For the Democratic Republic, West Berlin was more than a shop-window, it was a military base where more than twelve thousand soldiers were stationed, American, British, and French. And the East Germans did not like having these soldiers right at their front door.
Ulbricht’s official policy was to propose the unification of Germany: In fact what he wanted was a federation with no foreign troops. In this way, he could seem like a man of peace who was making peaceful proposals that were not accepted because of Western imperialist intransigence. Pure propaganda, of course. His idea of reunification would be to incorporate the Federal Republic into the same collectivist system that the Democratic Republic was living under.
But he was aware of the constant bleeding away of brainpower and resources inherent in the continued emigration of many Germans from the Democratic Republic.
I will never forget the night of August 13, 1961. I was studying in my room when a noise made me look up and I saw a group of soldiers and Communist Party militants stretching out a roll of barbed wire. Our house, apparently, was on the “border” with West Germany.
“Papa! Amelia! Look out of the window!”
The three of us stretched and peered through the window as the soldiers carried on unrolling the barbed wire.
“The border,” Amelia murmured.
“What border?” I asked, unable to believe that Berlin was not a single city.
“Churchill spoke of the Iron Curtain... Well, here you are, the curtain is being drawn across Berlin as well,” she replied.
“But it’s ridiculous. What are they going to do with this barbed-wire fence? The only thing they’re going to do is make it difficult for us to get from one side of the city to the other, and there are thousands of Berliners who cross into the other side of the city every day,” I said.
Amelia stroked my face affectionately, as if I were still a little child who could not understand what was happening.
My father was silent, with a look in his eyes that one often saw, a lost gaze, and his face twisted into a tense expression.
“We should go, it might still be possible,” Amelia said.
“No, I’m not going, but I won’t stop you,” my father answered, visibly upset.
She didn’t say anything. What could she say? He knew that we would never abandon him, whatever happened. But Amelia was right, we should go. What sense would our life make here? I never understood my father’s insistence on our remaining in East Berlin. Sometimes I thought that he needed to punish himself for having been a member of the Wehrmacht and having sworn loyalty to Hitler.
The next day, Garin explained to Amelia that he had been told that the barbed-wire fence was merely the first step.
“They want to build a wall more than three meters high.”
“But what help will that bring them? People are going to have to carry on going to work on the other side.”
“It will mean the definitive partition of Germany. I think that they are going to make a proclamation that there is only one legitimate Germany, our own. And maybe they’ll restrict the freedom of movement to West Berlin. We’ll see.”
Garin was right. Getting through to the West became a nightmare. You needed a permission document and to explain why you were going. It was easier to enter our side of Berlin, because the visitors had no intention of staying forever.
From our window we could see how the barbed-wire fence was followed by the construction of a concrete wall that was around three meters tall, and extended, we found out, for fifty-five kilometers. Now the only view from our windows was that block of concrete, patrolled day and night by soldiers. There was only a meter between our little garden and the fortifications: First came the barbed-wire fence, and then, the Wall. I felt like I was living in a prison, I felt suffocated, as did Amelia, but my father accepted it all without complaining.
“They can’t cope with the constant exodus of people, it was putting the economy under immense pressure,” he said in justification.
It was in the autumn of 1961 that Amelia met Ivan Vasiliev again. We went out like we did every morning and walked a while before going our separate ways, she toward the ministry, and me to the university. We spoke Arabic as we walked. We liked to do it when we were alone. Amelia said that she spoke it so as not to forget. Maybe it was instinct, maybe the man’s insistent gaze, but Amelia suddenly slowed down.
“Amelia, Amelia Garayoa,” we heard someone say behind our backs.
A man who must have been about sixty had said Amelia’s name. She looked straight at him, trying to find in her memory the name that fit this face.
“Ivan Vasiliev,” the man said in Russian, holding out his hand. “Do you remember Moscow? I worked with Pierre Comte.”
“My God!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, it’s a real surprise to see you here.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, that’s what I was thinking when I saw you, what are you doing in Berlin?”
“I live here with my family.”
“Your family? Well, it’s natural that you would have put your life back together after Pierre died.”
“That’s right. Are you still... ? Well... Are you still working in the same place?”
“You want to know if I’m in the KGB? That’s a question you shouldn’t ask me and I shouldn’t answer. Who is this young man?”
“My son. Friedrich, allow me to introduce Ivan Vasiliev...”
The man looked me up and down, in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. He was taller than me, and stronger, and though he was wearing a suit, he seemed to have a military bearing.
“If you have time, maybe I could invite you for a coffee,” Ivan Vasiliev suggested.
“I’m sorry, Friedrich has to get to class and I need to be at work in fifteen minutes.”
“Where do you work?”
“In one of the departments of the Ministry of Culture.”
“Maybe I could walk with you and we could talk about old times.”
