*
The dance was in a brick-built mess building, part of the British Army barracks behind our school. Because there was nowhere on the neat military lawns to build a proper bonfire, a brazier had been lit on the concrete terrace in front of the building, and it flickered like a fire at a medieval castle gate. The flames lit the edge of the surrounding lawn and the dark soil of the flowerbeds, stripped of their summer annuals, and our faces as we stood waiting to go in, making us look like conspirators lining up to be hanged in the night.
My old headmaster was standing in the low foyer with his wife to welcome the guests; a short queue of families had built up hoping to ingratiate themselves. I tried to hang back, planning to run home in the dark when I had the chance, but my father opened out his arm to guide me between him and my mother. Was he going to do something to me now that I knew? I was beset with a crushing panic as if I was being pulled towards a truth that I didn’t want to acknowledge, like a dog dragged to look at its own mess. I watched my father’s face bathed in the orange glow, looked at his neat moustache and large metal glasses, the pressed collar of his shirt. It was impossible to imagine him betraying anyone, but, I supposed, that would make him the perfect traitor. It was Oz that was the terrible spy, and me. It was we two who had failed.
As my mother reached the headmaster’s wife and they said their hellos, my father, close to my ear, muttered, ‘Ralf. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’
I pulled my hand into a fist to stop it trembling and didn’t answer him, only opening it to shake my old headmaster’s hand and talk vaguely about my good grades and Durham University for as briefly as was polite.
The moment I was clear of him, I pushed into the wide hall, which smelt faintly of canteen food, cigarettes and spilled beer. Inside, the partygoers hadn’t yet filled the dancefloor and the battered lines marking the bounds of basketball, netball and badminton games were still visible on the parquet, which was peppered with the tiny dents of dropped cutlery and thrashed with spinning disco lights. On the strip of rough green carpet encircling the dancefloor, the guests, inured to the Stock, Aitken and Waterman hits pumping out of the tall speakers by the DJ’s table, milled around paper-covered trestle tables strewn with rolled ham slices, curling sandwiches, and cheese-and-pineapple hedgehogs. I pushed through the crowds at the edge of the room towards the fire exit at the back, but as I reached it Dad stepped in front of me.
‘Do you want to go outside and have a chat, Ralfi?’ he said.
‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about,’ I said, afraid of him, but also aware of a mounting rage. In that moment, it wasn’t the spying or the communism or even the lying, really, that made me so furious, it was what a fool he’d made me feel.
‘No,’ he said, nodding meaningfully. ‘We won’t talk about any of this. Not ever.’
‘That’s not what I said.’
I abandoned the fire exit and turned to the buffet table. I ate a cocktail sausage, chewing on the stick that had been stuck through it, feeling sweat patches forming on my shirt beneath my coat. When Dad didn’t come after me, I turned and saw that he had been caught by my mother’s old boss, the head of the military hospital. He was chatting to him with his hands pushed casually into his chinos as if nothing had happened. He didn’t look at me, but I could see that he had positioned himself in such a way as to keep me in his peripheral vision.
I looked towards the main door – I could definitely run faster than my dad once I got onto the drive that led down to the gates. But where was I going to go? And then I realised that if Dad was working for the Stasi, he probably knew where Oz was.
The DJ started playing ‘Surfin’ USA’ by the Beach Boys and the floor filled with parents attracted by the easy-listening pop of their youth. A gummy woman with a crown of bright platinum hair and a pink-and-black polka-dot dress screamed with laughter, held her nose and shimmied to the floor, where she lost her footing and rolled drunkenly onto her side.
Mum had joined my dad and they were talking to her boss together. I ladled myself two plastic cups of punch and took them over to my parents. My mum smiled and waved the cup away, so I gave one to my dad and leant in to say, beneath the jangling pop music, ‘Where is he?’
He put a hand on my waist and said, ‘Ralfi, we’re really sad about your friend.’
‘Is he in jail?’
‘Ralf,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’
‘What would happen to me then?’
‘Happen to you? Mein Gott! Ralf!’
