by Henry Porter
The woman looked along the table triumphantly.
‘The people are not stupid,’ continued Rosenharte. ‘They want to believe in socialism, but they cannot accept lies that insult their intelligence. They think less of the Party because of it. I was only expressing the common view.’
‘A disloyal view none the less,’ observed Schwarzmeer.
‘To the Party, or the ideals of socialism?’
‘Both,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘They are the same thing. You would do well to remember that.’ He clasped his knees and got up, which seemed to be a sign for one of the men and the woman to leave the room. Then, after giving Rosenharte a weary look, he pulled the wader straps up to his belt, fastened them and left.
‘I am Laurentz,’ said the older of the two men that had remained. He was in his forties and had the air of a practical man - a construction engineer or a factory administrator. ‘This is Richter.’ Richter was pallid with wispy blond hair that curled at the collar.
‘At last, some names,’ said Rosenharte. ‘Are they real?’
‘We are archival specialists. We deal with the past and we have real names.’
Rosenharte knew that that meant they scurried about in the filing system at Normannenstrasse, picking up trails from long ago and applying them to current intelligence problems. It was this pair who must have supplied Hans Heise with the information about the Commission so that he could test Annalise.
‘We specialize in people’s lives,’ said the younger one, whom Rosenharte realized had barely moved since he’d been in the room. ‘We construct a biography of a life, any life, in order to identify certain psychological traits, certain patterns.’
‘And we have been looking into your life,’ said Laurentz. He glanced down. ‘Actually, a lot of work was done back in the seventies and then more recently, in connection with your brother Konrad’s crimes.’
‘And through this analysis,’ said Rosenharte, ‘you will decide whether I have the right psychological profile to make a traitor?’
‘That is a little crude but yes, it is certainly one of our aims. We also suggest ways of addressing a problem with, say, an interview subject or someone who is harbouring a secret.’
The little shit was happy to sit there and admit that his speciality was suggesting ways of breaking people. ‘Are you threatening me?’ asked Rosenharte.
‘No, what makes you say that?’
‘Because I have heard of these techniques and know that you wouldn’t hesitate to use them on me.’
‘We are not threatening you,’ said Laurentz. ‘We just want to confirm a few things about your background and your career.’
‘Right, the old stuff about my parentage.’ His eyes drifted to the window and then a room next door. He noticed through the open door a man sitting in a chair with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap. Rosenharte’s subconscious had interpreted the man as a shadow. Who the hell was he? He turned with an enquiring look to Laurentz and Richter but they ignored him.
‘You and your brother Konrad were born on 15 December 1939,’ Richter intoned, ‘to Manfred and Isobel von Huth, both of them early members of the National Socialist Party. Your father joined the Second SS Panzerdivision, “Das Reich”, in 1939. He rose to become Obergruppenführer and saw action in Russia in 1942 and 1943 when he was linked with the massacres of several thousand civilians in Ukraine. In 1944 he became Brigadeführer und General of the Thirty-second SS Panzergrenadierdivision, “30 Januar”, and again saw action in Russia and in the defence of Berlin. Your mother, Isobel, was an aristocrat, a von Clausnitz, and it was at her family estates that your parents settled before the war. Your mother died in the bombing of Dresden on 13 February 1945 at which point it seems Marie Theresa Rosenharte, a housekeeper in the family home, took charge of you and your brother. In March 1945 your father died in mysterious circumstances and it is now generally assumed that he was either executed on orders of the high command, or that he was simply murdered by his own troops. Some time in that spring Frau Rosenharte took you to her farmhouse south of Dresden. She and her husband, an invalid from World War I, Hermann Rosenharte, adopted you. There were no other children.’
‘Is this necessary?’ asked Rosenharte. ‘Am I still to be held responsible for the actions of my parents?’
‘Naturally, this is a sensitive matter for you,’ said Richter. ‘Fascist tendencies of that order are still an embarrassment.’
‘They say the apple never falls far from the tree,’ chimed Laurentz.
‘I don’t think of my natural parents from one year to the next. I cannot even remember them.’ This was not quite true. He held one image of his mother - a neat, slender woman, sitting in the window bay of a great house. She was looking down at a book. When they entered the room with their nurse she turned and smiled with a look of remote interest. Rosenharte supposed that this must have been shortly before she was killed in Dresden. He and Konnie would have been five years old. From then on the only woman whom he had called mother - and loved as a mother - was Marie Theresa Rosenharte.
‘Perhaps you have subconsciously eliminated these memories,’ said Laurentz. ‘It would be perfectly understandable, given the nature of your father’s crimes.’
Rosenharte shook his head.
