Stasi Child

by David Young

  46

  February 1975.

  A forest in East Germany.

  Christmas has gone. New Year has gone. We might have lost count with our days scratched into the wood, but they were no different to any other days. Mathias still shovels the rock into the trolley, the rock that the guards, or miners, or whatever they are, dig from the rock face. I still trolley it to the shaft, and Beate still lifts the bucket to the surface. But we are not mining silver ore for Neumann’s private fortune, I know that, because there is a pile of slag by the top of the shaft – the debris we’ve removed from the mine – and it just stays there, and grows and grows. So what are we doing? Neumann won’t tell us. He just says it’s a special project approved by the Ministry of Education. Sometimes he’s not even here. He comes and goes, but always there is someone guarding over us, gun at the ready.

  So nothing much has changed. Except for Beate’s mood; she seems elated. Then, one night, she confides in me. She whispers to me on the mattresses, stretching so she can get right up against my ear, straining against the metal chains that bind our legs each night. That way Mathias won’t be able to hear.

  ‘I’ve found out where we are,’ she says.

  ‘Where?’ I whisper back.

  ‘The Harz mountains. Right by the inner German border. The foothills of the Brocken. It’s the highest mountain in this region. That’s why there’s so much snow outside.’

  I turn this new information over in my mind for a few seconds: we’re digging a tunnel, right by the border. I try to picture which way the sun sets in relation to the direction of the level underground. West. The level must be heading west. But that doesn’t make any sense at all. We escaped to the West. We were ordered back to the East, under what Neumann claims is a legal repatriation agreement for anyone under sixteen. So the Bundesgrenzschutz officers had just been following orders. No wonder dog woman had looked so upset. Though how they came on the boat to find us straightaway no longer seems a mystery: Mathias must have betrayed us, that’s the only explanation I can think of. And now we are digging our way back to the West? Madness! I can’t believe the tunnel is for us.

  Beate wonders why I haven’t said anything. ‘Did you hear me, Irma?’ she whispers again.

  ‘Yes, but why’s that got you so excited? We’re still being held as slaves.’

  She squeezes my hand hard. ‘I’ve been invited to another party – Neumann says it’s going to be like the ones on Vilm.’

  I don’t understand. Why is she looking forward to it?

  ‘And I’ve worked it out. Who had sex with me. On Vilm. I knew his face was familiar. I saw it again yesterday in a copy of Neues Deutschland that one of the guards had left on the breakfast table. He’s going to be at the party being held at the top of the Brocken. And he’s invited me. He’s a real, proper high-up. His name’s Horst. Horst Ackermann. He’s about as high as you can get without being a government minister. He’s a colonel general, in the Ministry for State Security.’

  ‘The Stasi? Oh be careful, Beate. You cannot trust them.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’m sure this time if I play along I will be able to convince him to free us, to keep his promise about the Abitur, about everything. Don’t you see, Irma? It’s a chance. I’ll try to persuade them to help you, too, and then all this will be over, and we will be free.’

  I stroke her hand and shush her.

  ‘Be careful, Beate. Be very careful. I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  Of course I should have stopped her, should have known it was lunacy for her to get back into the abusive relationship that had made her so unhappy – but I didn’t.

  Beate Ewert and I were sworn friends for life, yet I allowed her to dress up in her short, black witch’s outfit for the fancy dress party, and helped her ink in her nails with a black felt-tip pen borrowed from Neumann. I kissed her on the cheek as she went, half wishing I could go with her, despite now knowing what went on at these ‘parties’.

  That was the last time I ever saw her.

  47

  March 1975. Day Sixteen.

  The Harz mountains, East Germany.

  ‘Is it sensible to be doing this on our own, boss? Don’t you think we need back-up?’ asked Tilsner as they drove away from the Wernigerode People’s Police station car park.

  ‘We don’t have any option,’ said Müller. ‘If we ask Baumann, he’d have to arrest me.’

