The Linden Tree

by Hester Rowan

  ‘Comrade Elisabeth Lorenz?’ said the thin dark one.

  My hand went nervously up to my lips. I nodded.

  ‘We have some sad news for you. May we come in?’

  They advanced without waiting for my agreement and I found myself backing clumsily into the sitting-room.

  ‘News …?’ I heard myself saying, my voice cracking with tension.

  ‘Yes. I am sorry to have to tell you that your grandmother died last night. You will not need to go to West Berlin today after all, Comrade.’

  Chapter Twelve

  I swayed. I could feel the blood draining from my cheeks, leaving them pinched and cold. ‘But –’ I stammered, ‘– but –’

  The spokesman took off his hat, revealing a prematurely balding head. His dark face was thin, his nose and eyes sharp. He watched me like a bird of prey, waiting for my reaction.

  My mind was in a turmoil. I was near to panic, the implication of his words filling me with blind terror, and only my stage training kept me from breaking down.

  The show had to go on. At all costs, I had to remember my role. I wasn’t Alison Maxwell who was desperate to get back to the safety of the West, I was Elisabeth Lorenz who had just heard that her much-loved grandmother had died.

  Or had she really died? Did they suspect the switch? Had they come to test my story?

  I sagged into an armchair and bent my face down on my hands, playing for enough time to think my way through this terrifying situation. Alone, I would be helpless; I might as well confess and get it over. But Kurt would arrive within the next ten minutes, and he would be able to extricate me. Yes, I was sure of that. Nicolas had trusted Kurt and put me in his care, and he would know what to do.

  In the meantime, I had to try to react as Elisabeth would have done. I looked up at the men, my eyes, my face, my voice all showing the grief that she would feel.

  ‘But – oh, but surely my grandmother can’t be dead?’ I appealed to the man. ‘The doctor said yesterday that it might be a week – she can’t have gone so quickly.’

  He shrugged, politely regretful. ‘I understand that she was very old. A sudden relapse, I imagine.’

  ‘How do – how did you hear this, Comrade?’

  ‘We have very reliable sources of information.’

  ‘I see …’ I stood up, clutching the borrowed wrap round me, and faced him with dignity. ‘I would still like to go to West Berlin today, please, to pay my respects and comfort my aunt.’

  He raised his eyebrows, making his face even longer and thinner. ‘That is not within the terms of your permit, Comrade. You were allowed to make two visits to the West for the purpose of seeing your grandmother when she was gravely ill. Her death invalidates that permit.’

  The callousness of East German officialdom appalled me, but anger would not be in character; presumably Elisabeth understood the system. ‘Comrade Braun will be here in a few minutes,’ I said. ‘I will ask him when he arrives – I’m sure he will be able to arrange it.’

  The man gave a thin smile. ‘Comrade Braun would have been here,’ he corrected me, ‘but when the news of your grandmother’s death came, his instructions were cancelled.’

  I sat down again. I hadn’t much option; my knees seemed suddenly to give way. If Kurt wasn’t allowed to come, then I really was on my own.

  ‘But I must go back,’ I babbled, finding no difficulty at all in making my voice break with tears, because they were so nearly genuine. ‘My relatives are expecting me to go back. You can’t stop me now, it would be too cruel! Oh please, just for twenty minutes –’

  He shook his head implacably. ‘Your permit has been withdrawn,’ he said. ‘You know as well as I do, Comrade, how difficult it was to get the permit in the first place. Oh, not because of your own record, that has always been impeccable. But your father has been a trouble-maker.’

  I remembered what Nicolas had told me about Elisabeth’s background. ‘My poor father is in hospital,’ I retorted.

  ‘Now he is. Lucky for him that he had a nervous illness, or he might well have found himself on trial as an enemy of the State. It was his record that made the authorities so reluctant to grant you your permit, Comrade. But they were generous. You should be grateful that you were able to see your grandmother at all. There is nothing more that you can do over there now.’

  ‘But – but the funeral,’ I stammered, clutching at fronds of hope. ‘I must go to the funeral.’

