The Berlin Crossing (38 page)

‘I can beat it out of you, if you like.’

‘Why don’t you go to the fucking truth commission, or whatever the fucking
Wessies
call it? They’ll write it all down, check the records – whatever the Americans didn’t bother to steal – and they’ll declare
that Major Fuchs was a very naughty boy.’ He stirred in the chair, clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘D’you think I give
a shit? Look at this dump.’ One deformed hand emerged from its covering, gestured at the flat. ‘I found it empty when I came
back from Erfurt, I didn’t even have to break in, the door was open, everyone gone fucking west. Now they won’t give me my
pension! All I did was serve my country! And for doing my duty, I’m rewarded with this shithole!’

The outburst exhausted him. He slumped back in the chair, smaller than ever. He took a cigarette from the packet on the table
beside him, put it between his thin lips. I watched his swollen fingers fumble with the matches and took the box from him.
He didn’t look at me as I struck the match and held it to his cigarette. His breath came loud, hollow, as he sucked in the
nicotine.

He twisted in the chair, looked out through the uncurtained window at the sky like someone searching for answers, explanations,
a lost world. The thin shoulders shrugged and then, as though something had been decided, the yellow eyes came back to mine.

‘A tough little piece of stuff.’ I realized he was talking about my mother. ‘I only meant to scare her but it got out of hand.’
He sucked on the cigarette. ‘I only meant to smash the fucking violin.’ Another suck, the smoke exhaled in a thin plume. ‘I
forget her name.’

‘Her name was Petra Ritter.’
And you took a hammer to her fingers
.

He nodded. Another case, another name.

‘The British had sent in a spy, the bastard nearly killed me over in Prenzlauer Berg.’ He touched his left ear. ‘Ear still
hurts in the cold.’ Another desperate drag on the cigarette, the yellow eyes narrowing at me through the smoke. ‘Your mother
had something to do with it, I was sure of it, but the powers that be got cold feet or just lost interest, they wouldn’t let
me get on with it. End it, they said.
End it
! So I delivered a body to some priest out in Bad Saarow, let him take care of it.’ Another pull, another plume of smoke.
‘And then they sent me to fucking Erfurt to take charge of records. Me, a fucking clerk!’

‘You broke that priest’s back, Major Fuchs.’

‘I told you, it’s
Herr
Fuchs now.’

‘He’s still bent, still in pain.’

‘The old fella is still alive?’ He looked vaguely interested, surprised.

‘My father’s not alive. It was my father’s body you delivered to the priest.’

Fuchs straightened in the chair. ‘So I
was
right all along! That little blonde piece
was
working with the Engländer!’

‘That’s all you’ve got to say? That you were right all along?’

Fuchs lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. He pushed the dead butt into the overflowing ashtray.

‘What d’you want me to say? That I did what I thought was wrong? We did what we thought was right, Herr . . .?’

‘Ritter, Michael Ritter.’

‘We were a country under siege, Herr Ritter, our way of life constantly under attack in newspapers, television, radio. And
spies, they kept sending spies. Why couldn’t they leave us alone? And I had a job to do, I was an officer of the security
forces. Why shouldn’t I defend my country the way I was trained to defend it?’

His question hung in the cigarette smoke in the dingy flat. All through my own journey of discovery I’d been pondering the
same question.

‘D’you ever think that maybe we were wrong, Herr Fuchs?’

‘We?’ He hadn’t been a policeman for nothing.

Anyway, I had nothing to gain by not telling him.

‘I was a member of the Party too.’

‘But . . . your mother . . .’

‘She never spoke of it, not until last year. She was dying. I knew nothing about my father before that.’

‘I interviewed the border guards who were on duty that night,’ Fuchs said. ‘One of them said the damnedest thing, so odd I
still remember it. He said the Engländer was almost away, that it looked like he stood up deliberately, as if he wanted –
you know, as if he didn’t want to get away.’

‘Maybe he wanted to draw your attention away from my mother.’

‘Maybe, but why was he here at all?’

I didn’t answer Fuchs. That part of it wasn’t his business. Maybe none of it was.

Snow was falling, soft flakes melting, dying, on the window-panes. I stood up, picked up my rucksack.

‘May I ask, Herr Ritter, what you do?’

I laughed. ‘I’m a teacher, Herr Fuchs, and a bit of a writer, but now I share your fate.’

‘You’ve been sent to Erfurt?’ Something like a grin opened his features.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘They fired me from my school in Brandenburg.’

He looked at my rucksack. ‘So you’re leaving?’

‘I’m on my way back there.’

He was silent a while, looking over his shoulder at the softly falling snow.