The disco lights spun across his face, turquoise, red, green, yellow, tumbling over one another. We heard a whoop. Mum had begun to dance with the woman in the polka-dot dress, a glass of Pimm’s sloshing in her hand. Emboldened, more men and women began to edge onto the dancefloor.
My father started swaying to the music and began to stare at Mum, looking for a way into the circle of dancers she had gathered around herself, the tinned mixed fruit swaying in the plastic cup I’d handed him.
‘I know about the children’s home,’ I said, recalling Axel’s story. Mum looked over at us and winked, so I started to move in sync with my father so that she didn’t worry about us and cut in. ‘I know about your mother. That’s why you did it, isn’t it? Because she abandoned you?’
For the first time he seemed, if not angry, then at least confused.
‘I don’t know what bits and pieces you might have picked up from your friend, but—’
‘You had polio. You don’t know who your dad is. You have a sister. Where’s she? I know that your mum gave you up because she didn’t want you.’
He shook his head insistently. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Where is he?’ I said. ‘Just tell me where Oz is and I’ll drop it. I’ll leave.’
‘Why would I want that?’ he said, bemused.
The DJ started playing ‘Twist and Shout’ and the British men and women who were too embarrassed to dance freestyle cheered and joined us on the floor, awkwardly mimicking the moves of the more proficient dancers.
Dad tried to twist away from me, but I followed him, saying, ‘Did you make up Opa?’ Someone bumped into me and fruit punch sloshed onto the back of my hand.
‘He … ’ I was desperate to make him scream at me, to make him burst into tears and tear at his hair, but I had to make do with him shaking his head and being lost for words. That was something, at least. I’d never seen him lost for words.
‘You made him a war hero,’ I said, thinking that if he lost his temper then he might reveal some nugget that would lead me back to Oz. ‘It’s so sad.’ And although I said it to goad him, I suddenly felt wretched at the loss of my imaginary grandfather. I felt as if everything that had held me fast in the world was falling away like mooring ropes pinging from an airship.
‘Don’t,’ my father said hoarsely as he twisted up and twisted down, looking at my mother for help. But she was too absorbed in the dance, dropping to the floor back-to-back with the polka-dot woman.
‘Who are those photos of? The ones hanging all over the house? No wonder he looks nothing like me. Are we even your children?’
He stopped dancing and stood dumbly as the crowd moved around us. ‘Of course you’re my children!’ he hissed.
‘We won’t be once I tell Mum who you really are.’
‘You think your mother doesn’t know?’
She bumped into us and cackled. I let my drink drop to the floor. It splashed against someone’s trousers, but they didn’t notice, and an overweight woman danced backwards and crushed the cup beneath a heavy heel.
I pushed through the crowd trying to get out of the building, but Dad caught me under the arm and led me into the empty foyer. The inner doors swung shut and muffled the music and a cold wind pushed at the wired safety glass and brown-stained wood of the outer doors. I stared at my father’s grey leather shoes and the green carpet tiles beneath them.
‘Who are you?’ I said. The space was echoless.
‘Who am I? Who are you? Who are any of us really?’
‘You’re going to defend yourself with philosophical platitudes?’
‘Defend myself?’ he said, apparently astonished. ‘You of all people must understand what I’ve done. After Oz. After what you did.’
My mouth tasted sour and the air was filled with the smell of tropical fruit juice, in the cup still in my Dad’s hand, splashed onto my skin and clothes. ‘That’s completely different,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘I did it for the West.’
‘That’s not why you did it, Ralfi. You were in love.’ I looked up at his face. He looked so boundlessly loving, his eyes glistening, his mouth stretched into a comforting, understanding smile. ‘We’re the only honest ones, Ralf, because we can see both sides, we live with the hypocrisy, we have to.’
‘He loves me.’
‘Of course he loves you. You’re our wonderful Ralf,’ he said with pride. ‘You’re easy to love. Like your mother. Don’t doubt how much I love you. Don’t doubt how much I love her. I was besotted with her, from the moment I saw her photograph in that file.’
