Confession with Blue Horses

by Sophie Hardach

  ‘You terrorised my mother.’ I could hear my voice waver, but persisted. ‘You accused her of trying to murder us. You humiliated her. You destroyed our family, you completely destroyed us. You destroyed our lives, our home, you destroyed everything we had.’

  ‘Oh please!’ He shook his head. ‘Your mother sedated her own children. You may not want to hear this, but she could have killed you all.’

  ‘You took away my brother and told her that if she didn’t behave, you’d take away the others, too.’

  ‘I didn’t take him away. She gave him up for adoption long after she was transferred to another prison. I had no hand in that.’

  ‘You did nothing to prevent it, either.’

  ‘It was not within my power, but even if it had been – the adoption was ultimately in the boy’s best interest.’

  ‘How? How could taking him away possibly have been in his best interest?’

  ‘Because it gave your brother the chance of growing up in a proper home.’

  ‘We had a proper home!’

  ‘A proper home? Oh yes, a delightful home. What a bunch of model citizens you all were. And after reunification, your side really rose to the occasion. Did your mother ever tell you what her friends got up to then? I had shit thrown at my windows. People poisoned my dog. My son was beaten up at school, my daughter was held down and had her hair cut off. There are still lists circulating on the internet, vicious little vigilante lists that made life hell for anyone related to me. There aren’t many families called Kuboweit, you know.’

  I felt my face grow warm. ‘I had nothing to do with that. I’m here for my brother.’

  ‘And as I said…’

  ‘You must know where he was taken.’

  ‘I don’t.’ He finished his water and poured himself another glass.

  I tried a different tactic: ‘Look at it this way, this is your chance to make up for some of the things you did.’

  ‘Make up for what? I served my country, I helped prosecute criminals, I protected our loyal citizens. I have nothing to apologise for.’ He smiled. ‘How about you, Fräulein Valentin? You were in the Young Pioneers, weren’t you? We the Young Pioneers love the German Democratic Republic. When exactly do you think you would have started to rebel? At university? Or later, when you had a job? A family? Would you have risked all that?’

  ‘My parents did.’

  ‘And you’re grateful to them, are you?’

  ‘They had the right intentions.’ I wished I sounded more convincing.

  ‘Yes, the right intentions.’ He nodded, satisfied. ‘I had the right intentions, too.’

  ‘I’m not going to leave until you tell me. I’ll stay here for as long as it takes. I’ll be here when your wife comes home. When your son comes over, your daughter, your friends. If you throw me out, I’ll just come back. I’ll drill my way into your life.’

  ‘Oh, stop it.’

  ‘Tell me where he is.’

  He smiled. ‘Fine, of course I know where your brother is. And your mother knew – that surprises you, doesn’t it? Are you sure you want me to go on? Yes? Because you want to know everything, everything, don’t you; you people want to know everything, everything, everything. And you think that once you know absolutely everything, then – then what? Then you’ll be at peace? Then you’ll have us all beheaded? Fine, fine! You want to know what I told your mother. Well, I told her about your brother’s adoptive family.’

  ‘My mother knew where Heiko was?’

  ‘Yes. And she decided to leave it at that. You didn’t expect that, did you? Your mother could have contacted your brother, but she decided not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she saw him. I took her to see him. His mother – his adoptive mother if you want to call her that – had a stroke a few years ago. She’s in a retirement home now. He goes to visit her whenever he can; apparently he’s a wonderful son. He thinks his birth parents died in an accident, and by the way, he never spent a single night in a children’s home, he was fostered by this lovely couple and then adopted, but did that count for anything with your mother? No, she still insisted on seeing him. Anyway, I took your mother there, we sat in the park where they always went for a walk – I’d asked around, I knew their habits. We had to try a few times, but the third or fourth time, we spotted them. The mother’s in a wheelchair now; your brother was pushing her, they were chatting about something and laughing, the father was there as well. The mother was one of us, of course—’

  ‘What do you mean, one of you?’

  ‘Well, she worked for some ministry or other. They were loyal party members, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to adopt a child like that in the first place. I told your mother that. She wanted to know everything, didn’t she? I told her not to expect some sort of junior dissident. I told her your brother was quite loyal to the old guard. I had my sources. Anyway, she insisted on going to see him, but when we finally spotted them, she suddenly went very quiet. She just watched them for a bit. I think she went back a few more times, but eventually I got a phone call from her – she said she’d changed her mind, she wasn’t going to reveal herself to him. She wasn’t going to tell him, and she asked me not to tell anyone, either.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘Do you want to know?’

  I nodded.

  ‘She said he looked so happy. She said he looked so much happier than her other children, the children she had raised herself.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m sorry, Fräulein Valentin. But you did say you wanted to know.’

  ‘She didn’t say that. She can’t have said that.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘He looked so happy,’ I repeated numbly. ‘He is happy.’

  ‘They certainly seem like a very close and contented family, yes.’ His tone softened a little. ‘Before you allow yourself to get angry with your mother, consider that…’

  ‘I’m not angry with her.’ My hands were shaking. ‘Of course I’m not angry with her.’

