Sektion 20 (9 page)

That afternoon the sun was still shining and Alex was keen to get to the park with Sophie. But first he had to sit through double politics. Herr Würfel was telling them the Socialist Unity Party was the conscience and organiser of the German working class.

Sometimes Alex could not even pretend to be interested. Würfel pointed a stick at a stupefyingly dull diagram showing the various hierarchies within the Party.

‘As the child is to the parent, so the citizen is to the State. The Party represents everything that is true in society and the political system.’

Alex could feel himself falling asleep. He was beginning to loathe school and tried to remember when he’d last been interested in a lesson.

Würfel threw his chalk at Alex. It hit him square on the top of his head. He jerked upright, instantly awake. ‘I am sure Dr Richard Sorge never nodded off in politics lessons,’ announced Würfel. The class snickered.

Würfel sent Alex off with a copy of
Economic Legislation for Socialism
and told him he expected a précis of the first three chapters on his desk first thing the next morning.

At breaktime Alex and Sophie sat together in the school yard, away from the others. Even then, they whispered. Just the other day a rumour had gone round that the perimeter of the playing field was bugged with Stasi microphones and it was only safe to talk if you sat in the middle of the field rather than at the edge. The school was planning an anniversary celebration of the birth of the Socialist Unity Party and he was wondering how he could get away with doing as little as possible for this event.

Alex loathed parades. ‘The last one, we had to carry great big pictures of the Party leaders. It was surreal. I had to carry Honecker. His picture was much bigger than all the others, in case we forgot he was the leader!’

They were laughing and Sophie shushed him. ‘Quiet – someone will hear.’

Alex said, ‘Come to the fair with me tonight. Geli is going to meet Lili there too. We could meet up early. Have a
Currywurst
and a beer. Even go on the Ferris wheel.’ The fair was at the far end of Treptower Park – a brisk twenty-minute walk from their apartments.

‘Lili’s a bit frightening, isn’t she,’ said Sophie.

‘She’s all right. Geli and I have known her for years. Please come along.’

Alex admired anyone who could do well at sport. His entire childhood had been blighted by early morning athletics competitions – freezing to death on a bleak football pitch, waiting for the winter sun to come up while the school tannoy blared out the national anthem or brisk brass-band music.

That afternoon their routine was interrupted by the Stasi. They descended on the school when Alex’s year was out playing hockey and football. When they returned to shower and collect their bags, they were barred from entry to the changing rooms. A Ministry of State Security guard stood by the doors to both the male and female changing rooms. No explanation was given. Ten minutes later they saw three plain-clothes Stasi leave the building.

‘They looked like creeps – especially the big one with the lank greasy hair,’ Alex muttered to Anton as they were allowed back in.

The whole year was called into the school assembly hall. Herr Roth, the Principal, announced that the Ministry of State Security had visited for routine checks and the school had been given a clean bill of health. As the kids walked home, the usual rumours went round about the Stasi looking for Western newspaper cuttings, pornography, drugs . . . Alex laughed at that one. They were told that young people in the West took lots of drugs. Alex hadn’t seen anything like it in East Berlin. The nearest he got to drugs was sharing a cigarette with Anton. He didn’t like to admit it but cigarettes always made him feel a bit sick.

It had taken three minutes for Unterleutnant Erich Kohl to identify Alex Ostermann’s possessions among the untidy piles of clothes and bags. He quickly located his keys in his pocket and made putty casts of them. They were never exact, these casts, but a skilled operative with a file could make minor adjustments to keys on the job.

Kohl enjoyed his work. Things had certainly moved on from the early days. The toys they gave you to play with! He had a microphone disguised as a tiepin that connected to a tiny tape recorder in his jacket. Science fiction thirty years ago! Back then, you had great big metal wheels of tape, and the hiss and crackle on them was horrendous. Kohl also loved the little cameras they had – ones that nestled in bags or lapels, which you operated with a little push button in your pocket. And the TV surveillance equipment was fantastic – stuff that looked like it had come from a laboratory or the Soviet Space Centre in Kazakhstan. Nowadays you could even record people’s misdemeanours on videotape.

Although he missed his work in the Foreign Section, he had settled into the Internal Service now. Sektion 20 was performing a valuable duty – weeding out the malcontents, trying to spot the escapers. There were still too many people trying to leave – some of them were even doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers. All of them trained and nurtured by their country, only to desert it when they were ready to do some good for their comrades. It wasn’t right.

He even liked the cultural stuff, although a lot of his colleagues moaned about how tedious it was – keeping an eye on the ones who showed ‘negative tendencies’. But they were the ones most likely to escape. If you had some kid with long hair and hippy clothes and weird music, then it was a safe bet they weren’t going to be an A-Grade student of Marxist-Leninism and destined for a career in government. Catching them young would nip those incorrect tendencies in the bud.

Alex rattled off his extra politics assignment as soon as he got home, then headed out into the winter evening to meet Sophie in the park. He was disconcerted to hear her parents had objected to her coming out with him. But they had relented when she told them who she was going to meet. Everyone knew Lili Weber.

They drank beer and ate their
Currywurst
. Alex felt happy and a little light-headed, and the curry sauce had left a pleasant sting on his lips. Sophie rested her head on his shoulders. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it. Just the two of us. I’m glad we came early.’

‘Let’s go on the wheel,’ said Alex. ‘Catch the last of the sunset.’

Soon they were beginning their jerky, stop-start journey to the top, as the wheel emptied and filled with passengers. As they ascended, Alex caught sight of the flashing lights of a Western airliner banking over the city as it made its approach to Tegel Airport. He thought how much he would like to be one of those passengers. He was about to say as much to Sophie but something stopped him. It seemed too frank an admission, even to say to her.

