Darkness into Light Box Set

by Michael Dean

  Turning to better things, Norbert smoothed his sleek hair in anticipation of his call. It was about time. He had no illusions about Hermann Schaffner, the manager of his rhythm and blues group. But he wanted to get in before Jens Körner, the group’s drummer, did. He dialled, then barked out the name of Hermann Schaffner to the receptionist at Schaffner GMBH.

  The familiar honey voice sounded on the line. ‘Schaffner, Grüss Gott.’

  ‘This is Norbert. When should I come?’

  There was the briefest of pauses at the other end. ‘Come tonight at eight-thirty. I’ll make you some supper. Bring an overnight bag.’

  ‘Eight-thirty. Fine.’

  Norbert Sibulsky hung up, let out a deep breath and leaned against the wall of the telephone booth. He let himself imagine Hermann Schaffner’s powerful cologne to block out the stink in the booth. For a swooning second he imagined himself held tight in Hermann’s arms, breathing in the cologne.

  Then he strode back to the City Bank, grabbing a sandwich at a kiosk on the way, and was his usual efficient self all afternoon. He was also as kind as he could be to serious, bespectacled Sabina Göller, without getting her hopes up in any way.

  *

  Himmelfahrt pulled out all the papers, to give to the clerk. At the last minute, he shoved the map of Ludwigsburg town centre and the Employment Certificate back in his pocket, handing over his passport only.

  The clerk stared at him. Her name was Lieselotte Quednau, a name she detested because when she was a schoolgirl back in Fast Prussia, all the kids called her Quecke, a kind of weed.

  Lieselotte Quednau had come over from the East when it was still easy, before the Berlin Wall was built. She had a nephew in Wismar, not far from the border, so she could go there without attracting attention. Once in Wismar, she got a bus to the border, waited for nightfall and walked across to the west. There she got another bus as far as Lübeck. The most difficult part had been getting enough Deutschmarks for the bus fare from Lübeck to Ludwigsburg, where she had an elderly aunt. You couldn’t use the lousy East German Ostmarks to get Deutschmarks, or for anything else.

  She arrived in Ludwigsburg in the winter of 1960 with 2 Deutschmarks and 50 pfennigs. She also, as she quickly discovered, suddenly had no qualifications. A magna cum laude degree from Friedrich Schiller University at Jena was apparently worth about as much as her remaining Ostmarks over here. And then there were those gaps in her CV.

  For three years she had no work at all. If the elderly aunt had not died in 1962, leaving her a little money and the poky, dingy flat near the prison out in Asperg, she doubted she would have survived. As it was, she got this shit job at the Ausländeramt only because attitudes to the Ossis — immigrants from Fast Germany — started to soften with the glamorous and well-publicised escapes over, under and round the Berlin Wall.

  The escapes set off volleys of Lieselotte Quednau’s sardonic snorting. She used to watch the newsreel footage of escapees, whether shot escapees or successful escapees, on the tiny television in her flat, over a bottle of Asbach Uralt, screaming drunken abuse at the black and white pictures.

  ‘You idiot!’ would ring out round the bare, dim flat, her voice slurring with the booze, as a would-be escapee hung impaled and dead on the wall. ‘You bloody donkey! Blockhead! Arsehole!’ The volleys of abuse would then be followed by extremely precise and clear instructions on how the escape attempt could have been improved and successfully managed.

  *

  Lieselotte Quednau took in Himmelfahrt for the first time. Her angular, ferociously intelligent face softened, almost melted. Her hazel eyes widened: what have we here? Look at that open-pored skin and the big cock and balls — it wasn’t just the tight trousers, she was sure of that. A sensualist, then. But he didn’t know what to do with it. Almost certainly a virgin. But Du lieber Gott finally, finally, someone with a bit of intelligence.

  Lieselotte Quednau loathed her daily working diet of guest workers, not because they were foreign but because they were Lumpenproletariat. They were vulgar. They were coarse, they were crude. They had no refinement. Karl Marx could fill in their bloody forms for them. Him and his catamite, that arsehole Engels. Give them a bit of contact with some real workers, they’d be voting Liberal in a fortnight, the pair of them. She’d fled their shithole of a workers’ paradise because it was full of workers. And now look what’s happened. More bloody workers.

  Lieselotte Quednau wrinkled her aquiline, aristocratic nose. Her dry white skin crinkled a little round the mouth. She sighed. Then she looked at Himmelfahrt’s passport.