‘“In that file”? Fuck!’ I said.
The music cut off and a heavy voice started speaking over the microphone. A cheer went up and people pulled on their coats and moved towards us. Martin pushed the door open. ‘What are you two doing?’ he said, wrapping his scarf round his neck. ‘The fireworks are starting.’
Unlike a Berlin New Year’s, where an unruly barrage of rockets is fired from the hands of drunks and children, filling the air with throbbing bangs and choking gunpowder smoke, the Guy Fawkes Night fireworks at the British barracks were lit in careful succession by soldiers and school teachers and exploded in a complementary display of pops and sparks. We stood on the grass in the middle of the expansive lawns and watched the black sky fill with electric sprays of blue and white, cascading down like the spokes of umbrellas, and listened to the dejected whines from a chorus of Roman candles. My father stood behind me holding my shoulders.
‘How long were you following me?’ I said over the bangs.
‘We were following him.’
‘Why didn’t you stop it?’
‘I did.’
The wind roared and the fire in the distant brazier flickered and bloomed as it drank up the gust. Three rockets thunked into the sky and exploded in lilac sparks followed by delayed bangs that thundered off the straight brick surfaces of the mess hall. I shivered as I gradually sewed my father into everything that had happened that summer. ‘The photographs. How could you … ?’ I muttered.
‘I would do anything to protect my family. And my country. To protect you, Ralf.’
‘How is taking … those sort of pictures of … of your son … How is that …?’
A Catherine wheel began to spin, spraying out green and blue sparks like peacock feathers and emitting a high surging cry.
‘It was very serious. Your friend was trying to expose us. Think of our family, Ralf. It had to be drastic. I made sure that you weren’t identifiable. And it worked. Oz is gone, you’re here. It worked perfectly.’
‘The bulbs too,’ I said. ‘The clinic? He really was drugged when he came to ours, then.’
‘As I said, it worked.’
‘Where is he?’
As if he’d done me a favour, he said, ‘This is West Berlin, Ralf. He’s free to come and go as he pleases. We didn’t need to put him anywhere, we just needed to make sure no one cared where he was.’
I turned and looked at him. A large chrysanthemum rocket burst behind his head.
‘He loves me,’ I said again.
‘We all love you, Ralf.’
I broke away from the crowd. Dad called my name, but he didn’t stop me. I walked to the gates, the grass beneath me flashing blue, green, pink and orange. As I neared the sentry boxes one of the soldiers frowned at me, surprised I suppose that I was leaving in the middle of the display. He opened his mouth to say something, but I couldn’t bear to hear it. I ran past him and once I’d started running I couldn’t stop. I ran through the black streets in my good yellow polyester shirt, through Charlottenburg, through the park and all the way home to Windscheidstraße.
Thirty-Eight
I ran up the stairs to our apartment and unlocked the door with shaking hands. The phone was ringing. I stopped in the black hallway. I had planned to grab some things and leave that night and I was afraid it was Dad calling to see if I’d come home. But it could also have been Oz, knowing somehow what had happened, coming to rescue me, so I ran to the kitchen and picked up the phone, putting the cold receiver to my ear.
‘Hello,’ came a voice. I fingered the loops of the cable like a rosary. ‘Hello? It’s Maike Willert, is anyone there?’
‘Maike?’ I said, unsure whether it was a ploy.
‘Ralf? Is that you?’
‘I’m here,’ I said in a half-whisper, though there was no reason to whisper now. ‘It’s me.’
‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to get hold of you. I’m in Berlin.’
‘Berlin? Is everything OK?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Mum’s died.’
She moved her head and I heard the plastic creak of her handset. ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry, Maike.’
‘I didn’t know what to do before, when my sister called. The whole way down on the train I was a mess. I kept having to go to the toilet to throw up. But now’ – a police car passed nearby on Kantstraße and the objects in the kitchen took shape in the dim light – ‘now I’m just tired.’
‘What can I do?’I said.
