An Honest Man

by Ben Fergusson

  I tried to imagine him losing his temper, finding out about Tobias and flying into a rage, but it was unimaginable; my father was pathologically calm. It frustrated my mother. I had seen her driven into rages so passionate in the face of his impossible serenity that she had broken cups, plates and glasses, dashing them to pieces in the sink when he calmly ended an argument by saying, ‘Well, yes, of course I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it’s made you so upset.’

  I watched him carefully remove the fliers from the newspaper and stack them up for the recycling bin. He ordered the important parts of the paper to read first, and made a second pile with the football section, the cultural sections and the magazine that he would carry through to the living room and place on the coffee table, to be read slowly over the week. His attentive movements, the perfect trim of his moustache, his neatly clipped fingernails and his lemon-yellow polo shirt, creased where it had been ironed, made me hate my mother for betraying him.

  I peeled off the yoghurt lid and sat opposite him at the table, licking the thickened yoghurt off the silvered underside. My dad pulled over a cup from the group gathered in the middle of the table and poured me coffee from the thermos jug. The cup was decorated with offensively bright birds and flowers, a ubiquitous 1970s Villeroy & Boch pattern called ‘Acapulco’ that I often see nowadays in trendy bars in Prenzlauer Berg, because it was ugly enough to become ironic.

  ‘Do you want milk?’

  I shook my head. ‘Do you get up this early every Wednesday?’ I said.

  ‘Where do you think the bread rolls come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never really thought about it.’

  ‘You know where the food in the fridge comes from, don’t you? And your pocket money?’

  ‘I think we all know the money comes from Mum.’

  He laughed and opened Die Zeit to a page containing a picture of happy people in summer clothes running through a field, with the headline ‘A Chink of Freedom: A Break in the Iron Curtain’.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I said.

  ‘Running. The Austrians and Hungarians opened the border for a few hours.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ostensibly, to celebrate freedom.’

  ‘And not ostensibly?’

  ‘Because thousands of East German holidaymakers in Hungary have decided not to go home, because they think there’s a chance that Hungary will open their borders after these democracy talks. They sell it all under the banner of freedom, but they just don’t want a load of East German refugees freezing to death in tents when winter hits. So they advertised a picnic to celebrate freedom and left the gate open for a few hours. Of course, hundreds just ran for it.’

  His moustache twitched.

  ‘You annoyed?’ I asked.

  ‘Me?’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, not annoyed, just worried. In the Sixties the Russians put down a lot of things like this.’

  I looked at the black-and-white men and women fleeing into a grey meadow. ‘Did anyone ever get through when you were little?’ Dad had grown up in Hessen in the West, but near the East German border.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Once or twice someone appeared at the farm.’

  ‘How did they manage it?’

  ‘It wasn’t impossible, just dangerous. They have automatic guns, mines, all sorts. Someone was always losing their dog in the death strip.’

  ‘Because it got blown up?’

  ‘Or shot.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘Once someone’s toddler wandered in.’

  ‘Did he get shot?’

  ‘No, but the mother did. Lived though. She was rescued by …’ He spun his finger around, inviting the inevitable response.

  ‘Opa the Great.’

  He laughed.

  I had never met my father’s father, nor his mother. My German grandfather had become a family joke, because of his relentless heroism. An enthusiastic socialist before the war, he had been persecuted and then tortured by the Nazis, losing an ear and all of his toenails. Despite this, he had briefly been a member of the regional parliament in Wiesbaden, had rescued a collection of rare manuscripts from the burning village library, and saved from drowning a woman, two children and a border collie, though, as my father was always careful to point out, all on different occasions.

  He had died, to everyone’s shock, from a heart attack two days before I was born. His wife, my grandmother, had never got over the death and died herself six months later, superficially of pneumonia, but really, we all knew, from a broken heart. There was a beautiful black-and-white photograph of them that hung in the hall, both of them handsome in the way that everyone is handsome in wedding pictures taken before the mid-Sixties. ‘I’m never going to live up to that,’ my dad would say whenever Opa’s name was uttered, and we would hug him and say we didn’t mind if he didn’t.

