As they walked up to it and he opened the door for her she noted that Jurgen had a driver just as Manfred did, even though he was a great deal less important than her husband. As soon as they pulled away from the pavement she asked what he wanted to talk about but he told her to wait until they arrived. He did, however, ask with some concern about the bump on her head and how her memory was. She assured him she was quite well.
She was regretting getting into the car, worried about where they were going, but Jurgen was true to his word and they got out at the Park and started to walk. He began by talking about the Party, and the importance of its image. At the entrance to the park was a large fountain with an improbable statue of a horse and as they walked past it Birgit saw a small child with its mother. She was instantly reminded, for the first time since it had happened, of Christa taking the hand of the little girl at her party. She remembered how she had led the girl out of the bedroom just before Birgit had fallen down the stairs. She wondered who the little girl had been; she couldn’t remember her name. Christa’s presence at the party was understandable, but why was there a little girl at the house at some time past midnight? And what was her relationship to Christa? She thought with horror that the child might be Manfred’s, but it seemed impossible.
The questions she was asking herself meant that she had not been listening to Jurgen properly. He had moved on to pointing out her husband’s importance and position within the Party. He seemed to be concerned about Manfred. She tried to give Jurgen her full attention but her thoughts kept returning to the child.
‘So you would have no hesitation to help me?’ he was asking her.
‘Of course not.’
‘I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t anything like informing on him.’
‘I’m sorry, what isn’t like informing?’
He stopped and frowned at her.
‘Are you sure you’re fully recovered?’
‘Yes, sorry, I was just distracted. I was remembering seeing Christa at the party, and a little girl…But what were you saying about informing?’
He was patient with her and started again:
‘Your husband now holds a very important position in the Party. He’s a very visible and vital part of it. The last thing that any of us wants is for him to make a silly mistake, or slip up. We want you to tell us if he does or says anything that he shouldn’t; anything that would reflect badly on the Party or on himself.’
‘You want me to inform on my own husband?’ she was incredulous now she realised what was being asked of her
‘As I said, it’s not informing. It’s protecting him. And it’s a case of protecting yourself.’
‘Even if he was doing something he shouldn’t, a wife would never do that to her husband. There’s a trust between us…’
Jurgen put his hand up to stop her.
‘I understand,’ he said.
‘My husband and I trust each other,’ she dismissed his request. ‘I wouldn’t do anything to undermine that.’
Jurgen considered his next move, and then made it with deliberation.
‘Your husband is having an affair with Christa Smisek.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Birgit replied with as much composure as she could muster. To have her fears realised made her feel weak, and she was unable to order her thoughts.
‘You are in an awkward situation,’ he said simply. ‘The beautiful house you have, your social position, your friends…they are all as a result of your husband’s position. You lose your husband and you lose everything else.’
‘Am I going to lose him?’ she asked quietly.
‘I hope not. We do not want any kind of scandal. As far as everyone knows you are happily married. We want your husband to keep his position in the Party, his nice house, his friends, his wife…But he is weak and needs to be helped, by us and by you. But, surely he has forfeited his right to trust?’
In her thoughts she agreed, although she would not give Jurgen the satisfaction of hearing her articulate this.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
‘Very little. Perhaps we can meet once a week and you can tell me if he is saying or doing anything against the Party. I promise you that he won’t be punished, but we will make sure that the temptation to do anything wrong is removed. As I say, he is weak, but we need him to appear to be strong.’
‘What about Christa? She’s a temptation.’
‘In return for your help you have my word that we will remove that particular temptation.’
And so Birgit heard, a few days later, that Christa had moved away. A new position of some importance had been given to her somewhere down south. There was no mention of any child, born or pending. Birgit wasn’t sure what she thought about any of this but when she met Jurgen the following week he explained that the Party only wanted harmony and it was better to persuade a person to act sensibly than to force them.
‘We only want what’s best for everyone,’ he smiled, in a fatherly fashion. ‘I know what people say about the Party, and the rumours and the gossip. There are times when people need to be punished, and punishments can be severe. But usually we can modify any wrongdoing, any unbecoming behaviour. We can use persuasion, subtlety, understanding even.’
‘Manfred has been in a bad mood since he heard that Christa had left,’ Birgit told him. ‘But this morning he seemed genuinely caring towards me; loving even.’
‘Did we do the right thing?’ Jurgen asked, apparently eager for her approval. ‘Have we handled it well?’
‘Yes, I think it might work out.’
‘Good. And now you can get back on with your life with Manfred. And he doesn’t need to know about our little talks. You just need to keep an eye on him so that he doesn’t do anything silly again. If he does, or if you’re worried that he might, then let me know and we will quietly put things right.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll feel the same way about him again.’
‘It was simply a minor infidelity, a slip.’
‘Surely it’s more than that,’ she said, and screwed together the courage to ask: ‘Is it his baby she’s carrying?’
