by Brianna Hale
I think about how he reads Neues Deutschland every morning, cover to cover. The paper is State-run and seems to be popular at Stasi HQ. My father always said it was stuffed full of propaganda and lies. “Do you really believe in everything that they say? That they stand for?”
I hear the skepticism in my own voice and flinch. I’ve forgotten who I’m talking to. But Reinhardt doesn’t seem perturbed and he’s silent for a moment, considering his answer. “As much as I can believe in any political party. I come from the military, not the government. In the days after the war I saw how dedicated the Party was to anti-fascism and I liked that very much. The Stasi was the ideal place for someone like me.”
I remember the Stasi motto: the Shield and Sword of the Party. Reinhardt is the embodiment of it. Protective. Possessive. Strategic. I can see that he’d naturally gravitate towards the security ministry. But I shake my head, exasperated, as I’ve heard him speak about fascism before.
“The war was twenty years ago. Where is fascism now? Why must you be our sword and shield when there is nothing to fight?”
“Oh? Do you think there aren’t people in Germany who miss the days of the Reich and the Führer? The far right can be very alluring to some people. Everything is always someone else’s fault.”
“But Reinhardt—”
He holds up a hand. “Yes, all right, I admit I see no imminent signs that the next Hitler is about to rise. So, my little traitor, you question why we need people like me at all? Remember that the West is as frightened of us as our Party is of them, and both sides have the Bomb now. When in history have two enemy powers wielded such weapons? It is the power of the gods in our hands, and I can’t see that things will de-escalate on their own for some time. So, I do my part to ensure that the West doesn’t learn too many secrets about the East and feels emboldened to act against us. Their people do the same on their side, and there is peace, of sorts. A cold war.”
I stare at him, still exasperated but bewildered now as well.
He smiles. “Why do you look at me like that?”
“Because you are a Stasi officer and I just questioned the very reason you exist! Shouldn’t you be lecturing me on communism being the one true way and the West being evil?”
Grinding out his cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed, he puts his arms around me. “I told you. I’m a soldier not a bureaucrat, and you wouldn’t listen if I did lecture you. I just want peace for Germany and not to die in a mushroom cloud. And I want you. And here you are. Let’s not talk about serious things right now.”
But I can’t let it go. Lying with him, being close to him like this, makes me want to understand him. “Anything for peace? Anything at all? The end justifies your means?”
He twists one of my curls around his finger. “Ja, Liebling, anything at all. And I don’t apologize for that.”
I shake my head again, because I’ve just questioned the entire power structure and ideology of East Germany to a Stasi officer, and he’s lying here, supremely unruffled. “I can’t believe you let me talk this way. Aren’t you going to lock me up?”
He pretends to consider this. “Not just now. I enjoy you too much. Come here.”
Pulling me closer he kisses me, and then rolls me beneath him. He watches me for some time, eyes speculative. “Know this, meine Liebe. If you ever get away from me I will tear West Berlin apart looking for you. I will tear West Germany apart. I hope you know that I can, and that I will. Nothing short of death will keep me from coming for you.”
His eyes have hardened and turned gray. I don’t reply, and seeming satisfied he’s made his point he kisses me and lies down, his heavy arm over my waist. I watch his face, softened by slumber. The curve of his mouth. The slight indentation on his long, straight nose.
Here is my remarkable man, just as vital, handsome and strong as I’d always hoped he’d be, but presented to me in the shape of my enemy. Could he tear West Germany apart looking for me? Could his spies find me even in the West? If he’s telling the truth it means that to escape him once and for all I will have to bring him down. Otherwise I will never be free.
Meine Liebe. My love.
When I was a teenager I used to ride the Berlin Ringbahn, the overground train that circled the city, sometimes for hours at a time. I would get on and watch the roads and buildings slip by, the steel lines caring nothing for borders or permits. You are now entering the American Zone, came the tinny announcement. You are now entering the Free Zone. Caution: you are now leaving the Free Zone. I used to savor the sensation of plunging headlong into another world and then out of it again, over and over. I was at home in this zone, a foreigner in that one, but how powerful I felt that I could bear this becoming and unbecoming dozens of times a day.
