Sisters of Berlin

by Juliet Conlin

  ‘A bit what?’

  ‘You know.’ He pulls a face. ‘A bit . . . vacuous.’

  ‘Vacuous?’ she asks, astounded. ‘You do know she has a PhD in macroeconomics?’

  ‘Sure. But aren’t you the one who said that any dummy can get a doctorate?’

  She bites her lower lip. Yes, she has said this. She does think it – and, as a student, she thought it about lots of her peers – but never about Sara. Sara is smart, and Sebastian knows it. But she doesn’t pursue it. Secretly, she thinks her doctorate is a sore subject for him, or rather, the fact that she has one and she doesn’t. She smiles to herself. It’s petty, of course, but we all have our weaknesses.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘I said you’d call her back when you were up to it.’

  ‘You weren’t rude to her, though, were you?’

  He exhales noisily. ‘Of course not. I know to behave in front of your friends.’

  Nina closes her eyes. Another messy conversation. Lately, she’s somehow always managing to strike the wrong, contrary tone, leading their exchanges down a path that leaves her feeling tired and bruised and mean.

  Sebastian lets himself fall onto his back and lifts his hands behind him on the pillow, releasing a sickly hint of his tuberose scented deodorant. ‘So, what’s the news from Franzen?’

  ‘A couple of leads. Maybe nothing. He doesn’t give much away.’

  ‘But what did he actually say?’

  ‘There’s an unexplained amount of money in Marie’s account. Fifteen thousand euros.’ She turns her head, wanting to see Sebastian’s reaction.

  He lets out a small snort. ‘Where did she get her hands on that kind of money?’

  ‘Nobody seems to know,’ she says. ‘And there’s a man from her writing group they’ve yet to speak with. Jakob Fraunhofer.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘No idea,’ Nina replies. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

  ‘Franzen?’ He reaches across and gently pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ he says. ‘Him, and that fat guy Maslowski – I don’t know. I don’t like their style. But anyway,’ he continues, leaning back and pulling her onto him. ‘That’s enough about them.’

  She lets him wrap his legs around hers. She feels his erection on her stomach and tries – but fails – to conjure up erotic images that might put her in the mood. The smell of his deodorant isn’t helping.

  ‘Did I tell you?’ he says, teasing her earlobe with his teeth. ‘You’re looking hot. Have you lost weight?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘It suits you,’ he says and rolls her deftly over onto her back.

  She simply closes her eyes as he enters her, trying to push her mind into a place that isn’t grief and pain and darkness.

  12

  On Gärtnerstraße, Nina parks the car in front of a dumpster. The sign behind her says that parking is not permitted between nine in the morning and six in the evening, but it’s the only free spot on the street, and it’s still a good few hundred metres from Marie’s flat. Despite the drizzle she walks slowly along the shabby cobbles, careful to avoid the dog shit that smears the pavement, only semi-consciously noting the sprawls of graffiti and flaking paint on the buildings she passes. In summer, the street is glorious, with long lines of lime trees that provide verdant, sun-dappled shade, and the sun bleaches the dirty plaster façades so they appear almost clean. But now, with the low, grey autumn sky and naked trees, there is nowhere for the ugliness to hide.

  Further up along the road, past a small playground and beyond the next junction, Gärtnerstraße is fresh, clean, revamped; the Wilhelmian architecture as grand – perhaps even grander, who knows? – than its period of origin, bulky BMWs fighting for space next to Mercedes, SUVs and brand-new Mini Coopers. Marie’s building is only some fifty metres away from the gentrification sweeping this part of Friedrichshain. In Berlin, the divide is no longer east versus west, but rich versus poor.

  Nina reaches number 31 and fishes a set of keys out of her pocket. The door is plastered with tattered posters advertising demos and weekend-long parties. Nobody has bothered to remove the outdated ones, just stuck more recent ones on top. Nina fumbles with the keys, looking for the one that fits the main door. When she finds it, she places it in the lock and pauses. It is the first time she’s been back here since a month before the attack on Marie. Her father phoned this morning to tell her that a professional cleaning team had been in, following Franzen’s suggestion, and would she please now go to the flat and sort through Marie’s belongings. He didn’t give her the option to refuse.

