by Anne Emery
“I certainly do. How is she?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” And he handed the phone to Normie. “It’s my brother Patrick.”
“Oh!”
Brennan knew she was fond of Pat, having met him on a couple of occasions before. And he knew the feeling was mutual.
“How are you? Oh, not too much new here.”
Now there was discretion for you; nobody would ever be able to accuse Normie Collins of being a gossip. She chatted with Patrick for a bit and then said, “You know what? I decided what I’m going to be when I grow up. You’ll never guess. No, wait, you probably will. A psychiatrist! Do you really think so?”
Patrick most likely did think so, and Brennan did, too. She would make a wonderfully caring, conscientious psychiatrist.
“I like helping people with their problems.” The dear little thing looked guiltily at Brennan. “I mean, I will like helping people. I’ve never helped anybody yet. At all, for anything. Well, yes, maybe. Some little thing some time. I don’t remember. I should go now so you can talk to your brother. It costs money to call long distance. Okay, good. Thank you!”
She gave the phone back to Brennan and signalled that she would be leaving him to have his conversation. He mouthed the words, “Thank you, angel.” And she smiled and was gone.
Brennan filled his brother in on the eventful few weeks since they had seen each other last. Then, “So, Bren, you had a visit from little Normie. She’s not in trouble with the principal, I hope!” He was laughing as he said it; he knew the chance of Normie being in trouble was about equal to one of their family winning the Irish Sweeps.
In a rare moment of candour — rare indeed — Brennan decided to be candid. “The little sweetheart came up here on a pretext of wanting to borrow the score of the Fauré Requiem. We are doing a couple of pieces from it, but that’s not the real reason she came up here.”
“Oh?”
“She came up to, em, be my psychiatrist.”
“Well!”
“She’s concerned about . . . my fondness for the drink. Would you like to interject here, Doc?”
“Not at all. Carry on.”
“And the most endearing part of it all was that she’d obviously researched the subject. She’d found a book on, let’s say, alcohol problems. And some information from AA. But she didn’t want me to know it; wanted me to think she’d just happened to hear something on CBC Radio. I don’t think I’ve ever felt —” Brennan suddenly found himself unable to speak. Patrick didn’t rush him. After a few moments of silence, Brennan came clean with his long-distance shrink. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a rush of love for anyone in my entire life.”
Chapter XXVII
Brennan
The following week, Brennan was treated to one of those infrequent opportunities that thrilled him to the core: after taking a flight to New York, he was soaring over the Atlantic in a plane flown by his younger brother. He thought of little Dominic Collins and how delighted he would be in this situation, and Brennan promised himself he would arrange a cockpit adventure for the little lad someday soon. And of course he thought of Normie Collins, and how he had not — not yet — acted upon his promise to her, to go off the drink. This wouldn’t be a good time to try to wean himself off it, not with the trip to Germany with Terry, and the stress and anxiety over the Meika Keller situation. If he tried now and failed to stay off the stuff, that would only compound his feeling of failure and might even lead to more drinking. So, he would put it off for a bit. For now, it was the Burke brothers on the 747 from New York to Zurich. Terry’s voice came over the PA system; he introduced himself and welcomed everyone aboard. He said his brother Brennan was on the plane and remarked that if anyone found the time a bit long on the transatlantic flight, they should ask Brennan about their family’s first voyage across the Atlantic to New York. The ship was an old tub, the sea was stormy, and the trip took the better part of a week. This got a laugh from the passengers and from Brennan as well, though he remembered the long, sickening voyage to exile from their beloved home in Ireland. It was still the stuff of nightmares for him, and he put it out of his mind; he looked forward to the eight-hour flight to European shores.
They caught a connecting flight to Leipzig and checked into a small hotel in the city centre. Captain Terry Burke was of course well accustomed to being wide awake all night and showed no sign of needing a rest in the morning, so Brennan was determined to put aside his jet lag and keep up with his brother. He called the number provided by their contact in Berlin and spoke to the man doing research in the government files, Manfred Peter Steiff. Steiff asked him to call again later in the day, and they would arrange a meeting. Brennan thanked him and headed down to the lobby with Terry. They obtained a map of the city and set out for a bit of sightseeing. Brennan’s first destination was the church where one of his musical idols, Johann Sebastian Bach, had been cantor and choirmaster in the 1700s.
It was a bright cool day with a bit of a breeze. The walk through the centre of the city was, to Brennan, architectural Himmel. Leipzig was renowned for block after block of magnificent buildings spanning the centuries and architectural styles. There were elaborately decorated facades everywhere, and Brennan nearly brought on whiplash for himself, gazing up, down, and around him. Then it was musical heaven. Bach’s church, Thomaskirche, was built in the twelfth century; hundreds of years of renovations had culminated in a new Gothic–style building with a stained-glass window dedicated to Bach and a statue of Mendelssohn outside. And the church boasted something that was particularly close to Brennan’s heart: there had been a Saint Thomas boy choir here for eight hundred years. Civilization was rich and deep-rooted in this country; Brennan wondered, as he and countless others so often did, how such a highly accomplished and cultured civilization had given way to two forms of murderous totalitarianism in the twentieth century. He also knew that Germany had turned its back on its brutal past and was now one of the most progressive societies in the world.
