Thoughts Are Free

by Max Hertzberg

  Evelyn continued in the same easy tone as before: “Please tell the Minister, or the Ministerial Committee or whatever you call it nowadays, tell them that they’ll get their evidence.”

  “And the other information, the intelligence I mentioned?” I stood up as I asked the question, and as I moved, so did the suit. As I sat back again, the suit returned to his position in the doorway, both of us marionettes on the same pulley. Behind him I could see a bathtub, the sides lined with cork tiles.

  “I think, dear Martin, that it’s time to leave, don’t you? Goodbye.” Evelyn blew me a kiss and the suit stepped aside as she went into the room beyond.

  As I stood up, the suit returned to his position. I looked at him, and he looked back. A steady, hard but not malicious look. A step towards the doorway where he was standing, and the hands came up, clenching into fists.

  I considered my options, consulted my experiences with the Stasi, with Evelyn, and decided the other doorway—the one that led to the stairwell and the outside world—might be a safer option.

  I’d gone straight to the office, it was still early, nobody there. But a telex was waiting in the basket: I’d received the summons. And when you receive the summons you don’t delay. Frau Demnitz, the senior civil servant responsible for the sundry agencies attached to the Ministry of the Interior enjoyed summoning her minions. She was old school—like many civil servants she had survived the transition that started at the end of 1989. This was apparent in her arrogance and her bureaucratic manner—she blamed you for everything, even the very fact that she had to deal with you. Reports were always too long or too short, illegible, incomprehensible or inconsistent; you were too late or too early; too well-dressed or too informal. And never, ever had you filled in the correct forms in the correct order using the correct stamp. Her endemic criticism wasn’t an expression of political belief or values—although we had never talked about politics, so I couldn’t be absolutely certain—but her attitude was typical of civil servants in the GDR. Oh, things had improved: officials were softening, bending in the wind of change, but up in the rare heights of the ministries and the organs of central government the situation had remained much as before.

  So when you were summoned by Frau Demnitz it was best to go as soon as you could, and if at all possible, sooner.

  As I got off the S-Bahn at Friedrichstrasse my thoughts were on Evelyn and the other person with her this morning. To them I was more a hindrance than any help, and they were probably right about that. Reaching Unter den Linden I headed down the side of the Russian Embassy to reach the neo-classical grandeur of the Ministry of the Interior. I passed the policeman standing under the trinity of flags by the main door, and climbed the marble stairs to Frau Demnitz’s office.

  I wasn’t kept waiting but was immediately ushered in. I greeted Frau Demnitz, but she didn’t look up as our hands clasped each other in a handshake. She was looking at a flier on her desk. I noticed it because it wasn’t the kind of thing one expected to see there—usually her attention was occupied only by manilla files and heavy, dark archive boxes. But this A5 piece of grey paper, badly mimeographed in purple ink, looked like the samizdat newsletters we produced before the revolution.

  “Thank you for coming at such short notice comrade Captain Grobe.” She sniffed. She was famous for her sniffing, I often had the impression that my presence was somewhat offensive to her. “I presume you have seen this publication, although why you didn’t think to inform the Ministry I cannot conceive.”

  I sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of her desk, reached over and turned the piece of paper round so that I could read it. Although it was badly copied, it looked like the original had been laid out and printed from a modern computer. There was even a picture, taking up nearly half the page: a face. I looked more closely, it was hard to make out the features in the blurry, purple ink, but the person in the photograph looked familiar.

  Holding the flier at arm’s length, trying to decipher the smeared words: STASI SCUM IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD was the title. Below the picture was my name.

  I looked up at Frau Demnitz who was watching me with a calculating gaze.

  “I see you aren’t familiar with this. Well, you can read it at your leisure, but in short it provides some biographical details, including your current occupation as an officer of the Republikschutz, and goes on to encourage the reader to,” again the sniff, “take action, shall we say, to deal with what they see as a problem.”

  “Where did this come from?”

  “Well, apparently they’re pasted up all over your part of town, although someone was kind enough to deliver a copy to the Ministry at some point in the night.”

