The Unfortunate Englishman

by John Lawton

  There were endless individual types of refugee, but only two generical species, she concluded. Those who came from the east of the country, from the DDR, were pasty, lacking vitamins, lacking joie de vivre, as though hidden too long from the light of the sun. Those from East Berlin looked better fed. You couldn’t tell a Berlin Oster from a Berlin Wester just by looking. It was the easiest thing to live on one side of a scarcely guarded line and work, eat, and shop on the other. Indeed, the cheap deal for years now had been to work in the West, to be paid in Western Marks, and to live in the East and pay rent in Eastern Marks at a very favourable rate of exchange. To be a Grenzgänger. Nell had never been tempted to do this. She was happy, although she would never have used the word, in Wilmersdorf in the American Sector. Her old school friend Eva Moll mocked her for her lack of pragmatism. Eva lived on Bernauer Straße in Mitte in the Soviet Sector. Her front door opened into Wedding, in the French Sector. One small step and she was in the West, with its shops and its better-paying jobs, one step back and she was in the East with its subsidised rent. It was, she said, “Sweet.”

  None of the East Berliners pouring into Marienfelde on the second Saturday of August was starving—but they were hungry. While they were in line to be “processed,” a word whose use Nell had tried to discourage, they could not be fed and got hungrier. And when a line became a queue, and a queue became a crowd, the refectory retreated to infinity. By lunchtime, not that lunch was on offer, an additional two thousand had crossed from the East and sought refuge. The centre ran out of food.

  Nell sat at her desk and thumbed her tatty black book of telephone numbers. What were the chances of anyone on the mayor’s staff being in the office on a Saturday afternoon? What were the chances of anyone on the mayor’s staff being in the office on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of Willy Brandt’s election campaign for the chancellorship in West Germany? They’d be in Nuremberg. Or was it Hanover? Or Timbuktu?

  Her eyes fell on “Marcus Dürer,” whose title was something like deputy assistant chief of staff. She had his home number. She could not remember why. She could not remember that they’d ever met.

  A grumpy Frau Dürer answered.

  “We are in the middle of lunch!”

  “Some people won’t be getting any lunch, Frau Dürer.”

  Dürer came on the line.

  “How can I help you, Fräulein Burkhardt?”

  “I’m the assistant administrator at Marienfelde.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re running out of food.”

  “Why are you running out of food?”

  “They’re coming over in their thousands. We’re out of everything, coffee, tea, bread . . . you name it. We feed all we can and still they keep coming.”

  “Thousands?”

  “Something’s happening, something’s about to happen . . . they all know it. The numbers won’t drop. There’ll be a few thousand more overnight.”

  “Oh God. Give me a quarter of an hour. Stay by the phone.”

  It was three quarters of an hour before Dürer called her back.

  “I’ve found none of the people I need right now. I’ve left messages for the mayor in Nuremberg and Kiel, and for Harry Kempson.”

  “Kempson?”

  “He’s with the American mission. Something on the political staff. His people tell me he’s having lunch somewhere in Charlottenburg. Didn’t seem to know where. You might try ringing around yourself.”

  Nell tracked Kempson down at Café Kranzler.

  He was as grumpy as Frau Dürer, but heard her out.

  “And what do you expect me to do?”

  “Do, Mr. Kempson? I expect you to open up some of those vast warehouses you have to keep the PX and every smuggler in Berlin happily supplied with the fruits of the Western World.”

  “Lady, you got some nerve.”

  “And I also have two thousand hungry and homeless.”

  “Is two thousand a lot?”

  “Not as such, but we have been running at a thousand a day for weeks now. Last month more than thirty thousand crossed over. Last week alone, eleven thousand.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  One of the things Nell liked about Americans was the combination of bluntness, reasonableness, and flexibility. A German in Kempson’s position would be readjusting his dignity the better to stand upon it right now. Kempson, adjusted his view, his tone, and his mind.

