Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  ‘The axe to my frozen sea,’ she whispered eventually, stroking his back.

  Next morning he saw her standing in a huge old bath, bending down with a pail to scoop up the warm water they’d heated on the range. Things were easy between them now. As she emptied the pail over her the light from the mottled glass of the bathroom windows fell across her slim white body. He watched her do this several times before she caught him smiling and flung some water in his direction. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s just that I saw a painting in my mind - the picture Rembrandt did of his wife Saskia in that exact pose. You know the one?’

  ‘No.’ She stepped out of the bath and wrapped herself in the length of sheet they used as a towel. ‘I know the exact moment when I completely fell for you. It was when you looked at that bird by the phone box and talked about your brother. When was it for you?’ she asked rather earnestly.

  ‘I felt something in the cafe that first day but resisted it.’

  ‘What!’ She came over and pinched him on the leg. ‘God, I love you. I have never meant it like this before and it feels so wonderful to be able to say it without the usual doubts and qualifications. I’m like a teenager. I’m weak with pleasure when I watch you.’

  He took her hands and held them. ‘I can only say this: that I’ve never loved a woman like I love you. In fact I barely credited the existence of such a state. I am . . .’ He searched for the right words. ‘Your raging glory, your conviction and tenacity, your brilliant, eccentric courage and your beautiful, beautiful body which leaves me helpless with desire. You simply overwhelm me, Ulrike.’

  She held his hand and stroked it with pleasure shining in her eyes. ‘This is too much,’ she said.

  ‘The hibernation is ending,’ he said.

  Later he walked to Schwarzmeer’s house and broke in again. He dialled Harland and was put through to Else very quickly. They spoke for fifteen minutes, which included some long, painful silences. He did not tell her about the cremation, because he judged she wasn’t up to hearing about the East German state’s final indignity to her husband. He would have to break it to her later that there was no body for her to weep over, no place where Konrad lay. He read her Konrad’s letter - the letter that he’d wept over so many times in previous days - and apologized for not giving it to her before. She listened in silence, and when he came to the end, said that Konrad never wrote anything that better caught his nobility and generosity. She told him Harland had been to see them three days in a row and had set up a bank account for her. She had been in touch with Idris and was arranging for him to get a visitor’s visa. He was so good with Christoph and Florian that she wanted him to stay for a few weeks and help them settle down. He said goodbye and told her he would be with her as soon as circumstances allowed, an odd phrase that she didn’t question because she was too busy telling him to be careful.

  He lit a cigarette and thought guiltily how much he could do with a drink. He looked down at the chair where he’d collapsed and put the idea to the back of his mind. It was too early and he was too damned old to go on behaving like this. In a few weeks he was going to be fifty.

  He picked up the phone again and dialled the number on the piece of paper that had fallen from his pocket with Konrad’s letter - the number that had been left with Else by the Pole.

  ‘It’s Dr Rudi Rosenharte,’ he said when the call was answered.

  ‘This is good,’ said a man in German. ‘I need to meet you or your brother about a most important matter.’

  Rosenharte drew breath. ‘My brother is dead.’ There was a silence at the other end. ‘Hello? Are you there? My brother died nearly four weeks ago.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that news. It’s tragic - very shocking.’

  ‘Well, can I help you?’

  ‘This is a delicate matter . . . er . . . I must talk to you in person. I cannot speak of these things over the telephone. It concerns your natural mother.’

  ‘My natural mother? Why would you want to talk about her . . .’ He stopped and crouched down. The top of a man’s head had passed the window at the far end of the house. ‘I can’t talk now,’ he whispered.

  ‘It’s very important I speak to you, for your sake as well as mine.’

  ‘Not now,’ Rosenharte hissed and replaced the receiver.