  PARRASITES LIKE SO-CALLED ‘CAPTAIN’ GROBE ARE LIVING OFF YOUR WORK AND LABOUR! NO BETER THAN THE STASI THIS REPUBLIKSCHUTZ SCUM ARE NOTHING BUT SPYS PREYING ON HONEST WORKING GERMANS! I managed to read before Frau Demnitz continued, her voice betraying her distaste at dealing with such material.

  “I expect you, comrade Captain, to deal with this situation. We simply can’t allow this ordure to bring the Ministry into disrepute. I would be grateful if you could prioritise dealing with this matter.”

  I looked at her in disbelief. Bring the Ministry into disrepute? She couldn’t be serious?

  “Is it the spelling mistakes that bother you most, Frau Demnitz, or the threatening nature of the message?”

  Demnitz didn’t answer, she just fixed me with her glare.

  “So, let me get this straight, Frau Demnitz: you demand my presence at the Ministry, make me come all the way into town, present me with a leaflet that is calling for physical violence to be done to me, then demand that I do something about it?” I was angry now, standing up and leaning over the desk, hands resting either side of her blotter pad. She didn’t even flinch.

  “Thank you comrade Captain, as ever you have succeeded in summarising the situation in a commendably succinct fashion. Now perhaps you could find your own way out?”

  “Tell me, would you have pulled this trick if the new Ministerial Committee were already in place?”

  But she must have pressed a button somewhere because her office door opened, and a young civil servant was standing there, silently but politely inviting me to leave.

  I ran down the stairs, my heavy feet sending echoes before me. I pulled open the outside door with a suddenness that caused the policeman standing on the steps to look around, then I stalked off down Mauerstrasse.

  As my pace slackened and my pulse slowed I found myself standing at the end of Unter den Linden, looking at the Brandenburg Gate. The Wall glowed white beyond the columns, and over in the West the trees of the Tiergarten were budding, the branches picked out by the early sunlight. Tourists were already passing through the checkpoint, customs and Border Police cursorily checking papers and joking with the Westerners coming over to sightsee in central Berlin. The open space, the calm purpose of the tourists with their cameras and their intent gazes—it was all a million miles away from what was happening in the East Berlin that I knew.

  I took the leaflet out of my pocket, but it didn’t improve on second reading. Putting it away in my briefcase I found the box of chocolates that Evelyn had given me. Why had she given me chocolates? Had they been tampered with? I checked the cellophane wrapping, but it appeared undamaged. What could Evelyn or her Stasi friends have put in a box of chocolates?

  A microphone? Too easy to discover, and why bother?

  A transmitter to follow my movements? Again, too bulky to evade detection. As soon as I opened the box I’d discover any electronics.

  Poison?

  I laughed out loud at the thought, and a policeman who had already been keeping half an eye on me started walking towards me. I continued up Otto-Grotewohl-Strasse, still trying to work it all out.

  No, like she said, she just didn’t have any appetite right now. Fair enough, given her plans for the day.

  The thought of Evelyn going undercover to penetrate a fascist group put my
little problems into perspective. Sure, there’s a shoddy flier with my picture on it, sure, I’ve got Frau Demnitz on my case, and yes, I’ve been considering how to undermine the central government of the GDR. But all of that was a breeze compared to the task Evelyn had volunteered for.

  Crossing over Marschall Bridge I paused and looked down at the river Spree. Seeing the barges tied up there, next to the whitewashed concrete slabs of the Wall, I remembered my conversation with Rico the border guard just a few days ago. But it felt like more than a just few days, much more.

  By now I was nearly at the Charité Universitätspoliklinik, the hospital where Steinlein was being treated for his injuries.

  I wondered whether Steinlein might appreciate a box of chocolates.

  It took a while to persuade the staff on reception that they could admit to having Steinlein as a patient, and a further few minutes for the police officer on the ward entrance to agree that my RS credentials were bona fide. But eventually I was allowed into the private room where Steinlein lay.