  “The PX, I can’t raid on your behalf, but I’ve got C-rations by the ton. The stuff we gave out to combat troops. Not the most appetising chow in the world, but it got us from Normandy to the Elbe. I reckon it’s about three years old, dates from ’57 or ’58 but it should still be good.”

  C-rations might be perfect. Pre-packed. Pre-cooked. Cereal bars, fruit cake, processed cheese, chocolate . . . all-American chewing gum. It could all be handed out in the queues. No pans no, plates.

  “That would . . . suffice.”

  She knew it was the wrong word, perhaps even rude, smacking of ingratitude in its precision, but it bounced off Kempson.

  “How much do you need?”

  “I have over two thousand refugees already, I anticipate more than four thousand by this time tomorrow. Some move on quickly, some do not. So let’s say . . . enough to feed . . . to feed . . . five thousand for a week.”

  “Sure. I’ll throw in some loaves and fishes too. And after tomorrow?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you saying you’re not expecting more refugees in the next few days? Another what? Another five thousand? Another ten thousand?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. But I’m expecting something else.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as . . . something.”

  “Something like the shutters coming down on the East?”

  “Aren’t we all expecting that, Mr. Kempson? I can read it in the faces of my Flüchtlings.”

  “Miss Burkhardt, I don’t know what to expect. Nobody tells me a damn thing. And your something could be a wooden No Go placard stuck up at the Brandenburg Gate or a nuke on Washington. We’re dealing with Nikita Khrushchev, here. A wagonload of monkeys does not begin to describe the man.”

  By 6:00 p.m., lorry after lorry, each with its US Army white star on the cab door, pulled into Marienfelde. Kempson had been as good as his word.

  Around 10:00 p.m., a warm August night, after one of those blistering Berlin summer days that rendered its winters such an unwelcome surprise, Nell packed up, locked her office, wheeled her bicycle past the long lines of Flüchtlings and went in search of her something. Rode her bike out to Bernauer Straße, up to Eva’s apartment, up to the line.

  Eva was in her room on the second floor front, the sash window propped up with a broken piece of broom handle in the vain hope that a breeze might stir the evening stillness. She was hunched over her treadle-operated Singer sewing machine. Joe Wilderness had bartered for it just before the airlift in ’48. A small mountain of coffee handed over to a USAF sergeant out at Tempelhof. Wilderness had not asked Eva for anything. In return Eva had stopped referring to him as ‘Nell’s Schieber’—her smuggler, her black-marketeer—words from which Wilderness had never shrunk but Nell would. Eva had welcomed the gift as a symbol of freedom—not just the freedom from post-war Berlin shop prices and shop shortages, but the freedom to supplement her income by making clothes for others. Her eye and her sense of what might look good, whether following or defying fashion, were flawless. Eva was always better dressed than Nell, always better courted. Not that Nell gave a damn.

  It was another summer frock. No doubt Eva’s own copy of something seen in an expensive store on the Ku’damm. Yellow pansies on a translucent, sage green. Flimsy and seductive. A man-catcher. Eva was younger than Nell, but not by much. At twenty-nine, men were still abundant. She felt no need of marrying. At thirty-two
, Nell was still seared by her time with Wilderness. If the men since did not remind her of Joe Wilderness, what use were they? And if they did, what use were they?

  “I’m surprised to find you out on a Saturday night,” said Eva.

  “And I’m surprised to find you at home.”

  “No, you’re not or you wouldn’t have biked all the way out here.”

  “There is . . . there is . . .”

  “Nell, for Christ’s sake spit it out.”

  “It’s going to happen.”

  “Oh bugger, if you’re going to talk in riddles I’ll get the gin.”

  Listening to Eva rummaging around in the kitchen, Nell paused to wonder. Was the “riddle” any more than a hunch? What was it Kempson had said . . . no one had told him anything? And surely the Americans would be the first to know?

  “The Russians are getting ready to cut Berlin in two.”

  Eva stuck a warm gin and tonic in her hand. No ice, no lemon.