  ‘Thank God for Opa,’ I said. ‘Would’ve ruined my day if she’d died.’

  Dad smiled, his moustache flaring out like the wings of a pigeon. ‘I’m sad you didn’t meet him.’ He reached out and touched my hand. ‘He would have loved my boys. And you’re the spit of him.’

  ‘Dad, I don’t look anything like him. He was two metres tall.’

  ‘The eyes though.’

  I smiled and adjusted my towel so that it clung to my waist more securely. ‘Dad?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, mein Lieber?’

  ‘If you thought you knew something bad about someone’s boyfriend – if it was a friend of yours, I mean – something that your friend would be really upset about, would you tell her? Even if you weren’t completely sure.’ I considered this approach very subtle; I’d been thinking about the wording of the question for some time. I tried to read his face, but it was impenetrable. Did he ever cry? I thought. Beate liked to joke that my dad was the only real ‘new man’ in West Berlin, but that was only because he earned less than Mum and sometimes filled the dishwasher. He was very affectionate, but I’d never even seen him wet-eyed in front of a sad film. The idea of him screaming, weeping uncontrollably – it was incomprehensible.

  ‘Is this Petra by any chance?’ he said. He liked all of my friends and enjoyed seeming knowledgeable about them.

  ‘I can’t tell you, but … ’ I shrugged as if to imply ‘maybe’.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think if it was someone else’s relationship and I wasn’t sure I probably wouldn’t say anything.’

  I felt both relieved and disappointed. ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what you think you know about this boyfriend, but unless you’re a hundred per cent sure I think you could really hurt your friend and potentially your friendship.’

  I murmured in agreement. I wanted him to give me permission to tell him. I wanted to rat my mother out, not for my father’s sake – he would be destroyed – but for simple old-fashioned revenge. She had betrayed us. All the supposedly happy family moments, all the dinners and holidays and nights in front of the TV when I felt safe and loved had all been a lie. When Dad was teasing her about her crush on Peter Weck in Ich heirate eine Familie, rubbing her thickly socked feet as he reached over for a pretzel stick, she laughed in the blue glow of the television, having fucked Tobias perhaps an hour or two earlier, perhaps on that sofa where she now sipped Grauburgunder and complained about the British poll tax.

  ‘Everything all right, Ralf?’ Dad said.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. It’s not about me. It’s not really my problem, but …’ I trailed off.

  ‘Your mum mentioned you still weren’t sure about where you were going to study. And you’ve been in and out this week at funny times. You weren’t here for Sunday lunch. We picked the food for your mum’s birthday and Martin had to pick for you.’

  ‘That’s in like two weeks’ time,’ I said. ‘And we always eat the same thing.’

  ‘It’s just a bit erratic, for you.’

  ‘Erratic? I just left school. I’m still doing my Wildlife Trust things. I�
��m still working at the beer garden. And I will decide about university, but I just want to be free to think about it. Otherwise what’s the point of living in the West?’

  Dad laughed.

  ‘Don’t laugh at me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You just usually tell us if you’re going to be out all night. You’re usually very considerate.’

  ‘I haven’t become inconsiderate. But maybe … I don’t know. Maybe I feel like I’ve been behaving a certain way for too long and I haven’t been very honest with myself. And that everyone else just does what they want and doesn’t care what the consequences are.’

  He put both hands on my arm. ‘Well, that sounds kacke.’ Kacke was the second-worst swear word my father used. Scheiße was reserved for slicing a finger or stubbing a toe.

  I got up, threw my yoghurt pot into the bin and rinsed the teaspoon under the tap.

  ‘Ralfi?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘D’you want to do the coffee before you go?’

