by Alex Cugia
The street door was unlocked and as Thomas entered he felt rather than saw a movement to his left and noticed the door to the only apartment on the ground floor, presumably that of the caretaker, standing very slightly ajar and then clicking shut as he crossed the hall to the stairs.
He climbed slowly to Kai’s apartment, thinking of the woman who managed the cleaning and collected the rents and who, Kai was certain, was one of East Germany’s multitude of Stasi informers. He was annoyed at being seen but realised that one could hardly avoid that in East Germany where, so some said, at least one in ten people were informers under Stasi control. At least it was gloomy in the hallway and he’d instinctively turned away as soon as he’d realised he was being watched. Kai had said he'd sometimes come across the woman unexpectedly, including once when he’d stormed out of the apartment following a furious quarrel with Ulrike and surprised her apparently tying her shoelaces right outside his door.
Thomas knocked and the door opened immediately, bringing with it the sounds of Strauss's Horn Concerto No 1. Thomas spoke formally and in a voice firm enough to carry downstairs rather than merely to the young man facing him.
“Good morning, Mr Schulz, I’d hoped to learn more about music in East Berlin. Is this a convenient time? And isn't that Baumann with the Leipzig orchestra, with Masur?”
Kai had raised a sardonic eyebrow, bringing a tremor to Thomas’s voice which he’d had difficulty controlling.
“Of course, Mr Schmidt, of course. I’ve been looking forward to your visit. I thought that today we might look at going below the surface, exploring some of the hidden depths of the art for which we’re so renowned.”
He ushered Thomas in with a flourish, kicked the door shut, switched tracks on the tape deck and turned up the volume, filling the apartment with the full punk rock blast of God Save the Queen.
"Great guy Masur, especially the way he's moving now, but this is more like it." He moved to the music for a moment or two then turned to embrace Thomas.
“God, Kai, you do push things. My nerves are already shot bringing this stuff over.” They hugged each other.
“You have to. It’s the only way to remain sane. Anything else and you become one of them, or give up, stop living. They've hauled me in a couple of times, complained about my choice of music, but I just play dumb and they shout at me and nothing happens. They think I'm a half-wit. I guess you found what you were looking for. That’s great! Let’s see. Let’s see!”
Thomas cut away the false lining of his jacket, removed the papers hidden there and spread them out on the table. Kai pored over them, tracing the lines with a finger and reading the station names with pure pleasure, a smile creasing his face.
“This is wonderful! Wonderful. Far more detailed than I’d ever hoped possible. This is going to make all the difference to us. Just wonderful!” He hugged Thomas hard again.
Thomas unfolded the construction plans of the now closed Alexanderplatz station and he and Kai pored over them, identifying the apartment block, measuring distances and checking angles. One of the documents was a blueprint on translucent paper showing the area’s geology on the same scale as the construction plans and this confirmed what Kai had earlier been able to establish through talking casually to engineers and builders. The project was audacious but realistic, they could both see that now. Kai became serious. “I really think you’ve saved our lives with this.”
Later at Kai’s door they again shook hands formally. The album had come round to Anarchy in the UK for the second time, the volume now less of a full throated roar.
“Thank you again, Mr Schulz. That was very helpful and informative.”
“My pleasure Mr Schmidt. I believe I learned from you in turn. I look forward to our next meeting, perhaps in a week or two if things go to plan.” There was the slightest of smiles on Kai’s face as he shut the door.
As Thomas clattered downstairs and crossed the hallway there was again a slight click from the door on his right. He scowled at it then opened the street door and walked away from the building. He should get something to eat, he felt, but decided first to make a business visit to the Ephraim Palais, an old French restaurant which many considered among the best in East Berlin. Perhaps Axel Gutwein, the restaurant manager he'd come to know well, would feed him.