  He didn’t turn his head when I came in, just continued staring at the ceiling. His face was badly bruised, swelling over his left cheekbone, plasters covering most of the right side of his face. His hair had been shaved in patches to allow stitches to be sewn into the scalp. Two fingers were taped together around a splint, and a drip was attached to the back of his right hand. Beyond that I couldn’t get an impression of his injuries: a starched white sheet and hospital blankets were drawn tightly around his chest.

  I stood by his bedside and touched my right thumb to my forehead in a Pioneer salute. A stupid gesture, one I was hoping would elicit a smile from Steinlein. But he just stared at me, his eyes flickering briefly in greeting. Gone was his sardonic look, his disrespectful attitude. It wasn’t just his body that was bruised and battered, I could see that the Nazi boots had kicked his soul around too.

  “Comrade Lieutenant Steinlein, I’m sorry to meet you again in these circumstances.”

  Again the vague flicker of his eyes. There wasn’t much to read into that, and I wasn’t sure what to say. Steinlein didn’t look like he was about to help out with any conversational openings. We looked at each other for a moment before I remembered the chocolates.

  “Here, these are for you. Chocolates. Mon Cheri—from the West.” I waved them around for a bit, then put them on the visitor’s chair next to the bed. “I, er, just wanted to say hello. To say sorry. I mean, sorry that this happened to you. But look, you probably need your rest-”

  A slight movement on Steinlein’s face, his lips parting slightly, then closing again. The tip of his tongue protruded, moistening his lips, his eyes closing at the pain this tiny movement was causing. Then he looked at me again. Intent, trying to communicate.

  I bent over, putting my head nearer to Steinlein’s, watching his eyes close and open again. A breath taken, then: “Angst.”

  That was it. Just one word.

  Fear.

  I couldn’t get Steinlein’s word out of my head. Sitting on the S-Bahn, travelling back to Lichtenberg, the word echoed around my skull. Fear.

  The train whined and clacked its way around the curves. Opposite me was a young woman, wearing a sweater with the hood pulled over her head. Her toes pointed inward, her eyes unfocussed, deep in thought.

  Of course Steinlein was frightened. The hospital staff wouldn’t tell me the extent of his injuries, insisted that since I wasn’t family I had no right to know. But it had looked pretty bad. Maybe Steinlein was scared that he’d never recover from his injuries. Perhaps there was some sort of spinal injury. Or brain damage?

  Or maybe he was scared for his colleagues. Worried that they would be attacked too.

  Or his family.

  I took the leaflet out of my pocket, smoothing the crumples and folds as I read it through again. Badly written, badly spelt, badly copied. Everything about it was bad, from the politics to the paper it was written on. Despite that, the laughable quality of the whole thing made it hard to take it seriously.

  But Steinlein would probably disagree. And so would the informant who had been killed in a West Berlin hospital. Or the man from Mozambique who had been kicked to death a few weeks ago, or the Russian family that had been spat on in the supermarket, or the Vietnamese family who had once had a shop near Lichtenberg station—boarded up since the windows were smashed back in January.

  Or the young woman who’d been urinated on in the S-Bahn a couple of weeks ago. I looked at the passenger opposite me, her skin, darker than mine, her hair beneath the hood dark and glossy. It was someone just like her. The skinhead had just got his dick out and pissed on her, shouted “Gypsy scum!” and got off at the next station.

  How had we let it get this far?

  “I guess it’s not so surprising, after all,” Laura said, not quite looking at me.

  “What do you mean? What’s that meant to mean?”

  There was a pause while Laura contemplated me, measured, disapproving.

  “I just meant, well, you’ve been putting yourself out there. Poster boy of the RS and all that.”

  How to answer that? If Laura spent less time in the office and being a bit more pro-active then I wouldn’t have to put myself out there so much! I looked around at the others, waiting for them to support me. But Klaus was fiddling with a paper clip, and Erika was avoiding my eyes.

