Hidden Depths

by Ally Rose

  ‘I’d be breaking the law if I didn’t inform the police. I’ll do my best to keep the media circus away and make enquiries into compensation for your sister.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor. Sorry to rush you, but is that all for now?’

  Dr Roth smiled, understanding her impatience. ‘It is.’

  Julia galloped down the corridor and burst into her sister’s room. ‘Lotte,’ she cried.

  ‘Julia!’ Lotte responded, attempting to raise her arms, weak from the years of inactivity, into the shape of a hug.

  Tentatively, Julia held her sister in her arms. Lena wiped her own tears and made a discreet exit from the room, leaving the sisters to their poignant and long-awaited reunion. Lotte was now unattached to a monitor and although vocal, she was speaking as if she’d just awoken up from a deep sleep. Julia helped her take frequent sips of water to lubricate her dry throat because Lotte simply didn’t want to stop talking and was highly animated.

  ‘There was a man, he attacked me.’ Lotte’s voice resonated a palpable fear.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ Julia said, softly. ‘You’re in hospital and I’m here.’

  ‘And my baby? You know I’m seven weeks pregnant. Is the baby OK?’

  Julia remembered Dr Roth’s words of wisdom: don’t lie. ‘Lotte… I’m sorry, you lost the baby.’

  Lotte let out an anguished howl and began to sob. Julia held her sister close until her breathing returned to normal.

  ‘I’ve been here every day, talking to you,’ said Julia. ‘Did you hear me, could you understand anything I was saying?’

  Lotte nodded. ‘I heard your voice. It just sounded as if you were rambling on.’

  Julia laughed. ‘Poor you, listening to my ramblings. You were a captive audience.’

  Lotte smiled, which brought a mixture of tears and pleasure to Julia’s eyes as she remembered mannerisms she’d long forgotten.

  ‘Why are you crying? I’m the one in hospital,’ Lotte asked.

  Julia smiled and wiped her eyes thinking that Lotte didn’t realise she had just woken up from a coma.

  Lotte stared at her. Julia looked different from the last time she’d seen her. At first she couldn’t fathom what exactly it was but then she realised Julia looked older. Quite a lot older. ‘What’s happened to you?’ she asked, bluntly. ‘Being married to Jurgen has aged you.’

  ‘Lotte, Jurgen and I are divorced.’

  ‘What? You never told me. But you only married recently, I don’t understand.’

  Julia hesitated. ‘I told you while you were sleeping.’

  ‘I never liked Jurgen anyway, he was far too old for you. He was just a substitute father.’ Then it dawned on her. ‘What do you mean, you told me while I was sleeping?’

  ‘Lotte, I don’t think you realise you’ve been in a coma.’

  ‘A coma?’

  Julia nodded. ‘You suffered blows to the head followed by severe hypothermia.’

  Lotte still didn’t ask how long she’d been in a coma. Instead the colour rushed to her cheeks as rage against her attacker took hold.

  ‘That bastard! My attacker knew me, I know he did.’

  Julia was dumbfounded. ‘No!’

  ‘When I worked at that place for unruly kids, he was one of the kids. He said he’d got rid of other wardens the same way, in the lake, and now it was my turn.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell the police,’ Julia insisted.

  ‘I’m not telling the police I worked at Torgau! I told you that when the Berlin Wall came down and Germany reunited, it was a social stigma to admit working there. Julia, you haven’t told anyone, have you?’

  ‘Of course not. But the police will ask because they’ll have to re-open your case.’

  Lotte was curious. ‘Have I been in the news then?’

  ‘Not for a while.’

  Lotte noticed Julia’s reticence. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me? What are keeping from me? You and me, we don’t have secrets. Come on, out with it.’

  ‘You’ve been in a coma.’

  Lotte frowned. ‘Yes, you said. Julia, how long have I been in a coma?’

  It was all happening too quickly for Julia. She wasn’t ready to tell the truth, yet it was impossible to lie. Terrified how her sister would take it, Julia took Lotte in her arms again.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my darling. Lotte, you’ve been in a coma for 12 years.’

