‘Why did you go to the prisoners’ reunion?’ I asked, to change the subject.
‘I wanted to be heard.’ She adjusted the doily on the table. ‘Yes, I wanted to be heard. Why do you think I agreed to speak to you? For the same reason, to be heard. You should see the rumours they’re spreading about us these days, when it wasn’t half as bad as they say. You were doing it yourself just now, jumping to conclusions about that water cell.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t bad for you because you weren’t a prisoner.’
‘And why wasn’t I a prisoner? Because I respected the law! That’s what no one dares to say these days, and whoever does gets slammed. Fleeing the Republic was a crime, people knew that, they knew the consequences. It’s just that some people always think they’re better than the rest. Listen, how much did the West pay for your mother? Probably more than my annual salary. If you think about it, she got what she wanted in the end: a ticket to the other side, first class probably.’
I refused to snap at the bait. There was no use arguing with Frau Jankowitz, it would only end with her throwing me out.
‘So what happened at the reunion?’
‘Well, they all got very upset with me.’
‘Including my mother?’
‘No, your mother treated me very politely, very respectfully.’
My mother, polite and respectful! Jankowitz was clearly making this up.
‘Did she remember you?’ I asked.
She avoided my eyes. ‘At Hohenschönhausen, one wasn’t allowed to talk to the inmates at all.’
Man durfte ja gar nicht mit den Insassen sprechen. My German had been sharpened by the past few conversations. I was beginning to catch nuances that had eluded me before, like Jankowitz’s slippery shift to the neutral, objective, general and absolute. As if all this was not really about her or my mother or the prison, but about a remote and untouchable rule, the not-talking-to-prisoners rule. Had we shaped the German language to create these moral loopholes, or had they always been there? Hannah Arendt had made a similar point about Eichmann’s love of stock phrases, but I knew that bringing up Eichmann would swiftly end this meeting.
‘In any case one would have been too busy to chat,’ Frau Jankowitz continued. ‘But she was a little bit famous, your mother. The others were only referred to by their cell numbers, but her we called die Waschfrau, the laundry woman.’
‘Why?’
‘For some reason your mother was familiar with the rules of the prison. I don’t know how she managed that. She knew that prisoners had the right to wear their own clothes if they wished. So she insisted on keeping her own clothes, but our prison laundry only accepted prison clothes. Which meant she had to wash her clothes in the sink in her cell.’
It pleased me, this tiny act of individuality. I recognised my mother in it, her stubbornness, her insistence on being different, and yes, her belief perhaps that she was better than the rest.
Without thinking, I reached out and ate one of the jam biscuits, which earned me a sharp little smile from Frau Jankowitz, as if she had known all along that I would eat her biscuits in the end.
‘What else did she do in her cell?’ I asked.
‘What they all did, I suppose. During the day they had to sit on a chair and place their hands on the table like this, and at night they had to lie on their backs with their hands on top of the blanket, like this. That’s why we had to switch the light on and off at night, to check that they were complying. Now people call it sleep deprivation, but we needed the light to ensure that they were in the correct position, that was all.’
‘My mother sometimes still slept like that when she was at home.’
‘How peculiar.’ Frau Jankowitz looked intrigued. ‘I thought they would revert to something more comfortable when they were back home.’
‘I don’t think she dared to.’ It was impossible to move this woman; she seemed to have no sense of contrition. I took a sip of cold coffee. ‘And during the day? What did they do during the day?’
‘Nothing, really. They would just sit there until it was time for the next interrogation.’
‘Right.’ I shifted in my seat. My shoulder brushed against one of the succulents, a plump and spiky little plant that left a few needles in my jumper. The room was too warm, and oppressively cluttered with its dangling plants and trinkets. The scent of sweet violets felt overpowering, cloying, like air freshener in a hot car. Beads of sweat glistened in the fine hairs that lined Frau Jankowitz’s thin upper lip. She dabbed her face with a white handkerchief. I resisted the urge to open the window, or to pull down all that macramé.
