He sits down tentatively. A woman clears her throat behind him, and he recognizes the female funeral director. He notices that she’s wearing practical shoes with thick crepe rubber soles. She sways on her feet, and he imagines that she could stand for hours in those shoes. She’s in charge of the funeral. Like any good funeral director, she possesses the ability to express the gravity of a situation at a moment’s notice. With a sympathetic air, she introduces herself, even though they met earlier in the week, and then guides him to the first row, reserved for the closest relatives of the deceased.
Then other people begin to arrive, and it occurs to him that some may be relatives that he hasn’t met, maybe an uncle or an aunt, a cousin whom Bea forgot to mention in her grief.
Bea’s helping to support Veronika, who seems old and despondent—maybe she feels older now that her younger brother is to be buried. An older couple has already sat down, and he recognizes the inquisitive woman from the first-floor apartment. The man seems irritable, like he’s here only to fulfill an obligation.
Andreas stands and takes Veronika’s arm. He shoots Bea an apologetic glance. He hadn’t meant to act the way he did, and he can tell that she understands. He guides Veronika into her seat. She clasps his hand, and that’s how they sit: Veronika in the middle, holding Bea’s and Andreas’s hands all the way through the songs, which Andreas let the funeral director choose. They’re all too strident; the tone makes him uncomfortable, and he hears his own voice squeak through verses he doesn’t recognize. Throughout, he must guess whether the next note will be higher or lower than the one emerging from his mouth, but he nonetheless feels he must continue to sing. Anything else would be rude.
The woman in the practical shoes is the only person singing along with confidence. While everyone else fumbles hesitantly through the melodies, her voice rises above the group, with a clarity and assurance the others lack. He makes eye contact with Bea, who smiles at him through her tears. It’s not until he sees her crying that he realizes just how much Peter meant to these people. He studies them. Their faces are distorted in pain, in varying degrees of loss and longing. They may be strangers to him, but they knew his father; they knew him well enough, in fact, to feel he’s worth crying over.
Veronika leans toward him and whispers through her tears. “You couldn’t have asked for a better brother. He always wanted the best for me.” It almost sounds like an apology, though she has nothing to apologize for.
He sees that only the first few rows are occupied. There are no other family members. Peter’s family consisted of Veronika and Bea.
He’s now uncomfortable at Veronika’s touch. Their single encounter doesn’t justify the close contact, but does their blood relation? They are family, after all. Still, they’re strangers. Until a few days ago, he didn’t even know Bea and Veronika existed, and now they have suddenly been added to his family tree. All at once he feels like he’s part of some bad soap opera, and once again he thinks of Dallas. Just like on that series, unknown family members have surfaced in his life. Luckily, they don’t appear to have any hidden motives. They aren’t after oil; they’re not out for power—in fact he was the one who sought them out. Soon he will leave them again. All he has to do is get this over with so that he can return home to Copenhagen and put it all behind him. His thoughts shame him, and he tries to find the right funereal expression.
The coffin rests in the center of the chapel on a raised platform with wheels. He recalls the last time he saw a coffin. It lay in a hole in the ground at Bispebjerg Cemetery. Andreas was twenty-five years old when Aunt Irene was buried. The sexton had been meticulous; the grave was a perfect rectangle. At home they’d never called her Aunt Irene; instead, they called her Aunt Irrelevant. She’d been a nun of the indignant variety, but the only place her faith had gotten her was that neatly dug grave.
There had been three sisters, each with her own set of beliefs: a nun, a communist, and a lawyer. The two remaining sisters, Elisabeth and Birgit, scowled at each other from either side of the grave—Elisabeth with Thorkild and Andreas, and Birgit with her husband, Arne, and their three kids whose names he always forgot. Aunt Irrelevant seemed suddenly relevant, and it wasn’t until that moment that Andreas understood how much his mother had loved her sister.
Every time Elisabeth sobbed, Birgit sobbed too, as if they were competing to see who grieved the most. The scene grew painful to watch.
The final song ebbs away. They don’t have enough people to carry the coffin, so the funeral director wheels it out to the waiting hearse with professional care. As they’d agreed, Andreas walks behind the coffin. His sneakers squeak on the floor, embarrassing him. The others follow him with bowed heads. Outside, the treetops absorb the street noise; the city seems remote. One by one the guests approach him to shake his hand. Frau something or other, Herr this or that—everyone expresses their deepest condolences.
They watch as the shiny, polished car crunches slowly down the gravel path. They remain standing. No one says a word. Several people cough, either because they are uncomfortable with the silence or are raising a cigarette to their lips.
A large bald man exits the chapel last. He walks toward them.
“My name is Grigor Pamjanov.” His voice is deep and confident. “My condolences.”
He offers his hand, and Andreas’s own is buried in a huge, soft mitt. The back of the man’s hand is covered with dark hair all the way up his wrist before being split in two by his expensive watch. It’s not merely a device to measure time but a symbol of how much this man has succeeded in life. Thorkild always said that you can tell a lot about a man by looking at his watch, car, or wife. His stepfather would have called Grigor Pamjanov a Gucci type: the type who reads thrillers, drives convertibles, and goes on packaged golf tours—and he would get all that just by looking at the man’s watch.