The lines are broken now and the trains run sad little semi-circuitous routes on their own sides of the city. But I remember the rush that came from being propelled from one world to the next, and I feel it again as I slip from Reinhardt’s bed into the silence of the hall.
Except now I don’t savor it. I’m not a girl riding the Ringbahn but a woman walking the tightrope of the Berlin Wall, a sheer drop on either side, and at any moment I may plunge to my death.
Chapter Eighteen
Evony
I wish I was a better liar. I wish I felt a rush when I got away with an untruth and could gloat over the gullibility of others. I can’t lie to Reinhardt with words so I don’t try. Instead, I keep my mouth shut and give him what sings in my heart. He feels my desire for him as my fingers brush against his gloved ones as we ride in the back of his car. The way I soften against him when he pulls me close. My body is sincere. As long as he doesn’t force me to speak he’ll never find out that I intend to betray him.
One wine-dark night he catches me in the hall as I head for my bedroom, and he kisses me until I grow drunk on the taste of his mouth. I’m pliant in his arms, my desire for him sounding in every soft breath I take.
But it’s not enough for him anymore. “Do you love me, Evony? I want to hear you say it. Tell me you love me.”
Instantly my body tenses. Is it not enough that I want him? Why must he ask for more? Or am I afraid to speak those words because of what I’ll hear in my own voice? “Please don’t. Please, I can’t.”
His mouth is insistent on mine, and he murmurs between kisses, “Tell me, Liebling. I know you do. I want to hear you say you love me.”
“I—” Just say it. It’s three words. You can speak three words to save your life. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Why can’t you say it, if it’s true?”
I pull myself out of his arms and glare at him, my chest heaving. “Love you? Do you think I’ve forgotten what you are? What you’ve done? You’re a cold-blooded killer and you murdered my friends. You take people to prison who just want to be with their families. Do you think I can ever forget that? Why can’t you be satisfied with what I give you? Why must you always want more?”
He watches me for a long time, a cold, hard expression in his eyes, and I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake. Him believing he could win my love was the only thing keeping me out of prison and I’ve just told him it’s impossible.
“Get your coat.”
My throat works, trying to get the words out. Maybe it’s not too late. He wants so badly for me to love him that if I say it now he might believe me. But he’s not a fool. I spoke the truth just now and he heard it loud and clear.
In the hall I drag my coat on, feeling numb. So this is it. Downstairs we get into his car and he’s still not looking at me. He drives us in silence through the empty streets. I don’t know where exactly Hohenschönhausen is except that it’s near Stasi HQ. They don’t keep murderers and thieves there. It’s a special prison just for dissidents and traitors and they’re treated in special, cruel ways. What Reinhardt said before he put the silk stockings on me comes back to me. It’s bleak, Liebling. The lights stay on all night. There is no sky. No wind. No hope.
He slows the
car as it goes over some railway tracks and I want to reach for his gloved hand on the wheel and beg him to pull over. There’s so much anger and confusion in my heart, but I can tell him how he makes me feel. How I admire and fear him at the same time. That I respect his drive, his passion, his cleverness, even if I despise the things that he does. That I want him so much it frightens me. But if I start talking I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop. I’ll confess everything—about Peter, about spying on him, and I’ll end up betraying the only people who can get me away from him. I won’t do that, even to keep myself out of prison. If it’s too late for me I won’t drag everyone else down with me.
Stasi HQ is up ahead but before we reach it we turn left up a side street. My stomach lurches, realizing this is the way to Hohenschönhausen, but a moment later he’s pulling into a parking space in front of a nondescript beige building that doesn’t look anything like a prison. Reinhardt gets out of the car and waits for me to do the same.