  ‘Where is your Arbeitgeberbestätigung?’ she said suddenly in her clear, harsh Mecklenburg German.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your Employment Certificate,’ she said in English, holding out her hand for it.

  ‘Oh. Frau Stikuta didn’t have one,’ said Himmelfahrt, also in English. ‘But she wants me to start work tomorrow. So she asked if I could fill one in here. Do you mind?’ He smiled at her. ‘Thanks a lot! Cheers! Really appreciate it!’

  Lieselotte Quednau snorted. She glanced at the youth. He was obviously lying. But why? ‘You mean, Frail Stikuta from the language school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Liselotte Quednau was enjoying this. She was even enjoying speaking English again. She spoke English to Mr de Launay in her conversation lesson, of course. But of necessity that had to be just idle chatter. This had a purpose.

  ‘What did you just put back in your pocket? When you gave me the passport.’

  Himmelfahrt shrugged elaborately. ‘Nothing. Oh, my map of Ludwigsburg.’

  Liselotte Quednau suppressed a smile. ‘There was something else. It looked like an Employment Certificate. I see them all the time, you know.’

  Himmelfahrt shamefacedly pulled out his crumpled Employment Certificate and handed it to the clerk.

  Liselotte Quednau ran a practised eye down it. ‘Why is the name different?’

  ‘I applied for the job in the name of Hill. I didn’t think it would cause so much trouble. I’m sorry.’

  Could that be true? Surely nobody could be that stupid? This must have some connection with what had happened to her recently, otherwise the coincidence would be too great.

  *

  Lieselotte Quednau thought back to that afternoon, a week ago. She had been sitting in Café Lassas having coffee and cake after her English conversation lesson. The approach had been clumsy from the beginning. A sleekly handsome middle-aged man with a comic Saxon accent had said ‘May I?’ and landed heavily at her table. The table next to her would have been better.

  He was here on business which brought him to Ludwigsburg at regular but not totally predictable times. Lieselotte Quednau could almost finish his sentences for him, he was so obvious, and once or twice she did. Just to make it easy for him she virtually arranged the next meeting herself. The poor dope, he was calling himself Kai-Uwe Prengel, looked confused.

  Bloody hell, thought Lieselotte Quednau. Are you the best the Firm can do these days? What hurt, and she was deeply, deeply hurt, was not that the Firm had made an approach, but that they had done it in this way.

  The Firm was the East German Secret Service, SSD — Staatssicherheitsdienst. It was called the Firmr or KONSUM, meaning Co-Op, by the people who worked for it. The Firm were always targeting lonely women of a certain age in West Germany. They called them grey mice.

  OK then, for the Firm she was a grey mouse, now. A lonely middle-aged lady who would be grateful to jump into bed with someone calling himself Prengel. Was she? Is that all she was now? Is that what her life had amounted to?

  And now the Firm were giving her some sort of test, sending her this Himmelfahrt-Hill person. That would be typical of the convoluted way they thought and acted.

  *

  She thought for a mad moment of taking him for a coffee, at Lassas maybe, but told herself to pull herself together. One thing was for certain, though. They would have a little chat. The bloody guest workers could da
mn well wait. She stared at him quizzically, fondly. My, my. This boy looks like a dreamer, a poet … like Hölderlin. She treated herself to a long look at his prick and balls.

  Unaware that he was being compared to one of Swabia’s greatest poets, even if he did go mad in the end, Himmelfahrt embarked on another round of explanation, babbling away. This was cut short by Lieselotte Quednau.

  ‘We will fill in a new Employment Certificate now,’ announced Frau Quednau, ‘One that matches the name in your passport.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Himmelfahrt casually, a bit relieved, unaware that he was participating in the biggest procedural breach since Eberhard Ludwig set up the civil service in this town, in the eighteenth century.

  But anyway, Lieselotte Quednau thought to herself, even if something did go wrong, this was her last week in the job. She had been mysteriously transferred to a new post and promoted, quite out of the blue. The Firm were no doubt behind it. So whatever this boy was up to could be important in her new future, one way or the other. She must definitely find out who was running him before she made any sort of move. Lieselotte Quednau pulled out a blank Employment Certificate and rapidly filled it in, asking the Englishman for his personal details, as Marcus Himmelfahrt.

