The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  Why not? Why would he lie? The dark, grainy, stocky figure in the photo looked just like him, stood like him. The facial features were not so clear, but the stance of the man was Joe to a ‘T’. His weight characteristically shifted to his right foot while the photographer snapped the scene. Joe did that in photos. Heike considered it a very American pose – laid back – whereas a German would stand feet spread apart with his hands clasped behind his back as if ordered to stand easy. Germans stood at ease, they didn’t relax.

  She wondered whether perhaps this incident had been the catalyst: Malmedy created the monster that assumed the role of father. Maybe prior to that discovery in the forest, Joe had been a very different human being? Maybe that whole disgusting view of hell and the lack of justice following removed the gentle and considerate man he might otherwise have been?

  He never once made reference to any relatives, living or dead. He seemed to be an orphan whose only true family was the US Army. She didn’t even know exactly where he was from: Texas? Wyoming? Detroit? If he was indeed an orphan, no wonder he couldn’t relate to a family unit. Yes, he provided food and a place at a US Army school and he brought them up to speak English, but love to him was patriotism, not a personal feeling for another being. Joe loved his country – the flag, the President, the Constitution – but cared not one jot for any common man, woman or child.

  Particularly, there was no love for Kirsten; it was as if he’d taken her prisoner and deprived her from then on of any affection or happiness. For a man who freely admitted that he’d never seen any action, least of all been in a position to capture the enemy, Kirsten became his ideal captive.

  Joe’s “war” had been at the tail end of the Allied advance, witnessing, but never doing. Dutifully, he cleaned and oiled his weapons daily but never so much as fired a shot in anger, and it bugged the hell out of him.

  Deprived of an outlet for his emotions, Joe and his company formed the “mopping-up” brigade, always a week or even a month behind their advancing comrades, and it drove him CRAZY!

  *

  Sonntag 23rd Oktober, 6.40 pm

  Hotel Room 218

  She looked deep into her reflection. Joe wasn’t there. Thank God! Nowhere in her skin, in her design, in her structure, demeanour, hair – either texture or colour – he wasn’t there.

  Peter was right all along. If Joe were their natural father, he’d show in some respect by now, even in the odd quirky mannerism that comes with middle age, some indicator of genetics. Genetics never lie. Kirsten was there alright, looking back through those small, hooded, pale blue eyes, the tendency toward short-sightedness, the stubby Bavarian fingers, the round shoulders and, most of all, the voice.

  ‘Is that you, Kirsten?’ people would answer the phone to Heike even after her mother had died.

  Peter was not like Joe either. Tall as a giant, thin as a stick and as fair as summer corn. He was no more Joe’s descendant than she was. There was a grandchild now – Emmi – but again no signs of Joe anywhere to be seen.

  Two generations: they were in the clear; it was like being declared innocent of a crime they hadn’t committed only it had taken well over half a century to prove their innocence.

  Like Kirsten, Heike didn’t normally make an effort when it came to going out. Nobody ever made that effort in the East because it was bourgeois. She wasn’t like Hanne in that respect (Hanne was very bourgeois), but tonight she’d take the time and make herself presentable as she appreciated the invitation and genuinely liked her English cousin a great deal; it was a reciprocated true fondness. They so rarely saw one another and it could have been left with a: ‘Well, auf wiedersehen! See you in a couple of years. Take care!’

  If she’d been at home, she’d have looked for some old albums, picked out some photos – the Berlin photos – photos that would have helped to describe things. Yes, that bloody old rust heap of a Trabant. Loved it to begin with, hence the photo with its missive:

  “Dear Hanne and Family, Everything is fine here in Berlin. I am sitting on the bonnet of a car that is known as a Trabant. Do you have Trabant cars in England? We also have cars called Skoda and many Trabants. We love driving here. Love, Heike”

  Also staring back at her: the young Heike, still recognisable in some respects but much diminished. Heike the idealist, the naïve, misguided communist.

  At home in Lubeck, she could have shown Hanne pictures of Roland, at the typewriter, their apartment, strolls in the park – all captured with the indestructible Praktica 5TL SLR, their beloved camera taken by the Stasi and eventually recovered by Roland in the milieu that was the ransacking of Stasi Headquarters in 1990. Liberated in triumph, it fell out of its case as Roland climbed the stairs; falling like a brick it could so nearly have killed someone, dropping three floors down through the stairwell before landing with a bang on a tiled floor, miraculously missing the heads of the surging masses that had invaded the building with him – all in search of answers.

  Roland went everywhere with that camera and even kept it on a shelf in the living room for anyone to see, as if it were some sort of trophy. His father had often said to Heike that the beauty of growing up with nothing means that when you have something – however small – you love it and cherish it all the more.

  Official permission to carry the camera and use it as a card-carrying journalist was almost a government permit to be happy in your work, and how rare was that? Senior colleagues had chastised him: ‘You wouldn’t have been allowed to carry it in my day, let alone take family snaps!’ or ‘You’re lucky, young comrade. There was a time when the government would have locked you up or at least sent you out with a minder.’