  ‘NO!’ howled Lotte, and her cries could be heard throughout the ward.

  Chapter Three: 1989. The Boy

  THE MOON OVER THE lake at Motzen in East Germany on a clear and crisp November night was a few days short of being full, yet still offered sweet temptation to be outside under the stars.

  Fourteen-year-old Felix was restless. It was 6.30 p.m. and moonlight was shining through the window of his hideaway, brightening up his dimly lit, microcosmic world: a storage room high in the rafters of an old, aircraft hangar. His eyesight had adjusted well to nocturnal habits since his arrival at the lake in the spring. Felix felt the night belonged to him. No one noticed him when he went out for a nightly run, after which he would take a rowing boat out onto the lake, whatever the weather. He enjoyed the rocking movement of the boat whilst listening to the sounds of the rippling water and the owls hooting under the stars.

  Motzen Lake was roughly an hour south of Berlin, in a verdant, agricultural area. It was one of the many lakes in the area with a large expanse of water, an ideal oasis for aquatic sports and outdoor activities, with dense woodlands surrounding the picturesque lake interspersed with bicycle and rambling nature trails.

  If he did go out in the day, Felix avoided the areas near the campsites during the summer because they were risky for someone who didn’t want to be noticed. As instructed, he wore a dark wig and a baseball hat to hide his fair hair and his real age, 14. He limited his time outside to just a few hours in the middle of the day when the sun was at its hottest and most visitors would be in the shade.

  But now summer had turned to autumn and tranquillity had returned to the lake, in stark contrast to the political unrest taking place in the Eastern Bloc countries during the summer of 1989. Under President Gorbachev’s glasnost policies, demonstrations for political reform had grown and its domino effect was the gradual toppling of what the West called the Iron Curtain. In Hungary, Czechoslavakia and Poland the borders were open and East Germany was cracking under the pressure. In East Berlin in October, over 100,000 demonstrators walked in protest and the East German President, Erich Honeker resigned due to ill health and was replaced by Egon Krenz.

  Felix kept up to date with these events as they unfolded by listening to a small radio in his room. The antenna on the roof of the hangar could pick up West German radio, and Western news gave a clearer, uncensored picture of unfolding events in the East. As optimism grew, things were changing.

  Felix’s uncle and aunt, Klaus and Ingrid Felker, were careful to keep him safe and live a life of subterfuge, knowing only too well the pitfalls and the punitive consequences should their deception be uncovered. After all, some ordinary folk in East Germany were informing on their families, friends and neighbours for the ‘good’ of the Communist party and eavesdropping was worse in small towns than cities as people were more exposed and couldn’t disappear into the crowd. Conversations could be twisted and personal circumstances discovered by watching and listening. No one knew who was a Stasi informant, but you instinctively knew whispering voices led to betrayal.

  Klaus and Ingrid were a childless couple in their late 30s, all attempts in their 20, happy years together having failed to produce an offspring. Tests had shown there was no medical reason why they couldn’t conceive: it was simply a case of unexplained infertility. After much disappointment they had accepted their family would consist of just the two of them and made the most of their life together.

  Klaus, a tall man with a thick head of hair and a protruding chest, was a little more rotund these days though he was strong and active. He liked to
pat his belly and say to his wife, ‘Look what your fine cooking has done to me!’ Ingrid, a tall and slender woman of subtle beauty, would throw back her hair and point to the flecks of grey in her long, fair locks. ‘And look what you’ve done to me!’

  Klaus preceded his brother Bernd by two years and a sister, Maria, had come along five years later. Klaus had always worked in the boatyard for his father Werner, and when he died 15 years ago Klaus had taken over the reigns of the family business. Gisela, Klaus’s widowed mother, then moved with Maria to the island of Rugen on the Baltic Sea.

  The land around the cottage had a small garden leading to a tiny beach and boatyard where Klaus, who was often dressed in blue overalls, worked fixing up fishing and rowing boats and hiring out pleasure boats during the tourist season. There was an old aircraft hangar set back from the waterside and everyone called it ‘Das Kino’. It was used as a cinema at weekends for the townsfolk and tourists. Ingrid ran a café next to Das Kino, which she combined with selling flowers at local markets. Life was busy.

