Aaron pushed the final pieces into place. Right at the end, the text turned on itself and ordered its own execution:
For the secrecy of specifi—— and tasks we recommend the compl—— destruction of operative proc—— and files.
‘Finished!’ Aaron pushed hard against the desk, rolled to the other end of his office and did a little twirl in his chair. He logged the report in the database. With a personal file, it was always worth checking if anyone had put in a request to see it. It was satisfying when you got a match, when the computer told you that someone was indeed waiting to read the very pages you’d just glued back together. Though he’d be surprised if the former staff of Office Suhl were yearning to read up on their final days.
He went over to Bernd’s office, where two large scanners were patiently processing another batch of shredded paper. Bernd was fiddling with the machines with an air of vexed concentration, flitting between the black rubber band that fed bits of paper into the scanner and a screen that showed the final reconstructed page.
‘A whole page before noon! Only fifty million to go!’ Aaron mimed an explosion. ‘Boom. You’re so paying for lunch.’
‘I bet it’s a list,’ Bernd said without looking up. ‘Lists only count half.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since fairness.’
‘It’s a list of offices being ransacked, though.’
‘So?’
‘So I should get an extra point for historical significance.’
The rubber band stopped. A small amber light by the feeding slot started to flash. Bernd sighed. Aaron looked at the screen. It was an interrogation, and Bernd was right, those were much harder than lists. The beginning was usually pretty formulaic: the rejected request for a lawyer, the tired pleading, the pressure to confess. But after that, each interrogation charted its own course. Evidence was presented, alibis probed, friends and family members dragged into the business. Sometimes you could spend days piecing together what you thought was the opening only to realise that it was the middle section, where the prisoner started to cave in.
‘I can give you a hand after lunch,’ Aaron offered.
‘Yes, please. We’ve got a request in for this one, and he’s been waiting for some time.’
Aaron read on a bit. Poor guy. The interrogators threatened to arrest his son if he remained silent. Yet even after he co-operated, and gave them plenty of names, the final line of the interrogation read:
STATEMENT: We confirm that we will be inviting your son in for questioning.
‘Do we have the son’s interrogation?’ Aaron asked.
Bernd pointed at a tray with a few big, hand-torn pieces, the kind that could be reassembled in no time. ‘I think that’s the son. It was all in the same bag. Do you want to do his pages, and I’ll finish the dad?’
‘Sure.’ Aaron slid one of the larger sections towards himself and started reading.
‘Come on.’ Bernd slapped his shoulder. ‘Schnitzel time.’
*
They took a little detour on their way to the canteen. Bernd wanted to show Aaron a wing that had previously been declared off limits. Aaron took it as a compliment that he was gradually being allowed into the more secretive parts of the building, the stacks where files with ancient military codes were stored, or even just the little room right at the back where Bernd kept an Italian espresso machine.
‘See those guys over there?’ Bernd pointed at a group of men and women near retirement age who were filling their thermoses with normal filter coffee. ‘Those are the elephants,’ Bernd continued once they were out of earshot. ‘They’ve been here forever, they’re all ex-Stasi in fact, and they know the place inside out. It’s very handy.’
‘Oh.’ Aaron looked back. ‘They’re not in jail?’
Bernd thought for a moment.
‘Well, it’s not like they were torturers or anything like that. They just worked here as – I don’t know. Stasi archivists, I guess?’
‘Aren’t you worried they might…’
‘… destroy files?’ They had reached the canteen, and Bernd picked up a tray and drummed his fingers on it. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, we’d notice, right? And you do need someone who knows where the bodies are. So to speak.’
‘Hm.’
Aaron walked along the counter, considering the merits of schnitzel and chips versus a Greek salad. He put the salad on his tray and immediately regretted it, but it was too late, he’d touched it now and the lady behind the counter was already giving him a warning look.
They sat down by a large window overlooking the courtyard. Aaron never quite grew used to the monumental scale of everything, these courtyards that went on forever, the doors that led to corridors that led to more doors that led to more corridors. He sometimes dreamed of these corridors, just like he sometimes dreamed of the Stasi man in his office, hunched over his desk, filing his reports, inspecting the dirt under his fingernails, contemplating how much longer to leave X in solitary confinement.
With a faint pang of guilt he realised that he was treating his internship as a thriller. Which was probably inappropriate given how much suffering these millions of pages documented, but then again, it was thrilling; certainly more thrilling than attending post-graduate research seminars at his university back in London.
Bernd had wisely chosen the schnitzel.
‘They like to keep to themselves,’ he said, and it took Aaron a moment to realise he was still talking about the Stasi elephants. ‘It’s best not to bother them unless you need help finding a folder, and you’ve asked every other person in the building, and no one has the faintest idea.’
‘You really don’t find it weird to have them around?’
Bernd laughed. ‘I’m from Bochum, all these East Germans are kind of a mystery to me anyway. But if you think about it, I mean, one of my granddads was in the SS and the other worked in a bomb factory. I’m not going to freak out over someone who helped the Stasi stack some shelves.’
