When Herr Schmidt’s lesson is finally over, I’m the first out of the door.
“Warte mal!” calls Astrid who’s busy gathering her things together. Hang on!
“Sorry,” I say, waiting for her by the door. “Didn’t mean to leave you behind. Just got things to do this evening.”
As we walk, Astrid chatters non-stop about an upcoming camping trip with the Freie Deutsche Jugend. I half-listen, nodding my head and saying gut or wunderbar at appropriate points. By the time we reach the corner of Stargarder Strasse I haven’t had a chance to mention this evening’s trip to the theatre and, to be honest, I’m glad. It’s not that I want to hide things from Astrid, but if I told her we were going to see a Brecht play she’d want to hear all about it, down to the very last detail of what the actors were like and whether the direction was any good. The fact is, I don’t know how much of the play we’ll actually see because the main task is to try and find a way of contacting Manfred Heilmann. I tell myself it’s better for her sake if she doesn’t know about the tunnel project. Then if it all goes wrong, she can’t be accused of consorting with traitors.
When I arrive home, Brigitta is already there. She is very excited at the prospect of going to the theatre and even more excited at the thought of our secret mission. I’m just nervous in case we fail to contact Manfred and the whole thing is a waste of time and money or, worse still, we’re observed by the Stasi.
I have written a note for Manfred and put it into a small white envelope. I will need to try and pass it to him, although how I am supposed to achieve this feat of conjuring I have no idea.
I hide my letter to Manfred Heilmann inside my coat pocket, then I check I’ve got the tickets and we set off.
We take the S-bahn to Friedrichstrasse and I am reminded of the journey we made back in August when we were looking forward to a day at the lake with Dieter and instead we discovered that the border had been closed and we were trapped in the East.
Brigitta slips her hand into mine as we leave the station and walk the short distance to the theatre. Oma used to have a picture postcard of the theatre taken before the war. The main entrance was an ornate tower decorated with carvings, scrolls and turrets. After it was destroyed in the war the entrance was rebuilt in a plainer style, the elaborate stone carvings replaced with straight lines and the fancy gothic tower on the top replaced with a circular metal sign announcing the building as the home of the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre group that Brecht founded.
Before we go inside I glance up and down the street. It’s become a habit with me now, checking to see if there is a white Trabant parked nearby, or a man standing on a street corner perusing a newspaper, or a woman peering into a shop window. I trust no one who seems to be just hanging around. There are lots of people making their way to the theatre, but none of them looks suspicious. But then, I suppose, the best spies are the ones who blend in so you don’t notice them.
There’s a crush of people inside queuing to leave their coats in the garderobe. I decide it’s better if we keep our coats on. I don’t want to be seen carrying Manfred’s letter in my hand.
We climb the stairs to the balcony and find our seats, which are in the second row from the back, in the middle. They were the only ones we could afford.
With its red velvet upholstery and grand chandelier hanging from the centre of the roof, this is the most opulent place either of us has ever been.
“I want to see the rest of the theatre,” says Brigitta, so we walk down the side of the balcony, lean over the edge and peer down into the auditorium below. There are three layers of seating, the stalls at the bottom, the circle in the middle and the balcony at the top. The seats in the circle are the best seats in the house, raised up above the flat stalls, but not so far away, like those in the balcony, as to make the actors appear like little dolls.
Pillars in the guise of semi-clad Greek maidens bear the weight of the balcony on their shoulders. I’m pointing out this architectural flight of fancy to Brigitta when a movement below us in the front row of the circle makes me stop.
The people in the outer seats are standing to make way for some new arrivals who are making their way to the middle of the row. From this angle I can only see the tops of their heads but there’s something familiar about them. There’s a tall man with a bald patch, a woman with her hair in a neat bun, a young boy and an older girl…I don’t believe it. It can’t be. They shuffle around until they are happy with who’s sitting where and then they sit down. Then the girl turns round and I see that I’m not mistaken. It is Astrid and her family.
She hasn’t seen me. I draw back from the edge of the balcony. I’m surprised to see her and feel somewhat put out. Why didn’t she tell me she was coming to the theatre? She usually talks non-stop about her plans for the weekend. I accept, not without a hint of shame, that I kept my own theatre plans a secret, but, I remind myself, I had good reasons for that. Astrid is presumably here just for a night out, to enjoy herself. So why didn’t she mention it?
For a while I watch her, unobserved. She is sitting between her brother Frank and her father. Her father is talking to two grey-suited men sitting on his left. Her mother is busy wiping Frank’s nose with a handkerchief. With no one to talk to, Astrid is flicking through the programme.
“Komm,” I say to Brigitta, pulling her away from the edge of the balcony. “We should go back to our seats. The play will be starting soon.”
The balcony is rapidly filling up. Some people, judging from their clothes, look as if they’ve come straight from work. Others look like students.
Whilst we wait Brigitta asks me to tell her what the play is about. I explain that it’s set in the Seventeenth Century and it’s about a woman in the Thirty Years’ War in Sweden known as Canteen Anna or Mother Courage. She hopes to make a lot of money in the war and starts trading with the armies of both sides, but all three of her children die as a result of the war. “It’s an anti-war play,” I add, somewhat unnecessarily.