  A street sweeper comes noisily along the pavement in her direction, forcing her to open the door and step inside. The light in the stairwell is dim, but she climbs the stairs to the second floor without switching on the light. Marie’s flat is on the left, opposite that of Frau Lehmholz, the old woman who found her and called the ambulance. Nina can see traces of the adhesive tape from the police seal still sticking to either side of the door frame. She looks at the keys in her hand, then changes her mind. She turns and rings the doorbell to Frau Lehmholz’s flat.

  It takes a long minute before she hears footsteps coming towards the door.

  ‘Hello? Who is it?’ The voice is husky and frail.

  ‘It’s Nina Bergmann,’ Nina says. ‘Marie’s sister. Marie, from next door.’

  ‘Who?’

  She raises her voice. ‘Nina Bergmann. Marie’s sister. I was wondering if I could come in and talk to you.’

  ‘Oh,’ Frau Lehmholz says. Nina hears the sound of the chain being released from its socket. The door opens a crack.

  ‘Marie was my sister,’ Nina says, astonished by how small Frau Lehmholz is; she barely reaches her shoulders. Her head, wizened and brown, reminds Nina of a walnut. The old woman’s scalp sprouts whispery strands of white hair. ‘I’ve come to sort through her things, and I – I thought I might come and have a chat.’

  Frau Lehmholz smiles and opens the door wider. ‘Of course, come in. But you’ll have to speak up. The batteries are low.’ She pats a small plastic box that is fastened to her belt, presumably the battery pack for her hearing aid, which is attached to the box by means of a wire. Nina almost laughs to see such a device exist outside of a museum.

  ‘They’re a special type,’ Frau Lehmholz says as she leads her down a dark narrow hall into the living room. She leans heavily on a cane to walk, with a lop-sided, awkward gait. There is a vague odour of stale smoke, as though the place was once inhabited by a smoker.

  ‘A special type?’

  ‘The batteries,’ Frau Lehmholz says. ‘They’re a special type. Can’t just use ordinary ones, or I would’ve taken them out of the remote-control ages ago. Marie knew where to get them.’ She lets herself drop into an armchair and props her cane between her knees.

  The room is crammed with personal possessions: a glass cabinet contains figurines, crockery and candlesticks; one section of the wall next to the window is covered in framed postcards from Cuba, Yugoslavia and Hungary; an enormous bookshelf – at least twice the height of Frau Lehmholz – covers the entire back wall, more books are piled on an ancient velvet sofa.

  On a large teak armoire, Nina spots a faded colour photograph of a much younger Frau Lehmholz. She’s smiling into the camera, her arm around the shoulders of a boy Rebekka’s age, who is wearing the blue uniform of the Freie Deutsche Jugend, the former East German youth association. In contrast to Frau Lehmholz, the boy appears rather cross, his head cocked to one side, eyes squinting at the sun.

  ‘My son, Günther,’ Frau Lehmholz says, with a definite trace of pride in her voice. ‘At his initiation, his Jugendweihe. He doesn’t live in Berlin any more, so I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like.’

  ‘He doesn’t look too happy,’ Nina says.

  ‘Oh, it’s a difficult age, fourteen,’ Frau Lehmholz replies. ‘But he was a lovely boy, back then.’ Then she adds, with a sudden fierceness in her v
oice, ‘I know what you’re thinking. But let me tell you, it wasn’t all bad. It was a corrupt, fascist state – I would be the last to deny that – but the ends were honourable. Do you understand? It wasn’t comparable to Hitler’s fanaticism. The means were rotten and inhumane, but many of us held such high ideals, ideals of a just world.’

  Nina is taken aback by this sudden outburst. ‘I don’t doubt that, Frau Lehmholz,’ she says, turning to face her, while thinking of her father’s “Nothing good to be found in evil” view of the GDR.

  ‘People don’t understand,’ the old woman continues. ‘It killed my husband. It killed Manfred that people were so quick to accuse him of things he had no choice about. He didn’t want to do any harm, he really didn’t. He was far too gentle for that.’

  She points, with a pronounced tremor, at a framed photograph hanging on the wall behind Nina. Out of politeness, Nina turns and takes a closer look. A youngish man in bathing shorts, tanned and powerfully athletic, grins a little self-consciously into the camera, displaying a small gap between his otherwise perfectly straight teeth.

