The Berlin Crossing (11 page)

I eased the book open. The pages were yellow and unlined. All of them, about the size of a paperback novel, were covered in
handwriting. The writing was small but I noticed that occasionally the script seemed to get bigger and then the writer seemed
to force himself into the smaller pattern, as though he were more used to writing in a larger, more expansive hand. I had
no doubt that these pages, fifty or so of them, had been written by a ‘he’: my mother’s spidery German hand was utterly different
from these more rounded characters. These words, I was sure, came from the hand of Roland Somebody. From my father.

Somewhere, not far away, perhaps here in Brandenburg, perhaps even in Pastor Bruck’s church in Bad Saarow, my father had held
the pen in his hand and written these words.

I turned the yellow pages, saw only the mass of cramped writing, tried to see the man who had done the writing. And failed.

And then, on the inside back cover of the book, a line drawing in black india ink, the ink faded now, but the sketch still
vibrant, clearly drawn by my mother. She’d even signed it, P.
Ritter mit liebe
, but I’d have known it was hers anyway; she’d drawn plenty
of indignant cats and fearsome dogs, all with human faces, when I was a small boy. This face on the yellow page was neither
indignant not fearsome, a handsome face, a strong chin, deep eyes, the face in three-quarters profile, the wavy, unruly hair
falling over the left ear. The hint of a mischievous smile on the handsome features, as though he thought the whole thing
was a nonsense. And my mother’s signature, in her neat script, in the bottom right-hand corner: P. Ritter with love. Opposite
the drawing his statement, his declaration:
Roland xxx Petra
. I didn’t know then that Roland had never seen the drawing, that my mother had added it afterwards.

I knew I envied them, recognized the bleakness of my own life: whose name could
I
write beside my own?

At least now I knew his name. She’d written it above the sketch,
Roland Feldmann
. I rolled it on my tongue, mouthing the words, silently at first, then aloud. And wondered if it was the first time his name
had been spoken aloud in that apartment. I would never know how often my mother had whispered his name to herself. I said
the name aloud again.
Roland Feldmann
. A foreigner, the priest had said, but this was no
Ausländer’s
name, this was a name as German as my own. And how could that be? Just one more unknown as I struggled to form a picture
of my unknown father.

Two days later, seated again in the sacristy of Pastor Bruck’s church, I watched his face as I showed him the sketch: the
long, pale face grew even paler, for a moment he closed his eyes and, when he opened them, I could see in the pale depths
the pain of sadness revisited. He said nothing, merely nodded, handing the book back to me.

‘It’s like him?’ Stupid, unnecessary question.

The priest did not bother to reply.

‘I wish . . .’ I hesitated, ‘I wish they’d left a photograph.’

A half smile, half grimace on the white face.

‘Michael,’ it was the first time he’d used my name, the first time he’d addressed me in the familiar
du
, ‘what kind of country do you think we lived in? What kind of country do you think Roland came to – to visit?’ A hint of
exasperation in the voice. ‘D’you think your mother and this young man could take photos of each other and just hand in the
film to any old shop for developing?
Do you
?’

I could not meet his grey, steely gaze.

‘What kind of country d’you think you grew up in, Michael?’

The words softly spoken, but they hung there, in the half-warmed air of the sacristy, like an accusation.

‘When your mother was drawing this little sketch,’ he went on, ‘they were all over the place looking for Roland. It was a
manhunt.’ The eyes wide, looking past me, to some remembered horror. ‘Yes, a manhunt. Like hunting an animal. You understand
what I’m telling you, Michael?’

And of course I knew but what the priest was telling me was stuff I didn’t want to know or understand. By then I was on my
own hunt – a personal hunt, for the man who was my father, even for the person my mother had been, the young woman who seemed
to have fallen in love with this
Ausländer
, Roland.
And for myself, too, although I didn’t know it then
.