*
On the way back to his office, Aaron passed the reading room where ordinary people could view their own files. An archivist was pushing in a trolley stacked high with folders. Aaron proudly recognised the printed name and number on one of them. K/05.671 had kept him busy for more than a week: he had reconstructed five whole pages in this folder, photocopied them and prepared them for the viewing, carefully blacking out any information on third parties.
The man waiting for these pages in the reading room was about to find out that on a cold January morning in the early 1980s, his clandestine meeting with other peace activists in a small church in Prenzlauer Berg had been spied on by at least three informants. What did he expect, Aaron thought; Prenzlauer Berg was right next to the border. Stupid place for a peace meeting. But still, he felt for the guy. He would read about IM Brücke, IM Schlosser and IM Luchs, and even with some of the information concealed, he would surely realise pretty quickly that they were his mates Oleg, Kalle and Detlef. Plus Pfarrer Hof, the young vicar, who went by the codename IM Sebastian. It must have been getting pretty crowded in that church.
Aaron very rarely came across proper spies in his reports, proper Stasi men with guns and multiple passports. His bread and butter were the Unofficial Collaborators, or IM, for Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter. The husband who reported on the wife, the favourite student on the teacher. There was the man who denounced his nineteen-year-old brother-in-law for reading 1984 by George Orwell: three years in jail for ‘agitation against the state’. And, of course, people like this vicar, rushing off after choir practice to meet his handler down in the crypt.
He peered through the window in the door. Only one visitor, an old man, sat among the rows of desks and plastic chairs in the reading room. The archivist unloaded the trolley. Her lips were moving, but Aaron could not hear what she was saying. She placed her hand on the different folders, probably explaining in library whispers what was what, and where to start. Then she discreetly withdrew.
The ol
d man opened one of the folders and began to read. He propped up his head with one hand and sat there like a monument, like Fate going through the book of life, perfectly still except for the hand that turned the pages, and the eyes that scanned the pages. His face was gaunt and lined, and his free hand trembled a little. When he was about halfway through his file, he lifted his head. He remained like that for some time. Then without another glance at the open folder, he stood up and left the room. He walked past Aaron, walked down the corridor and disappeared into the courtyard.
*
At his desk, alone with the shreds, Aaron felt that unease again, that sense that something was not quite right. He tried to push the feeling away and focus on the torn-up interrogation. We will invite your son for questioning. This was it, the son’s transcript. Piece by piece, it emerged from the scraps. The son sounded young and frightened. He did not even ask for a lawyer. Three lines into the transcript, he was already saying that he would do anything, report on anyone, if only they let him go. On the second page, he agreed to report on his father.
It mattered, Aaron told himself. In the end these piles of paper could explain someone’s life to them. Why their brother died in custody; why their daughter, from one day to the next, lost her place at medical school; why their own husband spied on them. If such things could ever be explained.
He reached for his well-used Stasi dictionary, a white hardback entitled Definitions Regarding Political-Operative Work. Aaron had spent many hours immersing himself in this book, both because he was fascinated by the Orwellian codewords and because he had few friends in Berlin. He flicked through it.
Hatred. An intense and deep feeling that can fundamentally steer human actions; H. forms a crucial foundation for the passionate and unforgiving fight against the enemy.
Interesting, and not irrelevant to his troubled mood, but not the word he was looking for. The entry he settled on sounded much more mundane, but it had been on his mind for some time. It was about Gewohnheit, habit.
Habit. A recurring action that through its repetition becomes mostly unconscious, creating the desire to do it again.
Gewohnheit came from wohnen, to dwell, to inhabit. Sometimes an activity could become a home, a shelter. The dictionary entry gave some instructions for making such a habit, such a Gewohnheit, out of spying. The handler was to create a pleasant, comforting routine, until his informers came to see their meetings as sanctuaries in the midst of their stressful lives, as restorative breaks where praise and encouragement were doled out. The goal was to get the informer used to the process of reporting on others until it became a natural and even enjoyable activity they no longer questioned. Habit, not the promise of thrills and rewards, was the secret of a successful handler. See also: ‘Trust’, on building an informer’s trust in their handler; ‘Betrayal’, on the detection and consequences of betrayal; ‘Doppelzüngler’, on dealing with unreliable sources.
Aaron had read this entry many times. There was something about it he could not shake off. A recurring action that through its repetition becomes mostly unconscious, creating the desire to do it again. Spying on the intimate lives of strangers was exciting, no doubt about it. He knew that feeling well.
He thought of the old man in the reading room. What had he seen that made it impossible to go on? Aaron tried to remember the details of the report he had put together. Those three friends, and the vicar. Maybe they were still his friends, grey-haired men who met up to play cards once a week. Maybe the vicar was still his vicar, hanging in there long past retirement.
He closed the dictionary and went to see Bernd next door. The machines were humming contentedly now, spitting out image after image on the screen.
