Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  ‘We can’t be long,’ she said, after they had stumbled through some awkward pleasantries. ‘I have an appointment at five.’

  ‘Anything important?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s very important, Herr Doktor.’

  ‘Rudi - my name’s Rudi.’

  ‘I prefer Rudolf. It suits you better. But I will call you Rudi, if you like.’

  ‘I have to go soon, too. I want to take a walk before I leave, maybe to the Clara Zetkin Park.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need the exercise. ’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s okay. But why do you have to go?’

  ‘I don’t have to go. I just want to stretch my legs.’

  ‘But you said you had to go.’

  This was not going well. He took a mouthful of beer and watched three police trucks that were disgorging Vopos.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘There were riot police at Dresden station at five thirty this morning. Do they think something’s going to happen?’

  ‘Monday evening prayers at the Nikolaikirche. That’s where I’m going after this. We meet every Monday to pray for peace. The authorities don’t like it because other groups come - the environmentalists, people who want to leave the GDR, people who want free speech and reform, people protesting about prisoners of conscience. Some day the Stasi are going to break into the church and take everybody. They’ve already arrested many of my friends.’ Her eyes flared, then she looked out of the window and suddenly straightened. ‘Were you followed here?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘There was a man looking at us from the other side of the street. You can’t see him now because of the trucks. I think he was at the lecture.’

  ‘It was open to the public. Perhaps he’s an admirer of yours.’

  She gave him a withering look. ‘You shouldn’t smoke so much at your age. You’re in the danger zone.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Tall, thin, russet-coloured hair almost like yours. He looks strong - maybe he works with his hands - but nervous, unsure of himself. Someone who is out of place in this town.’

  ‘You’re very observant,’ he said.

  ‘But does it mean anything to you?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. Tell me more about these prayer meetings.’

  ‘They started last year. Last January we tried to advertise them by leaving leaflets in people’s letterboxes. But one man went along to the police and, before everyone got up the next morning, the Stasi and the police had removed the leaflets from the letterboxes with long tweezers. Somewhere, the Stasi had a supply of specially long tweezers for this exact purpose. That’s the most amazing part of the story.’

  ‘So no one came?’

  ‘No, about five hundred people showed up in the end. That was really the start of it.’ She smiled and stirred her tea. Rosenharte watched her.

  ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘a lot of people took the leaflets to the police out of fear. Still, they are beginning to understand. In the summer there was a man who organized a festival of street musicians. I remember the date because it was my birthday, June the tenth. Musicians came from all over the GDR and began playing in the centre, but because it was not officially sanctioned, the police moved in and arrested anyone with a musical instrument - they even rounded up members of the city’s orchestra because they were carrying violin cases.’ She suppressed a giggle but her eyes began to water. ‘Can you imagine? They arrested players from the orchestra in the city of Bach.’ She placed a knuckle at the corner of her eye to stop a tear.

  ‘They’re frightened of their own shadows,’ he murmured.

  ‘No, they’re frightened of us. We, the people.’

  ‘We, the people,’ he mused.

  There was a silence, a good silence, he thought, because neither felt the need to say anything.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ she started, ‘thought you might be the brother of Konrad Rosenharte, the filmmaker. Are you?’

  ‘He’s my twin.’ He paused and looked away. ‘He’s in prison.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The usual . . .’ He stopped, suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of Konnie. ‘You see, he can’t take any more. They broke him last time.’

  Her hand fidgeted indecisively on the surface of the table. ‘I’m sorry. It’s nearly as bad for those on the outside,’ she said, ‘the helplessness, the not knowing. That’s the way they designed it, to hurt as many people connected with their target as possible.’

  ‘You sound as if you know about it.’

  She nodded. ‘Everyone knows something. The best anyone can do is support loved ones. That draws some of the poison.’

  ‘What a country,’ he said under his breath. ‘They’ve got Konrad’s wife, too. The children have been taken away.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Then why did you take such a risk today? It won’t be ignored. Believe me. Not with your brother in jail.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to say anything,’ said Rosenharte. ‘But then I made that stupid remark about Christ and Marx and when that fool started spouting, I . . .’

  ‘I had the impression that you were cooler than that.’ Her rather critical demeanour had returned.

  ‘Maybe I should have been, but the attitudes of that man are the ones that imprisoned Konrad. You know every formal act of expression has to be checked by a committee of nincompoops. The entries in the catalogue I have written for the Gemäldegalerie are being checked by five people. And each one thinks he should weigh in with a correction or some simple-minded observation. I have to tell them that Rembrandt wasn’t a Party member. Konrad’s only crime was to make a private film that displeased the authorities - and for this they put a block on his career and jailed him. They destroyed his health because they didn’t like his film.’

  She nodded in the direction of a couple that had sat down near them. It was a warning to him that he could be overheard. ‘When will you return to Dresden?’

  ‘This evening, probably - I’m not sure. I’m hoping to meet someone.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s not important. It’s related to work.’