‘My brother was taken away from us after my mother was arrested,’ I said. ‘My mother was looking for him. Did she say anything at the reunion you attended?’
‘Not to me, no.’ She bunched the handkerchief in her fingers and crossed her arms. New beads gathered on her lip.
‘That happened quite often, did it?’ I asked, feeling a little bolder. ‘That political prisoners had their children taken away?’
‘No, Fräulein Valentin, that didn’t happen at all, because we didn’t have any political prisoners in the GDR. People went to prison for breaking the law, just like in any other country, and when they did, the state made sure their children were taken care of.’
I noted her use of ‘Fräulein’, as if she wanted to emphasise my relative youth, my inexperience. And I wondered if Heiko had been adopted by someone like Frau Jankowitz, an ordinary East German following the rules and tending to her house plants. An image came to my mind of him in his high chair. He liked to eat with both hands at once, like a little gorilla, stuffing food into his mouth at double speed. When he did not like something, he dropped it on the floor, as if that were the only way to get rid of it. With infinite patience, Oma showed him what to do instead. Put it nicely by your plate, put it right there on the table if you don’t want it, look, like that. And one day, just as he was about to throw a piece of carrot on the floor, he stopped himself, and he put it by his plate.
Surely he remembered me too, even if it was just my voice, or my smell. Eyya! Eyya!
‘Fräulein Valentin?’
‘Yes. Yes, sorry.’
‘Have more.’ She pushed the platter towards me. ‘I can’t eat them. My doctor said, no more sugar.’
I dutifully ate another biscuit.
‘History is written by adults, isn’t it?’ I said.
She smiled pleasantly. ‘Well, yes, obviously. Though there are some very young authors.’
‘What I mean is, adults always tell it from their perspective, and then they say things like, oh, children forget, or, oh, children live in the moment anyway; children get over it. Even the word “tantrum”, if you think about it, that’s a very mean word. My brother sometimes got very upset over things that mattered deeply to him, but so do all of us, no? And he was so little, he didn’t yet know how to put on a mask for the world. He was very honest.’
I expected Frau Jankowitz now to extol the virtues of some ancient Prussian parenting style, and recommend rewarding honesty with a good hiding. But she nodded, and for the first time in this conversation we found some common ground.
‘Children have no power in this world. That’s a fact, a terrible fact.’ And she added, almost in an aside: ‘I do hope they found a good home for your brother.’
The trial was over, and no verdict had been reached. Frau Jankowitz might have been a particularly severe guard or a relatively gentle one, she might have mistreated my mother or behaved better than the rest; I would never know. She talked about the building site along the main road, and how it blocked the traffic. Then she told me the recipe for the biscuits, and then we ran out of things to say.
After a while, I gathered my jacket and bag. I thanked her for her openness. She responded with a relieved nod. Her shoulders relaxed, her fingers stopped fussing with the platter. In the end she was not that different from me. She had been frightened and now she was relieved because it had not been
that bad.
‘At Hohenschönhausen, did you ever meet a certain Hauptmann Kuboweit?’ I tried to make the question sound casual. ‘He was one of the interrogators.’
‘No,’ she said a little too quickly. ‘No, I never spoke to any of the interrogators, that was a completely different world from ours.’
‘You would have known their names, though? You would have known if…’
‘I’m sorry, I really can’t help you with that.’ She placed an unexpectedly firm hand on my back, guided me out into the hallway and opened the door. Cold, fresh air streamed in from the linoleum-covered staircase.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Why did you work as a guard in a prison like that?’
‘I had to make a living somehow, didn’t I?’ She played with her amber necklace. ‘We can’t all be glamorous young artists in London.’
There was a long silence.
‘I didn’t tell you I was an artist,’ I said. ‘Or that I lived in London.’
She smiled. ‘You did, you mentioned it right at the beginning.’
I knew I hadn’t.
I wanted to ask her if she went to the pub every Tuesday night for a little catch-up, as Katia had suggested; if it felt good to still know things about other people, and to surprise them with that knowledge. But Frau Jankowitz had already closed the door behind me.
