A Small Revolution in Germany

by Philip Hensher

  ‘Will you excuse me?’ the man opposite said. He took his briefcase. He stood up. He went to the next compartment of the train. There was complete silence in the compartment once I had stopped talking. The two seats opposite Ogden and me remained empty.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Ogden said, after twenty minutes. ‘You were saying something to him about piña colada. I don’t know how you got on to that.’

  ‘You raped me last night,’ I said.

  Ogden looked straight ahead. He did not blush, as I’d thought he would. He had prepared his response for exactly these words.

  ‘I’m going to have to find something in Weimar where I can spend five hundred marks,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s a painting of Erich Honecker or something even worse. I bet there are marble busts of Goebbels and Himmler still hanging around. It isn’t just in the West that old Nazis run the show. I have to get rid of at least five hundred marks.’

  ‘I thought about furs,’ I said.

  ‘Caviar all comes from the Soviet Union, doesn’t it? What about that?’

  I thought of turning up at our flat; of unpacking my suitcase; of presenting Joaquin with a big round tin of caviar. His delight! I had not spoken to Joaquin since I had left home, although I had written him a postcard from West Berlin. I planned to send him another from Weimar. I would very much have liked to telephone him this morning. There were no telephones in the room, either in Berlin or in Leipzig. We had agreed to let it go. It was not important, not speaking for a fortnight. I would, however, have liked to speak to him. That is all human weakness. We can deplore it, but we have to live with it.

  We had not succeeded in changing our daily twenty-five marks at Leipzig station. When we got to the hotel in Weimar, I asked if it was possible to change money there. The receptionist, a pleasant blond man in his thirties, had admitted us a day early without demur. He agreed that it was possible, but it was not necessary.

  ‘I don’t understand ‒ it is not necessary?’ I said.

  ‘This obligation to change twenty-five marks daily, it does not apply to visitors paying more than twenty-five marks per night for their hotel room,’ he said. ‘I have to inform you, that rooms in the Hotel Elefant do cost something more than twenty-five marks a night, and you are required to pay in your own currency, or in Deutschmarks from the Federal Republic rather. I hope that will not be a problem to our honoured guests.’

  ‘What is he saying?’ Ogden said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘We have been changing the required amount every day now, both of us, for six days.’

  ‘If you have been paying your hotel bills in Federal marks, you have been changing money to no purpose. Not necessary. There is a possibility that you may be permitted to change money back, but it is quite a complicated procedure. If I can advise you, the best thing to do is to spend it.’

  ‘What is he saying?’ Ogden said. ‘Why won’t he change money?’

  I explained.

  ‘Do you mean to say—’

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ I said to the receptionist, leaving the hotel through its heavy glass doors. ‘Very helpful, thank you.’

  ‘I needn’t have changed – do you mean to say I needn’t have changed twenty-five marks—’

  ‘It was one of those little misunderstandings,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you were in charge of all that,’ he said. ‘I honestly thought that. And look …’ We were in the central town square, or what looked like it. There was something approaching a bustle underneath and around a statue of a couple of guys, looking forward bravely into the socialist future. ‘Look how much money I’ve got. This is crazy. Look, fifty, one hundred, two hundred, three, four, five—’

  ‘Put it away,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no point in putting it away,’ Ogden said. ‘It’s just worthless pieces of paper. I can’t believe that through your basic incompetence you’ve put us in a situation where I’ve got all this paper. I can’t spend it. A beer here costs one mark twenty-eight pfennigs. There’s nothing I want to buy with this crap. It’s totally fucking worthless. So thanks a lot. You know what I think of this money?’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said, because Ogden had taken out his cigarette lighter. He was holding a bunch of DDR marks, perhaps a hundred marks, spread out like a hand of cards. He was attracting attention.

  ‘This is the only fucking fun I’m going to get out of this fucking currency,’ Ogden said. ‘It’s not worth anything, apart from this stupid fucking government they’ve got claiming that it’s worth five times what it’s really worth. We have to give them all our money, except that we’ve given them a lot more than we even needed to, thanks to you. I don’t see the fucking point of it.’