  He took the gun from his pocket, slipped the safety catch and checked the clip, then crawled noiselessly to one of the windows and looked out. He guessed the man had come from the direction of the storehouse, in which case he would know that someone had been there. He waited in silence, then heard a noise to his left. Whoever it was would soon notice the broken door latch and investigate. Inwardly cursing his own stupidity, he got up and moved on to the veranda, where he perched on the edge of one of the cane chairs. A second or two later a large man wandered round the corner of the house. He had a beer gut, a powerful, slow-moving gait and rather mean, unintelligent eyes. This was clearly Dürrlich, back from his spell of driving Schwarzmeer in Berlin.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Rosenharte cheerily. ‘I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.’

  Dürrlich did a comic double-take. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘I might ask you the same question.’

  ‘I have a right to be here. You don’t.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure about that. And anyway I’ve got a gun and will have no compunction in blowing your head off.’

  This didn’t seem to affect the man. He moved to the bottom of the steps and placed his hands on his hips. He was breathless and sweating from his walk.

  ‘I mean it,’ said Rosenharte calmly. ‘To kill you would not be an unpleasant way to start the day.’

  The man absorbed this. ‘What have I done to you? You’re on the property of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. This is part of a restricted zone. Maximum penalty ten years for trespassing. It’s you who is in the wrong.’ He paused and squinted at Rosenharte. ‘I know you. You were the man they brought here in September. They kept you locked up in one of the guest houses.’

  ‘That just shows me how stupid you are, doesn’t it? I mean, if you wanted to get away with your life this fine morning you wouldn’t say you knew who I was.’ He rose and approached him with a two-handed aim. ‘You have a choice: you can die or cooperate with me. Which is it to be?’

  ‘There are other officers here. You won’t get away with this.’

  ‘Call them. We can have a party.’ Rosenharte waved the gun towards the storehouse.

  The man said nothing.

  ‘You people are all washed up. You’ll be out of a job soon. You might as well do as I say and save your wretched life. Now, start walking to the storehouse carrying this above you.’ He moved a heavy oak dining-room chair to the edge of the veranda, which Dürrlich reluctantly hoisted over his head.

  When they got inside, Rosenharte made him sit down on the chair with his back to the cage. ‘Burgundy or Bordeaux? Ah no, I’ve got just the thing for you. There’s a very fine brandy here.’ He picked up a bottle, knocked the top off with a clean swipe against the cage door and handed it to Dürrlich. ‘No glass, I’m afraid, so you’re going to have to watch that you don’t cut yourself.’

  Dürrlich began to drink. When he had emptied the brandy, Rosenharte gave him a bottle of wine and then some port, but Dürrlich was already looking pretty pale. Rosenharte waited a further forty-five minutes before he slumped back in his chair, dribbling and groaning. He made him drink a little more port, then bound his hands and feet and tied him securely to the cage. ‘If I was a less charitable man, I’d gag you,’ he said. ‘But I believe you’re going to need your mouth in the coming hours.’

  Dürrlich shook his head. ‘Please . . . no . . .’

  ‘By the time you come to, I’ll be over the border. I’m saying goodbye to this apology for a country. So you can forget any idea of following me.’ He pushed the door shut and began to walk to the Schloss.

  It took no more than fifteen minutes to load the
Wartburg and say their goodbyes to Flammensbeck, who told them of a place they could stay with a friend of his called Krahl in the mountains. He said he’d discover Dürrlich towards evening on the pretence of doing the repairs that had been ordered. Before getting into the car, Ulrike hugged him and kissed him on both cheeks. The old fellow’s eyes watered up. He had enjoyed having them there more than he could say. It had been the best time he’d had in years, he said.

  33

  A Battle Won

  They spent the next few days touring the sites of his boyhood - the house that once belonged to the Rosenharte family, the school and sports ground where the Rosenharte boys starred and finally Konrad’s last home, which had an air of deserted melancholy now. They camped, hid out in barns and one night stayed with Flammensbeck’s friend Krahl who asked no questions when he was presented with two bottles of vintage Burgundy and a flagon of Flammensbeck’s slivovitz. As well as explaining his past to Ulrike, the trip served to fix Rosenharte’s position for himself after Konrad’s death. He knew that he was saying goodbye to it all because he’d decided to go to Else in the West.