  He retrieved a new packet from the sideboard, vacuum-packed into a hard brick. I wavered, but then went to the table and gripped it, trying to concentrate on its hardness as he snipped the edge of the golden foil with a pair of scissors. I felt the packet instantly soften and collapse beneath my fingers. I took the open packet and inhaled a noseful of the thick aroma, so rich and chocolatey it was almost savoury.

  ‘I wish coffee tasted as nice as it smells.’

  ‘I’m glad you asked me about your friend,’ said Dad, taking the packet back.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, adjusting my towel again and feeling ashamed of myself for even thinking about telling him. ‘That’s OK.’

  In my room, I pulled on a T-shirt and shorts, put on my battered trainers over high white socks and, hearing my mother stirring in the bedroom, ran out of the house. I wheeled my bike onto the street and sat on the crossbar with my hands draped over the handlebars. I had planned to cycle to Kreuzberg, to lie on the grass in Volkspark Friedrichshain until ten or so and then call on Maike, but suddenly felt indecisive. It was so early that I calculated I couldn’t call on Maike for another two hours, and I’d forgotten to pack a book. I certainly wasn’t going to go upstairs again. Cautiously, I turned and looked up the street. Close enough to make out that there was a driver, but too far away to make out their face, I saw a green car parked beneath a lime tree alive with sunlight.

  I turned my bike towards it, lifted myself onto the saddle and lazily kicked down on the pedals of my bike. I was aware, in my peripheral vision, of the Tweetie Pie bell on my handlebars, an ironic gift from Maike when I’d turned fifteen. But my gaze was fixed on the driver of the green Mercedes, that resolved into Oz, his hand hanging over the steering wheel holding a smoking cigarette, his other hand at his mouth and his eyes locked onto my face.

  Eleven

  We sat side by side. The car smelt of old leather and cigarettes, the smell of every second car in those days. Oz was wearing a pale pink T-shirt tucked into white shorts. I stared at his knees, like smooth, brown fists. After I’d locked my bike to a lamppost and got into the car I was silent for a while. At some point I managed, ‘You probably need to go to work.’

  ‘Ralf,’ he said, which I read as meaning, ‘Calm down and pull yourself together and you came to me, which is fine, but you don’t need to pretend you didn’t.’

  I caught sight of Frau von Hildendorf tottering out of the front door of our apartment block and ducked my head, covering my face with my hand. I scratched at my hairline, as if that was the purpose of the gesture, embarrassed that Oz had seen me embarrassed. Oz watched Frau von Hildendorf go into the bakery. ‘Shall we drive somewhere?’

  ‘Where, though?’ I said, the tone more desperate than I’d intended.

  ‘Out of town.’

  I looked at his face for the first time. He was frowning and smiling, patiently waiting for me.

  ‘Out out?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  My assent was a muddle of shrugging, nodding and the mouthing of unsounded OKs.

  *

  As we turned into Kanstraße, Oz pressed down the button for the cigarette lighter. Automatically, I drew my hands into my lap. I’d stuck my finger onto the glowing rings of the lighter in my parents’ car as a child and could still remember the ghastly sizzle and bone-white pain. When the button popped, Oz steered with his bare knees and lit a Gitane. ‘Want one?’ he said.

  I nodded and lit a cigarette from his. The wind from the open windows battered my face and the sun fluttered across my legs, turning the hairs amber. The smoke from our cigarettes disappeared to nothing over our shoulders and the car roared beneath us to the edge of the city, to the border.

  ‘I always loved these cars. Dad drives Opels,’ I said, my lips loosened by the cigarette.

  ‘I’ve had it for ever. I love it, but it’s a nightmare in winter.’

  The queue at the Dreilinden checkpoint was shorter than normal. We’d been waiting for two hours and I guessed we’d wait another thirty minutes at least. We were all very good at guessing the waiting time based on the length of the queues, but the vagaries of the East German border guards were impossible to fathom, and sometimes they stripped down car after car.

  ‘What if I’d left my ID at home?’ I said, listening to the chugging engine.