  ‘Really don’t do that,’ I said, but it was too late. Ogden had lit his cigarette lighter. He was holding it up to his money. It had never occurred to me that anyone would burn money. For years we had agreed, we Spartacists, that money did not matter, that it was a product of the capitalist system held up by false consciousness and the assertions of the capitalist state. And yet we did not burn it. We used it and preserved it. To see Ogden insisting there was no point to this money, and in this public square to set it on fire – the money burnt easily, like the paper which was all it was – to me that was deeply shocking. Money, after all, is what people mostly think they’re made of, their nationhood, their families, their existence. Who is in charge of the supply of money to the cities of England? Why, the government is, of course. Money is not like doughnuts, to be supplied by whoever thinks they can get something out of it. And to confirm that people are only made of money, all around Ogden now there were people shouting. One huge-bellied fishmonger had left his stall, his wet red arms outstretched. He was trying to wrest the lighter out of Ogden’s hands. The back of the fishmonger’s hand struck my face. I felt the wet and something hard and cold hitting my teeth, a wedding ring on his finger perhaps. The scenes in the German Democratic Republic had been orderly and subdued. Now Ogden was burning their money. We were surrounded by noise and a remonstrative behaviour by the crowd that was not far from violence. Order was being restored quickly, however. In a moment we found ourselves facing four police officers. There was blood in my mouth. They were unsmiling. They asked for our papers.

  I was in a cell on my own for more than thirty-six hours before anyone paid any further attention to us. We were in a police station, not a prison. I thought Ogden might have been taken to somewhere more serious. I suspect in reality he was in the same building, two cells away. I can’t be exact about how long it was that I stayed in the cell, because they took my watch, along with a ring that was never returned, and the laces in my shoes, which I did get back. The ring was a nice one ‒ my father’s, as it happens. I was certainly there for two nights before anything occurred. Meals came at intervals, in the same sort of moulded trays that we had eaten from on our first night in West Berlin, in the Serbian restaurant. The food was no worse than that. In the evening it included something I was pleased to recognize as soljanka and a block of something labelled Süsstafel, which might have been an alien’s attempt to create a chocolate bar, it having seen them only on intercepted earthly television broadcasts. I ate it all. Returning the tray, I tried a joke with the guard about ordering a Kaffee Komplett to round things off. He remained entirely silent, as he did when I went on to ask when I could see the British consul, as was my right. I was away from everything and safe. I had done nothing. The bed was hard and narrow and the room was cold but I slept well. A man of my convictions must get used to sleeping in jail. It was disappointing that my first night in one was due to the frivolous and insulting actions of another, and not through the demonstration of those convictions. But it was a start.

  Those hours were my revolution in Germany, the revolution without which, Lenin tells us, we are lost. I understood at the end of them what politics did, and the narrative it imposes on us. We l
ive in other people’s ideas of our narratives. Shortly a gentleman I had never met would start to tell me that narrative, quite convincingly to anyone but me.

  As far as I can judge, it was late morning on the third day that the cell door was opened. Two guards gestured impatiently for me to follow them. I did not appear to be dangerous enough to handcuff or frogmarch. I walked with them along a corridor, a glimpse of a busy office where everyone was in uniform. Then we walked along another corridor. A blue-painted steel door was opened. I was told to sit on a chair on the left-hand side of the table. I sat down. The door was closed.

  Time passed.

  The fluorescent light was nearing the end of its life. It flickered painfully, like the beginning of a migraine.

  After a while, I noticed there was a clock on the wall. I tried closing my eyes and counting to sixty to see how reliable a grasp of time I had. First I was ten seconds slow, then ten seconds fast. I was borderline cheating by saying one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, which is what a second takes. But it seemed admissible to me, waiting in that interview room.

  I had been there an hour and ninety minutes, solitary, in silence. It was hard to understand why they had extracted me from my cell before they were ready. I hoped it was because the British consul was not immediately available.

  Two men entered. They sat down. The taller one placed a thin Manila file in front of him. Neither of them looked at me. The taller one opened the file. Before doing anything else, he squared the papers inside it with the heel of his hands.

  ‘I need to see the British consul,’ I said. ‘Where is the British consul?’

  ‘That is not necessary in this case,’ the shorter, fatter one said – he had eyebrows that, in another situation, would have been classed as comic.

  ‘It is my right,’ I said.

  ‘You sound like a little boy,’ the man said, ‘calling for his mother. But you are not a little boy. You are a man. Kindly listen.’

  ‘I would like to ask you some questions,’ the taller one said. ‘It would be best if you answer them honestly and fully.’

  ‘Best for you or best for me?’ I said. I was suddenly furious.

  ‘Please,’ the man said. Then he started to talk.