  They were sitting at the top of a valley on a Sunday afternoon when Rosenharte turned and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Marry me and come with me,’ he said suddenly. ‘We can get over the border no problem.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Which are you saying can’t to?’

  ‘Coming with you.’

  ‘But you will marry me?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course, Rudi; of course I will.’ She was smiling but also matter of fact about it. ‘But I must attend the demonstration tomorrow. I’ve missed too much of what’s been going on. This is my destiny, to stay in Leipzig and see it through.’

  He put his hand on her shoulder and craned his head to see her eyes. ‘Most of the time a person’s destiny is what they choose. But if you choose to go to Leipzig I’ll come too and march for one last time. Then I want you to think about leaving with me. Because this - us, you and me - is your destiny now.’

  She was watching some geese that were moving nervously across the field below them with a sheepdog running and crouching behind them. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

  ‘Going to Leipzig now is a big risk.’

  She pursed her lips and turned to him with utterly resolute eyes. ‘There isn’t a risk. And even if there is, I have to be there. Look, I’ll phone Biermeier.’

  ‘His phone will be tapped.’

  ‘I doubt that, but I won’t speak. I’ll just see if he answers. If he does, we’ll know it’s okay. He’ll know it’s me.’

  Later she dialled the number in Berlin twice and let it ring three times before hanging up. On the third occasion she beckoned Rosenharte to place his ear to the receiver. They both heard Biermeier say ‘Hurensohn’ - sonofabitch - before hanging up.

  ‘Good. Hurensohn is our code for all’s clear. We’re going to Leipzig tomorrow.’ She paused. ‘Well, I’m going. I don’t know about you.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come,’ said Rosenharte.

  They stayed that night in a shack above the high, still waters of the lake where Konrad and he had spent so much time flat on their bellies looking at the sticklebacks in summer, and in winter fooling with classmates on an ice slide. It was without question the place he loved most, for it was here that his mind had first become attuned to nature, a passion that down the years had become the counterpoint to his scholarship, urging him to solitude and contemplation.

  They made a fire outside the shack, put their backs to its wooden side and covered themselves in rugs and the sleeping bag. The lake seemed to hold light well into the night and above them one or two stars shone through the cold winter haze, which had settled on the mountains at dusk. Rosenharte thought of some lines that he had consciously committed to memory when he was a young man and haltingly spoke them in their original English. ‘These beauteous forms, through the long absence, have not been to me as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in the lonely rooms and ’mid the din of towns and cities, I have owed to them in hours of weariness, sensations sweet.’

  Ulrike watched him with a curious expression. ‘Who wrote that?’

  ‘William Wordsworth. It expresses what I feel about this place.’

  ‘Do you admire the English?’

  ‘They killed my mother with their bombs, though that was probably a merciful release for her, Konrad and me. And they must share some of the responsibility for my brother’s death. I always liked the idea of the English but not the pleasure they take in their own amateurishness. As Konrad said, they are the only Europeans content to be ignorant.’

  Soon afterwards, Ulrike fell asleep propped up against him. He stayed awake for a long time, moving carefully so as not to disturb her when he took a swig from the last bottle of Schwarzmeer’s wine or lit a cigarette. Then he too slept.

  They left early next day and found a phone. Ulrike called several friends and when she returned to the car she could barely contain herself. The leadership was in a state of paralysis and didn’t know how to respond to the popular movement or to the country’s worsening economic problems. That very day Democratic Awakening was to constitute itself as a political party, and although the Stasi was trying to mould the revolution by infiltrating new political groups, no one was taking any notice of them. There was almost no evidence of them in daily life in Leipzig. Across East Germany the people were in a state of constant and open defiance of the authorities: demonstrations on the Leipzig model were occurring in every major city. And they were peaceful. Not one example of vandalism had been reported. There was no violence.