  Younger brother Bernd was on the committee of a town council just outside East Berlin. His political job of functionaire in the Communist party came with certain privileges such as ‘vouchers’ to spend in special, Western-style shops. He dressed in a suit and a tie and his wife Ute, dressed in smart Western clothes. They both enjoyed the perks of the job, especially driving in the comfort of a Western car rather than the ubiquitous, under-performing, East German car, the Trabant. Their teenage daughters, Anna and Heidi, were fashion-conscious and also disliked wearing the outdated clothing that was predominant in a country known for its anti-consumerism.

  It would have been easy for petty jealousies to spoil things between the brothers but Bernd didn’t resent Klaus for owning the land at Motzen and Klaus didn’t resent Bernd for his perks. The brothers were close despite their different lifestyles.

  When Felix turned up at the lake in the spring of 1989, Klaus and Ingrid thought long and hard about their actions and anticipated that Bernd would be at risk of repercussions if a family member was found to be hiding a runaway. They came to the conclusion it was best not to compromise anyone but themselves and to safeguard Felix at all costs. Thus Bernd was not told and he never suspected Felix was in hiding in Das Kino – a far safer place than for him to live with his aunt and uncle, at risk from spying eyes.

  Pacing in his room and mumbling in the silence of his mind, Felix counted three paces to the sink and three paces back to his bed. He muttered, constantly berating himself. He began rubbing his hands, quickening the speed as he did so, and before long his palms started to tingle with pain from the friction. The last part of this ritual was to scrub his hands with carbolic soap, which he always carried with him, but no matter how much he scrubbed away he never ever felt clean.

  Once his panic had abated, Felix could no longer contain his feelings of cabin fever. He grabbed his rucksack and climbed down the spiral staircase and out into the moonlight. He ran along the pathway at the side of the lake with a torch to guide him. He was unafraid. Tonight, as he often did, he detoured into the village and climbed over a familiar gate, happy to be back in his grandmother Gertrude’s garden. He would sit and look at the dark and empty house where once there was light and laughter, imagining the aromas coming from her kitchen. Gertrude had been a good cook, and used vegetables from her garden to create a variety of delicious dishes. Felix and his twin sister Susanne had loved coming to stay at Motzen on extended visits. But as he remembered his grandmother, or Oma , an unpleasant memory filtered through. The final time he had stayed in Motzen was when Gertrude died. After the funeral, his mother, Sofie, had had a bitter argument with her sister Ingrid and then dragged Felix and Susanne away. They had never returned to Motzen after that, and Klaus and Ingrid never visited them again in Berlin. Felix used to ask his mother why they couldn’t go back to the lake but she just said, ‘One day. Not now.’ Without really understanding why, he accepted her explanation and after a while stopped asking.

  Things went from bad to worse for his family after that. His parents separated and his father, Jakob, continued in a drunken, downward spiral until luck abandoned him not only at the bottom of a glass but in the depths of a river whilst attempting to escape to the West. A few years later, Sofie was knocked down by a speeding cyclist on a busy East Berlin street, sustaining serious head injuries. She never recovered consciousness.

  The twins were 12 when their mother died. East German authorities tended to view those who attempted to escape to the West as traitors to the Socialist State. Jakob Waltz was a traitor and also a drunk, therefore his children were tarnished by his genes and guilty by association and were punished in their father’s place. Without consulting the two bereft young twins, or bothering to contact any of their relatives and thereby reflecting the cruelty of the system, the social services declared Felix and Susanne orphans and therefore wards of the state. In East Germany at this time, orphans and disruptive youths were often sent to institutions where abuse was rife and punishments were inflicted by staff without mercy or moral conscience.

  So it was that in 1987 Felix and Susanne ended up in an institution called Torgau, approximately two hours south of Berlin on the outskirts of Dresden. Its reputation meant it was only ever mentioned in undertones and the only way out for anyone to escape was to risk their lives by jumping into the swirling River Elbe, far below.

