I decided to stop ranting at the empty room and tried to work out why the news had wound me up so much. I guess I was scared that they could still come back, things would be like the old days again, when people like me would be harassed the whole time, locked up now and again, not allowed to work or only given the shittiest jobs. When people would give up and try to leave the country rather than put up with the hassle.
And the fucking hypocrisy! The PDS pretending they’re concerned about the rise of nationalists and authoritarians—jealous more like, because somebody else was using their tactics!
But they were right about one thing, we needed to act against the fash. I’d been ignoring it for too long. It was time to get involved, cos otherwise things were only going to get worse.
Martin
As I’d told Evelyn, the plane trees were budding early. Cycling up Puschkin Allee I could see the folded leaves glistening in the midday sunlight. The sight of them made me stop to look more closely, appreciating the freedom I had to do just that. Dismounting and pushing my bike between the large concrete flower pots that marked the end of the road and the start of the border zone, I kept an eye open for Rico, but the only people to be seen were the trailer residents.
Leaning my bike against the side of the tower, I banged on the steel door, my knocks echoing around the sandy park that was being laid out on the old death-strip. The door creaked open and a guard looked out. He pointed me towards the roof top of the bus garage on the other side of the street, where Rico, Kalle and I had watched the boats last night.
I climbed up the stairs, and went out through the tiny door onto the catwalk, making my way towards the figure looking down at the river. As I got closer I could see it was Rico.
“Hi Martin.” He shook my hand before offering me a cigarette. “The duty officer said you might be coming by.”
“I’ve got some questions about the smugglers. I tried talking to the big cheeses at the Customs Administration, but they just fobbed me off. I thought it might be better talking to someone on the ground.”
“You want to have a word with Kalle? He’s the customs officer in charge of this sector.”
I shook my head, Rico could probably help just as well. “We think large shipments are coming in from the West, and we’re fairly sure they’re not coming in through the proper channels. There’s a fascist group with huge amounts of printed materials, including banners and placards that obviously haven’t been produced over here. So we’re wondering how they might have got them across the border.”
Rico laughed, almost choking on his cigarette.
“Are you serious?” he asked. “Ever heard the expression about the needle and the haystack? You saw what happened the other night, they’re running rings around us—what you’re looking for could be coming in at any point along the border. The Wall leaks like a sieve now, and it’s only going to get worse. There’s not enough Border Police to keep an eye on the whole of the Wall, and the border zone isn’t at all secure since we opened up the death strip. Now they’re talking about reducing our numbers. And that referendum coming up—if the people vote to get rid of the Wall … We’re going to have to get used to the fact that smuggling is here to stay.”
“What kind of thing is coming over the Wall in this sector?”
“Well, you know about that lot.” Rico nodded over his shoulder, towards the wagons and trucks behind him. “They’re probably taking beer over to the West, maybe cigarettes from Poland. They’ll flog them over there and bring cannabis back. But that’s nothing, there are rumours of more serious stuff coming in. Heroin, crack, and some chemical thing they’re calling ‘E’. We’re trying to move towards intelligence led policing, but look at us, we’re not really policemen, are we? We’re just soldiers. For years they told us to shoot anything that moved, now they tell us we need to be intelligent.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“But back to your problem. Look, how big are these consignments, a pallet? Two? It could be coming in on a regular lorry—customs can’t check every load like they used to. Or somewhere along the green border, round the back of West Berlin or along the inner-German border—bribe a guard to open up a maintenance gate and look the other way for ten minutes.”
He paused for a moment to shake his head, tapping ash off the cigarette. Then he pointed at a barge being pushed by a tug, making its way downriver.
“Or what about them. They come in and out, loaded with coal and gravel.” We looked down on the barge, its covers were open, showing several dumps of gravel. “All we can do with that lot is poke sticks in it. In the old days we’d have dogs sniffing, checking for the smell of humans, but it’s not people smugglers you’re after, is it?
“And come to think of it, what about the Baltic coast? You could have a fishing boat come out of Travemünde or anywhere in the West—a launch could just bring the goods ashore. And now Dömitz has been opened up you can bring small boats in from the Elbe, right into the heart of Mecklenburg.”
Rico was piling on the options: there were so many ways in and out of our country, a country that just a short time ago had been hermetically sealed against the West. And the way Rico was talking it all sounded pretty obvious, yet in the office I’d imagined that we could somehow narrow down the options, work out the probable entry points for the fascist material. Now it just looked hopeless.
“Don’t look so down in the mouth!” Rico clapped me on the shoulder, “there’s always a way. Look, I wasn’t here in the old days, before 1990, but there’s plenty of guys in the ranks who were. We talk, you know, they tell tall tales of what it was like back then, the loneliness of being on guard duty on the border, just hoping that nobody would try to escape on your watch. Because if you saw someone you’d have to shoot them. If you didn’t see them, or if you looked the other way, well, your life wouldn’t be worth living.”
