by Alex Cugia
There was silence. After several minutes he put his ear to the door but heard nothing. The silence in the building was complete and he felt desperately sad and lost that she was not in. He turned to descend then changed his mind and sat on the top step, leant against the wall and closed his eyes to wait for her return. Behind him the door opened silently. Bettina looked at him, put her hand to her mouth and retreated but as she closed the door carefully the latch clicked.
“Bettina! Bettina! Please. Let me in. The Wall. You must know about the Wall and what’s happening. Please. I want to see you and talk with you.”
He knocked on the door but there was no response. He rested his forehead on the panels, willing her to open to him, and then slid to a crumpled heap. He turned and sat there, leaning angled against the wood. The sudden silent sliding open of the door took him by surprise and he tumbled backwards into her apartment.
She laughed, looking down at him as he scrambled to his feet but he saw that her face was red and swollen. They embraced, saying nothing. He tried to hold her longer but she pushed him gently away and, taking his hand, led him along the corridor and into a room on the right, dim, lit only by a nearby street lamp. She sat on a chair and motioned Thomas to sit on the bed, facing her. She sat, crouching forward on the chair, her head on her knees, for a long moment. Her body shuddered in a slow rhythm, shaking. Thomas started towards her, then sank back on the bed.
When she lifted her head briefly, Thomas could see tears streaming down her face. He got up and moved towards her, half kneeling, awkward for the moment at her level. He caressed her hair then gently pressed her head towards him. She resisted at first then leant against his shoulder, her face kept hidden. It was the first time he’d seen her fragility, and it moved him deeply. He bent down and gently kissed her hair, turned her face upwards to let him kiss her forehead, to brush his lips over hers, and then hold her, his cheek pressed to hers, the scent of her skin surrounding him and reminding him of how much he’d missed her. The swell of her breast on the inner crook of his elbow, rising and falling with her breathing and interrupted with an occasional shudder and gulp, excited him and he stroked her back then trailed his fingers down and again lightly up, now on top now under her loose shirt, the soft and warm skin exciting him further yet troubling him with her lack of response as if she was indifferent to anything he might do.
Her arms were round his neck but suddenly she sat upright and dropped them to her sides inside the ring of his own, pulling away and sweeping out with her movement his questing hand. She looked steadily at him, her mouth trembling.
“I’m sorry about weeping. I couldn’t help myself.”
Thomas felt ashamed of what had seemed natural comforting. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself either, seeing you like this. Maybe you wanted to be left alone and I barged in on you. I tried calling but your line was always engaged. I just ... ” He searched for the right words. “I just really wanted to see you. That’s all.” He got up. "I can go now."
She looked at him in silence, face sad and eyes wet. She gave him a half smile. “I’d left the phone off the hook. I couldn’t face talking, seeing anyone. But I’m glad now that you came.” she said, and Thomas believed her. “I missed talking to you too. Would you like something to drink?” She got up.
Thomas nodded. “Whatever you’ve got.”
She left the room and came back a minute later with a bottle and two ornate glasses, long stemmed, the bowls decorated with green glass and gold.
“Hungarian.” she said, her voice still shaky. “I’ve had it for a while, for a special occasion. And, well … I guess today is pretty historic.”
They sat back down, and Thomas poured them wine. They clinked glasses but Bettina seemed miles away, her gaze vacantly on the wall behind him. They drank in silence, separate, alone.
Finally, with a slight start, she returned, her attempt at a smile showing the depth of her despair. “I’m sorry, I’m really not great company today. You know, I’m just not feeling all that well.”
“You don’t need to excuse yourself.” He looked in her eyes. “Do you feel like talking?”
She looked at him for a while without changing expression. Then she gave a nod that was almost not there.
“It’s because of what’s happened today?”
She nodded quickly, and tears again started flowing down her face. “This is only the beginning.” She caught her breath. “But it’s the end of life as we know it. Nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Everything will change.”
The phrases came from between her tears, despairing. With difficulty Thomas restrained himself from taking her in his arms and kissing her, comforting her by his embrace.