Like most students in West Berlin Thomas lived hand to mouth. After his father had died relations with his mother had deteriorated. He’d finally had enough and, partly on account of following a girlfriend, partly because of its reputation as a party city, he’d moved from his family home in Frankfurt to Berlin and found a flat. He’d enrolled in the university to study economics, a course chosen less through a love of the subject than as a calculated assessment that an economics degree might help if he ever decided to return to Frankfurt and join the Bundesbank in the shadow of his illustrious father. His real love was opera and although he couldn’t afford it he’d found ways of hustling money for occasional singing lessons even if that too often meant dodging his landlord.
Opera in East Berlin had a good reputation, he'd remembered. Visitors to West Berlin liked to visit the East, gawking at the Wall, shivering slightly from being in a communist country, asking how people set about escaping, and even, a few of them, admiring and curious about the history of that now separate part of the region. His eye for the main chance had alerted him to the opportunities that existed when a country’s exchange rate was held at a wholly artificial level.
His venture had started slowly but was now going well and bringing him enough money to take more regular singing lessons and generally to enjoy life more. He focussed particularly on opera lovers, of whom there were many. He could put them at ease through his enthusiasm, knowledge and upbringing and by letting them deduce that his own voice was well regarded and that he was being encouraged to perform. He would hint at La Scala but modestly refuse to elaborate when pressed. His character of impoverished student from a good family and with a burning desire to succeed on the stage went down particularly well with visiting wealthy widows and divorcees from the US eager to spend their money on deliciously alarming excursions they could describe later at home to their less adventurous, or simply less rich, friends. Later each one would dwell nostalgically on the special relationship they, and only they, had developed with their handsome, well bred and attentive young guide. They sighed. If only they had been half a century younger.
His clients understood that an evening at the opera was incomplete without dinner in one or other of what passed as fine restaurants in the East. He would settle up in Ost Marks but charged his clients in DM at the official rate of 1:1 less a small discount he offered. This discount sweetened the deals and bound his clients more tightly to him both because they took pleasure in their cleverness in getting Ost Marks at a preferential rate and because the implied minor illegality heightened the thrill of visiting this curious and alarming country. He was entirely transparent as to his costs, showing openly restaurant bills and ticket prices, explaining that he got a small commission for bringing custom. He accepted tips only after an elaborate show of refusing, but did so graciously, bringing an additional glow to the giver. That he bought his Ost Marks at between 12 and 15 to the DM gave him sufficient room for generosity.
Only rarely did it cross his mind, still less trouble him, that some of his clients might not be what they seemed.
The Ephraim Palais was his favourite restaurant for this. He enjoyed the atmosphere and though it had lost some of its former glory he liked bringing clients there and watching them marvel at its faded opulence.
Axel was in his office, more baroque salon than modern business powerhouse and complete with ornate mirrors and overstuffed easy chairs in dull green velvet. Thomas took a long draught of the pils Axel offered, set it down on a mat on the Empire side table, and approached his mission obliquely.
“Axel, you know I bring tourists here and how much they enjoy it. And you make out separate bills for everyone at the end.”
“Suppose we offer them a fixed price menu? That would make things easier, wouldn’t it? And suppose I paid in advance? You set up a kind of reverse tab and I’ll preload it, maybe four or five thousand marks. You charge whatever number of meals it is against it and let me know how the balance is going and when it needs more. It would save time, make life easier for everyone.”
Axel thought. There was something odd here but he couldn’t work out what it was and the idea of cash up front was attractive. If Thomas kept a credit balance with him that meant he’d keep coming back to spend it. And if anything went wrong he could simply pocket what was left.
“Hmm. Maybe 50 to 60 marks a head would work.” said Axel. “That’s about the average spend, I guess.”
“You could give me a discount on the menu prices.” added Thomas. “What? 25% perhaps?”
Axel laughed. One of the things he liked about Thomas was that he was always on the make but had no embarrassment about it and didn’t let a refusal dent his good nature or stop future attempts.
“OK! Let’s do it – 55 Ost Marks a head for dinner on the menu with one glass of wine and anything more to drink to be paid for. Some of your clients drink like fish and the wines cost me enough as it is. Once you’ve set the tab up I’ll charge the meals against it at 50 marks each and the wine at menu prices.”
