Thoughts Are Free

by Max Hertzberg

  It was ace. Everyone shut the fuck up and looked at this hardcore woman. She was dead small, and really thin, but she shouted so loud that everything just stopped.

  “Thank you,” she said, in her normal voice. “I’m going to call a break, then we’re coming back in ten minutes, and we’re going to have a proper discussion. I’m facilitating it, and I’m going to let everyone have their say, and we’re all going to fucking listen to each other! Anyone got a problem with that?”

  Nobody had any problems with that, so she walked out to the edge of the group and I got up out of my broken deckchair again to go and talk to her. Tam, she said her name was. I told her about the ideas I had, and she liked them, so I let her get prepared before the meeting got back together and went over to the watchtower, just a few metres away.

  I banged on the door and asked for Rico. He came out, and was a bit gobsmacked to see me standing there. Probably wondered what the fuck a punk was doing banging on the door of his watchtower. It was really funny, this German lad, about the same age as me, with his stupid uniform and his spotty face. But I told him I was a friend of Martin’s and about what was going on over in the Wagenburg so he agreed to come over. I told him to lose his uniform jacket and cap, so he left them behind, putting a padded blue work jacket on and buttoning it up. He still had his fatigue trousers and boots on, but at least now you couldn’t see he was some sort of officer or whatever.

  Walking back I could tell he was nervous. He puffed his chest out, and started marching, swinging his arms in time to his strides, but they were short, uneasy strides, and he stayed half a step behind me the whole way. Had to smile to myself.

  We got back to the meeting just as it was starting up again, and Tam asked me to speak first.

  “Hey, I started off on the wrong foot before. Sorry. I think it’s because I’ve been asked to present something that I don’t actually agree with either, so I didn’t think it through properly, about how to explain it. But basically, like I said before, you’ve got people worried about the way you’re jumping the Wall here and near the Køpi. But I shouldn’t have said it that way, so if we can start again I’d like it if we could let Rico here talk: he’s from the Border Police, so perhaps he can explain better than I can what he sees as the problem.”

  Tam took over then, reminding people that we’re not here to just say yes or no to Rico, but to look to see if there are any solutions that work for everyone.

  There was a tense silence while people waited to see what Rico had to say. I wasn’t the only one feeling unsure about having him here, even though it’d been my idea to bring him over.

  Rico began to tell us why he had a problem with people jumping the Wall. He talked a load of tosh about security and order and respect for state borders, and it was dead obvious that people were finding it hard not to get pissed off with him.

  But then he started talking about the smugglers. People laughed when he said how the smugglers were taking the piss out of the Border Police. Then he started ranting on about what the smugglers were doing to the economy. There was nothing new there, we knew the score, but it was good to hear it said because it was relevant, it was part of what we were talking about.

  When he ran out of steam I spoke again, and talked about how it looked like the smugglers were bringing in stuff for the skins and fash over here. Basically I just said the same as I had before the break but this time people were actually listening to me.

  “Do you want to tell us about drugs on the East Side?” I asked the person who’d interrupted me earlier.

  “We don’t talk to the cops.” A head shake.

  Yeah, they were right. We don’t talk to the cops. People were nodding their heads around the circle, and Rico was getting a few dirty looks. The facilitator stood up and said it was time for another break and would someone put the kettle on.

  Rico had got the message, and was about to leave. He looked really sad. A bit pissed off, too, but mainly sad. But before he could go Tam was by his side, asking him to stay until the end of the break. She wanted to ask the group if he could stay for the discussion. He shook his head, but stayed anyway, sitting back down on a log near the fire, nobody looked at him, everyone avoided meeting his eyes.

  They got the tea going, and warm cups were passed around, that was dead good because it was getting a bit nippy, and we sat there slurping, waiting for Tam to start the meeting again.

  “I’m going to ask if anyone can tell Rico why we jump the Wall rather than go through the Crossing Point, but first I want to check if it’s OK for him to stay. Yeah, alright, he’s Border Police, but he’s already part of the discussion. We’ve listened to what he has to say and I think he should be allowed to hear from us too. Maybe he can help us find an answer.”

  There was a lot of grumbling at that, but no-one blocked it, so Rico was allowed to stay, looking a bit nervous and isolated on his log.

  The gobby Bavarian kicked it all off with a rant about why it’s ideologically purer to use a ladder to climb over a wall than to show your ID to someone in a uniform. Rico was dead intense, listening to what people said, trying to understand them. After a while he put his hand up, like he was at school. Tam nodded at him, and he stood up again.

  “But you end up showing your ID cards to the West German official on the other side of the bridge! Is he better than us? He’s the class enemy, but you’ll show him your Ausweis. And I’m on your side but you’re not even comfortable with having me at your meeting! Aren’t we meant to be working together now? Aren’t we meant to be building our new society together?”

  “All cops are bastards!” came a shout from the shadows. “Take off your uniform and join us!” someone else said.

  I had to smile, it was quite funny, even though I felt sorry for Rico too.

  “Why do you hate us so much?” Rico asked. He was being dead genuine, but everyone laughed anyway.

  “You serious? You for real?”