‘We’re not sure. We don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘Manfred has betrayed me.’
‘You don’t know that for sure. All that we know is that he was weak. He needs a strong woman, like you, Birgit.’
She had resolved to also ask about the little girl but the conversation took an unexpected turn.
‘Perhaps you should consider trying for a baby again yourselves?’ he suggested. ‘Now Christa has been removed perhaps Manfred will be a little more attentive and sensitive to your needs. Think of it as an opportunity to start again.’
‘Attentive’ and ‘sensitive’, he had said. It was like a blow that winded her. ‘Attentive’ and ‘sensitive’; the words recalled a painful memory from immediately after the party; with the last guest seen out of the house Birgit had asked Manfred to hold her. She didn’t say that she required reassurance because of Christa, but she had needed help and he had said that he was too tired.
‘Do you love me?’ she had asked, and he replied with a mechanical ‘Of course.’
It wasn’t enough, she said, and he had asked why not? He stated, obviously bored, ‘Birgit, I love you. There, now let’s go to bed.’
‘I don’t believe you do love me,’ she replied. ‘If you did you’d be, well…’
‘Well what?’
And then she had said it: ‘If you loved me you’d be more attentive and sensitive to my needs.’
They weren’t words she remembered ever using before. She had immediately thought them too melodramatic and clichéd. She was embarrassed by them.
And they were exactly the words that Jurgen had used.
She considered the possibility that Manfred had told someone else what she had said, but it seemed unlikely. He was not that kind of man. He would not have repeated her accusation of inattention and insensitivity; the suggestion that he w
as not fulfilling her ‘needs’.
She had certainly told nobody. It was as though Jurgen had been there at the time and had heard her say it. She couldn’t get over the thought that he had been listening. She had a mental picture of Jurgen standing in the corner of the room, observing them, making notes. It was stupid, of course, because everyone knew that wasn’t how the authorities worked. No, they concealed cameras and microphones if they wanted to know what was going on.
Cameras and microphones; they were what the authorities used if they wanted to listen in to the conversations of people they distrusted.
Why had she not realised before? They were obviously interested in Manfred’s private life. And any of those friendly tradesmen in their nice new house could have put in surveillance equipment. Everyone knew that’s the kind of thing they did, but it had never once crossed her mind that she and Manfred might be important enough. Of course she wasn’t, but he had certainly become so. Why else was she there in the park with Jurgen, driven there in the back of his car? Why else was she being asked to act as an informant?
‘Do you just have microphones in my house?’ she asked him directly. ‘Or are there cameras as well?’
‘We don’t do that kind of thing!’ he laughed.
‘If I go home and tear down all the light fittings, pull out all the sockets, I’ll find nothing?’
‘You would do a lot of needless damage.’
‘Those nice plaster mouldings on the ceilings could be smashed up. I’ll rip off the wallpaper and tear up the carpets and pull up the floorboards.’
‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you.’
She imagined someone in an adjacent building listening in to her conversations with Manfred on headphones. Worse still, he would be watching a low-quality picture on a television monitor. Would they have cameras in every room? Please, not the bedroom! Would they have surveillance equipment in the bathroom, just in case?
Jurgen was talking, trying to reassure her, when she remembered the night of the party and hiding under the coats. She remembered the little girl. Now she even remembered her name.
‘Who’s Katia?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, apparently genuine.
‘She was the little girl in the house, with Christa, on the night of the party.’
‘Christa wasn’t at the party.’
‘Your people would’ve been watching, listening, noting who was there, listening to the conversations. You’ll have it all in a file somewhere. I thought you were there as a friend!’
‘I was there as a friend. I wasn’t there in an official capacity.’
‘But somebody will have been there “officially”. You’ve been keeping an eye on my husband; spying on him. You’ll have known Christa was there, with the little girl.’
He considered this and then said, seriously:
‘I wasn’t aware that Christa was at the party. But I will find out for you.’
She supposed that he might not have noticed her, or the girl, but it seemed unlikely. No doubt they had left in the confusion when Birgit had fallen down the stairs?
‘I’ll look into it,’ he reassured her. ‘We are on the same side, aren’t we?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We are both making sure that you and Manfred lead a happy life together in your new home. We want him to retain his position. We want you to stay together.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Then we’re on the same side,’ he smiled broadly, as though it was all decided. ‘We will work together. I’ll help you and you’ll help me.’
She grudgingly agreed, and he drove her back home.
It was hard to go back into her house knowing that she was being listened to, and probably watched. Birgit went immediately to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. From that position she was able to naturally look around the room and examined it for the possible hiding-places of cameras. She knew that they could be small and she decided that there were a number of places in which they could be hidden. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable she retreated to the bathroom and sat on the toilet. There, she was sure after looking around her, there was no camera, although there might well be a microphone. She ran the water in the bath and carefully inspected every surface, every nook and cranny. But then she began to doubt herself. And would she ever really be able to tell whether she was watched anyway? Hadn’t technology developed to such a degree that almost anything was possible?
