Confession with Blue Horses

by Sophie Hardach

  *

  When I got home, I found an email from my old friend Sandy in my inbox. It was short and carefully formatted, the kind of email you rewrite several times before pressing ‘send’. It said:

  Dear Ella,

  For as long as I can remember, people have been suspicious of me. First because my mother left for the West. Then, after the fall of the wall, because people accused my father, and by extension myself, of some unsavoury dealings with certain people.

  You contacted me in the hope that I might know what happened to your brother. I do not know what happened to your brother. I do, however, remember the summer you asked me about. I remember the pain I felt when I heard that you had tried to leave, without even telling me, or saying goodbye. In light of our conversation, I now realise that you were similarly disappointed by my behaviour after your return, though it is easy to explain. I could not be associated with the daughter of another escapee. This, I always thought, would have been obvious to you.

  In my own experience, travel, mindfulness and the discipline of a spiritual routine can all be very helpful in coming to terms with the past. I have no desire at all to return to Germany, and was surprised to hear that you are in Berlin. But we all have to find our own paths in life.

  I am sorry I was not a better friend to you.

  With much love

  I noticed that she had not signed it, perhaps because she had not wanted to sign as Sandy, but could not bring herself to use her ashram name with me. At first I bristled at the tone, at that somewhat sedated voice of retreats and meditation centres everywhere. It saddened me that my wild, rebellious friend had been pacified. Then I thought, it’s very sweet that she did this. She did not have to do this. She went all the way to India, and here I am, chasing her online. I wrote a reply thanking her, and promising not to disturb her peace again.

  *

  The artists were in the kitchen, talking about the rising rents in Berlin. Was it time to look for an alternative? But where else offered the same combination of vast post-industrial studio spaces and cheap living costs? Detroit? Minsk? Chernobyl? (A bitter laugh at that one.)

  One woman had constructed a wheelie suitcase with a screen that picked up random broadcast signals: security videos from shops, and even grainy pictures of sleeping babies and toddlers from the baby monitors in the flats around us. The images of the babies and toddlers cut right through me. The very monitors that were keeping them safe were broadcasting their signals out into the city, dissolving all barriers, exposing them to the public.

  I was a little cagey with the artists at the residence. I did not tell them about my search, for example. I did not want my life to flash up on their screens and be made into art. I told them I’d come to Berlin because I was creatively stuck and hoped for renewal, which at least was not that far from the truth. When they asked what I was working on, I mumbled something about the topography of memory.

  The only one I confided in, and even then just a little, was the Argentinian, because her own family had been trade unionists and had suffered under the old dictatorship there. We spent some time talking about parents and politics and at one point she said that in Chile and Argentina many dissidents’ children had been forcibly adopted. She did not look at me when she said that. There in South America it was the grandmothers who were driving the search for the lost grandchildren.

  ‘And when they find them,’ I said, my heart beating faster, ‘are the grandchildren glad, or would they rather have been left in peace?’

  ‘Some are glad.’ She touched my arm. ‘Those who are glad, are really glad.’

  *

  On Sunday, Aaron and I met up in the Mauerpark. We dodged footballs and out-of-control tricycles, then took a narrow, overgrown path along the rail tracks. I told him about my meeting with Frau Jankowitz, and he listened carefully without interrupting.

  We walked at the same speed, quite briskly, without hurrying. For so long I had not done anything in a pair, and it struck me what a pleasure it was to go on a walk with someone, and how different it was from walking by yourself. Aaron pointed out things I would never have noticed, like a tiny plastic Eiffel Tower that lay half hidden by the grass, or a crumpled piece of paper with a crossed-out poem on it. He collected these scraps in a small metal tin that he carried in his back pocket.

  ‘When you work in an archive, you can’t help but start to see the whole world as an archive.’ He drew a wide circle with his hands. ‘If you think about it, everything could be archived. And then you get to the point where it seems unfair not to archive something.’

  ‘Because it would be like saying, no one is going to care about this plastic Eiffel Tower, ever.’

  ‘Exactly. And who are we to make that decision?’

  ‘I saw a bathtub just like ours in an exhibition at your archive.’

  ‘That’s what I mean! One day someone might put this poem in a display case. And the tower.’

  ‘And us.’

  ‘And this whole city.’

  I nudged him. ‘And then you’ll be there with your metal tin full of treasures.’

  ‘Fifty years from now, this Eiffel Tower could be worth millions.’

  ‘That’s what hoarders say.’

  ‘Archivists are basically hoarders.’ He picked up a stone, turned it over in his hand, put it back.

  ‘What was wrong with it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But you didn’t add it to your collection!’

  ‘Of course not. It’s just a stone.’

  ‘Poor stone.’ I picked it up and put it in my pocket. ‘I’m going to create an alternative collection of everything you reject.’ I was about to say something else when I looked up and saw the Bösebrücke.

  ‘That’s where that man was shot,’ I said and pointed at the bridge. ‘The one who tried to escape through the allotments.’

