Zerrissen shot a worried glance at Nicolaus, but he shrugged. “You can try to scold her, but she really only hears her own thoughts.”
Summoning the patience of a father that he never had a chance to be, Zerrissen decided that a pile of oily car and appliance parts could not be further harmed by a crippled, mute girl. And if she starts a fire? Fine. Let the place burn. With coal still hard to get and now so expensive, the extra warmth would be welcome.
Nicolaus continued, “I’m telling you this because I need Halina to live here for a short time. She can’t go back to her assigned flat. Then, we need to get her across the border.”
Zerrissen leaned over the workbench, searching for his pack of cigarettes. Time to feed the erstwhile piston with another stub and more ashes. “I already paid that butcher bill. I helped you escape Die Kuppel, remember? And here you are today, alive, and your life seems pretty good. So…. You’re welcome.”
“Oh? Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you save us? Or did we save you? A Nazi scientist fleeing the Bunker could evade suspicion, and, in fact, earn a string of sausages, with a couple of kids in tow, yes?”
Zerrissen was visibly uncomfortable with the accusations. He said nothing.
Nicolaus drove home his nail. “So… You’re welcome.”
Zerrissen lost interest in the cigarette, stubbed it out in the piston, already overflowing with the carcasses of previous smokes.
“So, what exactly do you want from me?”
“Halina will stay here for a few days.”
Zerrissen looked over at Halina. This request was much easier than he feared. What difference could it make who spent the night in the shop as long as it wasn’t him.
Sensing he was making progress, Nicolaus moved on to the next ask.
“There’s more.”
Here it comes, Zerrissen thought cynically.
“Do I want to know?”
“You will find it amusing. It’s about what under the streets in this neighborhood.”
“I’m listening” The challenge to ‘surprise me’ went unsaid.
“We’re moving you.”
“Oh? Better neighborhood?”
“What? No. Just a few hundred meters up the street. The neighborhood is the same. At least above ground. It’s what’s underneath that will amuse you.”
“I’ve never been amused by anything underneath Berlin in my life.”
“Ducts.” Nicolaus pronounced plainly, as if the word were self-explanatory.
“Did you just say ‘ducts?’”
“Yes. Did you know that the Reich had a plan to flood Berlin in the event of an invasion?
“Flood? From the river?”
“From ponds and reservoirs from the mountains. Ostensibly for recreation, ice-skating in winter, and small boats in summer. That sort of thing. But what residents did not generally know was that the reservoirs could flood the streets of Berlin and invaders, leaving the drained reservoirs available as ad hoc landing fields for the Luftwaffe if need be.”
“Does that make sense? Are you sure? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Nazi plat maps do not lie, and no, it doesn’t make sense. Does building a huge bunker in the Polish forest to treat children with polio make sense?”
The Reich was ruled by madness for ten years, Zerrissen thought. And it did sound like something Goering would do.
A shower of sparks as angry fireflies filled the air around Halina. Nicolaus could see the alarm in Zerrissen’s face.
“She knows what she’s doing. The State sends her to a Socialist Workers gymnasium to learn a trade. She picked that one.”
Zerrissen watched her don the welding helmet with one hand as if she were born to do the job. He sat back down.
“You said I would be amused. I find that amusing,” he pointed to Halina holding the welder’s helmet, nearly as big as she was, to her face.
Nicolaus smiled affectionately in agreement.
Zerrissen returned to the mysterious subject of ducts. “Even if that duct is still there, and assuming you could find it, what do you want with this duct, Nicolaus?”
“Ducts can be very useful for hiding things you don’t want found, or for escaping from places you don’t want to be.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a specialty of mine.”
Nicolaus smiled wryly. “A team will be here tomorrow to move the shop. You can take the day off if you’d like.” Nicolaus called out a ‘goodbye’ to Halina, who waved back, and he turned to leave.
“I’m sorry, I’ll be missed if I don’t get back to my desk.”
“Your cultural attaché desk?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“How do I find you? How do I find the new space? Did I agree to any of this?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find you. Everything will be clear tomorrow.”
Zerrissen assuming the move as good as a fait accompli, called out after him as he reached the door.
“Nicolaus, I have a personal question.”
“OK.”
“Was Mengele right?”
“You know, I was going to ask you that. Was he?”
Zerrissen was in no mood to make friends with someone who could waltz in and change his life, so he asked the question bluntly,
“Are you a… homosexual?”
Nicolaus paused, then, because there was no good reason to deny it, he nodded his head.
“Then Mengele was right.”
Exodus Germania
During the first twenty years of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, over 20,000 East Germans managed to slither past GDU outposts and through Stasi fingers to begin a new life in the so-called Free World.
The primary motivation for risking death or imprisonment was hunger and warmth, the result of the logistical and supply chain disaster of collectivizing small farms and family vegetable plots in the Soviet occupied zone. The failure of the 1953 East German uprising against quotas involving as many as one million citizens, eventually suppressed by the same T34 tanks that dismantled the Reich nearly a decade earlier and would be celebrated as a holiday in West Germany for the next three decades. Early defections were simple, merely stepping across a line on the ground where their villages bordered western countries.