‘It can’t last for ever.’ For a moment I thought he was talking about the snow. ‘In the end there’s always a thaw, no matter
how long it takes. They can’t go on forever punishing fellows like me – even fellows like you, Herr Ritter. When the Wall
came down, they could’ve left us alone, let us try to work out something for ourselves but, no, they had to take us over and
teach us their way. They forget, Herr Ritter, that it’s still our country as well, yours and mine.’

He levered himself out of the armchair. When he stood close to me I could smell the cigarettes, the sweet cologne. Fuchs wasn’t
an easy man to like but what he said bore the tang of truth.

When he offered his hand at the door, I accepted it.

‘Herr Ritter,’ he said, ‘will you come again?’

‘I don’t know.’ The past stared up at me from the faded yellow eyes. My father dying in the snow. My mother living on with
her silent grief, her shattered violin. I struggled, but maybe I had to
begin forgiving this ruined husk of a creature for what he had done to them.

And yourself, Michael Ritter. You need also to begin forgiving yourself
.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I probably will.’

Outside, the snow was still falling, large soft flakes carpeting the roofs of cars and houses. I left my head uncovered, opened
my mouth to taste the falling sweetness. Above the rooftops a giant crane swung through the December sky, quarrying the last
working hours from the fading light. The hammering, the drilling echoed across the streets, man and machine reshaping the
city.

Our city. It’s still our country, yours and mine
.

I had to believe the old fox was right. The thaw would come, it always did.

In the end, if I kept knocking, they’d let me into
some
classroom. And if I kept the faith – in what I had been taught and in what I had discovered – my words would find a home
on
some
printed page.

I looked at my watch. It was still on Irish time: half past one. Jennifer would be waiting beside the phone in the small staffroom
of Feldmann, Watchmakers and Jewellers. My grandfather and grandmother would be at their lunch of soup and sandwiches in their
big kitchen. Them I would call tomorrow after I’d handed over their cheque to Pastor Bruck. ‘We’re too old for the trip,’
my grandfather had said. ‘This is a small thanks for what he did for our Roland, it will help with his church.’

There was another cheque in my pocket, for me. We’d almost argued about it. ‘You’re a member of this family,’ he’d said, pressing
the cheque on me. I knew that my uncle and my aunts didn’t welcome my appearance but I didn’t care; the old man’s words were
enough, like a fire blazing in a house that had grown cold.

When I reached the crossroads I could see the tram coming through the snow, the bell ringing like a song. The lights were
red but I sauntered across the road anyway to the tram stop: you had to start somewhere at learning to break the old rules.

In the 1990s, after the fall of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), there was an understandable reluctance among many who
had been Party members to wear their past on their sleeve. In my work as an English-language teacher in Germany I was fortunate
enough to meet a few such individuals who took me into their confidence. These very different individuals, regardless of where
they lived in the GDR, shared a common sense of grievance: in the ‘new’ Germany their accomplishments and experience were
spurned and, secondly, many of the ‘Wessies’ who had come east were, to them, just a bunch of carpetbaggers.

It was from the personal stories of these disenchanted former citizens of the GDR that the idea for this book emerged.

During various trips, teaching and otherwise, to the former GDR, many people helped with information and anecdotes. These
included not only students, as I have said, but also teaching colleagues, tourist office personnel in the city of Brandenburg,
railway staff in Berlin, hotel staff in many cities. And the man (or woman) in the street in umpteen towns and cities who
was ready to help with some snippet or opinion. The office worker returning to work after lunch just off Friedrichstrasse
was typical: I wanted to know how the U-bahn functioned in the divided city; what I got was a personal history of a GDR adolescence.
To my shame, I neglected to record my informant’s name.

I do recall that on that occasion I was on my way to the Research Centre and Memorial Site in Mauerstrasse, Berlin. And I
well recall that my inquiries there were answered with unfailing grace and patience by the staff.

I dipped into a lot of books about the Berlin Wall and the GDR. I am indebted especially to
Stasiland
by Anna Funder for its account of a failed escape attempt;
The Stasi Files
by Anthony Glees gave valuable information about GDR activities in the UK. Detailed information on the Berlin Wall is taken
from the map pamphlet,
Walk The Wall
, published by the Museum at Checkpoint Charlie.

I have taken liberties with the little town of Bad Saarow: the town, as far as I know, had no Institute of Cartography and
Pastor Bruck’s church is entirely a figment of my loving imagination. I chose the town simply because I liked the place and
the people.

And I can say the same for the city of Brandenburg-on-the-Havel. The city, like many others in the old GDR, has suffered in
the wake of reunification – it’s a bit down-at-heel and its population is declining – but, for its faded elegance and its
unstinting friendliness, it is very dear to me.

Finally, the usual caveat: any errors in the book are mine and mine alone.