Brigitta nods her understanding. No one in East Germany is in any doubt that war is a bad thing. It’s just that over here, behind the Wall, peace isn’t much fun either.
From Harry’s letter I know that Manfred Heilmann is playing the role of the Swedish Commander. The poster outside the theatre announced that Mother Courage will be played by the actress Elisabeth Borgmann.
The lights dim and there is a hush from the audience. A couple of latecomers shuffle apologetically along our row. The audience settles down and prepares to be entertained, although that’s probably not the right word for this rather grim type of drama.
It’s warm in the theatre, but I keep my coat on because I don’t want to risk losing the letter which must be crumpled by now. Somehow, in the interval, or straight after the performance, I’m going to have to find a way of passing it to Manfred Heilmann. The curtain rises and I try to sit back and enjoy the play but I’m nervous and can’t concentrate on the dialogue.
As Mother Courage drags her unwieldy wooden cart around the stage, doing deals with the army generals, and switching allegiance from Protestant to Catholic as the situation demands, I sit and worry about the task ahead of me. After an hour or so of onstage wheeling and dealing, her youngest son (who goes by the unlikely name of Swiss Cheese) is shot dead and the curtain falls for the interval. By now I have a knot in my stomach. I wish Astrid wasn’t here. If I bump into her it’ll be really awkward.
Brigitta and I stand up and follow the crowds heading for the foyer. It’s hard to move in the crush of people and impossible to tell if there are Stasi agents amongst the audience, although I’m sure there must be because they infiltrate all public gatherings, like flies that invade houses in the summer even when you keep the windows closed.
In the foyer the doors have been opened to let in some air. People are spilling out into the street, drinking, smoking and discussing the first act of the play. I keep an eye open for Astrid but don’t see her anywhere so I try and focus on the task in hand
which is to find a way backstage, but the audience and actors inhabit two distinct worlds and I can’t see how to cross from one to the other. We’ve now only got about ten minutes before the curtain rises again.
Brigitta tugs on my arm. “This way.”
She starts to weave her way through the crowds of people and I struggle to keep sight of her. She heads outside and I arrive just in time to see her dart around the side of the theatre into Marienstrasse. I run to catch her up.
“Look,” she says with a big smile on her face. She is pointing at a small black door in the side of the building. “It’s the stage entrance.” Brigitta is already reaching out for the door handle. I glance up and down the street, but there is no one loitering on the corner and there are no parked cars with men sitting inside them.
“Quick,” I say. She pushes the door open and we disappear inside, into the dark.
Dieter
The dark. I’m on my knees, hunched over in the confined space of the tunnel. I have mud and dirt in my hair, on my face, stuck down my fingernails and over my clothes. I want to stand up and stretch my legs, ease out my back, but the space I’m in is way too small. I’ve been down here for four hours, hacking at the tunnel face with the pick-axe and shovelling the earth into buckets. I now know what it must feel like to be a mole, living and digging underground and never seeing the light of day.
Werner is down here too, rigging up an electric cable so we can have some light and don’t need to rely on torches.
“I could do with a bit more space,” says Werner rolling out an electric extension lead. “Why don’t you go and take a break.”
“OK,” I say.
I crawl back to the vertical shaft and stand up straight for the first time in hours, pushing my hands into my lower back and leaning backwards.
I limp up the stairs to the kitchen and collapse onto one of the chairs. My jeans are ripped and my knees are grazed and bleeding. My whole body aches. The kitchen door opens and Claudia walks in, also covered in mud and filth. She’s been emptying the buckets of earth into the yard. She’s given up trying to keep the living quarters clean. It’s not possible when we spend hours every day digging in the dirt.
She takes one look at me and shakes her head. “Coffee?”
“Yes please.” I’m glad someone’s got the strength to put the kettle on because I haven’t.
Digging the horizontal tunnel is much harder than digging the vertical shaft. I spend hours crouched or kneeling on the rough ground chipping away at the wall of earth in front of me. My legs cramp up and my back is hunched. I think I’m going to turn into Quasimodo.
Progress is painfully slow. There’s only room for one person to dig at the tunnel face at any one time so the other members of the team are put to work passing buckets of rubble along the tunnel and shoring up the tunnel walls and roof with planks of wood.
Claudia places two mugs of coffee on the table, then kneels down and examines my bleeding knees.
“You should wrap bandages round your legs before you start digging,” she says.
“Yeah, I know,” I sigh. “Thanks for the advice.”
Sabine
After a few moments our eyes adjust to the dark and we find ourselves in a narrow corridor. At the end of the corridor is a short flight of steps leading downwards.
Backstage there is none of the luxury that adorns the public areas of the theatre; no carpet, or red velvet or carved pillars. The floor is laid in a cheap, brown linoleum like the one we have in our apartment. Exposed pipes, covered in a layer of dust, run along the wall at ankle level. A flickering strip-light does a half-hearted job of illuminating its dingy surrounds. I’m just relieved that we seem to have got in unnoticed. We head off down the stairs in search of the dressing rooms.