  Only Heike knew that Roland wasn’t so lucky. His job was “minded” very much indeed. Whatever he wrote or photographed was carefully checked and double-checked by any number of “minders”. They followed him, too.

  Sometimes he’d be aware of their presence, most often he wasn’t. There was no freedom to seek out a story. Stories were given to him by a desk chief saying: ‘Run an 800-word piece on the steelworks at so-and-so. Take some nice pictures of the production process. Talk up the employment side, productivity, you know. Don’t mention the foreign workers. Find a positive angle – exports, good working conditions, that sort of thing.’

  Roland knew all about “that sort of thing”; it didn’t need explaining. He knew to toe the line from the moment he began the job as an editorial assistant. Good East Germans did not question; it went without saying. It was Heike’s Western influence, her ideas of free speech and her explanation of the role of a Western journalist, that’s what made the difference to Roland.

  She actually began to question him: ‘Well, why don’t you do this or do that? Why didn’t you question him/the process…’, whatever. She couldn’t help herself because she was really a Westerner.

  *

  Samstag 29th April 1972, 10.38 am

  The moment of Heike’s defection

  The door slammed shut on Heike’s life as a West German at precisely 10.38 am. It was the door of a detention cell; it was every bit as stark and grey as she’d been expecting so there were no surprises.

  It was an indignant arrival in the East. Gripped, pulled, pushed, cajoled and stripped. Then: ‘Wait! Wait until you’re fetched.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Shut up! We’ll tell you when.’

  It was a long wait, a very long wait – over a week – a week of cold, heavy, grey metal imprisonment. Only when that time was complete did the panel convene. Eventually, somewhat reluctantly, they (the panel) convened. They didn’t know what to do with her because she was clearly an individual. Here was a girl from the West, telling them that she was a good communist, but they knew she was missing the point – she was thinking for herself. She’d made up her mind and had therefore committed a selfish act. In trying to be, she’d failed. No one was supposed to “think” in Eas
t Germany. Thinking was dangerous.

  To the panel, she insisted: ‘I am a true patriot, that’s why I’m here.’ But the panel found this rather nonsensical. She talked in-depth of the manifesto, the “glorious socialist revolution”, to the very people who themselves were filled with doubts because Ulbricht had brought his own doubts to the table just a few years prior to her arrival.

  ‘She thinks this is 1953!’ someone whispered.

  ‘Isn’t this where the best of the real Germany can be found?’ she asked boldly, her words recorded and paraphrased in the following week’s ministerial meeting.

  On the third day, she requested, and received, a large notepad on which she could write down all her thoughts about why she was defecting, which she had to admit was extremely unusual for someone who wasn’t escaping justice in the West.

  I admit I have no real concept of what being a communist is really all about. I believe it is about an ideal; about fairness and equality; that a socialist world is one that would never, ever tolerate the detested fascism ever again. The communist state, to my mind, forms a bulwark that protects those inside the vessel from fascism. The “real” Germany is east of the Wall, not west. The West has been corrupted by capitalism – American capitalism; and I loathe it. I hate everything American and I am convinced they will destroy Europe. The rich will get infinitely richer, while the poor work and suffer.

  I hate America because Americans have recruited Nazis for their own nationalistic programs. These men they call “the good Nazis”. Werner von Braun is a case in point; Speer, too. Their murderous, bloody-handed comrades have escaped thanks to sympathetic clergy within the Catholic Church. I hate that institution with all my being. It is the way the disappearance of leading Nazis from Germany has been so orchestrated, so easy and unhindered. The attitude has been: Let them fly, let them flourish; we don’t care! The Jews cared, the British and French seemed to care, but their debt is to the United States, so they look the other way and in this respect they too are complicit. Only Simon Wiesenthal seems to have the will to bring these murderers to book. I believe Simon Wiesenthal will reclaim justice for mankind.

  (Heike adored Simon Wiesenthal as if he were a pop star. She confessed that her interest bordered on the obsessive and, had she lived in Israel, she would willingly have been an acolyte.)

  I consider the “real” Germany – the “real” Fatherland – to be here in the GDR not the West.

  I see no reason why I can’t apply for citizenship in the GDR. Some have done it, and I know they are relatively few. In the West it is called “defecting”. I am following my heart.

  Heike Savers

  This was all highly suspicious. Panel members wrote down their feelings on a daily basis and filed them away for reference.

  “You want to live in the East? Are you for real? Go home, child. Grow up, why don’t you?”

  “This is clearly a new CIA tactic: send in a child who claims a hatred of all things capitalism. No more back-door ‘spies’; walk right in and denounce the West because the GDR will welcome you with open arms. And what’s more, this one is right out of the American military establishment and admits as much. Put her back on the bus! She’s wasting our time”

  “She’s not CIA or any Western agent – she’s clearly Red Army Faction. It’s as plain as the nose on my face. She’s on the run from the authorities.”

  “We could send the little cow up the line to Moscow. Let the KGB sort her out!”