“I’m sorry Peter died in this manner,” Pamjanov says. He smiles, revealing his teeth, and adds, “Any day I’m not in a grave is a good day.”
Though his German is correct and his pronunciation impeccable, he has a thick accent, the remnant of some Slavic language. He’s a large man. His body may have once been toned and slender, but it has gone slack, and his belly now pushes against his down vest. “Canada Goose,” the tag reads. His clothing clearly isn’t just purchased, but carefully selected without regard for price. He dresses like a young man, like someone who feels pressured by his wife’s age on her birth certificate. His tie is tight, and the knot looks as though it’s causing his face to swell. He talks like a military man and tries to appear friendly and relaxed.
He stares at the ground. “Sad, sad.”
They nod in unison. Neither speaks. An older couple approaches to say their good-byes with a few well-intentioned words. They shuffle slowly off, and suddenly Pamjanov shifts his tone. When he asks whether they’ve ever eaten a genuine Russian meal, the solemnity in his voice is gone.
Bea glances at Andreas and shakes her head for both of them.
“Then I invite you to do so.” He thrusts out his arms, as if he’s going to embrace them, but stops when he notices them hesitate.
“I knew your father well,” he says to Andreas, trying to get him to accept the invitation. When Andreas doesn’t respond, he continues. “I insist. I’m flying out tonight at eleven o’clock. Meet me at Oblomov at seven.”
He starts down the path without waiting for a response.
They watch him go.
“What just happened?” Bea asks. They both laugh, and their laughter seems wrong.
12
STEFAN
East Berlin, May 1977
His mother adjusted his tie one final time. She had already done so several times—proudly tightening it, brushing the lapel on his suit, and pinching him softly on the cheek through his beard, and he let her, because today was her day, too.
People were dancing, and the entire time he’d kept his eye on Nina, who was now dancing with Alexander. Her dress swung girlishly to the mu
sic, and her buoyant perm—which smelled like the large storage halls at chemical factories—fluttered behind her. He looked at her with pride and was bursting with love. Now she was his, and after the party they would move in together, into a two-bedroom apartment in Prenzlauer Berg that they had been assigned by the Housing Administration.
Stefan couldn’t help but notice how Ulf’s gaze kept seeking out Gisela Rahn, who ran the hair salon where Nina worked. It was understandable—all men looked at her. Her hair had a reddish tint to it, and her cleavage made her dress tight. The turquoise fabric was so tight on her bottom that you could see the lace of her panties; she edged closer to the men on the dance floor, rubbing her body against them promiscuously. Meanwhile her husband, Jörg, a wizened type with small round glasses that seemed ill-suited for his fine clothes, watched with visible despair, but he was used to it, because this was how Gisela always acted. The same scene played out at every party Stefan and Nina had been to. Late in the evening, they would embrace, hot and heavy, and he was certain that they went home and made passionate love, with his glasses hopping on the nightstand right up until the children knocked on the bedroom door.
Stefan and Nina had been married in the huge cafeteria where he worked. Chemiewerke Coswig was a mastodon of a chemical factory that produced artificial fertilizers and animal feed. They’d sat at a long table decorated by their mothers and had eaten dinner. The beer had flowed in a constant stream and continued to do so, and now people were drunk and dancing. Games were organized, and although he considered himself too grown-up to participate, Nina had laughed along, and so had he.
Ulf handed him a mug of beer, and Stefan smiled. Nina crossed the floor and kissed him. She still had rice in her hair. Family and friends had showered them with it in front of the town hall, and according to tradition, he was supposed to count them. For every grain of rice he found in her hair, they would have one child, but they weren’t planning on having children anytime soon. Not until they had made it to West Berlin.
Outside, he smoked a cigarette with Alexander and Ulf, and they regarded the factory’s two chimneys. During the day two columns of smoke spiraled out of them, touching the sky like slender cosmonauts, much the way Laika, Yuri Gagarin, and Sigmund Jähn had.
The two brothers sucked silently on their tobacco, casting glances at one another, waiting for Ulf to return to the party. Despite their friendship, there was no reason to involve Ulf in their plans. In this country you never knew who you could trust, so it was better to be careful. Alexander didn’t need to say anything, because even without words Stefan could sense that his big brother was seething. He hadn’t wanted Stefan to get married. It made their escape more difficult. Alexander said that he, like a virgin waiting for marriage, would hold off on finding a wife until he reached West Berlin. He claimed that was why he had no girlfriend, but Stefan knew the real reason was that Alexander was awkward around girls.
Mostly it was Alexander who discussed fleeing, but Stefan wanted to go along, and he wanted Nina to come, too. He had yet to tell her of their plans, and he knew her view on the matter. They still didn’t have any idea how they would get to the West, but they knew that others had managed it. It had to be possible somehow. For that reason they would take their time, turning over every stone to find the safest method. Each of them knew that their very lives would be on the line no matter what plan they chose, but they were ready to run that risk. Anything but this country. Every minute, every hour, every day, Stefan could feel his freedom becoming more and more restricted. The state was everywhere and into everything. The freedom they’d been promised had been transformed into a prison with borders.