But it was the darker history of the city that Brennan had to contend with on this trip. Leipzig was the hometown of the woman he had failed so utterly, and Leipzig had been on the wrong side of the border when Germany was divided following World War II. This city had been in Soviet-controlled East Germany. They stopped for a beer across from the church at the Johann S pub. Brennan pushed thoughts of Normie out of his mind as he sipped his Pils and consulted his map. “I’d rather not ask any of the locals where the Stasi headquarters was.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“But I did some research and I think this is where we’ll find it. They call it der Runde Ecke, the Round Corner.” He pointed to the map.
“Are we meeting our contact at the headquarters?”
“No, I’m to ring him later. But I want to see it. We’re here to meet somebody about secret police files and, well, I want to see where that element of sordid history was centred.”
They drained their beer steins, paid up, and walked to the local headquarters of the infamous secret police. The building was constructed of light-coloured stone; the corner facing them was round and it had a curved balustrade with carved figures upon it. It was topped by a terracotta-coloured roof and a modified turret above the corner. It was a far cry from the brutal, intimidating complex in Berlin, a complex befitting a sinister state apparatus. The Leipzig HQ would in fact have made a lovely postcard. But now that Brennan knew what he knew, he suspected that there was significance in the choice of the menacing Stasi building in Berlin, rather than a picturesque scene from Leipzig.
When they returned to their hotel, Brennan made his call, and Manfred Peter Steiff said he would meet them at Auerbach’s Keller that evening. He could not give them a time, but he would be there eventually.
“We’ll go early,” Terry suggested. “Treat ourselves to a meal and some more of that magnificent German beer.”
; “I thought you were trying to be a good influence on me, Terrence.”
“I am. I’ll show you, by example, the pitfalls of excessive drinking. I’ll demonstrate what a lowly, babbling wretch a man becomes when he lets beer and liquor rule his life. You’ll never touch a dhrop of anything but Communion wine again.”
God help me, if Communion wine is to be my only libation. All he said was “May God and Patrick and all the saints bless you for your sacrifice.”
“Now where is this place?”
“It’s in an arcade called the Mädler Passage off Grimmaische Strasse,” Brennan said, peering at his map.
“You’re a better man than I, brother Bren,” Terry said. “I can read a map, but I’d never be able to get my tongue around all those clashing esses and esches.”
“That dooms you from ever learning Irish, my lad.”
They left the hotel and attracted disapproving looks from their fellow pedestrians when, with no traffic in sight, they crossed against the red light. Nobody joined them in this flagrant flouting of the rules. They reached the cobblestoned market square, and Brennan was enthralled yet again with the great and varied architecture all around them. Soon enough, they arrived at the Mädler Passage.
“Here we are. Auerbach’s Keller.”
“Maybe yer one took her name from this place.”
“Doubt it. Keller just means cellar. A common name and a common word. But there’s nothing ordinary about this spot. It was opened as a wine bar in the 1500s. I’ve read about it. Well, I’m sure you have, too, Terry, when you studied Goethe’s Faust. He set some of the play in this very building.”
“I’m boycotting Faust.”
“Are you now? And why would that be?”
“Because Gerta set it here instead of in O’Malley’s bar in New York.”
“I understand you, but many wouldn’t.”
Brennan was reminded of a performance in New York not at O’Malley’s but at the Metropolitan Opera. It was Faust, the Gounod opera, and it was brilliant. He wondered whether Fried Habler had ever sung the lead, had ever been Faust. But it was more entertaining to picture the exuberant German as Mephistopheles, agent of the devil. That was bass-baritone, though, so probably wouldn’t happen. All this brought to mind Habler’s claim that he had been home asleep the night Meika Keller died, so deeply asleep that he had not heard the phone ring when Hubert Rendell called looking for his wife. Brennan knew Monty had spoken to Habler, and, thinking about it now, Brennan wondered whether Monty had ever had the opera singer in his sights as a possible suspect. The story that he had slept through the phone call had never been credible and of course it wasn’t true. Habler had later admitted to Brennan that he hadn’t answered the phone because he was afraid it was his wife calling. There was an unholy racket going on in his house when the call had come through. He had been spending a raucous evening, an evening of opera buffa, with a group of sailors and ladies of the night, and the cover-up had been motivated by nothing more sinister than Habler’s fear of his wife finding out.
What would Brennan say to Habler the next time they met? The singer, Meika’s old friend from their school days here in Leipzig, would be anxious to know what Brennan had discovered on his visits to Germany. Some of it of course could never be revealed. Secrets of the confessional. Would he want to disillusion Habler about his friend by revealing what he had learned from Willy Horst Lehmann? And what other revelations would be in store when Brennan and his brother sat down with the contact tonight?
He and Terry went inside and toured the various rooms. “Look at this place!” Brennan exclaimed. “Vaulted ceilings, painted columns, food and wine. The divil be damned; I’m here for the night.”