On the day after my visit to Normannenstrasse, I was back in Berlin, this time at the Documentation Centre in Mauerstrasse.
I had been up all night, I knew I was red-eyed, unshaven and unkempt, but there was a hunger inside me that demanded immediate
satisfaction. A fellow about my own age, formal in his dark suit, white shirt and sober tie, explained to me that it didn’t
work like that. The wheels of the Documentation Centre, he said, necessarily turned slowly: there were millions of documents
to be processed; every citizen’s rights had to be protected, even the
rights of those who might not have respected the rights of others in the former German Democratic Republic. He adjusted his
tie, leaned slightly towards me across the counter in the spacious reception area and asked if the gentleman understood.

The gentleman understood, I said, but this matter was urgent.

It was always urgent, he said.

And private, I went on, information concerning my family.

A nod, a glimmer of a smile. Information concerning any individual could not be released indiscriminately, only to an applicant
who could prove a family or other significant connection to the subject of the inquiry.

My collar-and-tie-clad administrator seemed to sense my unease at this stipulation. With a glance at his colleague, a young
fellow in jeans and dark sweatshirt, he came round the counter and steered me towards a wooden bench under the window.

‘You have a problem with this requirement, Herr Ritter?’ he asked me. ‘Perhaps, if you explain the difficulty to me, I can
help you.’

So I explained it to him: I wished to file an inquiry about my father but I had no documentary evidence to show that he was
my father.

‘He is not named on your birth certificate?’

I shook my head.

‘And you have no evidence to back up your claim that he was your father?’

Only the book, I told him, showing it to him. And the words of a pastor in Bad Saarow who had known them both, my mother and
my father, when they were young, before I was born.

Maybe it was a slack day at the Information and Documentation Centre, maybe Herr Gosch, as I learned his name to be, was simply
intrigued by my sloppy appearance or my unusual tale, or both; whatever the reason, he listened patiently to my story and
then proceeded to advise me on how best to set about my application for information about Roland Feldmann. I should submit
photocopies of the most relevant pages, including the sketch, to support my application; a notarized statement from Pastor
Bruck would surely lend added weight.

It was only when Herr Gosch handed me his card that I realized my good fortune in meeting him; he was, in fact, the Assistant
Director of the Centre and had just happened to be checking something himself with the young receptionist when I arrived at
the desk.

‘In this job,’ he said to me, ‘I am confronted every day by impossible stories, tragic tales. Yours is by no means unusual.
It might do no harm, Herr Ritter, to include a supporting reference from your employer – it might incline the Centre’s Adjudication
Committee to release the information you seek.’

I avoided his eyes as I told him I was unemployed.

‘An unfortunate reality of our times, Herr Ritter. May I ask what your profession is?’

A teacher, I told him, a teacher of English.

How long, he asked gently, had I been unemployed.

A few months, I said, since the beginning of the school year.

Maybe he sensed my discomfort; maybe he could read the runes, but he was too well-mannered to let the silence between us drag
on. He had another suggestion, he said, which might be helpful to my search.

‘Complete an application for information about yourself, Herr Ritter,’ he said. ‘Every citizen is entitled to see any files
concerning himself or herself, kept by the Stasi. It may well be that there is a Stasi file on you – and that file could contain
references to this Roland Feldmann, the man you claim to be your father.’

There was no avoiding it now. I looked around the reception area, at the tall information panels that listed the Federal
Republic’s version of the sins of the GDR, and saw my personal future in this united Germany laid out before me like an obstacle
course – a series of traps and bunkers to be negotiated daily, always under somebody’s disapproving eyes.

‘I was a member of the Party, Herr Gosch,’ I said, ‘an active member.’

The Assistant Director seemed to move a little away from me on the bench under the window. He shrugged his suited shoulders,
adjusted his striped tie.

‘To have been a member of the Party, Herr Ritter, cannot be considered a crime.’

It was my turn to shrug.

‘Try teaching at the gymnasium in Brandenburg,’ I said.