  They lapsed into silence, Müller grateful to be wearing sunglasses to protect against the snow glare and any lingering embarrassment from the previous night’s lovemaking.

  On each side of the road they passed old mine workings and quarries cut into the forest. Müller could imagine that in summer they might be an eyesore, but now the snow softened the landscape, giving it an Alpine feel. They followed the same route as they had the previous day, but then instead of carrying on further west towards the border, they turned northwest towards the Brocken. The road here was covered in snow. Tilsner stopped the car and pulled over. ‘I’d better put the chains on as a precaution. According to the map, the road climbs another hundred metres or so towards Schierke.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it would be this bad,’ said Müller as Tilsner climbed out. She opened the passenger window and called to him. ‘We’re going to need skis, aren’t we?’

  Tilsner got back in for a moment to move the Wartburg a few centimetres forward so that he could attach the snow chains. ‘It’s a winter sports training village. We should be able to get skis and boots from the sports club if we show our police passes. But that will be a risk if Reiniger’s already sent people after us.’

  Müller frowned, and rubbed her gloved hands together to ward off the mountain chill. ‘From the map, it didn’t look as though we could go all the way to the mine in the car. We’ll have more chance with skis. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’

  If they had been put on a wanted list in the Republic, then – possibly due to the adverse weather conditions – the police bulletin clearly hadn’t reached Schierke. As soon as they showed their Kripo IDs, the staff at the sports club were all over them trying to help, excited about why Berlin detectives were engaged in an operation in their village. Müller knew, though, that even if the phone lines weren’t working properly yet, the network of gossip would be. Someone at the club would be a Stasi informer, and their whereabouts would soon be known.

  With the cross-country skis firmly attached to a roof rack borrowed from the club, they used the antiquated map Müller had confiscated from the guesthouse to navigate the road up towards the Brocken.

  Reaching a plateau in the road, Müller signalled for Tilsner to pull over. He turned off the motor of the Wartburg, and for a few moments Müller sat alongside her deputy in silence, enjoying the reprieve from the car’s vibrations. She turned around to check that they weren’t being followed, and then both of them soaked in the view through the windscreen towards the heights of the Brocken. It almost looked like the opening of a feature film. Dotted across the mountainside were pine trees loaded with snow, their branches drooping from the weight; at the summit, a collection of aerial spikes aimed into the sky like needles, as though trying to puncture the azure above. Surrounding them, the globes of the listening station – the Republic’s eyes and ears trained on the capitalist world outside.

  The old mineshaft and neighbouring buildings were still some two kilometres distant, down a hill track to their left, heading for the border. They would have to ski the rest of the way – the Wartburg’s snow chains wouldn’t cope, and even a four-wheel drive would struggle. Müller, born and brought up in a winter sports village – though further south in Thuringia – had no qualms about negotiating the route down through the forest. But she suspected Tilsner’s claims of skiing proficiency might just be the bluster of the boastful.

  As she opened the car door, freezing air laced with the scent of the spruce trees blasted her face. The skin on her cheeks tightened, pores closing in defence. It was such a contrast to
Berlin’s daily smogs. She stood, then stamped the hired langlauf boots in the snow. Tilsner was out of the car too, stretching his arms and slapping his hands together. He freed the skis from the roof rack, fumbling in the cold. Müller hadn’t got her gloves on yet, and the metal of the bindings froze to her palms as Tilsner handed her the skis.

  ‘I don’t like the feeling of this at all,’ he said. ‘There’s just the two of us, in totally unfamiliar terrain. You did bring your gun, didn’t you?’

  Müller already knew it was safely there in its holster, but just to show him she dropped the skis on the ground, felt under her jacket for the Makarov and nodded.

  ‘What about wire cutters?’ he asked.

  ‘There are some in the boot.’