There’s a sign in metal lettering by the entrance: ministry for state security. It’s not a prison, but it is a government building.
“Where are we?”
Reinhardt still won’t look at me and his face is set and cold. He unlocks the door to the building and leads me into a vast open space filled with lines of metal shelving, stacked with manila folders and archive boxes. All the shelves are marked with letters and numbers that seem to mean something to him, and he walks smartly along them and then turns down a row.
I follow, and suddenly he stops and reaches for a file. It’s a thick manila folder stuffed with typed reports and photographs, and he searches through them. I look between his face and the documents, trying to discern what is happening. Is this when I discover he’s been onto me all along? Is this my file? Is it Peter’s?
When he holds out a photograph my brain doesn’t know what to make of what I’m looking at. It’s not of me or Peter. It’s of a group of people. A family. I recognize the woman at the center of the glossy black and white photograph.
I glance up at Reinhardt in confusion but he just nods at the picture. “Look at it, Evony. Look at it carefully.”
It’s Frau Schäfer, the neighbor that Reinhardt took away in the night for looking at the Wall and weeping. She’s with a man and two small children on a street, the family she so desperately wanted to join in West Berlin but couldn’t because the GDR wouldn’t let her leave. They’re getting out of a car, a model that I don’t recognize. She’s smiling. The street…
I grab the photo with a cry. That car, that street. The signs above the shops are in German but I don’t know the stores. The family’s clothes are cut in unfamiliar modern styles. Herr Schäfer is carrying a newspaper with a name I don’t know.
“This is West Berlin. When was this taken? How?”
In reply Reinhardt extracts a sheet of typewritten paper from the file and hands it to me. It’s some sort of report written in a dense bureaucratic style. All the names are written in capital letters, though I don’t recognize them and I think they must be codenames. I still don’t understand and I’m growing frustrated. “Just tell me what this means. Frau Schäfer is in West Berlin?”
“Ja, Liebling,” he says softly. “She has been for quite some time now.”
I examine the page again, seeking to confirm what he says. My eyes find the concluding note: “…unknown how LANGE reached the American Sector. GDR operatives in the W. BERLIN refugee camp have been unable to obtain intel about the defection from LANGE herself or those close to her.”
Then after a line break there’s another note. “No further intelligence regarding LANGE’s defection. GDR operatives assigned elsewhere.”
Written across the bottom of the page is OFFICE OF OBSTLT. R. VOLKER, and it’s dated just over a month ago. I stare at the report for a long time. I thought Reinhardt arrested Frau Schäfer the night I first saw him, but it seems she escaped. Maybe he thinks I had something to do with it.
Keeping my voice level, I ask, “Do you know how she reached the West?”
There’s a small smile on his face, the sort he gets when he’s particularly pleased about something. “Oh, Evony. Of course I know how she reached the West. I smuggled her across the border myself.”
I stare at him. He did this? Der Mitternachtsjäger?
As if reading my mind, he says, “It is a very useful nickname the people of East Berlin have given me. Midnight Hunter. I can go any place I want, do anything, meet anyone. Nobody questions me. Nobody stops me. My colleagues see only a zealous Stasi officer and my Oberst thinks I’m an insomniac. The people see someone to fear. Or, usually they do. Some reckless young women stare me down, unafraid.” He puts his forefinger under my chin for a moment and smiles again. “I’m careful not to work to a pattern and I deliver the best results in the Stasi. The cells in Hohenschönhausen are teeming with traitors, thanks to me.”
“But why let Frau Schäfer go? No, not let her go. Help her escape. She wanted to leave. Surely that makes her a traitor too?” I imagined it so vividly—der Mitternachtsjäger coming for her in the night, cruel and implacable, unmoved by her misery and tears as he took her to prison. If he’s not that man, then who is he?
Reinhardt gazes at me a long time. “Everything I’ve told you, Evony. Everything you know about me. Can’t you see why I would do this?”