‘Thirty pages in less than half an hour.’ Bernd looked very pleased. ‘When they work, they really work.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘If you must.’
‘Do you ever remove pages from a file before you send it down to the reading room?’
‘Only if they concern third parties.’
‘How about things that would just be really upsetting?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a son betraying his dad.’
‘Ah.’ Bernd looked up from the screen. ‘You’ve finished that interrogation already?’
‘Just the bits where the son turns against his family.’
Bernd looked confused. ‘But that’s why people read their files. They want to find out who betrayed them.’
‘I don’t think the dad wants to find out that his son betrayed him,’ Aaron said. ‘I think he wants to find out that some guy he never liked anyway betrayed him. Or that nobody betrayed him. If you think about it, he probably just wants to know what the Stasi had on him, and then get on with his life.’
‘You’ve never even met this man.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want him to read that his son turned against him, and so quickly too, within the first hour of the interrogation basically. I don’t want any dad to read that.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘We could leave out the son’s interrogation, and just give the dad the rest of the file. He can read all the other reports, there’ll be plenty of stuff.’
‘But you don’t know these people,’ Bernd repeated, clearly straining to understand.
‘I know more about their lives than they do.’
‘I see.’ Bernd sat down on the edge of the window sill. ‘Why not kill some other pages, while you’re at it?’
‘That’s not what I…’
‘Why not take out everything that’s potentially upsetting? Why not just hand him an empty file – no, wait – why not just write a less upsetting version and give him that?’
‘It was just a question.’
‘That man has been waiting to see his file for years. You think you can judge what he should or shouldn’t know about his own life?’
‘That’s not quite how…’
‘Look, I know you mean well. But working here is a great, great privilege. It comes with a huge responsibility.’ Bernd shook his head. ‘If I can give you one piece of advice, try and be a bit more careful about saying things like that. To tell you the truth, we have people here – not that I’m one of them, but I’m just telling you – we have people here who really don’t like the idea of having foreign interns at all, and not just because of the, you know, language problems.’
‘Actually, my grandparents were German. I don’t have any problems with the language.’
Even as he said it, Aaron felt the futility of his defence; insisting you were good at someone else’s language was as pointless as insisting that you were funny, or charming, or a good listener.
‘You really don’t want people here to think – and I’m just say-ing this as someone who’s trying to help – you don’t want them to think that you’re planning to meddle with the documents.’
That wasn’t what I was suggesting, Aaron thought. But there was no point in trying to explain.
‘People fought hard to get these files,’ Bernd said before he finally returned his attention to his scanner.
‘I know.’
Aaron went back to his office. He hated conflict. His idea had not seemed particularly taboo-breaking to him, but maybe it was; maybe this was one of countless archival taboos he was not even aware of, and might violate at any moment. Maybe the next conflict was only one innocent blunder away.
He should have become a medievalist after all. At least five generations back, that would be his own bit of advice to budding historians, at least five generations back, and make sure there are no survivors, because they only complicate things. Imagine if Anne Boleyn went up to an archivist, wanting to read her file. The awkwardness. Though at least she would already know who betrayed her.
The building was quiet. All the other interns had gone home. It was unhealthy, spending so much time with these files; he knew it was unhealthy.
He packed his bag, a beaten brown leathe
r satchel he’d been given by his dad. What if this guy were my dad was not a helpful way to approach a job like this. What if this were me. What if this were my son. None of these thoughts was helpful, none of them was relevant. Match white paper with white paper, match cream with cream. Match torn edge with torn edge. Match pencil with pencil, match ink with ink. He slung the bag over his shoulder. Match page with page, match line with line, and don’t think about the people who will read this, people like that old man in the reading room.
Before he left the office, he took one last look at the son’s interrogation. He could just slip it into his bag, drop it into the next canal. Save a stranger some pain. But Bernd would know, of course. And he liked this internship, and did not want to get fired and charged with destroying archival property. These decisions were difficult, and they were also very simple.
Aaron turned around, switched off the light and closed the door behind him.
*
Aaron was renting a room in a flat in Mitte owned by two architects, Petra and Cem. They were in their forties but partied with a stamina and determination that made Aaron feel like a geriatric carer in charge of two grandchildren. Sometimes they came home from an after-party just as he went out to work. Even more confusingly, there were times when they all arrived home together in the evenings, Aaron from work, and Petra and Cem from an after-after-after-party.
They were friendly and often asked him if he wanted to join them, but he had become somewhat cautious after a night out that ended up in a sex club, or perhaps not really a sex club but just a club where many of the people on the dancefloor were naked, and were having sex. In theory Aaron liked the idea of being the kind of person who went to a club, danced a bit, took their clothes off and had spontaneous sex with the person next to them, but he also knew that in reality, he was not that kind of person. That night, he had mostly worried that people would think he was a voyeur. When he’d joked to Cem about it, Cem had laughed and said that was nothing to worry about, because Cem himself was an actual voyeur, which explained why he enjoyed these clubs.
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