on the ground floor. On the right were tracks, a diesel locomotive, stationary, engine hammering out greasy, black smoke. Attached to it, a train, a long line of empty flat-bed wagons.
“Transformer works,” said Klaus, nodding towards the factory beyond the goods train. It too was stained and sooty, but behind all the dirt were yellow bricks, and an elaborate industrial gothic design. It must have been beautiful once.
“Just a bit further down—that’s the cable works, KWO. Designed by the same architect for Emil Rathenau last century. And that, on the corner at the end is the TV factory, where I ended up working in ’89.”
I nodded, concentrating on the road ahead of us, tyres rumbling over the broken concrete flags lining the tram tracks we were following.
“There’s the main gate, over there. Can you see somewhere safe to park?”
I looked round for a parking spot. On the left the road broadened out as a side road entered, making a triangle with a pedestrian island in it. As we slowed down to park I saw someone come out of the factory gates opposite. He turned to go to the tram stop, and as he came closer I realised who it was.
“Stop! That’s him! Fremdiswalde!”
Klaus looked over to where I was pointing, at the same time braking to a sharp stop, and before I’d a chance to get out he’d already gone, leaving the door swinging open. I ran after him. Fremdiswalde had already headed back into the cable factory. Klaus was at the factory gates before I was even half
way across the railway tracks, but someone jumped out from the gatehouse, tackling him round the legs. He crunched into the side of the gatepost, tangled up with a security guard. I took a short detour, avoiding the pedestrian gate, hurdling the slack chain hanging across the vehicle entrance.
“Left!” shouted Klaus from behind me, and I headed round that way, leaving behind the string of curses Klaus was raining down on the guard who’d grabbed him. Ahead of me I could see in the lee of the factory wall dozens and dozens of cable drums, some just over a meter in diameter, others more like two metres wide. Next to the drums, covered in chalk, and dusted in soot, men were winding up a cable as thick as my forearm. To my right there was a three storey building, built in the same yellow brick as the transformer works down the road. A door led into this building, and I was about to go in when I noticed that the men in chalk and soot were looking further down the way, towards another block perpendicular to this one. I ran down to the corner of the long high building. A door at the foot of a staircase slammed shut. In through the door, I saw another to my right heading onto the ground floor, and a staircase snaking upwards. Brown art deco tiles covered the walls to elbow height, climbing up with the stairs. They were greasy, threads of soot lining the grain. The steps were concrete, with steel runners, and although not steep, they were high. I ran up, following the echoing footsteps. Sometime around the third or fourth landing I lost track of how many levels I’d gone up, just concentrating on the pounding steps echoing from somewhere above me. My heart ready to pop, my head banging, I’d already tripped over once, catching my right knee on a steel edge. Why am I doing this to myself? I’m not a cop—I can’t even arrest this guy if I catch up with him! Some part of my brain kept feeding me reasons to stop, but still I continued up this nightmare of a staircase.
A crash of a heavy steel door falling into the frame: Fremdiswalde had exited the stairwell. It didn’t sound too close, so I passed the next floor and carried on upwards. A large number 6 was painted on the wall where the staircase ended. The steel doors were to the right. I aimed for these, trying to shoulder them open, pulling down the handle as I hit the brown metal. A dull impact, a sharp pain. Ignoring shoulder and knee, I tried it the other way, pulling the door open, using my weight leveraged against my heels. Behind the door the light was dim, the air filled with desultory dripping. What light there was came from skylights, but they were cracked, broken, and hadn’t been cleaned for years. Shadows danced in the corners. As I stood there letting my eyes adjust, some of the shadows materialised into workbenches, bits of machinery, and, at the other end of a long room, a human shape. It was turned towards me, as far as I could see, and swaying around. I stood there, trying to work it out, my eyes struggling with the grey light. As my surroundings come into focus, I realised that the workshop was a lot longer than I thought: the figure wasn’t swaying, but running down the length of the floor, jumping across gaps in the floorboards, and dodging drips from above. I didn’t fancy following him, and while I dithered, the door behind me slammed. This was nearly too much for me, my knee and shoulder were killing me, my lungs felt like they were about to rip. I swivelled around to see Klaus, face red, panting. I pointed towards the fleeing figure, now nearly at the far end, and Klaus nodded, setting off, jumping from one safe looking part of the floor to another. Meanwhile, I tried to use my head. I could go down a level, see if I could head Fremdiswalde off at the next staircase along. I turn back to the door, headed down to the floor below, and went in, turning left onto a corridor that looked about twice as long as the workshop above. I passed office doors and frosted glass panels. A scream reverberated down the corridor, but there was no-one in sight, no sign of who made this sound, and nothing to suggest that anyone else was in the building: nobody came to their door to look out into the corridor. I stopped, and over my own gasps I could hear a whimpering, a ticking sound, and Klaus swearing. He didn’t sound hurt, so it must have been Fremdiswalde that screamed.
Stealing the Future Page 14
