The Berlin Crossing (6 page)

‘Wait, Herr Ritter, please.’

The pastor’s hand was on my arm; I hardly knew that I had turned away from him.

‘Please.’

The grey eyes locked on mine. A kind of pleading in them. And knowledge. The knowledge of loss, maybe hopelessness.

‘Sit a moment.’ He motioned me towards a pew, waited, watching, while I sat, as though I were an invalid.

‘My son and I have not been very welcoming, Herr Ritter, and you must forgive us. In the past,’ the faint smile again, ‘we
didn’t welcome the kind of visitors who called at our door. Nowadays we get callers at the weekend, mostly kind folk who have
given to our rebuilding fund. Sometimes they come to see how we’re spending their money, sometimes they’re just full of curiosity
about how we’re making out in
dunkel Deutschland.
’ Dark Germany: a phrase the Western newspapers used: I hated it. The pastor went on, smiling, ‘But we don’t get
many visitors from Brandenburg, early on a frosty Wednesday morning.’

I had come to ask a question, full of doubts about my own sanity in doing so. Yet, doubting and disbelieving, I heard myself
recounting my recent past to this backwater pastor. He was what I had once heard Frau Mertens, recalling her childhood in
Poland, describe to my mother as a ‘listening priest’; there were two kinds, Frau Mertens had said, the kind that knew nothing
but thought they knew everything and just kept talking at you, and the kind that knew something but wanted to know more and
just listened a lot.

Pastor Bruck was surely one of the listeners. He prompted me a little but for the most part he just listened to my story.
Of my school, my job. And back to my studies in Rostock. And further back to my days in the Freie Deutsche Jugend. And forward
again to my weekend with Dieter’s family at their villa in this very place, in Bad Saarow. And so to my school job. And November
1989. And the streets of the East blooming with Helmut Kohl’s flowers and, most recently, my dismissal for my undesirable
past.

To this day I don’t know why I should have told all these things to somebody I had never met before. Maybe it was the womblike,
tomblike building I found myself in. Or the weeks of silence, of isolation, since my mother had died. Or a delayed reaction
to her death. Whatever. The fact remains that I laid out the bones of my life, as I had never done before, in front of this
dog-collared officer of an organization which trafficked in lies and superstition.

When I had finished, my own breathing, shallow and raspy, sounded loud in the silence of the small church. I sat in the dark
pew with bowed head, my hands covering my face, as though to hide from the grey eyes. From the loin-clothed figure on the
crucifix behind the altar. From the inscription:
My Lord And My God
. Maybe from myself.

‘We all have a past, Herr Ritter.’

It’s not the past, I wanted to say, it’s this fucking present that’s the problem.

‘All of us have to live with what we have done and what we have failed to do.’

His words horrified me. Did this fellow think I had come here searching for forgiveness?

‘Is that why you’ve come looking for me, Herr Ritter? So that you might be forgiven?’

‘What?’

‘Is that why you have come here?’

I could hardly remember why I had come. It didn’t matter: I got no chance to answer.

‘Who cares why he’s here?’ It was Thomas, standing in the aisle beside his father. I hadn’t heard him come into the church,
didn’t know how long he’d been there or what he’d heard.

‘He’s one of the bastards who made our lives a misery.’ Fury unleashed in the growled words. ‘He’s one of those bastards who
broke down our door in the middle of the night and then broke your back—’

‘Thomas, please.’

‘Why do you listen to these bastards, Father? You heard him – Party card and Education Committee member . . .’

I saw the clenching of the fist, saw the muscled arm being raised.

‘Thomas, don’t.’

I tried to get my head out of the way but I was stuck in the confined space of the pew. Thomas’s fist caught me on the side
of the head; I heard Pastor Bruck’s beseeching cry of alarm as I fell and my head struck the stone floor and there was a ringing
in my ears as the darkness enveloped me.

A voice in my ears, soft but insistent.

‘Herr Ritter! Herr Ritter!’

The voice faint, but coming closer.

‘Herr Ritter!’

A gentle tapping on my face, fingers on my cheek, cold fingers but soft, unlike the hard wood pushing against my spine. I
blinked my eyes open. The high, vaulted ceiling of the church focused into vision as I went on blinking. The ringing in my
ears was gone but my head hurt as though it had been kicked.

‘Herr Ritter, can you hear me? Say something.’