  ‘That was our honeymoon in Split,’ Frau Lehmholz tells her. ‘We got married in ’fifty-five but couldn’t afford a holiday until four years later. By that time, our son was on his way and I was sick all the time.’ She shrugs and lets out a small sigh. ‘Manfred was a champion wrestler. So muscular, so strong.’

  She pauses, and Nina stops herself from turning around to look at the old woman, afraid she might intrude on some intimate recollection and embarrass both of them. After a moment, Frau Lehmholz goes on with her story.

  ‘But he injured his shoulder badly about a year after that picture was taken. And so he had to retire from wrestling and trained as a physiotherapist instead. He had such lovely hands. Gentle but firm.’

  Now Nina turns around. She’s feeling somewhat wrong-footed, stuck in this one-way conversation, and for a moment, she wishes she hadn’t rung the woman’s doorbell. But then, Frau Lehmholz leans forward on her cane and looks straight at her. There is a flash of something – anger, grief – in her eyes.

  ‘He was at the ’sixty-eight Olympics,’ she says, ‘as part of the medical team. Günther and I weren’t allowed to go with him to Mexico, of course. Risk of defection, you know. When Manfred got there, he was taken aside by an official and told it was his patriotic socialist duty to keep an eye on the athletes, and to “observe and report” any contact with the enemy. Western athletes, that is. He was to compile a report on anything he found suspicious, no matter how harmless it appeared. He was told that every member of the Olympic team was doing the same, so they would know if he was withholding any information.’ She looks down at the floor.

  ‘So what happened?’ Nina asks quietly. She is familiar with patients, not just the older women, who live very lonely lives and are desperate for even five minutes of conversation, of shared memories or troubles. She’s always happy to indulge them; it’s the least she can do.

  ‘A member of the rowing team, a very young man, nineteen or thereabouts, took part in a friendly table-tennis tournament some of the Americans had organised, and was seen drinking with them later that night. Seen not only by Manfred, but by several others, too. He had no choice but to report it.’ Her voice is low, an old person’s rattle, now.

  ‘He said it was the most shameful thing he’d ever done. But he had no choice, you see?’ Her head quivers. ‘If he’d been the only one not to report it, that would have made him just as guilty. What would that have meant for me? For Günther?

  ‘Then, when everything was finally over, when they got rid of the Wall, it was all dragged out into the open: the Stasi files, the secret documents numbered and filed away. Everything. Well, nearly everything. There are probably some they’ve yet to pull out of the woodwork, don’t you think? People still hiding, people who did really wicked things.’ She opens and closes her mouth, making her dentures click. ‘And there, of course, was Manfred’s report from Mexico. They made him out to be a monster, a sneak and coward! As though he alone was responsible for all the suffering.’ She slumps in her chair, shaking at the memory. ‘He died of shame. You wouldn’t think it possible, but Manfred actually died of shame nine months later. My sweet, dear husband.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nina says, not finding better words of comfort.

  Frau Lehmholz wipes her eyes, gathers herself. ‘No, I’m sorry, dear. Ah, my poor Manfred. It would’ve been our sixty-fourth anniversary next week.’ She sighs, then turns to Nina with a smile. ‘But I hope I haven’t made you feel uncomfortable. Do please sit down and chat with me for a while.’

  Nina hesitates, unsure. Frau Lehmholz points to the sofa.

  ‘Just put the books on the floor,’ she says. Then she leans back in her chair, cane between her knees, and closes her eyes. She lets out a low sigh. ‘Such a shame,’ she says. ‘Such a shame.’

  When she opens her eyes again, they’re filled with tears. ‘If only they’d knocked at my door, instead of hers,’ she says quietly, and Nina realises she is talking about Marie now. ‘There’s nothing much here of value, of course, but they could have taken it all. And Marie would still be –’ She pauses and swallows. ‘Nobody wants to die, not really, but I’ve had my time. Now I’m waiting, passing the days the best I can. And Marie – Marie was so young.’

  ‘The police seem to think that it was someone who knew Marie,’ Nina says, not wanting to explicitly agree with the old woman. ‘It wasn’t a robbery, so . . .’

  ‘Oh, what do they know?’ Frau Lehmholz says, waving her hand across her face in a gesture of annoyance. ‘Who would want to hurt Marie?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nina says quietly. Then she adds, ‘Would you like me to make some coffee?’