“But why should you be so sad?” he asked gently. “All the people I’ve met while coming here were ecstatic. From today they’re free to come and go wherever they please. They’re free, Bettina, free. Surely that can’t be a bad thing.”
He paused to see what effect his words were having on her. She was still crying, shaking her head ever more wildly as he spoke. When she finally spoke, her voice was darker, controlling a bleak, desolate fury.
“But they’re not free.” she said. “Freedom is a state of mind, Thomas. Those climbing over the Wall have grown up with so very little. They had so very little but they had culture and they had things to believe in. And everybody had the same amount of whatever little there was. Everyone was treated the same. Now everything will change. It will never be like that again. Today it’s started, Thomas. We’ll all become like you Westerners, always longing for what we haven’t got, forever trying to reach the next rung of the ladder by stepping on someone below. We’ll become selfish, looking out for ourselves and what we want, not part of a community looking after each other. We’ll become enslaved to Western desires for consumer goods, to buying stuff we don’t want and don’t need. I want to have time to think, to experience life and people, not be hit constantly with your advertising, your marketing to buy, buy, buy, get the latest, get the best, get the newest, spend money you haven’t got for things you don’t really want to keep up with others you don’t really know and probably don't like anyway. You don’t understand: the Wall was to keep all that out, keep your lifestyle out, not to keep us in.”
Thomas thought for a moment over what she’d said. Some things rang true, too true for him to accept. But her reaction felt too strong for it to be purely theoretical. He thought back on what she’d said about her family. Her father was in the West. Now there was the possibility of meeting him, or making the conscious choice to ignore his existence.
"But walls are symbols, Bettina," he said gently "and any country which builds a wall to keep others out, to try to keep themselves secure, has already failed."
He poured them each another glass of wine.
“It’s human nature, Bettina. People long for a better life. You can’t just try to fence people in and tell them to try to be happy. Or tell them what they should believe in. OK,” he conceded “Maybe not that last part. It’s not what you should do but it’s something we do all the time in the West as well.”
“You’re right, maybe it is human nature. Maybe greed, envy and violence are just a part of us. But I’ve been over to the West, and I can tell you I’ve seen more happy people in our poor villages than I’ve seen in your rich cities. Just give it time. You’ll make them feel poor, slowly convincing them that their lives were inadequate without some of your useless products. The real tragedy is that we’ll lose the little we’ve got and gain nothing worthwhile in return.”
“What do you mean?”
“The majority of our people don’t realize they’re poor by your standards. East Germany is considered the jewel of the Warsaw Pact. But when they come over and get absorbed into your cities, they’ll feel poor. And nothing you can do or give them will make them feel better. The real, black market exchange rate is what, ten to one? They won’t be able to afford your lifestyle. Do you un
derstand this?”
Thomas nodded in silence. Bettina got up and put an Eterna recording of Puccini’s Tosca on her rudimentary stereo system, which drowned the distant clamouring of voices they could hear coming from outside.
Finally he took up the courage to ask. “Bettina, I have the impression there’s something else on your mind that you’re not telling me. Some other impact of what’s happening that disturbs you. Has it got something to do with the Stasi, or your dad, is it something you can’t talk about?”
“You’re becoming more perceptive every time I talk to you, Thomas.” She smiled at him. “The first time I met you I thought you’d have hardly noticed a dead body in the street, you were so focused on yourself, what you wanted. Yes, you’re right, there is something else. It’s about my brother and it’s connected with the Stasi but that’s all I’m going to tell you. Another time perhaps. I don't want to talk about it right now. Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is they’re singing? I don’t understand Italian.”
Thomas translated roughly the words of the painter Cavaradossi to her. It was the aria in the church, when a jealous Tosca inquires about the painting of the blonde woman.
“How did you learn Italian, by the way?”
“It’s because of my father. He was stationed in Italy during the war, and he learned the language. And he loved opera, so he kept putting it on all the time at home. One day, I must have been four or five years old, I started singing along. My dad laughed, and asked me if I wanted to learn it. I said yes, so he started teaching it to me.”