On that afternoon she resolved that she could not live in that house. Even making dinner for Manfred she moved around the kitchen as though she had an audience. There was probably only some dull, bored operative simply noting down her movements, but she felt so exposed that she might just as well have been on a stage in an auditorium, in front of thousands.
She did everything with the thought that she was observed, minding every action, and when Manfred returned home that evening she chose her every word with care. When it was time to go to bed she changed into her nightgown in the bathroom. It was not a part of her normal routine but Manfred did not seem to notice. She went through to the bedroom terrified lest he would want to make love and was relieved when he turned the light off on his side of the bed and left her alone. She would normally have read by her own bedside light but she was grateful to turn it off and lie in the darkness.
The following morning she got dressed in the bathroom and went down and made breakfast. Manfred’s driver called for him at 8:30 precisely and she was alone again, with her hidden audience. She tidied the house and did the washing. She found herself imagining the notes that would be taken and how dull they would be. In her head she started to narrate her movements and slowly found the whole idea of being observed quite ludicrous, if not almost amusing. Was somebody really noting down in a file that she was dusting her living room and then vacuuming it? Would they write that she poured the remains of her coffee down the sink, rinsed it away and then decided to add a small dash of bleach?
When Birgit made the dinner that evening she imagined that she was the star of a cookery show that she often watched on the television. She was nervous, and broke the eggs badly into the bowl but, on balance, she felt that she performed well. Perhaps she had missed her vocation? She fantasised that she would ask Jurgen how she might get on to the television. He seemed to know how things worked, and Manfred was powerful enough and could exert his influence, surely?
When Manfred came home that evening she listened to him talk about his day as they ate, initially worried lest he should say something questionable. However, he behaved impeccably and she was proud of him.
The next day she visited Yelena and was bursting to tell her what had been happening, but could not bring herself to do so. If she herself was being observed what was to say that there were not also cameras in Yelena’s house? Maybe she had her own little faceless, grey man acting as an audience? She laughed at the idea; the line had to be drawn somewhere; if half of the population was observed then it had to be by the remaining half, and who would observe the observers? It was all too ludicrous, she tried to tell herself.
She and Manfred ate out at a restaurant that evening, and the following day was Saturday. Manfred was at home but had resolved to work in the garden so Birgit promised that she would make him a favourite dish. It was one that required a great deal of preparation, and immediately she had washed up and tidied away breakfast she got to work. She took a glass dish from out of the cupboard and as she walked across the kitchen the sunlight caught it. For a fraction of a second there was a reflection from something in the far corner of the room, where the two walls met the ceiling in a simple plaster moulding. She had been right! There was the camera lens!
She turned to it: ‘First we marinade the meat,’ she said to it quite naturally. She walked around the table so that she could be observed fully. ‘But make sure you have the best possible meat. Don’t let the butcher give you any old cut that he wants to be rid of…’
Jurgen a
rrived in his car as usual on the Monday morning immediately Manfred had left for work. She went down the path and met him as he was getting out. He looked annoyed and she was worried. As the driver pulled away from the kerb he demanded of her: ‘What do you think you’re doing? Talking to the cameras?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, embarrassed.
‘You have to play the game!’ he told her.
‘I promise I will. I don’t like being watched. It’s how I cope, I think.’
‘You haven’t told Manfred about the surveillance?’
‘No. He’s acting naturally, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. And I’ve told the operator to ignore your behaviour; I’ve explained that you’re under pressure. I’ve made sure there’s no reference to it in the files.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry. I was very silly.’
‘Well, yes, you were,’ he agreed, and then laughed for a half-second. ‘But the operator said that he liked your recipe for pot roast pork.’
Birgit laughed naturally, and he resumed. She wondered if any of this was really important? He had called it a game, and perhaps he was right? But why should she play? She reasoned that she would probably go along with it because she hadn’t the courage to argue. Isn’t that what everyone did? Was it even possible not to play?
At the park they got out of the car and walked together down the dusty paths. Not once did Jurgen ask about Manfred. For some reason she did not understand he started to talk about his childhood. He reminisced about growing up in the countryside on a collective farm. He said how idyllic it had been, how good his teachers were and how well they lived generally. He was sure their standard of living was much better.
‘I’m not at ease in the city,’ he said. ‘But in the countryside I feel alive. It’s the air, the closeness of nature…’
His words faded away, as though the volume had been turned down. When she was sure he had stopped Birgit tentatively explained that she had been brought up in Berlin, where her parents still lived. She wondered if her story was already known to him? There would be files on her, she assumed, files that he would have had access to. Jurgen seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, though, and even asked friendly questions about her parents and sisters. He was an only child, he explained, although he had been close enough to other children that they might as well have been related. He asked her what it had been like growing up in a city with all of its temptations. He said that he never felt cool coming from the countryside.
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