  For two years Felix and Susanne suffered mental, physical and sexual abuse in this notorious institution, a place totally lacking in humanity and empathy. The perpetrators of these crimes went unchallenged by the authorities or their colleagues because abuse was conspiratorial and hidden. They grew to believe they were invincible and there would be no retribution for their heinous crimes, no price to pay. The children who were unfortunate enough to be put in Torgau were out of sight and out of mind to the rest of the world and were later given the name the weggesperrt , which meant the forgotten children.

  Felix left Gertrude’s garden and made his way slowly out of the village. As he walked along the main street it seemed every house in the village was in a party mood. It was late but many lights were on with music playing amidst the sound of laughter. It wasn’t normally like this so he felt bemused and wondered what was going on.

  Felix headed back to the lake and at the water’s edge stripped to his swimming trunks, wading out to waist high with a bar of carbolic soap in his hand. The coldness of the water was bearable. At Torgau, punishments were handed out indiscriminately for trivial and minor offences. He’d sometimes been made to stand knee-deep in a darkened cellar for hours on end, or hosed with icy water in a slippery, cobbled courtyard whilst the wardens looked on in amusement. The cold water held no fears for him as the urge to feel clean now overwhelmed him.

  Felix found it difficult to stop washing himself repeatedly, even though his excessive daily scrubbing had left him with dry skin that resembled eczema, especially on his hands. Despite the pain it caused, his obsessive washing was a comforting ritual.

  ‘Felix!’ shouted a bemused Klaus, appearing out of the darkness and making him jump. ‘What are you doing? You’ll catch your death.’ Felix hadn’t heard his uncle approaching or noticed the light from his torch in the moonlight.

  ‘Onkel, I’m OK, just cooling down,’ Felix replied, hiding the soap in his trunks. He liked to keep his obsession with cleanliness a secret.

  But how could anyone really keep Torgau a secret? The damage and effects were there for all to see. The first time Klaus and Ingrid had set eyes on Felix after he’d escaped from Torgau they noticed the cigar burns on his ears, his dry, red skin and pale, thin body. They also logged the torment in his eyes. On the night he’d arrived, Felix had answered all their questions as best he could. Klaus and Ingrid had listened patiently and compassionately and on hearing about the abuse he’d suffered they reassured Felix he shouldn’t feel guilty for escaping and leaving Susanne behind, and he was now safe with them. They were outraged on the twi
ns’ behalf, although Ingrid masked her sadness in front of Felix on hearing that her sister Sofie had died and the twins had been decreed orphans by the state and sent to Torgau. Love might not be enough to heal Felix but that was all Klaus and Ingrid could offer him, and they just hoped it would be enough after everything he had suffered.

  ‘Come to the house, it’s important,’ Klaus pleaded, his usually stoical voice faltering and close to tears.

  Felix felt a lump in his throat and a wave of sympathy towards his uncle. ‘Are you crying? Onkel, you never cry.’

  ‘Yes, I’m crying, even me. Promise me, boy, you’ll never be too proud or afraid to cry. It doesn’t make you less of a man.’

  It was the first time Klaus had spoken to Felix with such paternal warmth. Up until now he had shown kindness and generosity through his actions but had stumbled to say what he felt with words. Klaus and Ingrid were inexperienced in parenthood and were growing into this role but had agreed their relationship with Felix needed to develop over time and for trust to be built with the boy. Ingrid had discovered how Sofie had died, crushed on her bicycle on the streets of Berlin with no one to comfort her as she slipped away. Ingrid dealt with her own pain and regrets, crying herself to sleep for many nights, but knew her pain was nothing compared to Felix’s sufferings.

  But as Felix came out of the water there seemed no more barriers between them. They were not just uncle and nephew, there was at last the hope and possibility they could become like father and son. Klaus picked up the towel and wrapped it around his nephew and rubbed his back to warm him.

  ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened… I thought I’d never see the day.’

  ‘Onkel, what’s going on? Is it about the parties in the village?’ Felix asked.

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ Klaus exclaimed. ‘The Berlin Wall is down.’

  Chapter Four: The Wall