“Does your mother speak it as well?”
“No. She hated it, and told dad various times to stop.” He laughed. “She said it was a slithery, messy language with nothing of the crispness and certainty of German. She insisted that as Germans, living here in Germany, we should use our own language. But we continued regardless. It became our own private language.”
She took a long sip from her glass. “You miss him very much, I think?”
“More than I can say. I miss having someone I can confide with. You’re the only person I can talk to now. And to be honest, Bettina, I never really know if what you’re saying is really what you think or just what you feel you should tell me.”
“You might find it hard to believe, Thomas, but I never lie. At least, not about anything important. I think I know how you feel. I felt the same way when I decided to take up Dieter’s offer about working for the Stasi. It’s difficult not to be able to confide with anyone.”
Thomas shared the last remnants of the bottle between them as she watched silently. Her expression had changed to one he’d never seen before.
“Would you mind staying? I really don’t feel like being alone tonight.”
Chapter 18
Friday November 10 1989
AFTER the drama and emotional stress of the previous day Bettina, exhausted, slept on, not waking until well past eight. It was another bright, cold day. The window was uncurtained and the sun warmed her face as she lay on her side drowsily watching the dust motes dance in the shafts of light. She turned over and then noticed the dishevelled state of the other side of her bed. She frowned and stared uncertainly over, then raised herself on an elbow, leant over and sniffed at the pillow. She couldn't be sure, she decided. She lay back, struggling to piece together her fragmented memories of the recent past. She rarely drank much and perhaps the Hungarian wine had been stronger than she’d expected, she thought.
The news of the Wall’s opening had distressed her greatly, she remembered, and she’d wanted to hide herself away, wanted only to come to terms privately with what had happened and to nurse her own distress. Then Thomas had appeared at her door, she'd let him in, reluctantly at first, and as they’d ended up listening to Tosca she’d been able to banish the harsh sounds of joy and excitement outside and lose herself in the music of a language she didn’t understand, the unfamiliar rhythms and cadences complementing the voices of the singers and the instruments and her mood changing and lightening until she’d become calmer and happier. She remembered then that she'd felt very alone and had asked Thomas to stay - but surely he hadn't misunderstood her. She had also been very tired, certainly, and had fallen asleep almost as soon as she'd got into bed.
As she lay in bed, the smell of fresh coffee tantalising her from the kitchen, she suddenly recollected with a flush of embarrassment that as Thomas had been explaining to her the sense of the aria Non la sospiri, la nostra casetta she had found herself drifting off dreamily to explore the life of the two of them in just such a building. He’d been too intent on turning Italian into German to notice her absence, however, or even her unconscious experimental sigh, and in a moment she’d crossly repaired the breached shell around her.
The smell of coffee, now overlaid with that of warm bread and of eggs, became too strong to resist. Bettina stretched and yawned, scrabbled quickly out of bed, shucked her feet into slippers, and pulling a dressing gown together, her long rumpled blonde hair making a vivid contrast with the green silk of the garment, wandered to the kitchen where Thomas was preparing breakfast. She smiled as she looked at the preparations, the table set for two, and then frowned at the small bunch of freesias in a thin tumbler by what she took to be her place.
“Good morning!” Thomas waved a wooden spoon from by the cooker where he’d begun scrambling eggs. “You looked dead to the world so I thought you could use the sleep. How do you feel? Did you sleep OK?”
Bettina wrinkled her eyes, yawned and stretched again, nodded, then asked, suddenly wary, “Uhhhu, and what about you? Did you, um, sleep OK as well? Were you, were you comfortable enough?” Thomas, intent on the eggs, nodded slowly and let the smile broaden on his face while he looked at her. She waited, apprehensive.
Looking up from checking the eggs he smiled again. “I was OK. Your sofa was pretty short for me but it was fine. I managed, thank you.”