  He exchanged an exasperated glance with his companion, a stocky blond young man who had been quietly and systematically searching the bed-sitting-room during our conversation. ‘You have no permit to attend a funeral in West Berlin,’ he pointed out. ‘That would have to be applied for separately.’

  I looked up hopefully and for a moment he seemed anxious to help. ‘In the circumstances,’ he went on, ‘it might quite well be granted. Yes,’ he fingered his blue-black chin thoughtfully, ‘I should think that you might very well have a good case for attending the funeral.’

  My hopes and knees strengthened. I stood up.

  A smile hovered over the man’s thin mouth. ‘Unfortunately, however,’ he added, ‘permits to the West take rather a long time to come through. You know this from your own experience, Comrade. How long was it before you got your permit for the compassionate visit – three weeks, a month? I doubt that your grandmother could wait so long for her funeral.’

  I turned away, trembling, disgusted by his sick joke. Dear heaven, what would happen to me now?

  What a hideous predicament Nicolas had put me in! He had been so confident, so reassuring about the simplicity of this switch – and now I was in deep trouble, and entirely on my own.

  Except … except that Nicolas was probably here, somewhere in East Berlin. My spirits lifted a little. Kurt would know what had happened to me and surely he would be able to get in touch with Nicolas. Between them they were certain to rescue me.

  I faced the men again, holding my head high. All I could do now was to co-operate with them while I waited for help to arrive. They had given me no indication that they thought that I was not the real Elisabeth; perhaps their story was true, perhaps they really had come to break the news of her grandmother’s death and her cancelled permit. If I kept my head and did as they wanted, there was no reason why they should suspect me at all.

  ‘What –’ I heard my voice rise with nervousness, cleared my throat and tried again: ‘– what do you suggest I do now, Comrade?’

  The dark man nodded approvingly. ‘That’s a more sensible attitude. You’ll want to go back to Eisenach now, of course. There’s no reason for you to stay in Berlin any longer.’

  I nodded, breathing a little more easily. Once these men let me go, and I was outside and on my own, I was sure that Nicolas or Kurt would be waiting for me. The fact that I no longer had a permit to cross to West Berlin didn’t worry me in the least. Nicolas – or Kurt under Nicolas’s instructions – would take care of that.

  I wasn’t even worried by the search that the blond man was making in the kitchen. There was nothing of mine in the apartment, nothing that didn’t belong to either the real tenant or the real Elisabeth. I felt almost triumphant as he closed the kitchen cabinet and came back empty-handed to the sitting-room. There was only the bathroom left for him to search, and that contained almost nothing except for Ilse Schmidt’s towels and Elisabeth’s skirt and blouse and –

  Oh no. And my own underclothes with their unmistakable Marks and Spencer label, spread out on the towel rail in all their frivolously Western European pink and orange flowery glory …

  The blond man was looking round. He took one step towards the bathroom, But I beat him to it.

  ‘Then I must get dressed,’ I cried. ‘Excuse me, Comrade!’ And I whirled inside and slammed and bolted the door in his indignant snub-nosed face.

  I had never before dressed so quickly, even during backstage scene changes. The last thing I wanted was to make the men suspect that there was anything in the bathr
oom that I wanted to hide. My heart was hammering and my hands trembling as I pulled on my own incriminatingly brief garments, covered them with Elisabeth’s shoddily serviceable clothes and flicked her comb through my hair. There was no time to bother with her hairstyle, no point in wearing her fake glasses. The men stared in surprise as I erupted into the sitting-room, fully dressed in two minutes.

  ‘You were quick, Comrade,’ approved the blond man. He gave the bathroom a cursory search, then looked me over with a gap-toothed leer. ‘Some good reason for wanting to return to Eisenach, eh?’

  ‘No doubt,’ his companion agreed off-handedly. ‘But first, Comrade Lorenz, I must take you to see my Chief. He would like a few words with you.’

  My throat tightened. ‘Your … Chief?’

  ‘Just routine.’

  A touch of fear made me shiver. ‘But – can’t I go straight back to Eisenach?’

  ‘Just as soon as you’ve seen him. If you’re ready, then, Comrade? Please bring all your possessions with you, there will be no need for you to return to this apartment.’