  What

  is your

  name, What is

  your address, What is

  your age, When were you born,

  Where were you born, Why did you come

  to the Democratic Republic of Germany, I came because, Who asked you to come, Nobody asked me to come, Why did you come to Weimar, I came to Weimar because of its historical interest and value, What do you mean, I mean the history, the Weimar Republic, Please explain, I also mean the cultural history, What does that mean, I mean the great figures who came here, the Bauhaus and Goethe and Schiller, And yet you were observed to be sitting with your back to the statue of these two figures eating, eating an ice cream, I did not know that was not permitted, This is even before you started burning the currency of the German Democratic Republic, I did not burn any currency, Do you think that is respectful, It does not affect my respect for these poets and thinkers, the ice cream I mean, not the currency-burning in which I took no part, Where else have you travelled to in the German Democratic Republic, We have travelled to Berlin and to Leipzig, Who did you meet in these places, We spent time with an Australian professor of history who travelled to Leipzig with us, Who else, We met a friend of his called Matthias, Who else, In Leipzig we met a friend of my friend’s employer, Who is this employer please, His name is Philip Cawston, What is his business, He is a Member of Parliament, his name is Dr Philip Cawston, Were you given anything by Dr Cawston to give to his contact, No, I ask again, what were you give to this contact, We gave him a copy of Dr Cawston’s book, What is this book, I don’t know, I haven’t read it, What was the name of this Leipzig man who you were told to hand material to, I don’t know his full name, I only called him Herr Sussmann, my friend will know his name and address, Who is he, I believe he was a minister in the state government, It is better for you if you tell the absolute truth and not resort to fairy tales, These are not fairy tales, but we visited Herr Sussmann in his home, You must tell me the real people you have been in contact with and not pluck the names of famous figures from your copy of the state newspaper, we are not idiots and know that you did not visit a figure like that, What was the purpose of your stay in Berlin, There was no purpose other than to see an important city of historical and current interest, We have evidence that you engaged in activity against the criminal code of the German Democratic Republic within an hour of entering the country, do you deny this, Certainly I deny this, And yet it is reported by a reliable witness that you engaged with a black-market money trader in public, we have your names and addresses in association with this, I have nothing to say in response to this, We will move on, We understand that you have engaged in acts of political violence by your own confession, I do not understand what you are referring to, You boasted to a stranger that you had assaulted individuals in socialist and pacifist organizations many times and you had destroyed property in a wilful and violent fashion, do you think this is acceptable behaviour, I have only done so in order to further the options for socialism in my country, I did so out of solidarity you might say with your country, My country needs no such acts of solidarity, Yes I understand that now, Did you plan to carry out acts of political violence against the German Democratic Republic, No of course not, I am on your side, that is to say my acts of solidarity as you describe them were always to further the same goals that your government is pursuing with such success, We will leave that there for the moment, There is nothing more to say, We will discover that, but now why did you play with an orchestra when you were young, I liked music, Do you still play with this orchestra, No of course not, it is an orchestra for schoolchildren called a youth orchestra, we had to leave when we were twenty at the latest, And this youth orchestra travelled abroad on one occasion, you told a colleague when you were applying for a visa, Yes, that is correct, to Germany, the Federal Republic, Why did your orchestra visit these places, they are not very picturesque or cultured places, or so I am told, I believe the city I grew up in had twin-town status with Bochum, So this was an official trip, Yes although I had little to do with that, What was the inspiration for this trip, I do not know, Who suggested it in the first place, I expect it was suggested by the organizers of the orchestra, Would they have been in contact with the local politicians, I do not know, Can you list the names of those Germans with whom you came into contact, I stayed with a family called Meier, the father was a doctor, Who else, I talked with a boy called Wilhelm who played the flute in the Bochum youth orchestra at a party they gave for us, Who else, At the party I was asked to say hello to the mayor of Bochum because I could speak some German, So this was a propaganda visit to establish links with the political establishment of Bochum, No that is not it at all, Can you explain what the difference is between what I have described and what you have described, It is complicated, The minister Herr Sussmann’s wife has informed us that you forced yourself on her husband, demanding refreshments, But I thought you did not believe that we visited Herr Sussmann at all, Kindly do not speculate on what I know or do not know, it will be the better for you, We paid a short visit and handed over the book and left, there were no refreshments, You should speak of Herr Sussmann with more respect, I am sorry I had no idea I sounded disrespectful, If you were in Leipzig why did you not fulfil your legal requirements and register with the police, we have no such registration, We saw a horrible accident on the street, an industrial accident and saw a worker killed, we did not want to stay in the town any longer, it is distressing to see a man decapitated, We have no record of such an accident, the safety record of our country’s working practices must not be maligned, and so without explanation we find you have gone to Weimar, That is so, Again without registering your presence with us as you are required to
do, We would have done so in time, And then you burnt the money in a provocative and insulting way, I did not burn any money and I tried to stop my friend doing so, We have witnesses who say that you were holding the notes while your friend lit his cigarette lighter, That is not true, We have witnesses who saw you laughing as the money was burnt, do you think that is acceptable behaviour, No not at all but it is not true, What is true is what I have stated to be the truth, why do you refuse to accept what I am saying, This will not go well with your case, What case, have I been charged with anything, We will make an official protest with the British government about your behaviour, What case, I haven’t done anything wrong, it was all him, it was all Ogden, Any or all punishment will be carried out in the German Democratic Republic, But I haven’t done anything wrong, I am ending this interview now and returning