The sun had gone now and in the ebbing light of the distant sky he could see the illuminated signs of the big capitalist companies over in West Berlin – Mercedes, Axel Springer Verlag . . . In school they had been taught to despise these symbols and told horror stories of how the capitalist companies exploited the workers. Alex wondered if they were really any worse than the East German industries.

They met up with Geli, and a couple of her friends, soon after they finished their ride. She bought them two small beers and they stood around basking in the flashing lights and the booming music. Alex felt a little distracted. He had glimpsed a familiar face over the other side of the wheel and it made him feel uneasy. Was it that fellow who had been lurking around on the day Sophie had given him the Led Zeppelin record? He was about to mention it when Geli spotted Lili and shouted over to her. She was talking to another group of friends nearby, fellow students at the sports academy by the look of them, but she immediately came to join them.

They could see at once she was in the same foul mood she’d been in when they saw her before. ‘She’s been training too hard,’ whispered Geli. ‘There’s too much pressure on her. Let’s be gentle with her.’ She looked like a box of fireworks, ready to go up.

Geli felt especially protective towards her. Lili was one of the first kids in the school to befriend her and she wasn’t going to forget that. Lili had done her best to keep in touch when she had been transferred to the sports academy. They were all proud to have a friend who was a national champion.

The others drifted off and Sophie, Alex and Geli went to sit with Lili on a bench at the edge of the fair. In a few months’ time she would be competing in the Olympics at Munich. Alex asked her how the training was going. Lili needed no prompting.

‘“You are ambassadors in tracksuits,” says the coach. I’m sick to death of having to be an ambassador. “In your actions, your victories, you will demonstrate to the world the superiority of the socialist system.” It’s hard enough trying to win a race without feeling that your performance will reflect on your entire country.’

‘But it’s been good for you, Lili,’ said Geli, trying to make her friend feel more positive. ‘Look at all the things you’ve got out of it. The best school, travel all over the Eastern Countries. You have such an exciting life.’ She put a reassuring hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘And you are the best in Berlin – maybe the entire country.’

Lili nodded and put her hand on Geli’s and patted it. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Then she looked at her watch. ‘
Sheisse
, I forgot to take my pill.’ She took out a small silver blister pack and popped out an orange pill, knocking it back with a swig of beer.

‘What’s this,’ said Geli with a giggle. ‘You on the pill? Who’s the boyfriend?’

Lili bristled. Geli shrank.

‘They’re vitamin supplements,’ she said, trying to hide her irritation. ‘My coach started me on them last year. I take four a day.’ Then she looked sad. ‘Boyfriend? I should be so lucky. I seem to frighten boys away these days.’

Alex was not surprised. Lili had always been a bit of a tomboy, even in kindergarten, but she had been a pretty girl. Now, well into her teens, she seemed to be getting more masculine – even the shape of her face seemed manly and she had the beginnings of a moustache on her top lip.

A gang of boys and girls went past. The toughest-looking girl stared hard at Lili. ‘What’s your problem?’ Lili said, looking the girl in the eye. Alex shrank in his seat. There were six in this gang, and only four of them.

The girl turned round and squared up to Lily, who stood up to face her. Geli put a hand on her arm. ‘Lili – they’re not worth a fight.’ Sophie and Alex sat there in terrified silence.

‘Dyke,’ muttered the girl and turned to walk away. Lili picked up an empty beer bottle, gave a scream and ran after them. The gang scattered, leaving Lili standing her ground and laughing.

Two of the park police were coming over. ‘Hey, you,’ shouted one of them, above the blare of the fairground music. ‘Stay where you are.’

Lily let the bottle fall to the ground and shatter. Now it was their turn to run. All four of them disappeared into the bushes. Ten minutes later, they were all trying to get their breath back on the other side of the park.

‘Lili, that could have turned nasty,’ said Geli gently. ‘What if she had hit you? You might have been hurt.’

Lili was unrepentant. ‘I knew they didn’t have the guts for a fight,’ she said.

‘You frightened us half to death,’ said Sophie.

‘Na und?’
said Lili.

They all parted with sullen goodbyes.

Chapter 12

Alex had to get to school especially early to hand in his précis to Herr Würfel and decided to go on his bike. When he unlocked the little storeroom the Ostermanns had in the basement of their apartment block, he was irritated to discover that both tyres were flat. He had to run all the way to school and arrived five minutes late. Würfel could see he was out of breath so he forgave him. He skimmed through Alex’s work, making lots of encouraging noises. ‘It’s good. I’ve always known you are one of the brightest pupils. Why can’t you perform like this in class?’

Alex shrugged.

Würfel said, ‘You have a lot of growing up to do, Alex Ostermann. Be quick about it before it’s too late.’

Alex’s band reconvened in Treptower that evening. Anton and Heinz were OK with the idea of Black Dog for their name. They didn’t get the Led Zeppelin reference and Alex wasn’t going to let on he had the record either. It was too risky.

It was odd sitting in the living room without Holger. Alex felt guilty about having ever wished his friend would leave his group. He missed him now. He had asked Sophie to come along and hear them, and maybe sing on some of the songs. She was a bit wary but she said she’d give it a go. She was quite fidgety and Alex could tell she didn’t really want to be there. He thought he’d try out his new song. He’d got some words for it now.

‘Here’s how it goes,’ he told the boys. ‘The chords are E minor, then G, then D then back to the E.’ He sang and played the chorus:

We’re up against the Wall

and heading for a fall

But I’m still standing tall

Up against the Wall.

Alex felt pretty pleased with those words. Geli had helped him a bit and he had even managed to come up with rhymes in another language! He wished they did English at school instead of Russian.