  We walked up to the photo display of protesters breaching the wall. It all seemed so fantastical now. One day the only reminder of the wall would be signs saying ‘Mauerweg’, and people would pay them no more attention than they did to medieval city walls and gates. I showed Aaron the little memorial for the man who’d been shot.

  ‘Is there one for your dad?’ Aaron asked.

  ‘A memorial stone? In Hungary? I don’t think so. I mean, that was… a different situation.’ I could feel the familiar tension in my neck and jaw, the physical strain of trying to find the right words. ‘I think what happened was… he wrestled with the guard, and a shot was fired. It was an accident. I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I massaged my temples. ‘I don’t know what happened. I was in the forest, I didn’t see anything. I think it was an accident.’

  The tension had spread to my chest. Minutes ago I had felt so light, so contented. Now the old heaviness was back.

  ‘He was such a lovely dad,’ I said. It sounded trite. I would never find the words to do him justice. Aaron said nothing, just listened, which was nice.

  We sat down on a bench under a white lilac bush.

  ‘When you gave me that file, I really thought it had all the answers,’ I continued. ‘But it doesn’t, or maybe I’m just not seeing it.’

  ‘That other prisoner could be helpful. Frau Benn?’

  ‘Frau Benedikt. I’m not so sure. She seems to be avoiding me.’ I sighed. ‘There’s someone else though. I don’t know if you noticed, but the file mentions the name of her interrogator. It took me about two seconds to find him online.’

  ‘Her interrogator?’ He stared at me. ‘You sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘He must know everything, right?’

  ‘Do you want me to come along?’

  I hadn’t expected that. ‘You would do that?’

  ‘If you think it would help.’

  ‘That’s really generous.’

  I leaned back and closed my eyes.

  ‘I’m so glad you decided to get in touch with me,’ I said.

  ‘Are you?’ He sounded uneasy.


  I opened my eyes. ‘Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Let me show you something.’ I took the photo of the blue horses from my pocket. It was a little creased from all that handling and carrying around. He took his time with it, studied it with slow concentration.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ he said eventually. ‘Early twentieth-century?’

  ‘Ha, no, it’s from the eighties. Neo-Expressionism, or pseudo-Expressionism, if one wants to be unkind.’

  ‘Did your mother paint it?’

  ‘A friend. But my mother used to draw those three horses in her letters to me. And then I found this photo between the pages of some art books that she left me. That can’t be a coincidence, right?’

  ‘Who knows.’ He looked at me, concerned. ‘Sometimes people do just leave photos in books.’

  ‘You think I’m reading too much into all of this?’

  ‘I’m the wrong person to ask.’ He shook his head. ‘I probably read too much into everything.’

  ‘Here.’ I held out the photo. ‘Take it, for your tin.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It hasn’t brought me much luck, has it?’

  He hesitated, then carefully stored it away in his satchel. I felt an unexpected sense of relief.

  28

  ONE MORNING, FRAU BENEDIKT called me and asked if I could come to Heiligensee right away. She would meet me at the cafe by the station.

  I arrived at the cafe wondering if she was actually going to show up. A couple in their twenties were sitting at the window table, dipping two long spoons into a tall glass of ice cream and chocolate sauce and feeding each other. Outside, a group of lunching mothers were pushing their prams back and forth with one hand.

  I ordered a black coffee and watched the door. A homeless woman shuffled towards the mothers. A few awkwardly fumbled for their purses and dug out a few coins, eyes averted. The woman was perhaps in her sixties, though it was hard to tell; the deep lines, bloated face and leathery skin could have been from booze rather than age. I had already noticed her outside the station; she had sat on the kerb, smoking, her elbows on her knees. Her hair hung over her shoulders in dirty blond spirals, her tracksuit was stained and threadbare.

  Such women always seemed like spectral warnings to me, ghosts from one of my possible futures, and I half pitied, half feared them. In a crowd of people it was always me they approached, as if recognising a kindred spirit, or an apprentice of sorts. So I was not surprised when this homeless woman walked towards my table. I opened my wallet for change, hoping to get rid of her before Frau Benedikt showed up.

  She waved away my change, dumped her torn plastic bag on the chair next to me, opened her mouth and lisped through a row of grey and crooked front teeth: ‘Sorry I’m late. Got held up.’

  Blood rushed to my face. I was still holding the coins, which I now placed on my saucer, as if I had only been counting out a tip.

  ‘Thank you for making the time,’ I stammered. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘A beer and a schnapps, darling, that would be nice. And a packet of fags, if you don’t mind.’

  I fetched the cigarettes from the shop next door. When I came back, she was already on to her second schnapps.

  ‘Schnapps glasses were bigger in the GDR,’ she said, tapping her glass. ‘That was the only good thing about it, really. We drank more than the Hungarians, we drank more than the Poles!’

  She downed her schnapps and ordered another one. The fag breaks and the shot glasses dictated the rhythm of the next hour. I asked her about my mother and their time in prison, she fed me a few precious details, and then she drifted off into general complaints about the state of Germany then and now, about her string of ex-husbands, about the foreigners who were ruining the country. The next schnapps refreshed her focus and allowed me to ask more questions, until she drifted off again. Yet she never seemed drunk. I felt no guilt at all for feeding her addiction, only greed for everything she knew about my mother.