They shook hands. Axel waved his hand at the door. “Now finish your beer, I’ve work to get on with.” He laughed again.
Thomas sauntered down the street, pleased with the good start to the evening. Now he’d get paid in the West as usual but by banking his East German cash at the restaurant would avoid the risk of bringing currency out of the country illegally.
He'd become hungrier and so decided to eat and have another beer or two. Setting off for a nearby kneipe he liked he noticed four young women approaching from a side street, one of them slightly apart from and trailing her companions as if disdaining their evident good spirits. He slowed down, ostensibly looking at the Parliament building ahead, to let them catch him up. As the first ones overtook him the young blonde trailing the group stopped and asked him for a light.
"I'm sorry, but I don't smoke."
"Oh, well, it can wait. I only smoke very occasionally." She pushed the pack into the breast pocket of her denim jacket, tured to leave then glanced back.
"Wait! Uh, would you like to go for a beer?" he said.
She stared levelly at him, holding his gaze until he dropped his eyes.
"I don't know my way around here and I don't know anyone so I just thought, well, I suppose thought there might be somewhere lively we could have a drink."
Again she stared at him, saying nothing.
"So you thought you'd try your luck. You're from the West. Whereabouts?"
"Frankfurt. But I live in West Berlin now. I'm Thomas, Thomas Wundart. How did you guess I'm not from here?"
“Your clothes, your accent, your air of superiority, the way you said ‘There might be somewhere lively’ as in ‘Yeah, there's surely a decent bar somewhere even in a dump like the DDR’, your general cocky manner … What else would you like me to say? Doesn’t take much, does it?”
She again looked steadily at him, this time with the slightest of smiles on her face.
Women in the West didn’t talk to Thomas that way and this woman’s manner and confidence made him suddenly very interested in her. He’d already been attracted by her shape and the lights on her hair when he first saw her and although he still wanted her physically there was now something more that he’d rarely experienced, part irritation, part excitement, a sense that he was being tested to see if he was more than his surface, was worth getting to know, was at least her equal. But he sensed interest beyond the lightly hidden contempt and he had to build on that, not seem vacuous, boring or a typically materialist Westerner.
There was a silence while he struggled to think what to say and then she spoke again.
"Look, Thomas, I'm sick of tourists from the West patronising us. Maybe you didn't mean it in that way, though. I won't go for a beer with you, not now anyway, but you can come to this gig we're all off to if you want. That's if you've any interest in music." She nodded toward the Parliament building where her friends had gone and where three young men in jeans that moment pulled open the orange doors and disappeared inside. "I'm Bettina." she added.
She set off without waiting for an answer and Thomas hurried after her. There was no one in the long corridor just inside the door but as they walked to the end Thomas heard faint music getting louder. They descended some stairs and as Bettina pulled open a door marked Freie Deutsche Jugend he was hit by a crude cover blast of OMD’s Enola Gay. The room had couples dancing energetically under strobe lights and Thomas smiled, thinking that even when partying members of the communist Free German Youth were making political statements about nuclear war and the perfidious USA.
“Who’s the band?” he shouted.
“Ficken den Westen. They’re from round here, student group, mainly do warm-ups, play covers. Then there’s a DJ for a bit and the main band comes on at midnight. Shame you’ll miss that – they’re from Leipzig. Really, really good. But – if you will live in the West … ” Again there was the hint of a smile.
"Well, I know you had Bruce Springsteen here, last year wasn't it?"
"July. Quarter of a million at the concert, maybe more. It was OK, but I'm more interested in what we do ourselves."
She shrugged and her eyes flickered down his body, lingered briefly, then returned to his face, the pupils widening almost imperceptibly. Thomas ached to hold her but, uncharacteristically, decided not to risk suggesting dancing. That, and perhaps more, would come later.