The tug and barge were past us now, but had slowed down and given off a long, low whistle followed by a second, shorter blast.
“But that’s not the point. In the old days the Stasi were always sniffing around. They were always watching us, and at the same time, watching everyone who came into the restricted area near the border. They were on the look-out for people planning an escape over the Wall. Now that’s what they really mean by intelligence-led policing, isn’t it? Things don’t change so much, do they?” Rico shrugged. “So, Martin, what I’m trying to say is, if there’s a plan to get something across the Wall, there’ll be people who know about it. And there’s your weak point. The more people who know about a plan, the more chance there is of a leak. Maybe you need to concentrate on that angle?”
In his roundabout way, the young man was telling me that my only chance was to make an effort to find out what the fascists were actually up to, and not just try to second guess their plans in order to catch them at it.
My thoughts returned, once again, to the mole that Lichtenberg Kripo had in the Nazi scene. Presumably they were in the process of extracting him now that the Nazis knew about him, but why weren’t we being given access to the intelligence that had already been delivered?
Karo
“You ready for this?”
I nodded, yeah, ready as I was ever going to be. I’d gone to see the Antifa group as soon as I’d got up this morning. They were doing training and they’d given me a try-out right then.
I was knackered. I’d shown them all my moves, all the judo and karate self-defence stuff I’d learnt over the years. They weren’t impressed, but Bert said I could tag along. A few of the lads grumbled, but no-one said anything to me.
Martin
I’d been back for a few hours and was trying to relax. Freygang was on the record player, but the political lyrics kept bringing my mind back to the chat I’d had with Rico.
Before I could follow my thoughts any further the doorbell rang.
“Hi Katrin!” I gave my daughter a hug in the doorway. I was so pleased to see her that I didn’t notice at first how stiff she was.
“Papa?” she said finally, from the living room.
In the pan small beads of air gathered around the surface of the water, slowly turning to a faint steam. I turned off the gas and went into the living room. Katrin was still sat at the table, she looked exactly as she had done a few minutes before, but she must have moved because there, lying in front of her was an envelope, torn along the top. A letter. The white paper looked innocent against the colourful oilcloth.
But from where I stood by the door I could feel the cold fingers of a ghost reaching out to me. I took a step towards the table, towards the envelope. My eyes fixed on it, hardly taking in the West German stamp, just concentrating on the writing. It was intimately familiar to me: the swirls, the pressures, the scratches where the pen hadn’t quite lifted off the paper to form the next letter of Katrin’s name and address. I hadn’t seen that writing for years.
The ghostly fingers slowly, tenderly, wrapped themselves around my heart, tightening and freezing me in the winter of their grip.
“It arrived yesterday,” Katrin said. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to tell you, whether to hide it. Throw it away. Burn it.”
I sank into the chair opposite Katrin, my eyes fixed on the letter. Questions swirled, but didn’t make it as far as my mouth. Have you read it? Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you got it? Why tell me? Why didn’t you hide this from me?
“It’s from Mama.” The words broke loose, eddying from Katrin’s mouth. Her eyes met mine as she said the obvious.
I looked away, away from the letter between us, away from my daughter’s face. Up to the corners of the ceiling, grey webs woven with dust, swaying in the current of emotion.
“She asks if I want to have contact. With her. She says that now I’m 21 I’m old enough to understand the world.”
My eyes descended again, to focus on Katrin’s face, on the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. A movement further down caught my attention, her hand was edging along the oilcloth, unguided but drawn towards the letter. I stood up, and moved around the table, pulling my daughter into a hug, her face against my chest, her arms lying limp on the table.
We sat there all evening, silences punctuated by aborted conversations. Katrin had so many questions. So many feelings she couldn’t find a place for.
“Why did she go?” she asked me.
I didn’t have the answer, even though I’d seen it coming and had been there when it happened. I hadn’t been able to stop it.
“She couldn’t stand it. She felt that if she stayed there,” it was here, here in the GDR, but it was a different country in those days, so I said there. “If she’d stayed there, it would have broken her. She wouldn’t have survived.”
“She didn’t even apologise,” said Katrin. “In the letter. She didn’t make any attempt to explain or defend what she did.” Her mother’s decision to leave seemed ineffable to my daughter.
That sounded like her, like Katrin’s mother. She was strong, she knew herself, she knew her own limits. She’d decide to do something and then she would go ahead and do it, whatever the consequences.
“When did she go?” Katrin had been small, she’d just started school. But when exactly had her mother gone? In what month, on what day had she actually left the country? I didn’t know.
Oh, I know when they came to search the flat, I know when and where we were each and every time they stopped us on the street, every time they took my wife into custody, releasing her minutes, hours or days later. I know when they tried to warn her—so often. I know when they came to warn me, waiting for me at work, on the way to the supermarket, outside the house: Do you think we’ll let you all leave? Do you think we’ll let you keep the little girl? You can end this, make your wife withdraw her application to leave the GDR. Then you can get on with your lives.