27
I WAS ON THE tram back to Prenzlauer Berg when Katia rang. She had found someone who knew my mother from her second prison, Hoheneck. That prison had been in the mountains, or at least near them: the Erzgebirge mountains, well away from Berlin. The woman’s name was Frau Benedikt, and Katia said she was willing to meet me.
‘And another thing.’ Her voice was even raspier than usual. ‘I saw my son the other day.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ I hesitated. ‘I mean, was it?’
‘It was nice. I’m not going to say that he flung his arms around me and said, all is forgiven, Mutti. But he didn’t launch into his usual thing of saying I’d ruined his life, either.’
‘I’m so glad to hear that.’
‘Though I did ruin his life, I don’t deny that. Anyway, I said it would be nice to see him more often. You can’t force these things. We’ll see.’
‘Maybe we can all meet up one day.’
‘Hm. There’s an idea.’ She coughed, and then I heard her light another cigarette. ‘Good luck with Frau Benedikt, huh?’
*
Back in my room, I texted Tobi about the various developments. He replied immediately, sounding rather annoyed. I should not have gone to Hohenschönhausen without telling him, he wrote; that had not been part of our agreement. Was I in Berlin to find our brother or to dig up our mother’s secrets? I texted back explaining that it wasn’t like that. I was no longer directing the search; the search was directing me.
My phone rang.
‘You met with her prison guard?’ I could hear the steam blow out of Tobi’s nostrils.
‘Tobi, listen…’
‘Without even telling me? Have you gone completely mad?’
‘It happened so quickly. I called her and she was free the next day.’
‘You didn’t even bother to call.’
‘I wanted to get some proper results first.’
‘From Mama’s torturer?’
‘I’m sorry. I know I should have asked you first. I wish you were here.’
‘I can’t. Some of us have to work.’
‘If I only stick to nice people, my pool’s going to be pretty small,’ I said.
‘What about the guy at the archive?’
I hesitated. ‘He turned out to be very, very helpful.’
‘You mean he’s found the file? And you didn’t tell me?’
‘I wanted to read it myself first. Tobi, there are some really terrible things in there. I don’t think… I can just tell you what it says, if you want.’
There was a long pause.
‘I should read it though, shouldn’t I?’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘No, I want to.’ His voice wavered a bit. ‘It’s just, and this is not an excuse, it’s more like an admission. I don’t know if I’d understand everything.’
‘We can go through it together at some point. How about that? One day when I’m back in London. There’s nothing in there you don’t already know, Tobi.’
‘What about Heiko? Does it say anything about Heiko?’
‘Yes and no.’ Again I was reluctant to give him the whole truth. ‘There’s a picture of him, and of us. But, oh Tobi, it broke my heart. I can take a photo of it and send it to you, but it would break yours, too.’
Another long pause.
‘Maybe we can look at it together some time,’ he said, and I had a feeling this meant, never. I never, ever want to see this awful file; please, Ella, don’t ever show it to me. Tell me what I need to know, and keep the rest well away from me.
Hadn’t that always been our unspoken agreement? Hadn’t I always been his shield, his filter? To my friends in London, Tobi had always been my younger-elder brother, the sensible one, the one with the job and the money, the one who bailed me out, the one I called when I was in trouble. They never saw how it really was. This was how it really was. Of course, Tobi would never see the file. I would share with him what he needed to know, and protect him from the rest, so that he could continue to walk through life unharmed.
*
I spoke to Ute, the acquaintance who managed my lodgings, and she agreed to cut the rent if I cleaned the common areas and the cafe and checked in new guests. Gradually the rush of London life eased inside me and I adapted to the ambling pace of Berlin.
Frau Benedikt, the former inmate, proved hard to pin down. She cancelled two meetings, then left a long voicemail complaining that I had stood her up. I initially suggested several central, public places, one of the museums on the Museumsinsel for example. After the cancellations, I offered to meet her at a cafe in Heiligensee. It was her own neighbourhood, a West Berlin suburb right by where the wall used to be, the more remote part of it that went around the city. The shorter her journey, I reasoned, the greater the likelihood of her showing up.