  No need – or no opportunity? Was this an arrest?

  My movements were slow and clumsy as I folded what I guessed were Elisabeth’s things into her suitcase. This was it, then. Even if the man they were taking me to see had nothing to go on but suspicion, I could never stand up to close questioning. My German wasn’t up to it, let alone my courage. My deception would be revealed within minutes, and then I should be tried and found guilty and imprisoned in East Germany for years …

  But surely Nicolas wouldn’t let it happen? He’d told Kurt to look after me – so where was Kurt?

  Where above all was the man I loved?

  The porter said nothing as I walked from the lift to the main door, a trilby-hatted man close on either side of me, but she smiled to herself as she clicked her busy needles: a Teutonic Madame Defarge, knitting away as she compiled her list of enemies of the State.

  Another black official East German car, another drive through the streets of East Berlin. We entered another vast slab of a building, but this time it was one of the government offices on the Unter den Linden. It was quiet inside, with preoccupied people hurrying about their business. We went up several floors by lift, and then along a network of corridors. My mouth had dried so completely with fright that I began to imagine that I had lost my voice. Perhaps, I found myself hoping wildly, I shan’t be able to speak a word when I’m questioned, and then they’ll have to let me go!

  The dark man knocked on a door and waited respectfully. A green light flashed. He went in, closing the door behind him. The blond man, who had taken charge of the suitcase, gripped my arm unnecessarily high and unnecessarily tight. Then the door opened and the dark man motioned me inside.

  ‘This is the girl, Comrade Schildow,’ he announced, and then both my escorts retreated, leaving me alone with the man behind the desk.

  He was heavily-built, with a short greying stubble of hair, and he stared at me through thick-lensed glasses with pale, unwinking eyes.

  His voice was harsh and gravelly. ‘You are Elisabeth Lorenz?’ he asked, and waited for an answer.

  For a moment I was tempted to tell the truth. I was frightened and confused; since I couldn’t hope to get away with it, surely the only sensible, practical thing to do was to confess and ask for leniency? If I lied to this man, my prison sentence would only be longer.

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came.

  The trouble was, it wouldn’t just be my own punishment. The moment I blabbed, I would give away everyone else. Elisabeth herself, her relatives, Kurt, even Nicolas. I should be putting them all in danger and ruining the work that Nicolas had been doing. They might even use me to get to Nicolas, releasing me but keeping me under observation so that they could arrest him the moment he came to my aid …

  I cleared my throat, swallowed nervously and tried again. ‘Yes,’ I heard myself croak, ‘I am Elisabeth Lorenz.’

  He leaned back, still staring. ‘The daughter of Doctor Udo Lorenz?’

  I agreed, cautiously.

  ‘And you have been to visit your grandmother – your maternal grandmother – in West Berlin?’

  ‘Yes. That is so, Comrade Schildow,’ I elaborated, hoping to placate him.

  ‘Hmmm.’ He got up and wandered to the window which faced a massive wall of identical windows in a parallel building. Suddenly he turned, and spoke again: ‘Tell me, Comrade, when did you last see your father?’

  I suppressed a hysterical desire to giggle as the painting of the Cavalier child being interrogated by Cromwellian soldiery surfaced for a second in my whirling mind. This was where the dangerously difficult part of the interview was going to begin. I tried to concentrate on the information that Nicolas had given me in his briefing.

  ‘Er – several weeks ago,’ I stammered. If he asked me for dates, I should be lost.

  ‘And did he give you any message to give to anyone in the West?’

  ‘There was no question of that, Comrade,’ I said with earnest ambiguity. ‘His health …’

  Schildow pulled at the fleshy lobe of his ear. ‘Hmmm. Well then, who did you see while you were in the West? Who, exactly, was present in your grandmother’s house?’

  It must be a trap: obviously they had spies, their own sources of information. No doubt they knew exactly who lived in the house, whereas I had no idea. I tried not to flounder as I thought back frantically to the short period I had spent there, but the one person who came immediately to my mind was the one person I must not mention, Nicolas.