‘Come on Thursday. It’s just small – not even a service, really. She wanted to be cremated. It’ll be in Ruhleben. Petra and Stefan are coming.’
‘They’ve come back for the funeral?’
‘Stefan was already here, so he’s staying an extra few days. But, yes, Petra came specially.’
‘They’re good friends.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can you come though? I’d like it if you did.’
‘Of course. Of course I’ll come.’
I packed my things and the only smart clothes I had and cycled to Stefan’s. At every junction I heard the car braking behind me and waited for the sound of the door opening and then the footsteps of the man with the combover or my father coming up from behind. But each time the lights changed to green and I cycled on.
I couldn’t bear to tell Stefan what had happened that night. I said I was upset and exhausted because of Maike’s mum. Whether he believed me or not, he let me go to bed straight away, and I slept fitfully through the night, waking at every creak and crack, expecting my father to come through the door at any moment and drag me out.
He didn’t come though, and early on Thursday morning Stefan and I dressed in suits and pulled our denim jackets on over them – his blue, mine white. The only other jackets we owned were the bright Gore-tex ones we wore on field trips, and they didn’t seem appropriate.
I shaved using Stefan’s razor and wondered where I’d go once the funeral was over. I would hitchhike to Stuttgart with Petra, I decided, and disappear for a while. I felt sad, thinking about leaving Martin with them, but I knew he would be happier in his ignorance. I would’ve been happier too.
Petra was waiting on the tarmac driveway that led up to the crematorium, a grey breeze-block building with a green copper roof, surrounded by autumn trees, still covered in a flurry of green, brown and yellow. She stood beneath a lollipop-shaped lamp wearing a beautifully cut skirt-suit, looking grown-up and elegant. I saw how she would look as an adult and it brought tears to my eyes.
‘You look lovely,’ I said.
‘I stole it from Mum’s cupboard. It’s not mine.’ She squeezed me.
We waited, unsure what to do next, but then Maike shouted from the building. She was already there, waving from the door.
We embraced her. Her cheeks were warm and wet with tears. She led us into a room laid
out like a chapel, but with a terracotta floor, concrete walls and an inoffensive but inappropriate Sixties mural, showing factories with smoking chimney stacks and giant industrial wheels.
At the front of the room, by a wall of glass that looked out onto the grounds, was a simple coffin, light varnished pine like children’s furniture, reflecting the white glare of the lights on the ceiling.
There were perhaps ten other mourners who smiled at us in a friendly way. A few dabbed at their eyes. Maike left us to sit with her father and sisters, all tall like her, their eyes red from crying.
A Catholic priest said some words about Maike’s mother. I hadn’t known she used to work as a teacher. I found it devastating hearing about her early life. As an invalid, she had always seemed to me to be a different species, not of this world, but she had been a young teacher with a family, had fallen in love and moved to West Berlin from Bochum to make a life for herself here. After the priest spoke, there were prayers. I only knew the words to the English prayers we’d been taught at school, but murmured along and said the Amens.
From films I’d seen, I expected the coffin to disappear into the floor, but it didn’t. We just left it there, shuffling out into the foyer, where two pleasant-looking men with white hair were waiting to wheel it away again.
‘You must be Ralf,’ said Maike’s father. He shook my hand warmly. He was tall and round, with Maike’s wide brown eyes. His broad gap-toothed smile made him attractive, despite his pot belly and shining bald patch. ‘I’m sad we never met,’ he said. ‘And sad about you and Maike. You made her very happy. I think you were good for each other.’
‘Yes,’ I tried to say. ‘I’m sad too,’ but the ‘sad’ died and I started crying. I felt so ashamed and gripped my face with one hand.
‘There, there,’ he said, putting his heavy hand on my back and rubbing it briskly. ‘It’s a sad day. There’s no question about that. Sad for everyone.’
*
Maike, Stefan, Petra and I stood outside under the bright white November sky. Magpies cackled on the roof of the crematorium. One skittered down, flashing the iridescent blue of its black wings.
An Honest Man Page 28