The sound of voices reaches us from round the corner. I grab hold of Brigitta and pull her behind a rail of peasants’ costumes which someone has left in the corridor. Two men appear carrying a bulky piece of scenery. They are concentrating on not letting it topple over, so they don’t notice Brigitta and me hiding behind the tunics and capes.
When they’ve gone I peer out to check the coast is clear. We need to hurry before anyone else appears.
We continue round the corner, where the men carrying the scenery had come from. There are doors on either side. I think these must be the dressing rooms but I don’t know how we’re going to find the right one.
Half way down the corridor a door opens and six actors dressed as Swedish soldiers emerge. There is nowhere for us to hide now, but they head off in the opposite direction and don’t notice us. The interval must be over and Act II about to begin.
We hurry down the corridor, looking at each of the doors in turn. To my relief I see that the names of the principle actors are on the doors. We reach the door of Elisabeth Borgmann, the actress playing Mutter Courage, when suddenly there’s a shout.
“Was tun Sie da?” What are you doing there?
We freeze. A red-faced man is striding towards us. He looks hassled, as if he hasn’t got time to be dealing with uninvited strangers wandering around backstage.
“I asked, what are you doing?” His voice is stern and he fixes us with a hard stare.
Whilst I stand there tongue-tied, Brigitta gives him her sweetest smile and says, “It’s my fault we’re here. I’m such a big fan of Elisabeth Borgmann and I just wanted to get her autograph. She’s a real heroine of mine.”
The man looks taken aback. He clearly wasn’t expecting such a straightforward and innocent answer.
Brigitta doesn’t flinch or blush like I would do telling such an outright lie. She keeps her poise and I think, she should be an actress one day.
The man grunts and looks at his watch. “This is all very irregular, but I suppose if you’re very quick she might just have time to give you an autograph. She’s on stage in five minutes.”
He knocks on the door. We wait. I wish he’d go away but he stands there as if he’s about to present us to the Queen of Sheba. The door opens and Mutter Courage appears, aka Elisabeth Borgmann. She is in full costume - a coarse grey woollen dress, a grubby apron and a length of brown cloth wrapped turban-style around her hair. She stands with her arms akimbo, looking at the man with raised eyebrows. She doesn’t smile.
“A young fan of yours,” says the man, pointing at Brigitta.
Elisabeth looks down at Brigitta who is still radiating innocence. The actress looks as if she doesn’t believe a word of it but nods her head at Brigitta and me. “You’d better come in.”
She ushers us into her dressing room and closes the door on the man. Then she turns on us.
“I don’t know who you are,” she says, “but you shouldn’t be snooping around backstage like a couple of thieves. Don’t you know you can get arrested in this country for acting suspiciously?” I’m all too aware of that and don’t need reminding. But now we’re here, I need to decide if we can trust her.
She turns back to her dressing table, picks up a kohl pencil and starts to accentuate her eyebrows with it. For one dreadful moment I’m reminded of Frau Biedermeier, my interrogator at Stasi HQ.
“You heard the man,” she says. “I haven’t got long before I’m back on stage. What do you want?” She lays the kohl pencil down and picks up a powder compact. Amongst the clutter of make-up, hair brushes and cigarette packets on her dressing table there’s a photograph of a boy in a silver frame. He looks to be about fifteen. She catches my eye in the mirror.
“That is my son,” she says picking up the photograph. “He lives in West Berlin with his grandmother.” This admission is all I need to know I can trust her.
“We’re looking for Manfred Heilmann,” I say. “I have a letter for him.”
“Come with me,” she says getting up from her dressing table. We follow her down the corridor and wait whilst she taps on a door. She doesn’t wait for an answer but opens the door and pushes us inside.
“You have some visitors,” she says. Manfred Heilmann
is standing there in full Swedish regalia. Elisabeth closes the door on us and disappears, presumably not wanting to be caught aiding and abetting traitors.
Manfred Heilmann looks alarmed and his right hand flies to the hilt of his sword. He’s much taller than he appeared on stage.
“I have a letter for you,” I say, getting straight to the point and handing him the envelope.
He removes his hand from his sword and takes the letter, all the time watching me closely.
He rips open the envelope, takes out the letter and peruses its contents quickly. It’s just a short note explaining about Harry and the tunnel. As he reads, the expression on his face softens.
“Danke,” he says, smiling at me.
At that moment there is a call for Manfred to be on stage. He tucks the letter inside his tunic and hurries off ready for his cue.
We sneak back out the way we came in. It’s too late to return to our seats in the balcony so we will have to miss the second half of the play. But we are principle actors in our own real-life drama.
Dieter
I’m back at the tunnel face and making better progress than yesterday. I took Claudia’s advice and wrapped my knees in strips of cloth torn from an old shirt. I got some sarcastic comments from Andreas about suffering from housemaid’s knee, but I just ignored him.
I thrust the spade into the wall of earth in front of me and remove a clod of thick, brown soil. Andreas is some way behind me, knocking planks of wood into the walls and roof of the tunnel, following Werner’s instructions to shore up the sides as we go. Claudia arrives to remove the buckets I’ve already filled.
Oranges for Christmas Page 14