Even then, she remained elusive. I took the S-Bahn all the way to Heiligensee, only to receive a text twenty minutes after our appointment saying she was not going to make it. I told myself to be patient. She was clearly reluctant to talk about her experiences, and would open up when she was ready.
Every morning I served the freelancers in the cafe their lattes and herbal teas, which they sipped all day over their laptops. The most shameless ones brought their own vegetable soup in thermos flasks, despite the big sign that said NO FOOD FROM THE OUTSIDE PLEASE, WE NEED TO MAKE A LIVING TOO!
In the evenings, I stalked Hauptmann Kuboweit online. I read everything about his coaching business, I knew all the forums that discussed his past as an interrogator. I could not decide whether I should contact him. Yes, he might have information about my brother. But I hated the idea of giving him the feeling that he still had power over us, that his silence or co-operation could shape the fate of our family. I did not want my search to depend on his goodwill.
*
One Saturday I took a bus out to the countryside, to a small village. It was a warm day and the slow old bus smelled of rubber warming in the sun. We passed lakes, a few abandoned factories, the odd Prussian manor house. In one hamlet a handful of people got on, all of them elderly. Then they got off at the next one and I was alone with the driver. When we arrived at the village, I wished him a nice day, and he looked surprised and thanked me.
From the village it was a good thirty-minute walk to the lake. I had last seen Sven’s studio in the summer. I hoped this would help me, that even if the human traces had been blurred by time, the trees and shrubs would help me orient myself.
The lake was much smaller than I remembered, not the vast, wild expanse of my memory, but a rather tame pon
d with a few weeping willows. I walked around it until I found the pier, or in any case, a pier. Instead of Sven’s Datsche, there was now a small hotel. A sign promised wellness and Kneipp baths. There was a woman at the reception desk who turned out to be the owner. She’d moved here from Munich, had bought the hotel a few years ago, and was unaware that a painter had once had his ramshackle studio here. But she beckoned over one of the cleaners, a woman about my age who was from the village. After some reflection she said that yes, she remembered there’d been a painter here; he used to come into the village occasionally and swap his paintings for eggs and milk and such. That’s all she could tell me. Her own parents had no interest in art and never took part in those swaps.
In the village itself most houses were boarded up. The only shop was boarded up, too. I found a little train station, but the rail tracks had been removed, for scrap presumably, and tall yellow grasses and wildflowers grew between the two platforms. On the side of the empty station building were an old election poster and a sign advertising the wellness hotel. I waited for the bus back to Berlin, one of two a day. The air smelled of dry grass, and of streets baking in the heat. In my bag were some simple, cheap crayons and a blank sketchbook. I sat down on the warm pavement and drew a sketch of a painter and a farmer trading canvases for eggs. Then I drew another sketch, of three blue horses. Then another, of a Datsche by a lake, and one of three raucous children tearing through a studio. They were fast and fun and cartoonish, and before I knew it, I’d filled the whole sketchbook. Three children splashing in a ridiculous pull-out bathtub. A little boy toddling about with a paint bucket on his head.
In the distance I could hear the bus. I tore out the sketch of the painter and the farmer, and slipped it under the door of the boarded-up shop behind me.
*
I did not want to harbour suspicions about the long-dead painter. Perhaps the border guard’s sudden appearance in that meadow had been pure bad luck. Or perhaps not. He had approached us just as we had been about to enter the forest, and his reinforcements had arrived pretty quickly. It was almost as if they had been waiting for us. Just because you swapped your paintings for eggs did not mean you’d swap your friends for freedom. Sitting on that bus, watching the sun go down behind the abandoned factories, I felt unexpectedly warmed inside, and grateful to Sven for letting us run about in his lakeside kingdom. If I ever found Heiko, I had to offer him more than bitter memories. I had to tell him about all the good things – the wild days in the countryside, the mishaps and laughter at home. Maybe I could show him the sketchbook, maybe he’d like that. It would be a start.
Confession with Blue Horses Page 19