  He looked happy. So much happier than her own children. That was how my mother had perceived us, that was how she had judged her influence on us. As if she had infected us. As if staying away from Heiko could protect him from the same disappointing fate.

  ‘If you ask me, your mother did something very noble, very selfless, very…’

  ‘I didn’t ask you,’ I said. ‘And I don’t care what you think.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ He folded his hands. I turned around and left the house. Outside, the air seemed colder than before.

  ‘Fräulein Valentin.’

  I looked back. He stood under the grey security camera, one hand on the door frame. ‘There are some things, maybe… I did tell your mother… when she came here, I did tell her that there were some things one wished one had done differently. But isn’t that the case for all of us?’

  36

  THAT NIGHT I TOSSED and turned in bed. I opened the window and breathed in the cold night air, I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and downed it, wide awake and yet so tired I could hardly stand. I looked at the transcript, the one I’d so foolishly set apart to remind myself of why I had to find Heiko. The interrogator’s threat of force-feeding him. Kuboweit’s threat of force-feeding him. All the while knowing that this was a lie, that Heiko was not even in a children’s home; he was with foster parents – loving foster parents.

  I lay back down and stared at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and thought of the blue horses.

  Once upon a time there was a woman who lived… somewhere… with her three children… but the sorcerer took them away… and the grandmother came and killed the sorcerer and rescued all three of them. And they lived… happily ever after. In their flat in Berlin. With the bathtub.

  It was not like that at all. It was much more complicated. Heiko had been rescued by a loving couple, and had become deeply attached to them. They had raised him as their own. He had prospered in their care.

  He looked so happy
.

  Kuboweit was a liar. That thing about Heiko looking happier than the rest of us: now that I thought about it, it did not sound convincing. I might be a disappointment, yes, but Tobi was not. He was a successful garden designer who’d planted many a fine feature tree. Mama had always, always been proud of him. And she’d been proud of me, too, I knew that. Kuboweit had lied so much in his life that he did not even know how to tell the truth. Perhaps he was not even aware that he was lying; perhaps factual accuracy had become impossible for him. I usually jumped at the chance to tear into myself, to find yet another reason why my life was worthless and without meaning, but this time I thought: no.

  I thought: Mama decided to leave Heiko alone, not because he looked happier than us, but because he looked happy. That was enough.

  And I also thought: Kuboweit made up that bit about him looking happier than us because he wanted me to stay away from Heiko. He’s still up to his old tricks. It’s easier for him this way. Keep everyone nicely apart, don’t ruffle any feathers.

  And then I thought: he said the adoptive parents were – what were his words? – part of the old guard. Ex-Stasi, basically. But what if they weren’t? What if they were just decent people who’d been told that Heiko was an orphan? Then Kuboweit would be in trouble, wouldn’t he? If he’d known them all this time and not told them the truth.

  I thought: I’m really glad they took him in. I’m really glad they gave him love and comfort and a home.

  And finally I thought: Kuboweit is such an Arschloch.

  I fell asleep, and woke up again in the early morning hours.

  The question remained of what to do about Heiko.

  Was it right to drag him from this cosy home, this warm embrace, to remind him of a meadow in Hungary, of gunshots in the dark, of a dead man and an imprisoned woman? The thoughts were merging and blurring in my tired mind, the horses, the little boy, my dead father in the grass, the smell of grass, the smell of earth, the smell of metal, my father’s chest rising and falling, the sticky wetness under my fingertips, the border guard with a face like a boy. The pale little boys walking out of the forest, hand in hand.

  I did not know if this was something I had seen, or if I was only imagining it, but I had a clear picture of Tobi and Heiko holding hands as they came towards us. Trying to give each other courage, willing each other along. And then I felt as if it was my own hand that was holding one of those little hands. It was a strong physical sensation, of a little boy’s hand in my own, a sticky, damp, warm little hand. I gripped it and held it tight.

  I fell asleep again.

  The next morning I woke up with a hot, heavy head and aching limbs. My sheet was soaked in sweat. I felt as I had felt on that flight back from Hungary: that all this was a nightmare, that I had to do something to end it, that I had to stop it from getting worse. But I had already made it worse – everything I had done had made things worse. I could not bring myself to follow my mother’s example, I could not let go of that hand.

  I thought: this was never about Heiko, this whole search was never about him, it was about me, and my need to hold on; and I knew that this was bad, and very selfish. The wet sheet clung to my skin. It would be best to get up and take a shower – clear the head, cool the brain – but my body would not move as I wanted it to.

  37

  ‘MY MOTHER DIDN’T WANT me to look for Heiko.’

  Aaron and I were sitting by the canal again, this time in a cafe. It was a cool day, and the waiter brought us two blankets with our drinks and sandwiches.

  ‘I haven’t told Tobi yet,’ I continued, ‘but I’m going to. She made me promise not to look for him. She didn’t even want me to find out the name of the traitor.’