I was going to take my leave, but I thought that I would go to work with Amelia too. She was tense and pale, as if this man were a ghost.
“I always wanted to tell you how sorry I was about what happened. It was a mistake on Pierre’s part to go to Moscow.”
“He was ordered to go.”
“He should have followed Igor Krisov’s advice.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Krisov? No, never. He may be dead. I don’t know.”
“What are you doing here?” Amelia insisted.
“Well, as you know, the Soviet Union is providing valuable help to our friends in the Democratic Republic. They have sent me here to keep an eye on things in the Security Ministry.”
“So now they do trust you.”
“Yes.”
“They must trust you a lot, or else they wouldn’t have sent you here...”
“Well, now that you know that I am worthy of the confidence of my people, what can you tell me about yourself?”
“Nothing special. I live in Berlin.”
“Why in this part of Berlin? A young woman like yourself would fit in much better on the other side.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Don’t you remember that I was a Communist activist as well?”
“You’re right, we barely had time to get to know each other. It was very brave of you and that American journalist to try to save Pierre. You almost managed it.”
We got to the door of the ministry building and they shook hands goodbye. He asked for our address so that he could come and visit us, and Amelia had no option other than to give it to him.
When she had gone inside, the man turned to me and looked me up and down again.
“So, you’re Amelia’s son...”
“Well, I suppose you could say that I am like her son, that she raised me. My father and Amelia have lived together for ages.”
“And what does your father do?”
“Sadly he was wound
ed in the war, he’s an invalid, he doesn’t have any legs.”
“I’ll come and visit you one of these days, I hope you and your parents won’t mind.”
“Oh no, come when you want, Amelia’s friends are always welcome.”
When I got back home that evening, I found Amelia telling my father what had happened. This was when I discovered that Amelia had been in love with a Soviet agent named Pierre.
“Ivan Vasiliev behaved well toward me, but he was scared,” Amelia explained. “When we went to Moscow, they put Pierre under Vasiliev’s orders. He was very rigid toward him, but Pierre said that he seemed insecure, even though he was a good man. He told me that Pierre had been arrested because they thought that he had been one of the agents run by Igor Krisov, another spy whom they accused of treason after he deserted. When I met Ivan Vasiliev, he was extremely scared, now he seems changed, not just because he’s older... It’s like things were going well for him.”
“I’m worried that he’s with the KGB,” Max said.
“Me too,” Amelia agreed.
Two days later, Ivan Vasiliev turned up at our house. He brought a bottle of Rhine wine, a packet of sausages, and a piece of cake.
He was charming, he helped Amelia to cook the sausages and me to lay the table, and played a game of chess with my father. If he was surprised to find out that Max had been an officer in the Wehrmacht he didn’t say so, but he listened with interest to how Max had been a member of a group opposed to Hitler.
“A single bullet could have stopped the war, but none of us would have dared to fire on the Führer,” my father admitted.
“I don’t think that the Russians can be very proud of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact,” Amelia said, trying to provoke Ivan Vasiliev.
“Tactics. Stalin avoided going to war at that critical moment,” Vasiliev replied.
“He delayed it, and destroyed the morale of thousands of Communists all over the world who couldn’t understand why the Soviet Union would make a deal with Hitler,” Amelia replied.
“Hitler would never have been overthrown without us,” Ivan Vasiliev said.
“Yes, but if the Führer hadn’t invaded the Soviet Union, what would you have done? Would you have let him carry on with his atrocities?”
“History is what it is, it can’t be something different. Hitler made the mistake of attacking us, as did Napoleon. And here we are.”
I don’t know why, but my father got on with Ivan Vasiliev and the Russian got on well with him in turn. They seemed to feel comfortable with each other. After that night, Ivan Vasiliev came round for many more evenings. Amelia was tense at first, but bit by bit she relaxed. It was clear that if he was one of the KGB agents who had been sent to Berlin, he must enjoy the absolute trust of his superiors. If he had survived Stalin’s purges, he must be tough and intelligent.
Amelia told Garin that she had met Ivan Vasiliev and asked him to pass the information on to Albert James.
“You want to get back to work?” Garin suggested.
“No, not at all. If I’m asking you to tell Albert it’s because we both met him in Moscow many years ago.”
“So you’ve known each other for a long while...”
“Longer than you could imagine.”
“It’s a great opportunity to have a friend in the KGB...”
“An opportunity for whom? I’ve told you, I don’t want to work for Albert or for anyone else. We are doing alright here, Max is happy, he sleeps peacefully and so do I.”
But luck was not to be on our side. Walter, Iris’s son, was now a young fellow of thirteen or fourteen, and he came to our house one night unannounced. It was nearly Christmas, although the party had removed the festival and substituted for it winter holidays. Anyway, there were no classes.