  “Rico asked a question,” Tam intervened again. “Are we going to give him an answer?”

  “Where were you in 1989? And before that? When people like us got beaten up, tortured, sent to jail by people like you? People like you set dogs on us, pointed guns at us; you beat us! Come on, you know the score!”

  Rico shook his head slowly: “No, I’ve only been doing this for three years, I’m just doing it before I go to university. And where I come from, up in Mecklenburg, not much happened in 1989, I kind of missed all of that. And I’m sorry if they treated you that way, but you must have been doing something to make them-”

  Groans all round, cries of What planet you from?

  “Look, Rico, maybe this isn’t the time to talk about this stuff, but why don’t you hang around afterwards and we’ll tell you the stories,” Tam said. “Is that OK with everyone?”

  A few people reluctantly nodded.

  “Rico asked something before,” Tam continued. “We still haven’t given him an answer. He asked why we won’t work together with him and his colleagues?”

  There were no offers. I didn’t have a good answer either. This naive, liberal uniform had asked us why we weren’t prepared to work with him. Wasn’t it time to think about that question? We went on marches, we hassled our local Round Table, calling them stick-in-the-muds, saying they had to change with the times, listen to what people wanted. Maybe we had to move with the times too?

  Maybe he was right, we ought to talk to him. He was answerable to the Round Tables, and we could get involved as much as we wanted to—the Round Tables were open.

  But there was too much hurt, too many good reasons not to trust cops. And I don’t want a police force—not any kind of police force, whether on the streets or on the borders. So, no: I couldn’t co-operate with them.

  And I said that to the group, we can’t trust cops, and we don’t want cops. People whooped when I’d finished.

  “Yeah! No borders, no police!” someone shouted, and everyone laughed.

  Except for Rico. He didn�
��t laugh, he just looked confused. I was starting to feel sorry for him again. How did he do that to me?

  I sat there for a bit, thinking, What would Martin do? What would Martin say? and for a while I lost track of the discussion. When I tuned in again it had turned back to rants. People were lining up to have a go at Rico and all he stood for. He looked really miserable, but, fair play, he stuck it out, he was still there, listening, trying to understand. More than could be said about any of us.

  The whole thing was falling apart. Again. Maybe it just wasn’t possible to have a discussion with a cop, to find agreement?

  But Tam stood up again and spoke.

  “Look, we’re going round in circles. We’re not going to get any further if we carry on like this. We have a choice now, and we have to be serious about it. We can stop this discussion and carry on jumping the Wall like before, just ignore what we’ve heard tonight. Or we can think about whether the stuff about fascist smugglers means we have to do something about it!”

  “I’m not working with the cops!” shouted the Bavarian.

  “So don’t! Make a proposal that doesn’t involve the cops!” shot Tam straight back. That shut the gobby twat up. She was fucking ace, that woman!

  But Rico just sat there through it all, looking lost. It was like he was still there only because he didn’t have the energy to get up and walk away.

  “I hate myself for saying this,” the person next to me said. “But I gotta say, the cop is right—in just over a week there’s the referendum on the Wall. Things have changed, we have a say now. We want to get rid of the Wall, but we can’t do that just by ignoring it, or them.” A finger pointed at Rico. “We have to talk to people, get involved in the discussions that are happening at the moment. It’s time for us to take part and not just moan and blame others when things don’t go the way we want them to!”

  That was the point I’d thought about before, but still I shook my head. The Bavarian had something to say about it though. “Fuck’s sake—we’re punk!” he shouted. “We’re against all of this shit. Punk means resistance!”

  “Yeah,” I shouted back, irritated by his arrogance, “in Bavaria punk is resistance, but what are we meant to be resisting here? If you want to resist then go back to the fucking West! If you want to help build something new then stay and take responsibility!”

  By the light of the fire I could see people nodding their heads, but the smug Bavarian just shook his head in disgust.

  “We could just open our own Crossing Point,” somebody joked.

  But Rico looked up at that, and you could tell he was thinking about it, I could hear the gears working.

  Someone else took up the idea: “Yeah, there’s a Crossing Point here, but we need one on Köpenicker Strasse so we can get to the Køpi and the Schwarzer Kanal!”

  “I guess it would be possible,” Rico started, he was still thinking about it, trying to work out how realistic it would be. “We’d need to take a proposal to the neighbourhood Round Table, and the Berlin Regional RT too-”

  He was interrupted by groans. Doing it that way would take ages while all the old farts in the Round Tables argued about it—by the time we got a decision the referendum might have already decided to get rid of the Wall anyway.

  “But we could get it fast-tracked. If you were serious about it, if you agreed to staff it, and we put in a joint proposal together, I mean, all of you and my lot at the regiment and the customs administration-”

  He was interrupted by whoops of laughter and hands waving in the air. People thought the whole idea—working together with the Border Police regiment—was really funny. Despite all that had been said before I could tell they loved it.

  “But you’d have to agree to do the border controls-” Rico started again, but nobody heard him in all the laughing and shouting.

  “I think we may have a decision.” Tam smiled over to me and Rico.