But I couldn’t end it.
I know when they took her away that last time, the last time we saw her. She was dragged away from us, dry eyed, staring at us, fixing us in her memory as we stood in the doorway of our flat, too scared to follow them down the stairs. Katrin was hysterical, screaming, her clenched fists beating on my leg. The neighbour’s doors all firmly shut, knowing better than to show any curiosity.
But I don’t know when they let her out of prison. I don’t know when they put her on a train to the West.
I don’t know when she passed from our country to the other side.
Katrin kept her eyes fixed on the mug of coffee in her hands. She hadn’t expected an answer, but she needed to ask the questions. The same questions that I had.
Karo
We were waiting in the bushes, just by the entrance to Nöldnerplatz S-Bahn station. Behind us was the gate to the railway yard, but at this time of night it was shut and locked.
“Isn’t this a really stupid place to wait?” I whispered.
“This is the way they always come. Now keep quiet!” one of the hard lads said.
It was really boring, waiting in the darkness for some pissed up fashos to come sneaking into Friedrichshain. The idea was that they always come from the house they’ve got in Weitlingstrasse, and head this way to find a punk or foreigner to lay into. But only if the victim’s alone—because five fascists against two or three punks wouldn’t be an equal fight, would it?
“Do you do this every night?”
“No, just weekends. Now shut the fuck up. If they come now they’ll hear us gossiping like girls.”
I nearly did my karate moves on him, sexist pig. But I told myself I’d deal with him later. Right now I was here to get the fascists before they got us, and I was going to impress the fuck out of these chauvinist dinosaurs!
That’s when the sexist pig stuck his elbow into my ribs. I was about to shout at him but then I heard some laughing coming from the subway that goes under the S-Bahn station. Six skins stopped just under the street light, passing a lighter round and sparking up their ciggies.
Ronny was at the front, and he held up his hand: wait.
The fash carried on, heading towards Kaskelstrasse, still laughing about something. As soon as they were under the next railway bridge Ronny’s hand dropped, and we left the shadows, running quietly after the skins.
Ronny got there first, his arm went around the throat of the skinhead at the back, his fist smashed into the side of the fash’s head. The other Antifa lads were just behind him, and the two groups collided, but there was no way I could see what was going on. There didn’t seem to be any room for me to get in there, just a frenzy of shouts and fists. Ronny went down, and I got hold of his arms as paraboots thudded into his sides. But I managed to drag him out, and he was straight up on his feet and back in the middle of things. Just then, one of the skins made a break for it, went past me, so close I could have reached out my arm to touch him. But I didn’t. I just stuck my foot out, and he toppled over, his nose ramming the concrete in a cloud of blood. The other skins must have legged it and left their mate to his fate, because my lot had surrounded the fash I’d felled. They were laying into him, big time. Boot after fucking boot was crunching into him.
Day 7
Sunday 20th March 1994
Berlin: The parliamentary parties CDU and SPD are asking citizens to vote against the proposed devolution of power in next month’s referendum. In a joint statement the parties called the Round Table system a stop-gap solution, and condemned it as both untenable and undemocratic.
Martin
I’d slipped into a new ritual: Sunday Mornings. Somehow, during the winter, and without even deciding to, I’d managed to ease off on the work front. I avoided working on Sundays, and I
didn’t take work home with me at weekends. Maybe it was because I finally realised that no matter how much I do, the revolution will never depend on me alone. For years I’d been putting myself into this great project—heart, body and soul—and it was killing me. I was near my physical limits, and, after the stress of last autumn, my mental limits too.
Or maybe it had been Katrin, my daughter, nagging me: there’s more to life than this!
And here I was, doing my Sunday Morning thing. Sitting in my favourite chair, sipping coffee, listening to records, or today, one of the tapes that my daughter had given me. She was introducing me to various funk and acid jazz bands from the English speaking world. She’d tried to excite my interest in this particular album by drawing comparisons with our home-grown Panta Rhei. I was relaxing to a bootleg of Incognito’s 100° And Rising, wondering whether or not it was actually similar to Panta’s Kinder dieser Welt or Gib dir selber eine Chance. I could see why Katrin had made the comparisons, but the British band was bright and Panta Rhei was downbeat, owing more allegiance to classic blues. Perhaps it was because their best work had been before the start of the Revolution, when things were grey, and hope was scarce, manufactured only in small amounts by underground groups meeting clandestinely.
When Incognito bounced their way to After the Fall I got out of my chair, and, taking the cassette player with me, headed for the kitchen. I plugged the music in again, and Incognito carried on playing for me. Looking through the cupboards I wondered what to make for the house potluck lunch. We were becoming more and more creative when it came to cooking—the shortages of meat and milk products were making us re-examine our culinary culture—and I decided a mushroom and hazelnut pie would be a nice addition to the communal meal.
Thoughts Are Free Page 7