In truth he’d passed a very uncomfortable night. From time to time, fed up with turning and wriggling unsuccessfully to get comfortable, he’d wandered through the apartment, nosing around here and there and looking at Bettina’s collection of miscellaneous objects and souvenirs, indicative of her curiosity and eclectic outlook. Her bedroom door was ajar and twice he’d sneaked silently into her room and stood looking at her perhaps hoping, if he were honest with himself, that she’d waken and drowsily invite him to stay. Seeing her lying on her side, well tucked in under her Federbett, her back to the door and curled slightly in a posture just made for spooning weakened him with feelings of desire. On his second visit he’d reached out to lift and caress her hair but had left hastily when she’d sighed and started to turn towards him.
When daylight had begun entering the small living room, he’d abandoned the attempts to sleep and had got up. Once dressed, he’d walked downstairs to look for fresh bread leaving a small wedge of paper inserted in the front door so that it would look shut but let him re-enter. Guided by the smells of baking he’d found a shop a few streets away and bought fresh warm rolls as well as eggs, butter and milk. He’d paid in DM at the official exchange rate bringing a smile of delight to the face of the woman behind the counter. On the way back he’d passed a small park and stolen a few flowers from one of its borders.
Thomas poured coffee and passed Bettina a plate of scrambled eggs, indicating the warm rolls and fresh butter. Bettina began eating, looking at her plate and saying nothing. Thomas had hoped for, expected even, some compliments on his preparations and thoughtfulness, perhaps an expression of pleasure from her, but it was clear there were going to be none. He felt the barriers had again gone up but he acted as if nothing had changed. He was glad he hadn’t taken advantage of her fragile state the previous evening.
The phone rang and Bettina answered it quickly in the living room. All Thomas could hear were a series of “yes, yes” and once an “understood” and then Bettina returned.
“That was Dieter. He wants to see both of us immediately, as soon as we can get ther
e." She frowned. "He seemed to know that you'd stayed here. We’re to go to the Alexanderstrasse office – apparently the Normanenstrasse one is under siege from protesters.”
She glanced at her watch and went to her bedroom to change. When she returned she wore a dark brown leather jacket and a long skirt matching in colour, the outfit giving her a rigid, almost military, look.
Just under thirty minutes later Thomas and Bettina were shown into Dieter’s Alexanderstrasse office, two floors above where they usually met for their briefings. It was small and stuffy, much more cramped and nondescript than Dieter’s main office in the Stasi HQ. There was a tall, dark-haired man of roughly Thomas’s age sitting on one of the chairs in front of the bare desk who glanced over as they entered and smiled briefly at Bettina. Dieter seemed agitated and looked exhausted, as if he’d hardly slept.
“Hanno, you know what needs to be done. Thank you for coming. Report to me tomorrow and we’ll talk further then.”
He waved his hand towards the young man who then unwound himself from the chair, looming a good ten centimetres above Thomas. He moved to the door ignoring everyone.
There was a long silence after Hanno had left the room. Dieter kept walking back and forth in the small space left between his desk and the window overlooking Alexanderplatz, occasionally rubbing his eyes and at other times standing looking out apparently aimlessly at the scene on the street below him.
"Who was that?" Thomas whispered.
"Hanno Wornletz, another agent. We were quite friendly a while ago but I hardly see him now. He's very ambitious, very pushy, good at networking, clever too, I think. People seem to rate him, but, well, there's something ... "
Dieter turned abruptly from the window and sat down again at his desk.
“I called you here because of what occurred yesterday. It wasn’t really a surprise, at least not to us. We knew that something of this kind would happen and probably happen sooner rather than later. Russia is in a desperate situation economically and Gorbachev is taking a desperate gamble to try to correct, or at least contain, this. His policies of glasnost and perestroika – and for the times I believe they’re the correct ones although very dangerous to the Marxist ideal if not controlled and managed properly – have stimulated discontent among our citizens and those of our sister republics. In Hungary and in Czechoslovakia there has been dialogue. In Romania and Bulgaria in contrast there has been none but that will not save their leaders. I’m sorry to say that here in the DDR there are few with the foresight and vision necessary to give the greater freedom that our citizens want while at the same time securing and strengthening our socialist model. Modrow, I suppose, Wolf maybe, although he's supposedly retired, but precious few others if any.”