‘You did well at your studies,’ continued Richter. ‘The Rosenharte boys were the best students ever recalled at the small country school, which I don’t suppose is saying much in a community of cowhands and woodsmen. You both attended Humboldt University in Berlin, where your talent for languages displayed itself. Your brother studied political theory. You went on to gain a doctorate in history and taught at Humboldt. You were aged twenty-eight when you were approached by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.’ He stopped and consulted a thin blue folder. Rosenharte’s eyes came to rest on the Stasi seal, a hand holding a rifle aloft beneath a fluttering banner. ‘You were trained at the MfS school at Potsdam-Eiche. Your record as an officer with the MfS was well below expectations; you had little natural ability and were on several occasions reported to be in breach of disciplinary and security rules. Finally, you were deployed in the West - your file states as a last chance - first in Bonn then in Brussels. It was here that you met the woman known as Annalise Schering - the only successful attachment of this nature that you made. But within a few months it was reported to us that you had mishandled the situation. When approached by another officer, the woman said that she could not trust you with the delicacy of the task ahead. Then, rather than activating the agreed procedure to return to the GDR, you waited to be recalled and showed some signs of reluctance to leave the West.’
‘It was at this time,’ said Laurentz, ‘that your brother Konrad got into trouble with the authorities and was first arrested.’
‘To ensure that I returned,’ said Rosenharte.
They ignored him and peered into a file together.
‘You were married in 1980,’ continued Richter, ‘to Helga Goelkel. There were no children and you were divorced in 1982, just sixteen months later. Since then there have been a number of unsuccessful relationships which have all foundered because of your . . .’ he stopped and looked up from the file, ‘because of your philandering, Rosenharte.’
‘For a man of your gifts,’ said Laurentz, ‘it is not an impressive career.’
Rosenharte smiled at them ironically. ‘You missed all the good bits: my work at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden and my studies on the restoration of the Dresden collection carried out by the Soviets, the papers on Dutch realism and the drawings of the collection. The essays and papers published in the West. They’re modest achievements, I agree, but I am proud of them.’
‘Let’s face it, all this could have been carried out in the West. There’s nothing in your work which distinguishes it as the product of a socialist living in a socialist state.’
‘And my lectures? You dismiss those as well?’
‘A hobby,’ said Laurentz, ‘to entertain the idle mem
bers of the so-called modern intelligentsia - individualists who have forgotten the meaning of duty and loyalty to ideals of socialism. What I see here is a complete absence of the selfless contribution to the state required of every responsible citizen.’
‘I do my best,’ said Rosenharte hopelessly. ‘But not everyone is equipped for a life devoted to the socialist cause. It’s a special gift. I believe, however, that my lectures develop some themes that have not been considered before.’
Laurentz ignored this and looked at his companion. ‘And there’s the matter of your failure to help your MfS colleagues in Dresden,’ said Richter.
‘What? You mean my refusal to take money in exchange for information about my colleagues at the Gemäldegalerie?’
‘Three times you were asked, and three times you refused. That is not exactly devotion to the state. The picture emerges of someone who is set against the state and does not mind deceiving it,’ said Laurentz.
‘A psychological predisposition to defy the state’s authority,’ said Richter. ‘A pattern, which manifests itself in the anti-social stance of your brother’s persistent offending.’
Rosenharte got up again because he was in danger of hitting the little bastard. He walked away from the table and took another look out of the window, ignoring the man he had spotted listening next door. It was clear to him that he was not just in the hands of the Main Directorate. A whole range of Stasi specialists had been brought to bear on his case. Schwarzmeer was plainly going to cover all the ground before making a recommendation to the head of the Stasi, Erich Mielke.
‘It’s most impolite to get up like that,’ said Richter petulantly. ‘We’re dealing here with matters of the utmost importance.’
Rosenharte exhaled heavily. Play it cool, he told himself. Let them have their fun.
‘You haven’t had a drink now for nearly four days,’ observed Laurentz. ‘Are you missing alcohol? Is that a problem for you?’
‘I haven’t given it a thought. I drink for pleasure. I don’t need it and don’t miss it.’
‘That is not the feeling of your colleagues at the gallery. They think you drink to escape. They say you drink too much.’
‘If that’s all they’ve got to say about me I should feel relieved.’
Then they asked him about the women, naming one after the other with a prudish exactitude; the wives of friends, two students, a librarian, the girl who picked him up on the train from Berlin - although they had it the other way round - a netball instructor, and an assistant at the Dresden Intershop named Lottie, who gave him Südfrüchte - the fruits of the southern hemisphere, bananas, pineapples and, once, a mango, which were impossible to acquire in any quantity. They wanted him to know there was nothing they could not find in their files. They told him plainly that they were even acquainted with his sexual preferences. Rosenharte smiled at this. ‘By preferences you mean that I prefer women to men.’
‘You know what we mean,’ snapped Richter. ‘What you like to do in bed.’
‘I like to fool around a bit, talk, drink, make love and go to sleep. What about you? Perhaps you can suggest more interesting activities, Richter. Boys, poodles, leather-tell me.’
‘You’re being frivolous, Rosenharte.’
‘I didn’t raise the subject of relationships. You did. Anyway, I would like to know what these women reported my preferences to be. What else did they say? Does the Stasi have a rating system of sexual prowess? Perhaps you’ve developed a secret scale of performance? Did you talk to my ex-wife, Helga? Well, of course you would hardly get the most flattering portrait of me from her.’ She had been a bleakly beautiful woman: tall, fine-boned and in some ways like a Flemish Madonna with her white skin and tranquillity, which he had mistaken for a kind of inner grace. But after a year or so there was never any real conversation and the sex had faded. What she liked to do most was to clean and sweep wearing a pressed pinafore with the strings tied tightly around her waist. She watched television incessantly without comment or the slightest particle of curiosity. Why on earth had he married her? Well, she’d seduced him and he had been blinded by her extraordinary lovemaking. And of course he loved to see her in the flesh, rising in the morning, drying herself after a shower. She was exquisite and he wanted her as his. What a damned fool he had been.