  ‘I don’t think you’re the sort of person who leaves their ID at home.’

  I rubbed my index finger along my chapped lips. ‘I think my mum’s having an affair.’

  ‘Ach, I er … ’ Oz stuttered. ‘Scheiße. Sorry. That was … That was unexpected.’

  I leant against the door and felt the sun on my neck and the heat tumbling up from the concrete beneath us. I felt panicked; I felt like opening the door and running.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s been on my mind.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. For you, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry for me. You should feel sorry for my dad.’

  ‘He doesn’t know?’

  ‘Why would he know?’

  Oz put his hand on his chest and said, ‘I don’t know him, so … But, maybe it’s one of those kinds of marriages where those things are allowed.’

  ‘What kind of marriages are those?’

  ‘I don’t know. As I said, I don’t know him.’

  I stared out of the window at the cars in the neighbouring queue. There was a canary-yellow VW Beetle with a red setter hanging its head out of the window, filmy bubbles of spit clinging to its panting pink tongue. It turned its head, looking down towards the East German checkpoint, where a Russian tank – the first tank to reach Berlin in 1945 – was parked with its gun pointed at the queues of West Berliners.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It was stupid just saying it like that. I don’t normally tell people things like that. Just this one’s driving me … It’s made me sick and with you … ’

  ‘What about me?’

  I turned. He looked so worried. ‘Nothing. It’s just … I don’t know. I feel like I left school, was finally excited to start, you know, life, and everything’s just falling to pieces.’

  The red and white barrier lifted and the cars moved forward. ‘Tell me about it then,’ Oz said.

  ‘I can’t even explain it to myself,’ I said, as the East German guard waved us to the first window.

  *

  When I was a student in Britain I discovered that many people believed that Berlin sat exactly on the border between East and West Germany. In fact, when the occupying powers carved up the country after the war, they divided both Germany and Berlin into four zones. Berlin sat in the middle of the Russian zone, so when the Allies turned into Cold War enemies, West Berlin was left stranded, a semicircular island in the middle of enemy territory. Eventually transit routes through East Germany were negotiated, including three roads, the most popular of which ran from West Berlin to Helmstedt-Marienborn. It was this road that we joined, when the final barrier lifted to let us through.

&nbs
p; As we juddered over the joins between the concrete slabs at the mandatory 100 kilometres an hour, the interminable banks of pine trees dropped away revealing East German fields filled with wheat turning a pale yellow. I reached out my hand to feel the jellyish substance of air at speed and looked over at Oz’s mouth, at his lips slightly parted, the edges of his front teeth visible. I had to turn away again. I felt as though his face would turn me to ash if I stared at it for too long.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. I keep thinking how ridiculous this is.’

  ‘What? Me?’

  I laughed. ‘No. I don’t mean you’re ridiculous. I just mean this situation. Getting in a car with a stranger and driving to West Germany.’

  ‘I’m hardly a stranger.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about you!’

  ‘There’s not that much to know; I’m not that interesting.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. He smiled at me. ‘Ask me whatever you like. I’m going to turn out to be a massive disappointment. You’ll see.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you do when you’re not spying?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not a spy. Not in the way you’re thinking about it.’

  ‘How do you know how I’m thinking about it?’

  He looked at me. ‘I don’t want to disappoint you,’ he said seriously.

  I didn’t know what to say to this. ‘I don’t care,’ was the best I could come up with.

  ‘No?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  He shifted in his seat. ‘I’m a paid informant.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Which means I’m not technically employed by the Federal Intelligence Agency – the BND – but I get paid for helping out.’

  ‘Why can you be helpful?’

  ‘Well, Dad’s businesses are pretty diverse, so I take the deliveries at the shop, look after his flats – like the ones in your block – sort out bulk sales, things like that. I get around a lot in Berlin and meet a lot of people. Also, there’s the Turkish thing. That gets me into some places that other people can’t, makes me more invisible.’