Pastor Bruck was kneeling on the stone floor beside the pew on which I lay stretched. Close to, his face looked older, the
skin almost transparent, like old hide stretched in the wind. The grey eyes under the high bony forehead were wide with concern.

‘I hear you, Pastor Bruck.’

‘Thank God.’

I tried to lift my head but his bony hand pushed against me.

‘Gently, Herr Ritter, you’re bleeding.’ His hand around mine, guiding it to my forehead. ‘Press on this.’

I felt the cloth under my fingers and instinctively lifted it to look. A white handkerchief, stained with the darkness of
blood. Pastor Bruck took my hand again.

‘It’s better if you hold it against the wound,’ he said, ‘and try to sit up slowly.’

I lifted my head, put my hand on the edge of the seat, levered myself slowly up into a sitting position. The pews had been
pushed apart; Pastor Bruck looked up at me from his kneeling position on the stone floor. I looked from him to his suit jacket
on the seat beside me, where my head had been resting. And then I looked around, slowly, pushing the handkerchief against
the cut over my left eye, as though the stained cloth could stop both the flow of blood and the banging inside my head. And
then I looked around again. Just to be sure.

‘Thomas is not here, Herr Ritter. I told him to leave us.’

I said nothing

‘He gets upset, Herr Ritter. I apologize for him.’

‘He’s a fucking animal.’

Pastor Bruck looked at me, saying nothing, but his pale, cheesecloth skin grew darker – with shame, with anger, perhaps both.
I flinched before the grey, staring eyes.

‘Perhaps we should go outside, Herr Ritter.’ A shrug of the wide, thin shoulders in the grey clerical shirt. ‘We have no heating
in the church yet, it’s probably better for you to be outside.’

‘That’s what your son said to you, Pastor Bruck, when he was fussing about you.’

‘Yes,’ the priest said. ‘My son fusses about me, Herr Ritter, it’s true. He has seen much, maybe too much, things that a boy
shouldn’t have to see.’ The church door groaned as he pushed and held it open for me. I blinked in the pale, wintry sunlight.
The mallet and noticeboard lay on the ground but of Thomas Bruck there was no sign. ‘Thomas finds it difficult to believe
that the old days are gone, he’s afraid that someone is going to come and . . .’ he spread his arms, encompassing the old stone
building and the churchyard, ‘and take all this away from us, Herr Ritter.’

‘That’s not very likely, is it, Pastor Bruck?’ I couldn’t keep the sourness out of my voice.

‘That’s what I tell him.’ He stopped and laid his bony hand on my arm. ‘I know that’s not what
you
want, Herr Ritter, but I have to speak the truth as I see it.’

‘And
my
truth? Is there no room for
my
truth in this new world?’

‘The old question, Herr Ritter.’ The smile almost sorrowful. ‘
What is truth
? And two thousand years after Pilate, we still cannot answer it.’

A flurry of wind shook the bare branches above us. Fallen leaves rustling on the narrow pathway that wound among the graves.

‘Look at these stones, Herr Ritter.’ He gestured towards the tombstones that surrounded us. Blackened with the years, the
lettering unreadable, most of them leaned every which way like drunken layabouts. ‘There are few new stones or new graves
here.’

I shrugged. ‘People had given up.’ I didn’t wish to be rude to this old priest, limping against the tide in this backwater
cemetery.

‘Perhaps they had given up on faith, Herr Ritter. Maybe that’s why almost all those who died in the last twenty or thirty
years are buried in the municipal cemetery on the other side of the town. But maybe their families were afraid also. Those
who chose to have their loved ones buried here – and there
were
a few –almost always encountered difficulties later. A son or daughter couldn’t get to university. The Trabi the family had
been patiently waiting for, all those years,’ once more, that wintry smile, ‘was suddenly and mysteriously no longer available.
You know the sort of thing, Herr Ritter.’

‘Like being fired from your job, Pastor Bruck.’

‘Believe me,’ the pastor said, ‘I know how you feel.’

In the silence that fell upon us, a rook cawed, long and raucous, and we both turned towards the sound. There was no sign
of the bird but for moments we stood there in silence, looking and listening, as though the leafless trees might speak to
us.

‘Herr Ritter.’ There was a different tone in the pastor’s voice as he turned towards me on the earthen path – softer, but
more businesslike also. ‘I don’t know what you need from me. You have not told me why you are here.’