  ‘Right,’ said Lieselotte Quednau. ‘All we need now is Frau Stikuta to sign this form.’

  A look of panic crossed Himmelfahrt’s face.

  Lieselotte Quednau, by now positively girlish with mischief, said ‘Or you can just put the language school’s stamp on the bottom of the form, instead of a signature. Frau Stikuta keeps the stamp on her desk, I believe.’

  This was subversion, if not downright revolution! Lieselotte Quednau had not had so much fun since her romps at the Socialist Girls Camp at Greifswald, when she had lost her virginity to one of the instructors.

  She wondered if Himmelfahrt was Jewish. He didn’t look particularly Jewish but the name could be Jewish. Her husband had been Jewish; the man she had abandoned, along with her baby son, when she left East Germany.

  ‘Take this form and get it stamped,’ she said, crisply. ‘Give it to me tomorrow at seven-thirty at Sprachschule Stikuta, after my conversation lesson with Mr de Launay.’

  ‘Sure!’ said Himmelfahrt, casually, taking the form. ‘Thanks for your help!’

  Lieselotte Quednau watched him leave the room, noting appreciatively that he had an excellent bottom, showing to advantage in the tight blue trousers. As the door closed behind him, the clerk was smiling mischievously. Then she guffawed, her laugh croaking from lack of use.

  A Turkish bus driver opened the door and walked in, unannounced and unbidden. The clerk’s laugh strangled in her throat.

  ‘Du’, screamed Lieselotte Quednau, using the familiar form insultingly and clicking her fingers at him. ‘Sling your hook, you. Outside! Wait!’ The bus driver turned on his heel and left.

  No more guest workers today! Lieselotte Quednau went to report herself sick. Then she would return, with a spring in her step, to a stiff Asbach Uralt or two or three at her lonely shoebox of a flat, where she would dream of the lithe youth with the long black hair.

  4

  Next morning Himmelfahrt woke up late. He was still not hungry. Last night he had forced himself to buy a takeaway hamburger in town, for the sake of eating something. He had eaten it in the street. Then he had caught the bus home, learned some German and gone to bed early, with the towel.

  He decided to skip breakfast and wait for his new colleague, John de Launay. But he was already beginning to feel stir-crazy in the tiny room. His various aches and pains were still there, ears and jaw particularly. His hair was still falling out.

  He put the towel safely in the bottom of his backpack in the wardrobe, under all his clothes. He still had not unpacked; he didn’t intend to, he didn’t see the point. Then he found the scrap of paper with the Finnish girls’ telephone numbers on it. He went downstairs. Herr Biedermeier seemed to be around all the time, Himmelfahrt vaguely thought the little man must be retired. He peered round, looking for Herr or Frau Biedermeier. Just when you want them, there was no sign of either of them!

  That was a nuisance, he really needed to phone the girls this morning. He wanted something set up by the time John de Launay arrived. Oh well. Tough! He would telephone and leave the Biedermeiers the money.

  The telephone was on the sideboard in the oppressive front parlour. Himmelfahrt picked up the receiver. He thought for a second about which one to phone. No contest really. Those breasts … He phoned the number printed by Lati’s name. A female voice answered.

  ‘Burkhardt und Sohn. Wholesale building materials.’

  ‘Grüss Gott. I desire Lati.’

  ‘You want what?’

  ‘Lati out of Finland.’

  ‘From Finland? I don’t understand you. We sell building materials and tiles here. Is Lati a sort of Finnish tile, or what do you mean?’

  ‘Lati is girl. She comes out Finland.’

  At that point Herr Biedermeier skipped into the room. He turned bright red; his eyes pushed forward in their sockets like muddy golf balls. Himmelfahrt felt irritated at the sight of the elfin figure. He pointed at the receiver and said ‘Ludwigsburg’ loudly in case the little man thought he was phoning England at the Biedermeiers’ expense.

  ‘Ludwigsburg?’ said the bewildered disembodied voice from the receiver.

  Himmelfahrt panicked. ‘Not you! You give me Lati,’ he yelled into the phone. ‘I will have Lati.’

  The girl rang off. Herr Biedermeier fled.

  Himmelfahrt cursed under his breath and hung up. He wasn’t going to give up now, that was for sure. He considered enlisting Herr Biedermeier’s help with the foreign telephone system which had not produced Lati, but thought better of it.