“My mother told me to come here and that you should speak to Garin. She thinks they suspect her and they’re going to arrest her.”
Walter was scared and was trembling. His face was red and he was making a great effort not to cry.
Amelia tried to calm him down. She sent me to bring a glass of water from the kitchen and made an effort to calm him.
“Now, tell me what happened,” she asked Walter.
“I don’t know. Mother has been worried for several days, she says she’s sure that they’ve been following her. She spends the nights looking out into the street through the curtains. She doesn’t want me to answer the phone, and she’s told me not to bring any friends home. This afternoon, when I got back from school, I found her in the house with all the lights off. She gave me some money that she keeps hidden, American dollars, and sent me here. She said I shouldn’t get in touch with Garin or Konrad or Otto, but that you should do it, that she trusts you, and that if anyone can save her it’s you. Then she said that I should come here, but not directly, that I should take buses going in different directions, and walk, and that when I was sure that no one was following me then I should come to your house. I don’t know what’s happening, but she is very scared.”
“He can’t stay here,” Max said. “If they’re following Iris, then they’ll come and look at all her friends’ houses sooner or later, and if they find Walter, then they’ll think that we know where she is.”
“Well, he’s going to stay here,” Amelia said, standing up to Max with an anger I found surprising.
“I haven’t said that we’re not going to help him, just that he can’t stay here,” Max said, seriously.
“And where do you want me to take him?”
“Down to the basement,” I said. “They won’t find him there.”
The basement was where our old furniture and the odds and ends of our neighbors’ were stored. We had the keys.
“A good idea, Friedrich,” my father said.
“But it’s dirty and the light bulb is very faint,” Amelia complained.
“But it’s easy to hide there. I know of a place in the basement where no one will ever find him,” I insisted.
“What place is that?” Amelia asked with interest.
“I liked to explore the basement when I was little. I went down there with my flashlight, and well... One day I nearly fell down a hole that I hadn’t seen because it was covered with a very thin piece of wood. I found a space there, I think it’s where they must have kept the coal because the walls were made of wood and are very dirty. I climbed down there using a little metal ladder that I found among the rubbish.”
“You never told us that you discovered this place,” my father said reproachfully.
“We all have secrets, and this was mine.”
“But Walter won’t be comfortable there... ,” Amelia protested.
“We could make a little hidey-hole there, just in case the police do come,” I insisted.
They accepted my plan and, without making any noise, Walter, Amelia, and I went down to the basement, each of us carrying a flashlight. Walter put on a horrified face when he saw the dark basement and the little hidey-hole I had spoken of. But Amelia sent us upstairs for cleaning equipment.
“We’ll get it ready only for if you need to hide yourself.”
When she came out she was completely black, but she seemed happy.
“Well, it’s much better now. And with these blankets that I’ve put on the floor and this pillow you’ll be comfortable down here if you ever need to hide. I don’t know where it comes from, but there’s some air that gets into the hole as well. We’ll come down tomorrow to have a better look, but I think that the hole must lead somewhere.”
The next morning, Amelia got up early to go to work, she wanted to get there as soon as possible to speak to Garin. She told me to look after Walter and not to let him leave under any circumstances.
“Garin, Walter came to our house last night. He says that Iris thinks that she’s being followed.”
“They went to arrest her last night.”
“Good God!”
“A few days ago Iris told me that she thought her boss suspected her and that she was
sure that she was being followed. One afternoon, when her boss had said he was going away for the day, she stayed behind, as was her habit, with the excuse that she was going to do a bit of filing. This was when she normally used the camera to photograph documents. But he came back because he had forgotten something, and she heard him and was able to hide the camera, but the papers she was photographing were still laid out on the table. Her boss asked her what she was doing, and she said that she was trying to find a document that she thought she had filed in the wrong place. He didn’t believe her, even though he pretended that he accepted her explanation.”
“Where is she? Tell me where they’ve taken her!”
“Nowhere. She had a cyanide capsule, like we all do, for if they arrest us. You know, you have one as well. She wouldn’t let them arrest her. She always used to say that she wouldn’t let them torture her. When the police came to her house, they knocked the door down and found her dead.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve got a friend in the Foreign Ministry, who works near Iris’s department. It’s an open secret what has happened. Now they’re looking for Walter.”
“He’s in my house, but I’m going to hide him.”
“You have to get him out of Berlin. It’s what Iris would have wanted, she always said that she’d leave to start a new life with Walter one day. She was saving to be able to do it. She dreamed of living in the other Berlin, you know, so near and yet so far from where we are.”
“But how are we going to get him out?”
“I don’t know, I’ll have to get in touch with Albert. It’s not easy to get out of here, you know that.”
“But you must have some escape route...”
“You know how all the attempts at jumping over the Wall end up.”
Tell Me Who I Am Page 97