‘My mother,’ I said. ‘She died recently. Just before she died she told me to speak to Pastor Bruck in Bad Saarow about—’

I couldn’t get the words out: the whole idea seemed dafter by the minute.

‘About what, Herr Ritter?’

‘About my father. It’s ridiculous. I never had a father . . .’ I turned away to hide my embarrassment.

‘We all have a father, Herr Ritter.’ The voice gentle behind me. ‘Every one of us.’

‘I mean . . .’ I shrugged, facing the priest again.

‘I know what you mean. It was just you and your mother.’

‘Yes, it was just me and my mother.’

‘And her name was?’

‘Petra,’ I said. ‘Petra Ritter. Raised in an orphanage in Karl-Marx-Stadt. Lived and died in Brandenburg. No known relatives.
Just Petra Ritter and Michael, her only son, standing before you in a graveyard in Bad Saarow, unemployed, without prospects
and spouting this incredible nonsense to you.’ I turned away, disgusted with myself and my gibberish.

‘Petra Ritter.’ The priest’s words came at me from behind like a frightened whisper. ‘Petra Ritter, from Brandenburg.’

I turned to him, frowning.

‘You knew my mother?’

‘How old are you, Herr Ritter?’ he asked, ignoring my question.

‘Thirty – so what? Did you know my mother?’

‘You were born in nineteen sixty-three?’

‘Yes, but why?’

He was staring at the faded gravestones but his eyes were elsewhere, focused on some greater distance.

‘Have you a photo, Herr Ritter? A photo of your mother?’

I felt afraid now, of what I couldn’t say. Of the blank look in Pastor Bruck’s grey eyes, of the old gravestones leaning in
upon me, of the small black and white snapshot that I was taking from my wallet and handing to the priest.

I watched as the priest first glanced, almost casually, at the photograph. The picture had been taken on my thirteenth birthday,
the first day I had worn my blue Deutsche Jugend shirt and cap; I could remember Frau Mertens’ enthusiasm with the old box
camera – and my mother’s reluctance, as though she could not bear to be photographed beside her lanky son.

‘Forget the stupid uniform, Frau Ritter.’ Frau Mertens’ voice a mixture of laughter and sternness. ‘Just think of it as a
picture of your son on his birthday.’

And now, all these years later, the fading cardboard image in the skeletal fingers of this ageing priest among the faded gravestones
of a cemetery in Bad Saarow; my dead mother and my distant boyhood being scrutinized by those pale grey eyes in that transparent
face. Something – shock, recognition, alarm –dawned in the grey eyes. Pastor Bruck held the photo at arm’s length, eyes narrowed.

He glanced at me as he fumbled in his jacket pocket. An old brown metal spectacles case in his left hand, the photo in his
right. Confusion in his expression. I took the spectacles case from him and snapped it open. The glasses I handed to him
were a reminder of our lost world: round, brown-rimmed, heavy.

Now he drew the photograph close to him and there was no doubting the recognition in those old eyes. And more than recognition
– fear, alarm, sadness, perhaps anger, I couldn’t be sure. What I was sure of, standing there in that decayed graveyard, was
that this priest had known my mother.

‘You knew her,’ I said. ‘You knew my mother, Pastor Bruck, didn’t you?’

He handed me the photograph. His Adam’s apple bobbed in the grizzled neck. I caught at his sleeve with one hand, waved the
snapshot in his face with the other.

‘Tell me what you know about my mother!’

The priest seemed to quail before me; I realized I was shouting.

‘Please,’ I said in a softer voice.

The grey eyes darker now, dark with some unwanted memory.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m Michael Ritter, the only son of Petra Ritter, from Brandenburg.’

‘How do I know? How can I tell? Maybe it’s some stupid trick, after all these years—’

‘I told you, Pastor Bruck. My mother was dying, she said to ask you about my father—’

‘
Don’t you raise your voice to my father.
’

The pastor’s son was standing beside me on the narrow path.

‘I want you to leave now, Herr Ritter.’

‘But—’

‘No buts, Herr Ritter. Get out of here
now
or you may not be in a condition to leave at all.’

I looked at Thomas Bruck, wondered briefly how such a bull-like
figure could be the offspring of this cadaverous priest.

‘I’m talking to your father,’ I protested.

‘You’ve just finished talking to him, Herr Ritter.’