When the drain of workers became impossible to ignore, countermeasures were installed for each wave and style of emigration. When the State recorded 43 citizens immolated in the minefields, fences were fortified with razor wire and electrification, a counter measure that claimed another 20 victims.
As these layers of counter measures became increasingly brutal, so did the ingenuity of the escapees. A circus performer strung a wire over the Berlin portion of the wall using a bow and arrow. Sympathetic helpers on the west side pulled their end of the wire to retrieve the end of a cable, which they secured tightly to a building a meter or so on the western side of the wall, allowing the performer to walk casually across the cable to freedom while entertaining the crowd below. His idea was successfully copied by 24 others, until frustrated GDU border guards, under orders, began shooting for effect. Not wishing to further test the border guards’ willingness to shoot their own countrymen, the State ordered all buildings along on the East side border, already desperate for residential living quarters, condemned, prompting a visit from the US president to the western side where he declared himself a fellow Berliner, or, a type of sausage, depending on who was translating his attempt to speak German with a dense New England accent.
The declaration was broadcasted worldwide via the newly invented television communication satellite, to the extreme annoyance of Moscow, and to the encouragement of those brave enough in the East to continue their defection plans.
Subsequently, two escapees flew across the barriers with hang gliders, and another in a homemade hot air balloon made from parachutes. In retaliation, guard towers were placed along the border, including the eastern banks of
the River Spree, equipped with lights to guide the Czech air force to shoot down anyone who attempted to replicate these early successes.
Even so, attempts by air, by river, by land, continued.
Mistaken Indemnity
Rounding the familiar corner quickly without looking, Nicolaus ran into the line of strangers forming outside the Embassy commissary. In his years of working here enjoying as his morning routine a cup of tea, served Soviet style in cut crystal glass cradled in a nickel-plated holder and handle, he had never seen every table occupied. Soviet Army officers and apparatchik in suits talking in hushed tones in the hallway waiting their turn, surely the largest gathering of Russians outside of Red Square.
Making his apologies, Nicolaus left the Embassy for less crowded venue. He took the tram to the Ministry of Information and Stasi headquarters, only to find similar crowds. Russians were positively swarming over every collection of documents and archives in East Germany, looking for something.
He knew better than to show too much interest, but his curiosity overcame his initial caution. He dropped some harmless hints with a colleague working with the Soviets who would cherish the moment he was in on a secret not available to Nicolaus, infamous for knowing all secrets worth knowing, more than he would cherish denouncing him.
As Nicolaus anticipated with clinched teeth and forced smile, his colleague savored the moment a bit, then, with aggravating smugness, revealed only enough to taunt Nicolaus. The Russian Army found something disturbing in the Polish forest near the town of Debica, he explained with intentional mystery. In fact, he continued, it was the reason for the closing the borders, the increased fortifications on the frontiers, and the wall being built around the city of West Berlin. The Soviets want persons of interest to remain within easy reach. Beyond this, he warned Nicolaus, better not to ask any more questions.
At the mention of Debica, Nicolaus had nothing but more questions, but he could not tolerate the cost in condescension. His choice was to forget the whole thing, or somehow insert himself at a right angle.
With this information, Nicolaus made sense of what he saw at the archives. The Soviets were searching War records for any entry mentioning key words, ‘Debica’ being one of them. Only the Soviets knew what other words or cross references were on their shopping list.
The Ministry’s archive card catalog was immense, consisting of over 60 million separate index cards. Assuming only 30-seconds per card with no cross-references, scanning all these records by a room of officers working day and night, Nicolaus calculated a work effort lasting nearly 40 years.
Having already performed this basic arithmetic themselves, the Soviets came prepared with a machine they have smuggled in from America similar in size and shape to a large farm tractor without wheels, banned for export outside of the US. The machine could mechanically feed records from a two-meter-tall stack, scan it for arbitrary key words and phrases, comparing hits to memorized relationships, at the rate of 800 cards per minute. The entire archives in East Germany could be processed by this single machine in two months, with zero errors or oversights, compared to 40 years by humans. Those crazy Americans.
Finding where the Soviets had installed the machine was easy. One need only follow the Army privates hauling stacks of cards parading up to Room 88 of the 14th floor, which, of course was really the 13th floor. Superstitions persist, even in the Worker’s Paradise. Getting to the machine, huffing and whining like a caged animal, would only require his dressing as a private in the Soviet Army and accepting the real possibility of his being shot as a spy should he get caught.
Nicolaus always being up for an adventure and rather oblivious to the tortures ahead for his spying on the spies, had himself in a suitably mocked up uniform the very next day. Using his best Moscow accented Russian, he rather easily relieved a private of his stack of catalog cards with the suggestion he visit the commissary before they ran out of their special piroshki. Once in the room, its door having been propped open, Nicolaus had would only have ten seconds to learn anything before the next stack-of-cards carrying private arrived.