‘It is understood that she left you because of your unreasonable demands and habitual intoxication.’
In a way they were right. After a period trying to find out what was wrong he gave up and spent his evenings with friends or reading and drinking in any bar that stayed open late enough. A year into their marriage, Konrad gently asked that she should not be brought out to the farmhouse where he lived with Else. One of the group of people who met there had good reason to believe that she had reported what he had said to the Stasi. Nothing was ever proved but this was the beginning of the end. Rosenharte almost wondered whether she had been instructed to marry him to keep an eye on Konrad’s circle.
The survey of his life moved to Marie Theresa Rosenharte’s death of untreatable cancer three years before. It was said, by Richter’s nameless sources, that Rosenharte had shown the poor woman not the slightest help or support. He laughed at them because the lie was so preposterous. He and Konnie had not left her bedside for three weeks and they had been devastated when she died.
Richter implied that on the occasions Rosenharte did help Else, when Konrad was in Bautzen prison, he had an ulterior motive: to seduce her.
He let them see that he was troubled and hurt by these accusations, but all the time he watched them with a grim detachment, recognizing that when used during the full Stasi custody, in which a prisoner was skilfully disorientated from the outset, the technique would become very corrosive indeed. Konnie had told him that they had repeatedly said that Else had been unfaithful to him, an allegation that ironically allowed him to cling to his sanity because he knew it to be untrue. The lie had been his saviour.
What Rosenharte was seeing now was an overture to the methodical dismantling of his personality that would take place if he made a mistake. Konnie had also told him what they did in Bautzen to consolidate the work done in Hohenschönhausen - the beatings and confinement in a space measuring twelve by fourteen inches, the back-breaking labour, the stomach and chest infections that spread like pollen in summer through the place they called the ‘Yellow Misery’.
But why threaten him now? If they were eager to get their hands on more of Annalise’s material - and he was sure they were - what good did it do? Maybe it had something to do with their twisted obsession with the control and ownership of people. They were giving him a sense of their omniscience, their ability to reach inside someone’s head and destroy whatever they wanted to.
The leaden deprecation of everything about him and all he held dear was dragged on until evening, when the interview suddenly ended as though the pair were meeting a pre-arranged timetable. They closed their files, got up and walked out, leaving Rosenharte gazing through the grilles of the window. He turned to see if the silent observer was still there, but he had left also, and Rosenharte wondered if this man would be his eventual nemesis, a shadow of a person ready to materialize when his fate was sealed.
6
Night Inquiry
Five minutes elapsed before two of the resident guards came and led him back to the basement. There was food - bread, sausage-meat, cheese and another solitary apple - waiting for him, together with a packet of Cabinet cigarettes. He ate the apple, deciding to save the rest for later, and settled down to a new batch of old magazines and newspapers.
He read until ten, without hearing a sound outside or in his own building, then ate and smoked a couple of cigarettes. A little later on he lay down on his bed without undressing.
As he expected, they came for him again. In the dead of night, two men rushed him, still drowsy, across the damp grass to a low concrete tumulus surrounded by lights. He had the impression of a fortified storehouse; inside there was a lot of equipment - h
oses, protective suits, helmets and implements. He was roughly placed on a stool in front of three dazzling lights.
A voice came from behind them. For some reason, Rosenharte was certain that it belonged to the man who had sat so quietly through the first interrogation in the adjacent room.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
‘You met the woman known as Schering in August 1974,’ said the voice more loudly.
‘About then,’ said Rosenharte, straightening his clothes. ‘I had picked her up in a bar. At the time, I was working as a guide in the Musée des Beaux Arts. She came to one of my tours about a week later and things developed from there. You know all this: it was in my reports at the time.’
‘And you became lovers. How would you characterize her feelings towards you?’
‘I believe that soon afterwards she became very attached to me.’
‘She fell in love with you.’
‘If you put it that way, yes.’
‘When did you discuss working for the GDR?’
‘I left it for about four weeks, then introduced the subject one evening.’
‘She wasn’t shocked?’
‘No, but she said there was very little of interest for us in the Commission. She was hoping to land a job at Nato.’
‘This was not mentioned in your reports.’
‘I didn’t want to say anything to Colonel Neusel - my controller at the time - until she’d definitely got the job. Besides, she wouldn’t tell me which department she’d applied for.’
‘But when she did receive news of the job, she dumped you. Is that what happened?’
‘I don’t know. Some time that winter she seemed to lose her enthusiasm for our relationship. She said it had come at the wrong time for her: she wished that we had met five years later. Then she refused to see me. I tried to get in touch but she wouldn’t answer her phone or the messages I left at her apartment.’
‘She cut you out of her life?’
‘Yes. Look, why are we going over this again?’