  Rico grinned—the first smile I’d seen from him—a big, goofy grin on his pockmarked face, teeth glittering in the firelight.

  Day 13

  Saturday 26th March 1994

  Berlin: As the country prepares to vote in three referenda next week the Central Round Table has repeated its call for a fair and fact-based debate on the issues. In a statement issued this morning the body said: ‘Only by informing ourselves and only after careful consideration and discussion will we be able to help our Republic reach appropriate decisions.’

  The Round Table was responding to statements recently made by the main parliamentary political parties.

  Martin

  When I woke up this morning, the mist still covered the far bank, a smoky veil hanging in the moisture-laden air. It was a queer feeling, opening my eyes and expecting to see dawn, but being greeted instead by blankness. Everything else: white. Sheer nothingness.

  I took the rowing boat out onto the lake, the water rippling away before dissolving into that impossible emptiness. So beautiful, yet—in an atavistic way—terrifying. A canvas of a world, ready to fill with hope and fears. If I were to take my brush, what would I paint on this emptiness? Would I make the same awkward political landscape of Round Tables nudging up against layers of parliaments? Would there be a more elegant way to give people the chance of self-determination? Would there still be the egoists, the oddballs, the power-hungry and those who just wanted to be led? Would there be any people at all? Or just me, the last loner?

  After all, we have the system that history has bequeathed us. We can fiddle with the knobs and dials and valves of society, but we are moulded by our pasts. There’s no scientifically determinable march through social progression. Each advance has to be fought for, then fought over, again and again, lest it become jaded, corroded, worthless.

  Alone in that white mist I’d felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, and my heart lifted when the fog thinned. The fir trees to the left and right materialised, grey, then black, finally their true green darkness showing up against the light tips of fresh growth.

  The wind soughed across the water to keep me company on my watch.

  Karo

  I ended up spending the night at the Lohmühle, staying in an empty wagon. Only problem was that the person whose wagon it was turned up really early the next morning, still pissed out of his skull. He woke me up by crashing through the door and then falling on top of me. Then he wanted to talk to me, he sat there on the bed, slurring total shite.

  So I left.

  I wasn’t happy about getting up so early, but the low sun was glinting off the shiny buds of the plane-trees on Puschkin Allee and that was nice—it felt good to be out and about. I walked all the way over the bridge to Friedrichshain, and by the time I’d got to Ostkreuz station I’d decided to go and see Martin. He lived quite near by, and I was sure he’d want to hear about the meeting last night—I felt quite proud of what we’d achieved.

  So I walked a bit further and went under the railway bridge onto Martin’s street.

  But when I banged on his door there was no answer. I wrote a message on the notebook that was hanging there: I came to see you but you were still asleep you lazy git. PS You need to clean up the graffiti on the front of your building—you’ll give your neighbourhood a bad rep. Then I left his tenement.

  I stood there in the road wondering what to do now. The original plan had been to go home and go back to bed, but I was awake now and buzzing with the memory of last night. I could go and see if Martin was at his office, it was on my way anyway. And it would be just like Martin to go to work on a Saturday. Sad case.

  It’s not far to walk to the RS office, and I was there in no time. The aluminium and glass door stuck a bit and I had to give it a good push to get past. Why do all offices smell the same? That official floor-wax-and-detergent smell. And soap too—the same grey, hard soap that you get in schools. Not a good smell.

  I was still wrinkling my nose when I knocked at the door of the RS office up on the first floor. Laura answered and she must have seen me pulling
a face because she didn’t look very pleased to see me. Or maybe that was just her usual sour-puss.

  “What do you want?”

  “Good morning to you, Frau Laura,” I answered, all nice and sweet. “Is Martin here?”

  “No. He’s out of town on important business.” I could tell Laura wanted to get rid of me so I tried to think of something else to say, just to piss her off.

  But I wasn’t quick enough and Laura gave me a curt Tschüss and shut the door on me.

  I last saw Martin on Wednesday, just a few days ago. It’s not like he reports all his movements to me or anything, but he hadn’t mentioned any important meetings outside Berlin.

  I shrugged and started skipping back down the stairs. Sour Laura wasn’t going to spoil my day with her bad manners.

  When I got to the bottom somebody was trying to push the front door open, but it was jammed again, so I helped out. It opened with a jerk and Erika fell through the gap, almost landing on top of me.

  “Hey Erika!” I laughed. “Bit early for drinking isn’t it?”

  Erika looked sombre. Grey. She always looked a bit worried, but this was different. She didn’t even really say hello back to me, just sort of nodded and tried to push past me.

  This wasn’t like her at all. I liked Erika, she was the best of Martin’s colleagues. She always said hello and how-are-you, and she listened to the answers too. So I could tell something was up.

  “Erika? You OK?”

  She just nodded again, not stopping.

  “Erika, I was looking for Martin, do you know where he might be?”

  That stopped her. She’d reached the bottom of the stairs, but now turned round to face me.

  “What’s up? What’s going on, Erika?”

  Erika looked up the stairs, then went to the door that was still jammed open and looked outside before answering.

  “Karo, it’s all gone horribly wrong. I’m really worried about Martin, about all of us-”