  ‘The beast isn’t slaughtered yet,’ said Rosenharte. ‘I mean it; we have to be careful tonight.’

  ‘How are they going to find me in a hundred thousand people?’

  ‘Still, they may be looking, so I think we should stay apart.’

  In Leipzig, Rosenharte parked a few streets north of her place and went straight to the Nikolaikirche. When they arrived in the huge crowd outside the church she squeezed his hand and reached up to him, and whispered in his ear that everything that she had dreamt of had come true. She looked at him for a fleeting second with the myopic intimacy of their lovemaking, lifted his hand and placed it to her lips before turning to go into the church.

  Rosenharte hung around in the crowd uneasily. He raised the collar of his coat and avoided eye contact with the people around him. At the end of the service the congregation poured into the crowd with a surge of joy. He moved quickly to fall in behind the group of people surrounding Ulrike and followed them to the rally in Karl-Marx-Platz. Nothing could prepare him for the size of the crowd. There were three or four times the numbers of 9 October. Yet the atmosphere was far less charged by the fear of official violence. The citizens of Leipzig had laid title to the square named after the father of socialism: they owned their city, not just for the heady hours of the Monday demonstrations, but for all time. Rosenharte began to feel the battle had been won. He relaxed and fell into conversation with a man next to him, who explained that change had even been noticed in the security forces: young Vopos were refusing to police the demonstrations and desertions from the armed forces were said to be in the hundreds.

  Through the evening he never lost sight of Ulrike as she threaded through the crowds greeting old friends, hugging and kissing the companions with whom she had fought the long campaign at the Nikolaikirche. At about ten the crowd began to thin. The people had made their point, and they would do so again, pushing their numbers towards the critical mass necessary for permanent change. But their feet were tired, the working week was ahead of them and, whatever the joy of Leipzig’s new fellowship, they needed their sleep.

  Rosenharte tapped Ulrike on the shoulder and said it was time for them to be going. ‘We should leave the city too,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she replied firmly. ‘After so long on the road I need my own bed. It will be fine. They would have picked up Biermeier
if they suspected anything.’

  They walked briskly from the city centre, heads bent against the sharp breeze, talking excitedly about the things they’d seen that night. As they entered her street she slipped her hand in his hip pocket for warmth then withdrew it and looked down.

  ‘What’s this? Ah, the picture of your mother.’ She handed it to him. ‘I wanted to ask you a question about that picture.’

  ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘Why don’t we talk about it when we get inside? It’s probably nothing. I’ll go ahead and make sure everything’s okay. If the outside light is on you’ll know the coast is clear. Okay?’

  ‘What about the picture? What were you going to say?’

  She stopped. ‘It says September 1939. That can’t be right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, look at her, Rudi! She’s as thin as a rake. Yet you were born three months after that picture was taken. She should have been five or six months pregnant with boy twins that September but she looks like she’s just won a slimming contest.’

  ‘It’s dated wrongly. I found it in a diary for 1938.’

  ‘You’re probably right, but what mother makes a mistake like that?’ She smiled. ‘Wait a few minutes then follow me.’

  He watched her go, slightly puzzled, and felt for his cigarettes and lighter. He saw her disappear into the wisteria gateway then he began to move slowly up the road. He was less than fifty yards from the entrance when a car moved from the bay that he had used to observe her building and drifted to the kerb on his side of the road. Rosenharte flung the cigarette away and backed into the shadows, his heart pounding. He reached for the gun and fumbled with the safety catch. A man got out and held the back door open as a chauffeur would do. Then two men emerged from the gateway with Ulrike between them. No more than a few seconds elapsed before she was bundled into the back seat and the three men climbed in, but during that time Rosenharte registered that Ulrike did not look his way and that the man who opened the door was Colonel Zank. He raised the gun and aimed, but knew he couldn’t fire. He might hit Ulrike and the sound of the shots would certainly bring a response from Zank’s men. He would be outgunned and killed or taken prisoner. Neither would help her, and that was why she didn’t cry out for his help.