  “What I meant to say was, you’re the best known member of the RS—I mean, if you’re not talking to the Border Police about smugglers you’re having meetings with the KGB. You were even on Aktuelle Kamera. It stands to reason that sooner or later you’d be a target!”

  “Putting myself out there,” I repeated. “Poster boy? I’ve been doing my job—yes, I’ve been getting out there, talking to people. Because reading files and fiddling with paper clips isn’t ever going to change anything!”

  Another pause while I glared at everyone. Only Laura met my eyes—she was glaring right back at me.

  “What I think Laura is trying to say,” Erika murmured. “She’s trying to say that you’re good at making contact with people, listening to what they have to say, and using that to get an overview. You’re good at seeing the bigger picture. But that perhaps right now, considering what’s happened, and what we’re planning, perhaps it’s a low profile that we need.”

  I snorted, standing up suddenly, pushing my chair back so that it clanged against the radiator. I needed to move, but Laura was giving me a look, the one that told me she found my behaviour aggressive.

  I pulled the chair back in and sat down again, then shoved my feet out, leaned back and stretched my legs. I crossed my arms and looked down at my scuffed, brown shoes.

  “So is that it? I’ve been a bit too high-profile for your tastes, have I?”

  Nobody answered, and I ventured another look around. They were all watching me—that look that adults use when confronted with a toddler having a tantrum.

  Klaus cleared his throat and put the bent paper clip down on my desk.

  “Perhaps we should concentrate on the current situation,” he said slowly, looking between me and Laura. “Martin is under some kind of threat—we should think about what to do about that.”

  “Right now I feel like I could use your support, rather than all these accusations!”

  Laura rolled her eyes and exhaled, breath hissing between her teeth.

  We sat there for a while, avoiding each other’s gazes and not saying anything. Uneasy shuffling and scraping of chair legs on the lino.

  “Well it must be said that Martin hasn’t been respecting the team’s decisions.” Laura finally broke the silence, voice rising plaintively. “While we’ve been getting on with the paperwork and the background tasks he’s been off gallivanting. Trying to catch smugglers, winding up the Kripo, going on raids. It’s always like that, it’s like he thinks he’s Old Shatterhand!”

  “You like doing paperwork!”

  “Martin, no need to shout.” Erika was patting the air in a calming ge
sture.

  “I’m not shouting! But I don’t need to take this shit either!” I jumped out of my chair again, and ignoring the surprise on my colleagues’ faces I marched out of my office.

  Slamming the door behind me helped a bit but it also made Grit jump, so I shut the outer office door more carefully. But I was still pissed off, and I ran down the stairs, fast, aiming for every second step.

  Just as I reached the half-landing Nik came up the other way.

  “Hi Martin, guess what I’ve … Hey! What’s up?” he called at my rapidly descending back.

  I stopped and took a deep breath. It wasn’t Nik’s fault, no need to take it out on him.

  “I’ve had a death threat from the fascists and all Laura can do is have a go at me about the way I do my job!”

  “Whoah! Hang on, wait. That sounds a bit serious!”

  “It is fucking serious. I expected better of them all!” I ignored Nik’s puzzled face. “How long have we been working together? And then I get this crap!”

  “Martin, I was talking about the death threat. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Well seeing as I’m not going to get any help from that lot up there …” I shook my head, “I don’t know.”

  “Listen, where are you going? Right now?”

  I shook my head again. No idea.

  “Right, you and me, why don’t we go for a walk? Work out what to do?” he asked me, in a calm, patient voice that nearly set me off again.

  I was still angry, but Nik meant well, and I appreciated the fact that he was there for me.

  “OK.” A deep breath. “Thanks Nik.”

  We left the office and walked in silence, Nik giving me a chance to calm down. It wasn’t until we’d reached Pfarrstrasse that he spoke again.

  “OK, tell me what’s going on.”

  So I told him. The vague and insubstantial threat from the skinhead who’d been arrested last week, the long list of names that Schimmel had given me, being chased by skins at the East Side, the stupid flier that Demnitz had given me a hard time about, my frustration with my colleagues.