  Aaron looked as if he’d just bitten into a dodgy pickle.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ He took another bite of his sandwich.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘No! Of course not.’ He smiled, but in a lopsided and tortured way, as if he had a toothache.

  ‘What I’m saying is, it’s an impossible choice. Do I follow my mum’s wishes and give up on my brother, or do I contact him – and not only go against what she wanted, but also potentially make his life worse than it has to be?’

  ‘Is that your own dilemma, or one that Kuboweit has planted in your head?’

  ‘Fair point. You know, the weirdest thing was, while I was talking to him, I actually believed him. I believed him! Even though he’d just lied to me about a dozen times. “I don’t know where he is, I really don’t. Oh actually, I do.”’

  ‘Well, he’s a pro. For what it’s worth, I think it’s highly unlikely that your mother would have told her former interrogator that one of her children, the one who was kidnapped, looked happier than the rest. It’s just not something one would say.’

  ‘My mum was odd. I do have to admit that. She was pretty odd. And I guess there’s a version of this in which she said something, and Kuboweit interpreted it his own way.’

  Aaron thought about this for a few moments. I bit into my own sandwich – goat’s cheese and rocket – and thought how none of this had been around when I was little, not this sort of cheese, not the rocket, not the multigrain artisan sourdough loaf. It was tasty, though.

  ‘I think you can discount Kuboweit,’ he said, and his voice was firm and decisive, like when he talked about his archive work. ‘Take the details he gave you, the address and so on, and ignore the rest. Totally irrelevant. May his name be deleted from history.’

  ‘OK. I scatter his name to the winds. Done. That still leaves me with the fact that my mother was against all this.’

  ‘But you said she changed her mind many times. And anyway, you’re not your mother, you’re you. She couldn’t actually make that decision for you.’

  ‘Do you think I should contact Heiko?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not his sister, or his brother, for that matter. What do you want, Ella?’

  This was a good question, an excellent question. I took several more bites of my sandwich before I felt able to answer it.

  ‘I want to meet him. I want him to know that I love him, and that I’ve missed him, and that I wish I could have seen him grow up, and been a proper big sister to him. And I think – I think he should also know how much our parents loved him, and that whatever they did, they did it because they believed in a better future.’

  ‘Then that’s what you should do.’

  ‘Regardless of whether it’s in his best interest?’

  ‘You can’t try and guess what is or isn’t in his interest. If he doesn’t want to see you, he’ll tell you, right?’

  What he said sounded so plain and sensible. I looked out at the Landwehrkanal, which was brown and heavy with rain from the night before. It reminded me of the creek back home. Back home! So London was back home. But Berlin was also back home. Maybe one could have two home cities, maybe one could have two true families, maybe it wasn’t either/or.

  I finished my sandwich and wiped my fingers on a napkin. ‘Your turn. What’s this secret you’re keeping from me?’

  ‘What secret?’

  ‘Don’t lie. You’re a terrible liar.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of an ancient Greek river called the Lethe?’

  ‘No, and I’d rather hear what you’ve been hiding.’

  ‘Fine. There is something.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know what to do with this. It’s… well, it’s this.’

  He opened his bag, took out a taped-together letter and placed it on the table, as if he did not want to give it to me directly. It took me a few reads to even understand what it was.

  IM Erna…

  The child Ella Valentin, b. 4.2.1979, regularly brings objects from the capitalist exterior to her primary school…

  The mother of the child is Regine Valentin…

  The father of the child is Jochen Valentin…

  I recomm
end adding Jochen and Regine Valentin to the central registry of personal surveillance…

  I laughed with bitterness. My mother had been right. Heiko was better off without us, without me. We were rotten through and through, the whole Valentin family – we were like a log that fell apart as soon as you picked it up. We were unhappy, we were disappointing, we were failures, and as for me, well, I was a traitor. A child traitor! My doll, my books, my bragging. My incessant need to show off. What an insufferable little brat I had been. Why had I not for once managed to keep my mouth shut? Why had I not left my bloody toys at home?

  As for IM Erna – that could have been any of my teachers. There were plenty of obvious candidates, the type who never shut up about community and solidarity and the goodness of the party. The teacher who taught us songs from the Spanish revolution, or the one who made us write a huge collective birthday card to Margot Honecker with all our hand-prints on it. My thoughts settled on Frau Obst, my art teacher. She had been there one morning when Sandy and I had talked about the man at the Bösebrücke. She had asked me about my West German doll. And after Hungary, she had avoided me – because she was disappointed in me, I had thought at the time; but perhaps it had been out of guilt.

  Frau Obst, with her dangling plastic earrings and her quirky assignments. It cut me more than I would have expected. I’d always enjoyed her lessons. She’d been kind to me. I did not want to hate her. And in any case, Frau Obst was just a teacher who had written a report about a bunch of strangers. I was the one who had betrayed my own family.

  ‘You can look up IM Erna at the archive,’ Aaron said. ‘They’ll probably have her real name.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to. I think I know who it was. And I don’t want to stand in that reading room and go, ah, OK, yeah, it really was Frau Obst. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘At least it wasn’t Oma who betrayed us,’ I said.