  “Nicely spat. When did you have in mind? Tonight? Tomorrow?”

  “Oh no . . . not that . . . I mean I don’t know. I just know they’re panicking in the East. Marienfelde is full to bursting.”

  “Well . . . we are in the East and I’m not panicking. Don’t you think I might have seen something . . . more soldiers, more . . . more stuff?”

  “Stuff?”

  “I don’t know. Wood, concrete, barbed wire . . . stuff the silly bastards might build a fence with. And if Marienfelde is overflowing . . . well hasn’t it always? Haven’t you come here twice a week for five years to tell me your job is impossible?”

  Had she? Was that how it looked?

  “And if they build a fence . . . well the Flüchtlings will jump over it or crawl under it, won’t they? And if they mean to build a fence . . . why are they getting snotty about me paying my rent in ostmarks?”

  “Are they?”

  “Last week. Another silly edict from City Hall . . . those of us working in the West must pay our rent in deutschmarks not ostmarks.”

  “Of course, they want Western currency . . .”

  “Exactly. And if they do, why would they cut us off? No more Grenzgänger, no more deutschmarks. It’s all just too emotional. It’s Torschlußpanik. Last-minute panic. Ulbricht needs us. Ulbricht needs our currency. So, a bit more rent to pay. I can live with that.”

  It was a convincing argument, presented with Eva’s customary ­rattiness—the occasional skyward roll of the eyes as though she felt she was suffering a fool ungladly.

  It did not deter Nell. Few things, few people, could.

  “Eva, leave with me now. Pack a bag and come home with me. I have a bad feeling.”

  “Not tonight. I have a date, and before I have a date, I have a dress to finish.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t you mean who? Since you don’t ask I shall tell you. Ulrich—likes to call himself Rick because it sounds American. A meal out, and then back to his place.”

  “Where?”

  “Is there an echo in here? Where? Friedrichsfelde.”

  Further east, about twelve kilometres from where they sat now.

  “You’ll spend the night?”

  Another skyward roll of the eyes.

  “Y’know Nell, for a thirty-two-year-old woman you sometimes have a way of sounding like a born-again virgin. If you could give that to the Catholic Church they’d bottle it and sell at Lourdes.”

  §68

  West Berlin: August 13

  Around two in the morning Nell was woken by the telephone. She ignored it, but whoever was calling did not ring off. She wrapped her dressing gown around her and barefooted into the sitting room.

  “It happens.”

  “I’m sorry, who is this?”

  “It’s happening, right now. Pick a spot. Anywhere from Blankenfelde to Schönefeld. It’s happening.”

  Then the line went dead.

  She dressed quickly, lugged her bicycle down the stairs, and set off. She had chosen her spot. It required no thought—the Brandenburg Gate, where the British and Soviet sectors met.

  §69

  Nell was not a night person. The hours at Marienfelde could be so long that more often than not she would go home after work, cook, eat, listen to the radio, and sleep.

  Eva Moll thought differently.

  “It’s nothing to do with the job. It’s you. You’re hiding.”

  “From what?”

  “From yourself, and for that matter from Berlin. When did you last go to a nightclub, the theatre or even just sit in a bar after dark?”

  All the same there was an unexpected pleasure in cycling across the Tiergarten in the dead of night—perhaps because night was never dead. For one thing she could hear it breathing.

  Usually the Brandenburg Gate was visible for almost the length of the East–West avenue, floodlit by the Russians. Tonight it was dark, only moonlight to see by. She dismounted by the sign, the commonplace white board erected at every point where sectors met advising “You are leaving Such-and-Such Sector” in four languages. She had always seen it as advice—and superfluous advice at that—but perhaps it was now taking on the nature of a warning.

  By the sign two British Tommies leaned on a jeep, utterly indifferent to her arrival. Half a dozen West Berlin policemen stood closer to the Gate. One turned to look and perceived no threat in a girl on a bike. And a dozen or more curious Berliners stood and stared as grey-uniformed East Berlin Factory Fighters rolled out barbed wire and hacked at the cobblestones with crowbars and pickaxes.