  ‘You’ll see this person after your walk in the park?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And in Dresden, what will you do when you go back?’

  ‘My life is taken up with Konrad at the moment. It’s a pretty complicated business.’ He paused. ‘Then I suppose I’ll eventually get down to writing a book from these talks - a book that will never be published, of course.’

  ‘But a book that will be read,’ she said brightly.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘It will be your life’s work. A great book. A book that will be an axe to the frozen sea inside us.’

  ‘That’s a wonderful phrase,’ he said. ‘I’d like to use it.’

  ‘Then you must give credit to the author.’ She looked up from her tea enigmatically.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t recognize it. Who said it?’

  ‘Kafka,’ she said very quietly. ‘Franz Kafka.’

  10

  Clara Zetkin Park

  Outside the cafe Ulrike brushed stray wisps of her dark-brown hair away from her face with a gesture of irritation. ‘We don’t have much time. I need you to listen very closely to everything I say. But first, I must know how you heard about the villa in Clara Zetkin Park.’

  Rosenharte had prepared his answer for when he met Kafka. ‘I did my own investigations in Dresden. I found out from Misha’s colleague in the Technical University. It was by chance that I heard that Abu Jamal stays there.’

  She frowned doubtfully. ‘Nothing like that comes by chance. And please don’t use names.’

  ‘Trust me, it’s not important how I know.’

  ‘It is important,’ she said, ‘but I’m going to ignore it. Now listen. We’ll walk to the park. We’ll go the long way to avoid the traffic cam
eras. They use them to track people’s movements. It won’t take long. I’ll show you the villa, but don’t be obvious. Remember, in this city one in four of everyone you see is working for the Stasi in some way or other.’

  They set off to the south-east of the city. ‘I am a fluent Arabic speaker.’ She walked quickly and spoke with head down. ‘I spent most of my childhood in Arab countries. I studied European languages at university and I was employed by the government as an interpreter and translator of documents. I also worked at the university doing the same thing, though my position now is much less sensitive than it was. I am at the Central Institute for Youth Research, which in itself requires some security clearance.’

  ‘Why would you need it there? They’re just another group of people adding to the paper mountain, writing reports that no one reads.’

  She stopped and smiled firmly. ‘And you’re about to write a book that won’t be published. At least my work provides me with a living. I don’t want to be rude, but would you just let me talk? I need to tell you a lot in a very short time.’ He nodded and they continued. ‘We have to be vetted to work at the institute because of what we’re finding out in our surveys. Disaffection has been growing among young people. Your audience today was an example of that. Ten years ago they’d have all got up and left when Böhme told them to.’ She stopped speaking as they passed a group of Vopos and flashed them a supportive smile that was returned by their officer. ‘But this isn’t the point. I still have access to the Department of International Relations and I have a friend there.’

  ‘And this friend has shown you proof that the GDR is supporting Middle Eastern terrorism? That doesn’t seem very likely.’

  ‘Please, everything will be clear, if you listen. The bombing of the nightclub in Berlin - they knew about that though it was Libyans who carried out the attack. What I know for certain is that they’re going to do something big at Christmas in the Federal Republic and that there’ll be attacks on Western interests next year in the Middle East. The Arab has a list - the American embassies in Jordan and Egypt. Jordan will be in January, Egypt some time in March. There’s something planned for Vienna and maybe Paris, but we don’t have details.’

  ‘I can’t believe the Stasi would leave this kind of material lying around for you to read. They wouldn’t put anything like this in writing.’

  ‘Of course they didn’t put it in writing. These attacks will be enormous - as big as the truck bomb that hit the American embassy in Beirut. A lot of lives are going to be lost unless you listen carefully and then get this information to the West.’

  Rosenharte stopped. ‘Why me? Why have I been chosen for this job? I’m just an academic.’

  ‘Like me. But we have a duty.’

  ‘Exactly why would an academic doing youth research know about these things? The other side will need to know how you got this information.’

  ‘The Arab drinks heavily. That’s why he has problems with his kidneys and liver. My friend is the woman they have assigned to look after him while he stays here in Leipzig. She has already got clearance to work with the professor and she’s a valued employee. She was the natural choice.’

  ‘You mean the GDR supplies a woman for him?’

  ‘Yes, of course! A woman who speaks Arabic.’

  ‘And he gets drunk and tells her everything?’

  ‘That was true until his operation. He’s become fond of her and she was with him in the hospital when he had a kidney transplant. He needed an interpreter. He was on drugs and it was then that she began to learn the details. We acquired two names of his associates in the Middle East and these were passed to the West in the summer.’

  ‘Yes, those names are what convinced them that your information was good.’

  She nodded. ‘The rest we have deduced by the telexes and the movements of the professor.’ She avoided Misha’s name.

  ‘You’re sure that the authorities are involved?’