  He dialled the number neatly printed by the name Fredrika. A man answered. Himmelfahrt panicked again. Just as Herr Biedermeier came back with Frau Biedermeier he was saying. ‘Fredrika. Please. Fredrika. I am friend.’

  The man on the phone said ‘Nobody lives here called Fredrika.’ Then he hung up.

  Himmelfahrt was getting flustered. Frau Biedermeier had folded her arms defensively over her abutment of a bosom.

  ‘I telephone Ludwigsburg,’ he shouted at Frau Biedermeier. ‘I the telephone it will be paid!’

  Losing it somewhat, Himmelfahrt fished money out of his wallet and banged a note down on the sideboard. It was 20 marks. The size of the note mollified Frau Biedermeier.

  ‘Who is Fredrika?’ she asked.

  ‘My wife!’ shouted Himmelfahrt.

  ‘And who is Lassie?’ chipped in Herr Biedermeier, from somewhere behind Frau Biedermeier.

  ‘Also my wife!’ yelled Himmelfahrt defiantly, fists clenched.

  The Biedermeiers looked at each other, stunned.

  *

  His stomach was tightening. Both numbers wrong? Oh hardly. They had made a fool of him, or Fredrika had. He was sure Lati liked him. Himmelfahrt conjured up that sweet smile … He turned the scrap of paper with the telephone numbers over. On the back was the name and logo of a firm, ITT.

  Himmelfahrt grabbed the Biedermeiers’ telephone book, gritted teeth, dogged determination. Right! He was going to phone her, whether she liked it or not. There were five listings for ITT in the greater Ludwigsburg area. Himmelfahrt waved Herr and Frau Biedermeier out of their front room and composed himself enough to launch his fledgling German.

  He phoned all the ITT branches, one by one, and asked, in comprehensible German, for a Praktikantin from Finland called Fredrika. At the fourth ITT branch, out in Böblingen, they put him through to the Marketing Department. He repeated his request and a voice at the other end of the phone said ‘Fredrika Kuusinen?’

  Himmelfahrt, dry mouthed, heart banging, shut his eyes. ‘Here is Mark,’ he said. ‘From the Ausländeramt.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line.

  ‘I want look at you tonight!’ he said, grimly. ‘You and Lati.’


  ‘I think it’s easier to speak English,’ said Fredrika, coolly, in English.

  The German who was acting as her supervisor in the office, Anna Schweinle, looked at the Finnish girl curiously. Anna was nineteen, younger than Fredrika. She smiled as she put a pile of marketing questionnaires from her boss, Frau von Gravensburg, down on Fredrika’s desk and openly and curiously listened to the telephone conversation.

  Fredrika made a moue to Anna and shrugged one shoulder, expressively conveying that she had no idea how her admirer had found her office number.

  ‘Fredrika, can we go for a drink?’ said a relieved Himmelfahrt in English. ‘You and Lati and me and my friend. We can meet in town.’

  ‘And who is this friend of yours?’ asked Fredrika, coquettishly, with one eye on Anna Schweinle.

  ‘My friend,’ said Himmelfahrt, breathing deeply, ‘is called … John de Launay. Er. He looks a bit like Sean Connery. You know? From the Bond films?’ Himmelfahrt winced. Why on earth had he said that?

  There was a second of silence on the phone. And then a gulp of surprise, almost laughter but she resisted it, from Fredrika.

  Anna kept saying, ‘What did he say?’ The phone went quiet while Fredrika covered the receiver and told Anna what Himmelfahrt had said. Anna laughed and then wanted to know who Himmelfahrt was, but Fredrika shushed her and went back to the telephone call.

  ‘Tell Sean Connery that Lati cannot come,’ she said. ‘Lati is not very well, you know. She has very difficult period pain. She often has trouble with her periods.’

  ‘Oh, er …’

  Fredrika calculated again, as she had at the Aliens Office, how best to get rid of Himmelfahrt. Again, apparent compliance would be the quickest way.

  ‘So,’ she resumed, ‘Your friend will have to make do with someone else. There are twelve of us here from Finland, you know. Twelve lovely Finns’

  Himmelfahrt felt relief flooding over him. ‘Great! Great! Hang on! Hang on! Where shall we meet? Hang on, I’ll get a pen.’

  Herr and Frau Biedermeier had tiptoed back into the room and were listening, dumbstruck, near the door, although they could not follow the English at all.