They stood at the bar, looking out over the crowd, saying nothing. He bought a couple of beers and placed one carefully by her hand and then, testing, lifted his own bottle and held it out to her, pleased when she took her own and clinked the two briefly.
"So, Thomas, what do you do? And why are you in East Berlin tonight?"
"I'm a student, economics, but what I really want to do is become an opera singer. I'm taking lessons. What about you? What do you do?"
“Interesting mix! Me? I study history, here at the Free University. Modern European stuff mainly. And I work part-time at the History Museum." She slid her empty bottle along the counter. "Ever been there? Maybe you should visit it if you haven't seen it.”
“Once, but perhaps I need to visit it again. I could do with understanding more about different views on recent events, what others think happened during this century.”
Again there was that long level look denoting an awareness of the gap between what he’d said and what he really meant but this time it was she who glanced away first. She hooded her eyes, opened her mouth and tapped it lightly twice with the opened fingers of her right hand, and then looked straight back at him. Again that hint of a smile.
His face felt warm and he glanced at his feet. “When do you work there? Every day, regularly or just sometimes?”
“Wednesday to Friday afternoons, usually. I get in about three, stay for a bit, usually till it closes. Mostly it’s indexing and sometimes moving books up from the stacks.”
A figure in torn jeans and tee shirt, a cigarette hanging from a wispily bearded mouth lurched from the crowd and stopped in front of them, swaying slightly as he tried to focus on Thomas. “I need a light, man.”
Irritated, Thomas was curt. “I don’t smoke.” He turned, shutting out the figure and trying to rekindle the feeling growing between them which the student had interrupted. He glanced at his watch.
“I need to go.” he said “But I would like to look round the Museum again, perhaps next week, Thursday probably."
“Well, ask at the desk in case I'm there. My surname is List.”
They left the room together and as he walked up the stairs away from her he saw that she'd lifted the h
andset of a public phone along the downstairs corridor in the other direction.
"Colonel Dieter, please." she said and after a moment added "Yes, I've found him." and then spoke quietly for a short period.
Chapter 2
Friday September 1and Saturday September 2 1989
WHEN Ulrike returned from work about seven in the evening Kai fetched out from their hiding place under the kitchen floor the documents Thomas had brought. Not even giving her time to remove her coat, let alone eat, he turned on the ghetto blaster to drown out any conversation, sat her down at the table and spread the documents out with a flourish.
“Just look at this! Look at what Thomas has found for us. Isn’t it wonderful? Look – here’s our apartment block, right here, and here’s Alexanderplatz and here ... ”
She stared at the finely drawn diagrams and at the blueprint, wanting to match Kai’s enthusiasm but unable to share what he was saying. Well, they’d finally got her, she reflected bitterly. That’s what came of refusing the shop manager’s advances. Not that it was unexpected. Ever since she’d slapped him hard in the storeroom after it became clear that merely wriggling away from his grasp and saying ‘no’ wasn’t enough she’d realised that it was only a matter of time. Herr Wagner was known to be capricious and to become mean and vindictive when thwarted. It had been a month ago now but when she saw her name entered as item 8 on the agenda for the works council meeting she knew what was coming.
He’d been clever, she conceded, very clever, but then he always was. He spoke in sorrow, told the meeting how he’d tried frequently to give friendly advice to her about her work, her timekeeping on breaks, even - and here he hesitated but finally spoke with the air of someone pained by having to do what he knew was his duty to the organisation and to his country – even her attitude. Had it not been for that, he’d said, there might have been a way back, a way for her to learn to become a trusted and valuable employee. But everyone was in it together and the state depended on proper support from its people. He’d shaken his head slightly in despair at his own failure, saw to it that the meeting understood how hurt he was and left it to others to propose her dismissal. She couldn’t help but notice the glance of triumph that flashed between Wagner and the pretty new trainee who, she understood immediately, was to be her replacement in a week’s time. It was then she’d slipped out to oil the squeaky hinges of the outer door to the storeroom, a small revolt which gave her a flare of amusement and satisfaction as she thought about how Wagner had relied on its warning.