  The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse, almost literally the Workers’ Struggle Group, were factory-based. Somewhat like joining a trades union, and somewhat not. Formed in the wake of the 1953 protests it had probably done very little since, except dress up at weekends and drill after the fashion of the Third Reich Home Guard her father had been in during the war. It was voluntary. Nell could not understand why anyone would volunteer, but she knew people who had. One of them was facing her right now—Jürgen Fleck. They’d known each other since the thirties. They had survived the war apart, and got to know each other all over again in the deprivations of the peace. He fancied her. She knew that, but the boy had good manners and could take no for an answer. They had salvaged a good friendship over the years.

  The boy was now a man. Thirty-one or thirty-two years of age. Standing with three other Factory Fighters, all in their baggy uniforms and soft forage caps—and all clutching tommy guns.

  “Hello, Nell.”

  Smiling as he greeted her.

  “Have you come for the show?”

  “Jürgen . . . I’ve never seen you with a gun before.”

  “Oh, this . . .”

  He shifted the angle of the barrel, and looked at it as though she’d mentioned a particularly tasteless tie he might be wearing. Spoke of it in the same “this old thing” tone of voice Eva used if you tried to pay her a compliment.

  “It’s not loaded. None of us have loaded guns. There’s nothing to be scared of. Except them.”

  He nodded in the direction of the West German policemen.

  “They won’t be shy of wielding their truncheons or bringing in the water cannon if things get a bit rough.”

  “Is this happening everywhere?”

  “Probably. My entire hundred was mobilised last night, and dozens more from other factories.”

  She looked around at the snagging rolls of barbed wire, uncurling, twisting and turning on their own stored kinetic energy as though alive—gigantic metal worms.

  “And this is it? Barbed wire and empty guns. Do you expect to cut off a city with barbed wire and empty guns?”

  The man standing next to Jürgen nudged him. A West Berlin cop had come up behind Nell.

  “You shouldn’t be here. Move along.”

 
; “No.”

  She pointed east.

  “That’s the police state. This is free Berlin.”

  Jürgen and his comrades laughed out loud at this, enough to embarrass the cop into moving on rather than pestering Nell, and as soon as he’d gone two Factory Fighters with a roll of wire on a steel spindle cut right between Nell and Jürgen with a cry of “Mind yer arses” . . . and it was done.

  She almost wept. The simplest and crudest of symbols. A fence across her childhood.

  “Jürgen. Jump. There’s still time. Jump.”

  §70

  She cycled north, past the ruined Reichstag, and, thinking it unwise to leave the West, cut a dogleg to approach Bernauer Straße from the northern, French side, down Ackerstraße.

  The south side of Ackerstraße was already closed, and so was every other side street that crossed Bernauer Straße. At Brunnenstraße where the steps led down to the U-Bahn, the station had been shut off.

  It was a difficult border to close. The line being the front wall of the apartment blocks in the Russian Sector, the Factory Fighters had no mandate to patrol the street itself. Closing the U-Bahn and the side streets seemed to be about the most they could do. She stood half an hour and her point was proved. No one took on the troops in the side streets, but as news of what was happening spread, half the doors on Bernauer Straße opened, and in twos and threes and fours, entire families slipped out, clutching suitcases and parcels. From an upstairs window she watched a man throw down a sheet, knotted around whatever possessions he had wrapped, for his wife to catch and drop . . . the sound of rattling cutlery and breaking china.

  Where was Eva?

  Where was Eva?

  Why wasn’t she . . . ?

  And then Nell remembered. A night with “Rick” in Friedrichsfelde. Wrapped up in yet another man. Oblivious to what was happening on her own doorstep.

  How long could it be before the doors were nailed shut and the windows bricked up? She did not doubt that Jürgen had told her the truth when he said his gun was empty . . . but how far off were the tanks and the armoured cars? Tucked away? Around every corner? Merely out of sight?