  “Play their game. If she is a plant – a sleeper – let’s be dumb. Why not? If she’s Red Army then she’ll break cover at somepoint. Whoever she is, this little cow could be a cash cow, leading us into a whole new network. Put her in the hands of the Stasi. I know just the man…”

  Some days the panel would summon her; other days, she was left to stew in her cell – a prisoner of her own making. With nothing to read, she slept to pass the time and in sleeping dreamt of the days that awaited her. Her “Sandman” reassured her that: “It will be good eventually. Stick with it, because once you leave here the early days will be the best and then you will establish yourself with the help of others and everything will be alright.”

  Depression was never far away and would generally kick in upon waking; the continual light, no window on the city surrounding her, no morning, no night-time, no birds to sing.

  Throughout incarceration they watched her every move. She invented her own games, such as “guessing the time” as her watch had been removed. Another game was guessing who was in the corridor – male or female? Young or old? She would give “names” to the anonymous busy feet of people going about their business. That’s Hans today. Oh, that’s sounds like Ilke – she’s so light on her feet. In return, they listened for her silence.

  The panel: a diverse collegiate of the communist school of world affairs hurriedly convened because a girl had turned up unexpectedly of her own volition to a dull party where no invites had ever been issued. If this were to become a regular occurrence, they could put a procedure in place.

  The panel consisted of: a high-ranking Stasi officer; a high court judge; a politburo man come all the way from Moscow by slow train; a retired army general; and assorted Party professionals both male and female chosen for their unfaltering allegiance. Some of these had been Nazi Party officials many years previously in their youth, but Heike never suspected.

  Faces came and went: some fiercely stern, others just curious. There were those who were quite animated and human, while others seemed as pallid, stiff and lifeless as shop mannequins.

  Each time the panel sat in that draughty, vacuous chamber, there was great rubbing and wringing of hands and fingers. Their constant fidgeting unsettled Heike, who had naively imagined that the GDR would have been ecstatic in their welcome of a wannabe citizen. They were not.

  Files were ordered and brought in by underlings who scurried in and out, depositing each file for minute examination before it was taken away again by another underling.

  Conspicuous by her youth, a thin, very pale young woman in a knee-length plaid skirt took copious notes and refrained from uttering a single word in all the time that Heike saw her. Altogether, this miserable bunch of granite-grey, largely middle-aged Party members, who would have seen themselves as anything but jailers, held the keys to the anti-kingdom – the only place Heike wanted to be.

  They sought to know everything about the nineteen-year-old defector. This was in itself most welcome; Heike had no intention of holding anything back as she was in need of unburdening her soul. She told them about GI Joe Savers, carefully detaching herself, claiming that he most probably wasn’t her father; that her father was very likely Russian.

  She told them about her “English family; her English cousins” and “Uncle Hugo”. Nothing derogatory. She had to tell them everything she’d ever experienced and everyone she’d ever known – especially non-Germans. She was to leave no one out, however boring, however inconsequential.

  Some of the panel were experienced interrogators. They’d interrogated some notable British, American and German defectors whose double-agent status was suddenly compromised or because they were on the run from law enforcement as terrorists or criminals. Heike was very different; there was no precedent for someone simply arriving unannounced; it never happened.

  In Bavaria, East German sleepers were given a brief to report back on Fräulein Heike Savers. Education, family, work experience – anything they could find. Kirsten received a very friendly visit from a young couple armed with clipboards saying they were simply following up on Heike’s application to join “their” company in Berlin. They needed to ascertain a few facts. Kirsten – wholly oblivious – was only too happy to oblige with whatever information they needed.

  Even in faraway Cornwall, Hugo Mauer was visited by a couple claiming to be Bavarian tourists trying to find the right road for St Michael’s Mount. He later recalled their vi
sit as pure happenstance that such a nice couple, coincidently well acquainted with Oberwinkel, should be touring in the area. Unwittingly, he spoke proudly of his Oberwinkel connection and his Bavarian family even though the couple were complete strangers to him. He was by nature a very discreet individual, but such was their easy manner that he even invited them to drop in for tea that evening and stay the night, which they did. On leaving, and after complimenting him and Rene on a fine bed and breakfast, they promised to keep in touch. He never heard from them again, though in later years he remembered them fondly: ‘They were such friendly people – typical Bavarians.’

  There was just one more nocturnal dream for Heike before she was eventually released. It was a particularly graphic dream that both disturbed and enchanted her. She dreamt that the entire building was a camera. Inside its casing, she felt lost and vulnerable; she didn’t know how to enter or how to leave the giant camera. She was both inside and outside the mechanism, clambering over its cogs, looking in and looking out through its lens. That was the last visit from the “Sandman” – he never called again.

  On release, it was arranged that she meet a newspaperman. He was going to run her story, as it was so fascinating. His name was Roland, and he was also going to take some pictures of her – didn’t matter that she didn’t look her best; he thought she looked wonderful! That was the first time she looked into the lens of the Praktica and saw beyond to the face of the man she would marry.

  For a few weeks at least, the sun shone on her “Fatherland”. She believed she had been welcomed as a “lost daughter”, and even made the paper – Roland’s paper. It was good to begin with. That can be the way of life; the early days are sometimes the best.