In the meantime, they had to keep a low profile, though Stefan found that difficult. Results were everything. Five-year plans, production increases, agricultural effectiveness, numbers, statistics, and lies. Every last thing was colored by the party, painted in whatever color the party leaders wanted. Viewed from the upper echelons, everything looked rosy, and the GDR mission was a success. If he could, he would scream of state repression, friends who couldn’t find work, the goddamn informants who were listening everywhere, Wolf Biermann being thrown out with the bathwater, the lack of free choice, Erich Honecker—but doing so would only get him into trouble. Instead he did it on the sly, dropping small hints about his true feelings or changing his tone of voice, and he believed that several in the factory’s cafeteria agreed with him. He wanted to get away from all of it, away from the fact that he couldn’t speak his mind without fear of reprisal and away from all the people who stared through a telescope. They simply had to leave.
One evening a few months after the wedding, he and Nina took an evening stroll, passing near the Wall at the end of Gleimstrasse. He glanced at the floodlights slicing the city’s darkness in half, keenly aware that their freedom lay over on the other side. They passed a few dilapidated storefronts with only a few goods displayed in the windows. As they strolled, Stefan considered how they lived in a city of paradoxes. The shops where foreigners could purchase luxury items that normal people didn’t have access to—jeans, fine soaps, leather jackets, gramophone records, alcohol, and cigarettes—blatantly conflicted with the state’s ideology. The state wasn’t for the people; it was all a lie. The people were merely a tool serving a few men’s deranged dreams, and these men lived in seclusion with their families in the tony suburb of Wandlitz. According to rumors, the party elite inhabited a parallel world secured by a six-feet-high wall surrounded by barbed wire and an electric fence. They lived safely in their luxury villas, went pheasant hunting, and bought good French wine in their special supermarket. They ate and drank until their waistlines were tight and their belts needed more holes. Their Citroën CX limousines sped them the eighteen miles into Berlin, and in the Palast der Republik, they sat on their thrones shielded from the people, carrying on conversations on behalf of the people. They were hypocrites, all of them, and that’s what Stefan and Alexander would tell the world once they managed to escape.
It began to rain as they walked. Nina sneezed. In the West, rain poured down just like in the East, and on both sides of the Wall, people were sick with the flu, the same virus. The city was wet and gloomy, and the fallen chestnuts were like small, shiny nuggets on the sidewalk. He knew she would keep the secret, but what if she didn’t want to come along? He’d dreamed of getting out for so long, but he’d never leave Nina. What would he do if she put him in that quandary? There was only one way to find out.
It was time. He turned to Nina and whispered the words through his next breath, quiet and secretive, telling Nina about their plan that wasn’t yet a plan.
She looked sensitive and delicate as she stopped and turned to him, her curls tamped down by the rain. In that moment he loved her even more.
Confusion swirled around her face. She looked at him with frightened eyes. “I don’t dare.”
“We can’t stay here,” he said, trying to infuse his voice with confidence to get her to understand the necessity of their flight.
“We can. We must.”
“It’s not because I don’t want to, Stefan.” Nina fell silent.
The chestnuts in her hand glistened, and she stared at them. They walked toward home in silence. For the next few days, she only talked to him about everyday, practical matters. He knew she was intentionally avoiding any talk about fleeing the country. He knew deep down that he couldn’t live without Nina—just as he knew he couldn’t stay.
He spent the next several months trying to convince her. Though he’d initially been worried about her reaction, he decided it simply required more strenuous effort on his part. He enlisted Alexander to help him, but when Nina won a weekend trip to Wernigerode in a drawing among the city’s hairdressers, Stefan could tell that she was relieved.
“It’ll be good to get away from Alexander and all his ideas,” she said.
13
PETER
East Berlin, July 1977
Peter and Martina eventually began
to talk about moving in together. Peter entered the conversation with an expectation that they would move into his apartment in Lichtenberg, but Martina refused to move to that part of the city. She was stubborn, and he couldn’t convince her that it would be a nice place to live. Peter suddenly appeared to be at a crossroads: either he could put his foot down and risk losing her or he could bend to her wishes. Since he wanted to be with her, the choice wasn’t difficult, and in April he visited Major Sonnenberger to tell him he wanted to move in with Martina in Prenzlauer Berg.
Sonnenberger was initially skeptical, because most of his coworkers lived in Lichtenberg or Hohenschönhausen. The Ministry for State Security secured their apartments, and they’d given Peter a good place to live, Sonnenberger pointed out. His men typically didn’t live in Prenzlauer Berg’s rundown apartments. They were for the workers, artists, and students.
“What about marriage?” the major asked. Before Peter could respond, he continued, “I’m married, but as you’ve probably heard, my wife is very ill. We don’t know how long she’ll be with us.” The major slumped, drooping his head. Peter didn’t know what was wrong with the major’s wife, and no one ever said. He didn’t ask, because he knew that any additional details would just make him uncomfortable.
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