  ‘I met her in the work brigade at Hoheneck,’ she said, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Castle Hoheneck, in fact; it was a real castle, you know. The water in the bathrooms came straight from the mountains, those Erzgebirge mountains with the tin and silver mines, and I swear it tasted of metal. And so cold! Like putting your head in a freezer. There were ghosts in that place as well, prisoners from a hundred years ago mostly, because it used to be a jail under the Kaiser and then a jail under the Nazis and then our guys took over and guess what they did, put their own prisoners in there, of course. It was convenient, I suppose; all the dungeons were still there, and the cells. Oops.’ She coughed. ‘Dry throat, do you mind…’

  I ordered her a glass of water, but she coughed again and said she preferred beer.

  ‘So, the ghosts, some believed in them but I didn’t. To be honest we didn’t need any dead people wandering around to be scared, the living ones were bad enough. A dozen to a cell or more, the child murderers with the politicals, the thieves with the arsonists. There was one who’d drowned her toddler in a bathtub, another who’d stuffed her baby into the washing machine and turned it on. One who’d locked her children in her flat and gone to stay at her lover’s house for a month, and when she came back they’d died of hunger. So they were all charming company, really. Thanks, love.’

  She drank her beer.

  ‘But the creepiest thing was, all the child murderers were completely obsessed with children. You should have seen them – whenever we got out pictures of our kids, they were all over them. Look at that one, isn’t she cute, isn’t she adorable? Like that. Still sends shivers down my spine.’

  ‘There wasn’t a special wing for political prisoners?’

  ‘What special wing? Everyone was lumped together. We even had two old concentration camp guards in there with us: the Blonde Angel of Ravensbrück and the Beast of Ravensbrück. Not that the Angel was blonde any more, she’d gone grey and white; she’d been in there for decades. She really loathed the politicals. Whenever a bunch of them were bought by the West, she’d hiss: “Into the urn with you lot, into the soup!” and that sort of thing. But the Beast was nice enough, if you ask me. She was in our sewing unit, that was the unit your mother was in as well. I got along fine with the Beast. She worked all the time, even though she was half blind, and when we asked her what she wanted to do if she ever got released, she said, move to a place with a forest and water, where I can work. That was all she wanted to do, work, work, work. I wonder if she’s still alive. Probably not, she’d be over a hundred now. Where was I? Your mother. That’s right, your mother was in my sewing unit. Which was an OK unit, not like some of the other ones where everyone was at each other’s throats all the time. What we did have was quite a few people who tried to swallow needles or who, I don’t know, pushed the needles under their skin, like this, to get a few days in the sick station or because they wanted to kill themselves, or maybe they just wanted attention. And lots of people tried to swallow forks and knives, that happened pretty much all the time. But most of the time we just sat there embroidering cushions and it was OK, no worse than the other units.’

  I sat up. ‘Cushions? What kind of cushions?’

  ‘Nothing fancy, just those little blue flowers, forget-me-nots,’ Frau Benedikt said.

  Cushion covers embroidered with little flowers. Not as bad as the rest; slightly unpleasant.

  ‘She hated embroidered cushions.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not surprised; I can’t stand the sight of them either. Another beer, darling, do you mind? My throat’s dry as dust from all this talking.’ She raised her empty glass, and the waitress gave her a wary nod.

  ‘Did she ever talk about herself? Or about her family?’

  ‘All the time; she talked about her family all the time.’ Frau Benedikt wiped her mouth. ‘We really worked hard in there, you know. These days you see everyone having a good time on benefits, but back then…’

 
; ‘What did she say about us?’

  ‘I honestly can’t remember, it was all such a long time ago. Thanks, darling. And another schnapps, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘When she was at Hoheneck, my mother gave up my brother for adoption,’ I said. ‘Were you aware of that?’

  Frau Benedikt chewed her wet lower lip. She seemed to be weighing her options. After a while she said: ‘Yeah, well, that was a bit complicated. I kind of had a hand in that. See, because we were working side by side we got to know each other quite well. So I told her about how I grew up in care. I said, look, here you’re the dirt of the dirt, right? In a children’s home, it’s the same, but worse, I said. Children’s homes are really just like Hoheneck, but for smaller people, and there are even more beatings, and in the evenings the older boys corner you in the bathroom and pull down your pants and so on, that’s what I said, cause it was true. And your mother said, that’s terrible, my boy’s in care. And I said, good luck to him then, cause it’s even worse when you’re the child of an enemy of the state. Other children get a birthday cake, you get nothing. Other children get taken to the zoo, you’re told to stay behind. You look forward to a group hike in the forest, can’t sleep because you’re so excited, guess what, you’re not allowed to come along. Why? Because Mama’s a traitor, because Mama’s an enemy of the state. And you’re the one paying for it, until you hate Mama more than you hate the people who took you away.’

  ‘You told my mother all that?’

  ‘It was true, and anyway I didn’t have a choice.’