  ‘I’ll be glad to tell you, Comrade,’ I blurted out, playing for time. I could see her strained and anxious face, but what in heaven’s name was her name? ‘My aunt – Frau Henschel!’ Yes, that was it. And then there had been two other women who had bustled down from the sickroom to greet Elisabeth. ‘And other relatives, of course. Two – er – cousins.’

  He stared at me again, his eyes as prominent as binoculars: ‘And – outsiders?’ he grated. ‘People who wanted to know about your father?’

  ‘No!’ I cried urgently, trying to push Nicolas’s image out of my mind. ‘There were no outsiders, it was just the family.’

  ‘And what did they ask about your father?’

  I fabricated wildly. ‘About his health, of course! Naturally they are very concerned.’

  ‘And did they give you messages to take to him?’

  ‘No! I mean – I mean yes, of course, they sent their love and good wishes. Nothing else. Believe me, Comrade, there was so little time –’

  ‘Hmm.’ Schildow worked again on the lobe of his ear, and I was sure that he must be able to hear my heart thud in the silence of the room. Then he said, in a voice that was a little weary, almost gentle: ‘Open your handbag, please, Comrade.’

  ‘My handbag?’

  ‘Yes.’ He lifted some of his documents into a pile so that there was a clear space before him on top of the desk. ‘Empty it here, please.’

  A catalogue of its contents flashed through my mind as I fumbled with the zip. Elisabeth’s identity card, that was what would betray me! Had the officer at the checkpoint in the Wall reported the discrepancy in the colour of our eyes?

  But he hadn’t seemed to notice at the time; perhaps Schildow wouldn’t notice it either. Otherwise, the contents of the bag were completely innocuous. I tipped them out on the desk. Elisabeth’s handkerchief, Elisabeth’s money, Elisabeth’s railway ticket, Elisabeth’s comb, Elisabeth’s lipstick –

  Oh no …

  Not only Elisabeth’s.

  There on the desk, glittering in its gold-coloured casing, as alien among Elisabeth’s drab possessions as a kingfisher at a sparrows’ house party, lay my own unmistakably English lipstick.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Schildow pounced.

  ‘This, Comrade?’ he asked, holding it up in surprisingly delicate fingers.

  I moistened my lips with my tongue. ‘A present. From one of my cousins in West Berlin.�
�

  He peered distastefully at the brand name on the case. ‘American?’

  I didn’t argue. He fiddled unfamiliarly with the case, pulled off the top and discovered the action. He twisted the base, and up rose a meagre blunted half-inch stub of lipstick.

  Schildow raised his eyebrows sceptically. ‘A present, Comrade?’

  I cursed myself for my habit of economy, and even more for the folly which had led me to bring the lipstick with me. Nicolas had warned me, hadn’t he? I remembered the occasion so clearly, down beside the Havel in the dusk, when I had wanted him to kiss me but had been afraid to let him: ‘For God’s sake,’ he had said, ‘When you go to East Berlin don’t take anything of your own.’

  And now Schildow was staring at me, the lipstick in his hand, waiting for an explanation; and on the desk in front of him was Elisabeth’s identity card, describing her eyes as grey.

  I kept my own blue eyes lowered, and ad-libbed frantically. ‘It was the lipstick my cousin was using. I admired the colour so much that she insisted that I should take it. I have one of my own, of course – here, Comrade.’

  I snatched up Elisabeth’s plastic-cased lipstick and offered it to him as proof of my innocence. It was only when he started to unscrew it that I remembered with horror that it was new and completely unused.

  Schildow raised his bushy eyebrows above the heavy frame of his glasses, looking from one lipstick to the other. ‘So? You did not wear any of your own lip colour when you went to the West?’

  ‘Er – no,’ I babbled, ‘no, as a matter of fact I didn’t.’ I could feel the nervous tension breaking out damply on my forehead, and I prayed that he wouldn’t notice. ‘I was visiting my dying grandmother, remember … it was out of respect for her …’

  He nodded with apparent understanding. ‘Just so, Comrade, just so. I appreciate your sensibilities. I do find it a little strange, though, that in such a short visit to your dying grandmother you still found the time and the interest to discuss lip colour with your cousin …?’