He did not know how to load the cards into the hopper, and did not have the time to teach himself, so he just dumped them on the floor. Watching the cards already in the hopper sail through the bails of the machine was mesmerizing, and not becoming hypnotized by the blur and blinking lights of machine-thought took conscious effort. This is a machine Zerrissen would want to examine. Nicolaus forced himself to focus on the task during these last few seconds he would have to himself. He searched the bins into which the machine would drop cards that matched the search conditions. This potentially hopeless goal was made easy by virtue of the machine having only found one card that had met the criteria, whatever they may have been, from the two million cards already scanned.
Nicolaus read the card quickly, memorized the details, and left, discarding his uniform in a washroom garbage receptacle, scarcely believing he had gotten away with the stunt. Digesting the information and the implications required every bit of discipline he could muster. The single card found by the machine so far was the emigration record of a certain Helmut Gorgass who booked passage with a Vatican Passport for South America from Debica in May of 1945. Remarkably spry, Nicolaus thought, for dead man eaten by a dog.
Berlin Builds a Wall
Only 48 hours after seeing their feet from under an automobile, Zerrissen had convinced himself that the entire conversation was a vodka induced hallucination. He had not laid eyes on Halina since, her being in class during the day, and his being back at his flat at night. One aspect of the hallucination lingered, however. The engineering challenge did appeal to his instincts of problem solving and would be a welcome distraction. But are gimmicks, gadgets, and clever inventions the solution to life’s problems?
Still intrigued by the challenge, Zerrissen sat at his workbench to draw up his ideas for a mine detector which, even if Nicolaus and Halina come out of a vodka bottle, he might make use of himself. His first challenge was procurement. This was not Die Kuppel where expensive parts and rare chemicals were on hand at no cost, where nothing was beyond reach or no request unreasonable. Here, in modern day East Berlin, a lump of coal requires an hour in line at double the price of yesterday’s coal.
Looking around the shop for parts he might appropriate for the purpose, he noticed for the first time an intruder among the objects usually accumulating on the workbench: pistons, a carburetor partially laid bare, an oil can full of bolts, another full of screws. A stick and twig contraption with a wind-up crank, welded together from repurposed part plucked from the oil-stained cardboard boxes parked in various cubby holes around the shop. Turning the crank wound a spring that, when released, made a slithery object made of rubber and felts squirm and wag its legs, as if crawling up the branch. It was a caterpillar, but not a pretty one. It was black, odd shaped, with red spots. Someone with the skill to make this could have chosen a more beautiful insect, but Zerrissen had to admit it match very closely the caterpillars he sees in trees and grass around Berlin. Who could make this amazing toy, and, more curious, why leave it here?
At the end of the workday, Zerrissen walked autonomically back his assigned flat like the wind-up caterpillar on his workbench, at which point he concluded that it was a gift from Halina, and the conversation days ago was not a hallucination.
Before spending any more time considering implications, he passed a store with a rare television in its window. A newscaster was explaining that a boy from a local collective had been seduced by the West to steal a crop duster airplane so the West could study it and copy it as their own to help with their failing crops. Unfortunately, so goes the story, the boy was killed as he lost control of the plane at Potsdamer Place. The same reporter described how crops were failing in the West. Zerrissen reflected that despite the failures, their shop windows were as full of bread, vegetables, and stylish, cotton dresses, as they were of transistor radios and televisions. The East Germans should learn how to fail
crops so bountifully.
A blocky and unimaginative concrete structure indistinguishable from a thousand others across Eastern Europe, Zerrissen’s building housed workers when off duty, like insects in a collector’s specimen box. Each had a single window that did not open, in what State propaganda sold as the pinnacle of architectural expression, pure Bauhaus. In reality, mock Bauhaus chic arrived conveniently as the fastest and least expensive way to meet a five-year housing plan. The building exterior was coated with the same brownish-gray paint that covered every building in the Russian zone of Germany, probably the result of some Five-Year Plan for paint as well. He strolled carelessly amid the clutter of decline - the empty vodka bottles, used condoms, unmatched mittens, moth-eaten wool caps, and a tricycle missing a wheel, smashed as if run over by a lorry, sending them skittering across the broken tiled floor.
Without bothering to check whether the elevator had been repaired, its door propped open by a shopping cart, Zerrissen shuffled past the open door of Comrade Superintendent, which he kept ajar to help him monitor foot traffic. Through the gap, Zerrissen could see his TV, a gift from the State as a reward for his services reporting on his tenants.
Zerrissen had no television, but the programming was mostly propaganda anyway. They signed off every evening in time for good workers to be in bed, as the State-owned media reasoned, but not before broadcasting worn film loops, including scenes of Communist worker glory, vast fields of wheat, hydroelectric dams, and cosmonauts. So many cosmonauts.
He pondered the white pressure suits of the cosmonauts, looking at their enormous helmets with the red hammer and sickle, positioned right in the center above the cosmonaut’s eyebrows like a bhindi.
Once again, he managed to find the correct door of his own cubical despite their all being identical, steadied himself on the doorknob with the other, but the door eased open, the universal sign that the Stasi, KGB, or both have already helped themselves in, as they were fond of doing, just to keep its citizens on their toes.
Apparatus 33: Dead Man Switch Page 9