“No, I can’t. Why do you have a heart for her and not for everyone else in East Berlin?” But he doesn’t reply.
What Ana and Ulrich? Is this some sort of consolation prize, showing me that he has a crumb of mercy in the hopes that I’ll believe he’s more than just a ruthless killer? If what he’s telling me it even true. “That photograph and that report could be fake.”
He takes the report back, slipping it back into the file with the photograph. “I’m not going to demand you believe me. You will have to decide for yourself.”
I’m too tired and overwrought for this. “You hate traitors. You call us rats fleeing for the West.”
“Ja. That’s true.” His voice is heavy with disappointment and he puts the file back on the shelf.
“Why one life over another? Why is Frau Schäfer saved, but Ana and Ulrich are killed in cold blood?”
“I was getting to that. First I wanted to show you…” He glances at the file as if he’s regretting the way our conversation has unfolded. “I want to talk to you about Ana Friedman.”
My stomach turns over hearing him say her name. I’ve tried not to think about her much these past weeks, both because I’ve missed her and because I’ve felt so guilty. She knew the risks when we went down into that basement but that doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her at Reinhardt’s hands. “There’s nothing you can say.”
“You’ve seen me do things that seem harsh and cruel. I don’t enjoy killing people but I have to sometimes if they threaten me, or you. Especially if they threaten you.” His eyes harden and I know he’s thinking about Ulrich. I don’t know what to think about his death, either. I’ve lost so much these past months and I’ll never get Ulrich and Ana back. I’ll never get back Evony Daumler, either. Each day that passes I can feel her slipping further and further away and as she slips away so does the hope that I’ll ever see my father again.
Reinhardt shifts on his feet, his jaw working. “I’m not very good at explaining my actions, or asking for forgiveness. I’ve never had to do either before.”
That doesn’t surprise me in the least.
He’s silent for a few minutes, thinking hard. Finally he says, “I was wrong to shoot your friend.”
I search his blue-gray eyes, wondering if he’s just saying what he wants me to believe. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“What happened to ‘She deserved it because she aimed a gun at me?’”
“I was very angry that night. Hauptmann Heydrich was undermining me and I was in a terrible temper. In fact, he’s still—” Reinhardt’s jaw clenches again but he shakes his head. “I take my work seriously.
I think in absolutes, like the soldier I’ve been for a long time. But I should have told Ana to put the gun down. I’m sorry.”
My chest feels very tight all of a sudden. Why does this even matter to him? He doesn’t need to prove anything to me. I’m his prisoner.
His voice is low and urgent. “I mean it, Liebling. I’m sorry.”
So many things are churning in my head that I can only look at him, unable to speak, unable to breathe. Is this even forgivable? Does he deserve anything but my hatred for the things he has done?
He raises a hand to touch me, but then hope seems to die in his eyes. “For what it’s worth.”
I hear myself say hoarsely, “Why are you sorry?”
Reinhardt runs his eyes over the shelves, as if trying to put his feelings into words. “Because it could have so easily been you I shot that night. Ana on the stairs. You beside me with the gun. East Berlin has always been a battleground to me and there’s never been a single person in this city that I’ve had love for. I haven’t felt how I feel about you in a very long, long time.”
My face creases with tears and I bury it in my hands. The tears come thick and fast and I realize that I haven’t grieved for Ana. The world has moved so fast since that night. He puts a tentative hand on my arm and when I don’t shrug him off he draws me to him. He holds me as I cry, and I lean against him, taking strength from his body as I did after Ulrich attacked me. I know I shouldn’t, but I do, because I think I understand what he’s saying to me. All this time, we haven’t been people to him. We’ve been the enemy.
I’ve worried that I’ve been starting to see him as a man and not my captor. Maybe I’m becoming someone real to him, too.
He hands me his handkerchief and I wipe my face and say, “All right. I believe you.”
“Danke, Liebling.” And he sounds like he really means it.