  ‘Yes, but they keep their distance from the planning, which is why the Arab is not guarded as closely as he should be. Everything goes through the professor. That’s the weak point. We know when the professor comes to Leipzig, when he goes to the villa, when he travels abroad to Yemen or Libya or Sudan. We know about his money, which all comes from the Party.’

  ‘Is the Arab here now?’

  ‘He comes next week, or the week after. We’re not sure.’

  ‘And he’ll stay at the villa?’

  ‘Maybe. There are other places he uses. We won’t know until he’s here.’

  They had skirted the centre of town and now reached the park. Some children were trying to get a kite airborne and one or two couples sat on the grass. Rosenharte noticed that a number of the trees had died from pollution. It was the same everywhere, but in Leipzig the lignite smoke that was responsible seemed even worse that day. A slight taste of sulphur hadn’t left his mouth since he stepped off the train.

  ‘We all cough from November to the spring here,’ Ulrike said when he mentioned it to her. ‘In winter many people have respiratory problems. Is it as bad in Dresden?’

  ‘Nothing like this,’ he said. They had stopped at a path. She turned to face him. ‘Take me in an embrace and look over my shoulder.’ Rosenharte held her lightly by the waist and shoulder. ‘There is a large, dark green building on the far side of the park,’ she said to his right ear. ‘Next to that is the villa, but you can only see a little of it because of the high fence.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, thinking that it would be entirely feasible for someone to remove Abu Jamal at night. He let her go, after looking down at her face and noticing that her skin was almost translucent.

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you give all this information to the British woman who was here in the summer? Why wait?’

  ‘It was too dangerous for her to take this out. And anyway it wasn’t until the Arab’s medical operation in August that we had hard evidence of the plans and dates for these attacks.’

  ‘Why do you think I stand any better chance of getting this out?’

  She looked at him. ‘You can handle this. I know it.’

  ‘Did you know they were going to send me? Did you choose me?’

  ‘You were a candidate. We knew you travelled on the train with the professor because he complained about seeing you one morning to his secretary. He said that you were just the kind of unproductive member of the intelligentsia that he despised.’

  ‘But you suggested me to the British. They wouldn’t have thought of me otherwise.’

  ‘Among other people, yes.’

  ‘What made you think of me?’

  ‘We knew you came here quite often to teach your classes and lecture. You have a pretext for being here. You seemed perfect.’

  Rosenharte didn’t buy any of this, but decided not to press it. He was shooting the rapids, he thought, and it was crazy to question the only other person with a paddle. ‘What other information can I take to them?’

  ‘That’s all. The likely timing for the actions in Jordan and Egypt are surely enough for you.’ They had turned and were moving out of the park. She was looking down at the path ahead of them. ‘You understand we’re bound together now,’ she said. ‘We’re dependent on each other in a way that’s dangerous for us both. If you are caught, you will tell them in the end. So will I. We know that. You have to be very careful.’

  She glanced up, real fear in her eyes. He had made much the same speech in Trieste to Annalise’s stand-in.

  ‘There’s one other thing I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you leave? If you took this information out yourself they’d give you a place to live and a job.’

  ‘Leave!’ She hissed the word. ‘I will not leave. That’s the problem at my church: the tensions between those who want the freedom to go to the West and those who want to stay and build a country where people can speak freely and meet without thinking there’s an informer in the room. They’re the true de
mocrats. The others just want a new car and a better standard of living. I want to rid the GDR of these stinking old men who steal everything from us and give us platitudes about sacrifice in return.’

  ‘If you go on like that, you will be arrested.’

  ‘The time has come when everyone has to take risks, Rudolf - Rudi. You know that.’

  ‘But if we’re going to work together on this thing, I have to know you’re not going to put yourself in an exposed position.’

  ‘We’re already exposed. We’ve reached the stage when it’s no longer enough for an intellectual like you to make clever points that you hope one group of people will understand while the others don’t. We have to occupy the streets and take possession of our city.’

  ‘Well that’s for sure,’ he said, looking round him. They had reached a very run-down quarter where the cobblestones were loose in the road and the plaster had dropped from the nineteenth-century facades on both sides of the street. Drains had become detached and were ruptured. Bands of damp had spread three or four feet on either side of them and moss flourished in the cracks. Further down the street, one of the houses had collapsed and the two neighbouring properties were hopefully shored up with a few poles of scaffolding.

  ‘Ulrike.’ It was the first time he had used her name. ‘I want you to listen to me. You saw the number of police we passed on the way here. They will never let you simply take the state from them. You saw what happened in China. You read reports of Politburo members making threats about repeating Tiananmen Square in Germany. They will do it here, I promise you. You must leave. I can’t, but you can.’

  ‘We have to take risks. We will fight violence with non-violence. They can’t massacre us in the middle of Europe. We’re not living under Adolf Hitler.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s a pity we can’t take a proper walk out in the country,’ he said. ‘Somewhere clean and without pollution.’