  Müller watched as he went round the car, first ducking into the driver’s side for something. He spent a couple of minutes there, and then looked up furtively at her as he moved round to the rear of the vehicle, as though he’d hoped she hadn’t been watching. What was he up to? I’m on my own in this, she thought. Because he’s as likely to turn me in as anyone. Maybe this case just wasn’t worth it. Why did the girl, Irma, matter so much to her? But if she gave up now, what hope had she of Jäger keeping his part of the bargain, in trying to help Gottfried?

  Finally, Tilsner nodded to indicate he was ready.

  Müller set off first, skating on the flat to pick up speed, digging in her poles and pushing out each ski, sliding the left then the right to leave a herringbone pattern behind her. Then she brought her legs together and crouched into a schuss as the track headed downhill. It reminded her of winter skiing holidays with Gottfried in the early years of their marriage, near her Thuringian home of Oberhof. He’d been hopeless, falling over every few minutes. But still determined to have a go, and try to keep up with her, because he knew how she loved the snow.

  She could hear the swoosh of Tilsner’s skis close behind; his claims of skiing ability justified – Gottfried certainly wouldn’t have been able to keep pace at this speed. The pine trees flashed by on either side for several hundred metres. Then Müller realised she couldn’t hear her Unterleutnant anymore. She added a couple of turns to try to slow down, but the track had steepened.

  She was losing control.

  Suddenly, pain knifed through her shins.

  Time slowed as she tumbled over and over in a mass of snow, her body buffeted as she spun head over heels, trying to dig her hands into the snow to stop her fall. Then a crack. Her head smashed into a tree trunk, the pain now overwhelming.

  Müller strove for consciousness, as though she was underwater and fighting her way to the surface. But the knifing from her legs and the agony of her head were like hands pushing her back down. She felt her right leg, her trousers torn, her shin soaked with something. She brought her hand up to her face. Blood. There must have been a tripwire stretched across the track, and she’d skied straight into it.

  Then her face grew cooler as a shadow moved across her vision, between her and the winter sun. Tilsner had come to rescue her.

  She focused. It wasn’t Tilsner. It was a man she didn’t recognise, camouflaged in white, with a gun pointing right between her eyes.

  48

  The previous month (February 1975).

  The Harz mountains, East Germany.

  Days went by. Now it was Neumann himself who’d taken over from Beate at the top of the shaft. I asked him outright what had happened to her, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Said she’d been taken ill . . . wasn’t up to the demands of the work here . . . she’d been moved to another children’s home. Lies. All lies.

  Neumann has started looking increasingly mad. His one good eye has a wild, haunted look to it; the eyepatch on the mangled side of his face is dirty; his hair’s unkempt, and whenever he speaks to me he’s always fidgeting.

  Now it’s just Mathias and me in the old mine house, I’ve deigned to talk to him more. Otherwise the nights in the darkness would be unbearable. We lie and talk and wonder what’s happened to Beate. We’ve given up marking the days on the side of the wall. All I know is that it’s February. Both Mathias and I are sixteen, and if we’d waited until now before escaping from Prora Ost, then the evil repatriation agreement for under-sixteens wouldn’t have been applicable. We’d now be free in the West. But we didn’t know about it back then, in the Jugendwerkhof – at least Beate and I didn’t. Maybe Mathias knew, and that was why he was so ready to jump in the bed boxes and take part in my hare-brained plan – my crazy plan that nearly worked.

  One day, Mathias notices something about the level. There’s a small slope. Upwards. Neumann must have been setting the dynamite charges in a slightly different place each day. We don’t know what it means. We still do our tedious slave jobs: the goons digging out the loosened rock, Mathias loading it, me pushing the trolley along the rails of the level, round the corner by the stone steps, and tipping its contents into the bucket, which Neumann hauls above ground.

  Each day, we’re worked to exhaustion. Only then can we climb the dozen or so steps hacked into the rock to take us to the part of the shaft where the vertical ladder starts.

  As Mathias and I are lying on our mattresses, on opposite sides of the room, I ask him what he meant when he said they had ‘cheated’ him.