  ‘Oh no, I can’t drink coffee,’ Frau Lehmholz says. ‘But I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea. The kitchen’s across the hall.’ She smiles at Nina. ‘You’re as sweet as your sister.’

  When Nina returns with two cups of tea, Frau Lehmholz is sitting in her chair with her eyes closed. She looks like she’s fallen asleep, so Nina places the cups down gently on a side table.

  But then Frau Lehmholz speaks: ‘I heard the knocking, you know. On Marie’s door, the day she was attacked. I thought it was those damn Russians upstairs – they’re a rowdy lot, believe me – so I didn’t bother going to look.’

  ‘You heard knocking?’

  ‘Yes.’ She frowns, pulls her mouth into an o. ‘At least, I think it was knocking. Though maybe it was the pipes. This building, it’s old, it has a life of its own. The pipes in the walls, they make the most awful noise.’ She shakes her head. ‘They used to keep me awake at night, until I got used to it. And now . . . now it’s the thought of Marie that keeps me from sleeping.’

  Nina catches her breath. Perhaps this is the first opportunity the old woman has had to talk about Marie. She passes her the cup of tea before sitting down again.

  ‘I didn’t realise you and Marie were so close,’ Nina says.

  ‘Oh yes! She was such a good neighbour, an extraordinary young woman. I’m – what – more than fifty years older than her, and yet she talked to me like I was as young as her. Oh, the things she used to tell me!’ She giggles and places a wrinkled hand over her eyes. Her false teeth appear too big for her mouth; Nina thinks perhaps her jaw has shrunk since she first had the teeth fitted.

  This makes Nina smile too; she’s unexpectedly touched and delighted to have found someone who knew Marie from a very different perspective. ‘Like what?’ she asks, detecting a tone of urgency in her own voice.

  ‘Oh, you know, about her boyfriend.’ Frau Lehmholz lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘What he was like in bed – and out of bed too for that matter.’

  ‘Goodness.’ Alarmed at the prospect of talking about her sister’s sex life now that she’s gone, Nina wonders if Marie ever told Frau Lehmholz what she does for a living. All she can think to do is raise a hand to her mouth in faux-shock.

  ‘I’m talking about Robe
rt, now, of course. A bit too steady for Marie he was. She didn’t talk much about the last one.’

  ‘The last one?’ Nina notices that she has tightened her grip on the handle of the cup. She places it down on the saucer. ‘Did you meet him?’

  Frau Lehmholz shakes her head. ‘Only once. It wasn’t really a meeting, certainly not a formal introduction. I went over to ask Marie if she would buy me some milk when she was out shopping, and he was standing in her living room.’

  ‘Did Marie mention his name?’ Nina’s mind is racing; she’s working hard to control herself, not to scare the old lady off. ‘Was he called Jakob Fraunhofer, by any chance?’

  ‘Like the institute?’

  It takes a second to click into place. The Fraunhofer Research Institute. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘No. No, that wasn’t it. I’m sorry, dear, my memory’s not what it used to be. It was something short, that I know. But I can’t think what.’

  ‘Of course,’ Nina reassures her. ‘But do you remember what he looked like? Was he tall, or fat, or . . . what about his hair?’

  She tuts. ‘I’m sorry, dear, but my eyesight is almost as bad as my hearing. I think he was tall.’

  Nina frowns, exasperated but trying not to show it. She doesn’t understand why Franzen didn’t tell her about this man. Then something occurs to her. ‘Frau Lehmholz, when the police first spoke to you, after –’

  The old woman groans. ‘She was lying there, on the floor . . . and there was so much . . . so much blood. I didn’t dare touch her, I was frightened. I haven’t seen a dead body since I was a child. In the war . . . I thought those times were gone.’ Her hands are trembling. Nina reaches over and steadies them with her own.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to upset you.’

  Frau Lehmholz shakes her head and continues in a shaky voice, her hands resting in Nina’s. ‘The first police officers that came, the uniformed Schupos, they asked if I knew what had happened, but no. I had no idea. And I was so upset, so shocked. I couldn’t tell them anything. Apart from the knocking. But that might have been the Russians. Or the pipes. It’s a very old building, you know.’