They had a fine meal and lingered over a bottle of Riesling. They started a bit of a party with a man and woman at the table beside them. The couple appeared to be in their fifties, and Brennan heard them speaking English to the young waitress, who was studying the language on her own while attending college part-time. During his brief spells here in Germany, he had been struck by how many Germans spoke English and spoke it well. Linguistic imperialism by the English-speaking countries, one might say. And, as an Irishman, he understood why one might say it. But for Brennan, it was more a case of the European countries being proficient in teaching several languages to their students. Unlike in the U.S.A., where he had spent most of his life and where there seemed to be little effort, and little enthusiasm, for teaching anything but English.
The couple in Auerbach’s had two bottles of wine on their table, and Terry got the conversation going by saying he was a mere tourist and hadn’t realized that wine was to be paired with itself. The people weren’t in the least offended, and they gave Terry a bit of a lesson on German wines and where the vineyards were. They introduced themselves as Heinz and Margrit. It wasn’t long before comments were made about the difference between the atmosphere in Leipzig now and before. Before the wall came down and Germany was unified.
“We all heard stories,” Terry said, “about how bad it was here. And I know that fundamentally it was true. But there was an overlay of propaganda, as you might expect, particularly in the United States. Those nasty commies and all that.”
The man laughed and said, “Ja, there was a lot of that. But the truth is that things were terrible here.” He looked around him. “We like to believe that the walls no longer have ears to listen and record every word we say. It is hard for us to break away from old habits, when we were afraid that someone at the table beside us was spying and reporting back to the Stasi everything we said. The Staatssicherheit. State security, secret police. Well, you have heard of the Stasi.”
“Oh, yeah,” Terry acknowledged.
“Speaking to you here, or speaking to this young lady, would have made us suspects in the eyes of the authorities. Any person who had friends or contacts in the West was under suspicion. Anyone suspected of wanting to leave for the West could be imprisoned. It was a crime to try to leave the country.”
“But if this was the best system in history, the workers’ paradise, why would anyone want to leave?”
“They never gave us the answer to that question!”
His wife piped up. “Nobody was brave enough to ask such a question.”
“I know I did not have that courage,” her husband admitted. “There were listening devices on our telephones; our letters were opened. There was even a system of, well, this will sound comical to you . . .”
“Don’t tell them, Heinz!” the wife urged him.
“Yes, I will tell them.” Again, he looked around the place, then appeared sheepish about doing so. “Not used to the new regime yet even though more than five years have gone by now. Anyway, the Stasi had a procedure for capturing the personal scent of people!”
“My mind refuses to go in that direction,” Brennan said.
His brother laughed. “There is no personal scent permissible to my brother other than soap. And maybe the faint smell of whiskey in the mouth.”
“If it was soap or anything else,” Heinz said, “the Stasi tried to capture it. When people were brought to headquarters for an interview, or interrogation, a piece of cloth was on the chair underneath the person’s rear end.” Heinz must have seen something in Brennan’s expression because he said, “It is unbelievable, I agree with you, but it is true. Then these cloths were saved in jars. If the Stasi intercepted a letter or found other incriminating documents or items, sniffer dogs were brought in to see if the paper smelled like the cloth from under the person’s body!”
“Jesus the Christ, who could come up with an idea like that?”
Heinz merely raised his hands and looked around him: these people, this culture, came up with the idea all on their own.
“And,” he continued, “that was not even the worst thing. The worst was the informers, those who were Stasi themselves and those who were not but operat
ed as civilian informers. My sister was sent to prison for three years! All she did was make inquiries about emigrating. An informer of course — someone my sister thought was her friend — told the authorities about her inquiries. In order to subdue the population, the Stasi used blackmail, imprisonment, torture, and murder. Some say there were ten thousand informers here in Leipzig alone! You were afraid to trust anyone, and I mean anyone at all.”
“Like those at the other end of this room,” Margrit said. Her eyes went to a table of men at the far wall.
Exactly, Brennan thought. All around you today were people who had, only a few short years ago, been betraying their friends and family to the monstrous state of East Germany. If you lived here, you would be suspicious of everyone you met.
“After everything we went through during the World War,” Margrit said, “after everything our country did under the fascists, we were then under the boot of a regime that declared itself to be anti-fascist. The wall which you know as the Berlin Wall was formally called the Anti-Fascist Protective Wall. So, the West was fascist and we here in East Germany were free, happy citizens of the true democracy. I still cannot believe I am free to say that!”
Margrit and Heinz finished their meal and wine and paid their bill. Brennan and Terry stood and shook their hands, wishing them well.
A few minutes later, Brennan saw a tall thin balding man in wire-rimmed spectacles come into the restaurant. He looked around and seemed to register every one of the patrons in turn. His eyes lingered on the group of men Margrit had pointed out against the far wall. Then he walked towards Brennan and Terry and said, “Are you the Burkes who have just arrived from New York?”
“Yes. I’m Terry, and this is my brother Brennan. More formally known as Father Burke.”
“I am pleased to meet you. I am Manfred Peter Steiff. Shall I join you?”
“Please do.”
“What can we get for you, Herr Steiff?”