  ‘You’ll hate me for it if I tell you,’ he says.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘They made an agreement with me, in Prora Ost.’

  ‘What agreement?’

  ‘That if I kept a close watch on people, if I secretly reported on them, then when Beate and I turned sixteen, we would both be allowed to return to regular school, to leave the Jugendwerkhof, and to take our Abitur. They promised me that we could go to university, and that we’d be assigned a flat together. Our futures would be mapped out.’

  ‘Did Beate know about that?’ If she had, then her submission to Ackermann’s perversions had been totally pointless.

  ‘No. I didn’t dare tell her.’

  I don’t reply for a moment, thinking through the implications of what he’s just told me.

  ‘You probably hate me now, Irma, don’t you?’

  I still don’t say anything initially.

  ‘I know what they are capable of, Mathias,’ I reply after a few moments. ‘I can’t agree it was right what you did, but no, I don’t hate you.’ But what I say to him out loud does not necessarily reflect my true thoughts.

  ‘Thank you, Irma,’ he says. ‘That means a lot to me. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mathias.’ In a few moments, he is snoring, perhaps comforted in his sleep by my words. But my mind is racing. If he was reporting on us, what was he reporting and to whom? Did he know about Beate being forced to go to the parties on Vilm? Did he take part in –?

  The last thought . . . I stop myself thinking. It’s too horrible to contemplate.

  We don’t get a chance to continue the conversation at breakfast the next morning. Neumann and his goons are watching us closely. But I’ve been doing more thinking overnight. There is more I want to ask Mathias.

  I wait till we’re climbing the ladder down the shaft; Mathias is a few rungs below me.

  ‘Psst,’ I hiss. ‘There is just one thing I don’t understand. Why did you want to escape with us, if you felt they were going to look after you in the East, and let you leave the Jugendwerkhof ?’

  He doesn’t answer me until we reach the intermediate platform. Then he turns towards me, as I tackle the last couple of rungs. I see his face thrown into angular relief by the dim light of the mineshaft. He’s no longer the pretty boy he was. Months of working here, underground, in the dust and grime, have taken their toll.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to be parted from her, Irma. I knew she wanted to go to the West. I hadn’t told her about the informing – she would have hated me for it. So I had to go with her, there and then.’

  I hold his gaze. He looks down at his feet. There’s something he’s not telling me, and I think I know what it is. I’ve suspe
cted it for some time now.

  ‘Your last bit of informing,’ I say, and I’m sure he can hear the hatred and anger that fills my voice. ‘That was on the ship, wasn’t it? When you said you’d already been above deck?’

  He won’t look up at me. He’s too ashamed. ‘Yes,’ he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘You had them radio the Republic.’ He nods, almost imperceptibly. ‘And they told you about the teenage repatriation agreement, didn’t they?’ No reaction. ‘Didn’t they, Mathias?’

  Another tiny nod.

  ‘And I’ve a good idea who it was you were telling in the Republic. It was the Stasi, wasn’t it? They recruited you in Prora, didn’t they?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Irma. I’m so, so sorry.’

  I pause for a moment to let it all sink in. But I’m not going to let him off the hook. ‘Why did you do that, Mathias? Why turn us in when you and Beate were so close to winning your freedom together?’

  ‘Because I knew there was a good chance we would fail. And even if we didn’t, with us being minors I knew it was likely we would be sent back to the East. And then –’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then those hopes of getting out of the Jugendwerkhof, getting a place at university. Starting a life with Beate. They would all be in ruins.’

  It all makes sense now. Why the Bundesgrenzschutz officers were already waiting at the quayside in Hamburg; they weren’t just checking the boat on the off-chance. They’d been tipped off, by people in the Republic. And they in turn had been tipped off by Mathias Gellman. Mathias Stasi spy Gellman. Working for the same organisation that had made sure my Mutti ended up in prison; the same organisation that had made sure I was separated from Oma, and dumped in hateful Jugendwerkhöfe.