He smiled then. ‘Think about what I said, Herr Ritter.’ He stood up, crossed to the reception counter and came back with a
handful of A4-sized documents. ‘These are the forms you must fill in to seek information from the files we hold. You should
complete one form for each person you’re asking about – your mother, Roland Feldmann, perhaps even the gentleman listed on
your birth certificate as your father.’ He held out his hand to me. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for your application, Herr Ritter,
and,’ he was holding the door open for me, ‘think about what I said, about requesting information about yourself. You have
nothing to fear.’ An incline of the head, the door closed, and I was alone on the steps of the Documentation Centre. Nothing
to fear, Herr Gosch had said. Nothing to fear except hostile eyes searching through my past, ferreting in files and cabinets
for evidence of loyalty that they would immediately brand as betrayal. In our new world, I thought grimly, night becomes day
and light is turned into darkness.

And next day this old priest, in his tired voice, a voice so tired that it seems he himself is the exhausted quarry fleeing
the hue
and cry of chasing bloodhounds, this ancient priest is asking me if I understand.

There is much that I understand but don’t wish to; there is much that I don’t but hunger for.

Over the course of the next few months I will learn more. Pastor Bruck seems almost to welcome my visits, despite his son’s
continuing surliness; only on our walks through the Bad Saarow woodlands, when he stops unexpectedly, his face creased with
pain, his hand involuntarily drawn to his back, only then am I reminded that Thomas has, after all, good reason to resent
me. But the year turns, the trees put on their greenery, and each visit adds another piece to my vague jigsaw.

As do the replies from the Information and Documentation Centre. Each
Antrag auf Auskunft
, Request for Information, that I have completed brings its own shading to the picture I am trying to construct. Now I sit
on a stool to eat at the worktop in the small kitchen: the table in the living room is covered with papers, maps, official
stationery stamped with the eagle of the Bundesrepublik. Frau Mertens, bearing gifts of apple strudel and homemade bread,
looks at the pile of papers but keeps to herself the questions I can read in her homely face. As the information grows – although
the hunger in my head remains unsatisfied – I am warmed by her simple solicitude, her repeated admonitions to ‘eat plenty
of vegetables and make sure you get a good night’s sleep’. At least the vegetables are easily acquired.

I linger longest over the request for information from the State Security files concerning myself: for weeks, perhaps months,
the blank, duplicate pages of the
Antrag auf Auskunft
stare back at me from the kitchen table. I have no doubt that I feature extensively in the files of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei
Deutschlands. Why should I not? Why should I not have supported the security of my homeland? The SED, the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany,
was the sworn ‘shield and sword’ of the GDR; now membership and support of that Party are deemed a retrospective crime.

And yet my unease about looking for my own files is both deeper and, at the same time, vaguer than that. As I painstakingly
put the bits together about my father, I am troubled, uneasy, as though I myself had been part of what the pastor described
as a manhunt. In the end I feel I have no choice but to accept Herr Gosch’s advice; even so, it is with reluctance that I
drop the completed form in the mailbox in Hohestrasse.

My town is dying before my eyes. Yes, the new shopfronts come with their brand names from the West, but their gaudy loudness
and their windows plastered with discount posters cannot hide the continuing flight from the town. Empty houses. Windows broken,
boarded up. Estate agents, the new plant in our field, sprout photos of bargains, ‘ripe for redevelopment’, in their polished
windows, and the handful of tourists stand at the windows, their eyes shining with greed, their faces transformed by the prospect
of future yields. Tomorrow is all. Who needs yesterday? Or yesterday’s men?

Once in a while Frau Mertens counsels flight to the West, once in a while Steffi stops by, always without warning, and she,
too, after a satisfactory workout in my narrow bed, murmurs sleepily that there is nothing to keep me in Brandenburg.

By then, as the heat of summer cools into autumn, I am past caring about my personal future. Money, for the foreseeable future,
is not a problem: my substantial teaching salary, paid into my account for the rest of the school year after my dismissal,
remains almost untouched – my rent is tiny, my needs basic. Besides, in the early days of that autumn, I am distracted, even
excited, by something new.

It is Pastor Bruck’s idea.

We are strolling on a woodland path behind his church. Early
evening, the songbirds loud in the greenery, the air sweet with a kind of sadness, as though the leaves were already falling.
Less than a year has passed since I first ventured here but now that chilly morning seems a lifetime ago.