Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (37 page)

He paid up, left the café, and returned to the apartment. The girl had finished her tennis, the Alsatian was asleep in the shadows, and the doorbell remained unanswered. It was noon. Sidney realised that he would have to take a tram back to the vicarage and ask if Humphrey Turnbull needed anything doing. He needed to decide whether to confess to what had happened. He hoped that the vicar would not laugh at him.

He was just about to arrive at the tram stop when he heard a voice calling his name. He turned to see the sweaty figure of Matthias Baumann running towards him. He wore a dishevelled suit, his tie was loosened, and he carried a beaten-up trilby and a crumpled copy of
Der Tagesspiegel
under his arm.

‘You have been to the apartment?’ he asked. ‘I am sorry. Hildegard was worried and now I am late to tell you. Please excuse me.’

‘Has something happened?’ Sidney replied. ‘Is Hildegard all right?’

‘She is well. But her mother is not.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In Leipzig. Frau Leber fell in the street. Too hot. She was wearing a coat in the heat. She always wears coat. Then she collapse. I am not sure of the word you have –
Schlaganfall
. Is it stroke? Both sisters go to see her. I stay. Give message.’

‘Shall I follow them?’

‘Hildegard asks if you can. Is difficult. But not impossible. You need permits, visas. She told me to help arrange. We must go to Reisebüro Office.’

‘Now?’

‘This afternoon. You have papers?’

‘I think so.’

‘You must bring everything. They like papers. And stamps.’

‘I haven’t brought any stamps.’

‘No, they have stamps. For passport. You understand?’

‘I think so.’

‘You have been in DDR before?’

‘I don’t think I have had the pleasure.’

‘It is no pleasure. East Berlin is good. It has theatres, very good, and beer and is full of rebels. Hildegard will take you. But the rest of the country is like Russia.’

‘How long will Hildegard and Trudi be there?’

‘It depends on mother.’

‘How bad is she?’

‘You know what they say? In DDR you have to be very healthy to go to hospital.’ Hildegard’s brother-in-law put his hat back on his head. ‘If you are not strong, you die.’

The Reisebüro Office was situated near the Brandenburg Gate, and Matthias introduced Sidney to his friend Karlheinz Renke who was in charge of issuing permits. Renke warned that it would be a time-consuming process and that he couldn’t guarantee success. Money would have to change hands. It would be ten Deutschmarks just for the visa and there was an enforced currency exchange of twenty-five Deutschmarks per day. Sidney worried that he did not have enough.

First he had to get an entry visa from the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. There were four kinds, Renke told him, and Sidney had to nominate how long he was going to stay and the exact dates and times of his travel. Once he had acquired both a standard entry and exit visa (
Visum zur Ein- und Ausreise
), he needed a transit visa (
Transitvisum
), which restricted him to a predefined travel route within the shortest possible time. He would also need to register with the Volkspolizei. An
Aufenthaltsberechtigung
(residence entitlement) stamp would be placed in his passport. The names of each city or region where he registered, as well as the expiration date of that registration, would be entered in appropriate spaces.

Sidney wondered how the bureaucracy had become so tortuous and who could have invented it. The authorities would have to know exactly where he was each day, and there could be no deviation in his plans, and no allowance for any unpredictable event.

As Renke processed the paperwork Sidney looked out of the doorway to see the Volkspolizei carrying out technical checks on Berlin-bound vehicles. These were the people fleeing the republic for the West. This was
Republikfluchten
, Matthias told him, and anyone coming into the city was regarded with distrust. Men were taken off to be questioned, parcels were confiscated, cars were sent back. Sidney found it ironic that in the eighteenth century, under the Elector of Saxony, the appeal of Berlin lay in its tolerance to outsiders. It was a home for freedom. Now the border guards did everything possible to discourage any love for the place. The East Germans were clearly so desperate to leave their country that Sidney wondered why on earth he was going in.

Three days later he found himself at the Bahnhof Berlin Zoologischer Garten. He was to take the stopping train to Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. It was late afternoon. There were only four platforms at the station and they were already crowded, so that Sidney had to push and jostle with the best of them to try and make his way on to the train.There was a party of East German soldiers who were already drunk; young families with tired mothers in floral tops, sullen fathers and bored children. A group of female athletes in tracksuits were on their way to a competition in Munich; a party of young pioneers in their white shirts and blue neckties were singing in unison, while thin, hungry-looking businessmen in cheap, functional suits pushed past in search of their seats.

Sidney boarded the train and passed along the corridors. He hoped he would not have to share a noisy carriage. He had brought a book to calm his nerves before seeing Hildegard. It was the latest Kinglsey Amis.

As he made his way past families and groups of men who were standing at the junctions between carriages, Sidney worried what he might say or do if someone had already occupied his seat. His German was already at its limit. A beggar asked him for money and he felt guilty refusing, hauling his suitcase in one hand and his briefcase in the other. He stopped to check the number of one of the carriages. Inside sat a man whom he recognised as a Cambridge student: Rory Montague. He was with some kind of business associate. Sidney tapped on the window but the two men responded with bemusement as he slid the carriage door open.

‘Mr Montague,’ he began. ‘What an extraordinary thing! To see you here.’

The man looked up and said in German, ‘I’m sorry I do not speak English. I do not know what you are saying.’

Sidney was convinced. He even had the same mole on his left cheek. ‘But I know that you do speak English. You are Rory Montague.’

‘I am Dieter Hirsch,’ the man replied in German. ‘And this is my colleague Hans Färber.’

Sidney now spoke in halting German. ‘But I know you from Cambridge. You were a pupil of Valentine Lyall, the man who fell from the roof of King’s College.’

The man told Sidney he was mistaken. ‘Is this your carriage?’ he asked.

‘No, it is not my carriage,’ Sidney replied.

‘Then you must excuse us. I suggest you find your seat. The train is very crowded today.’

Sidney was thrown. Perhaps his suspicions a few years ago had been right all along. Montague must be a spy, but on which side?

He found his carriage crowded with a family of five. A young girl with blonde pigtails was sitting in Sidney’s seat by the window and he politely allowed her to keep it, taking the one next to her in the middle of a row of three, squeezing in beside a large woman who was holding a brown paper bag full of apples. The woman shifted minimally to her left and the young girl responded to Sidney’s kindness by saying that she did not want to sit next to a stranger.

‘Don’t argue,’ her mother snapped, before apologising to Sidney.

‘That’s quite all right.’

‘You are American?’

‘No,’ Sidney replied. ‘I am English.’

The ample woman offered Sidney one of her apples. ‘As long as you are not Russian,’ she whispered. A student sitting opposite looked up from his book.

‘Be careful, Grandma,’ he said.

The train was heading out of the city of Berlin and the sun was still high in the sky. The two boys in the family were playing with Sandman toys, pretending they were in a spaceship exploring a world where there was no money.

From the window Sidney could see a party of soldiers marching past the propaganda posters of Soviet workers holding up their tools, expressing their solidarity with their East German comrades.

Auf DICH kommt es an!

The posters hung from bombstruck buildings above watchful crowds who seemed frightened of drawing attention to themselves.

Marsch der deutschen Jugend für den Frieden!

The train eased its way south past Wilmersdorf and Zehlendorf and out towards Potsdam. Wrecked rolling stock lay abandoned by the sidings, rusted and with bullet holes. Farmers tended the fields and, in the distance, Sidney was reassured to see a few church towers standing in compact villages. As they approached Wittenberg, Sidney thought of Luther, apocryphally nailing his ninety-five theses on to the door of All Saints’ Church in an act of rebellion. Now they had undergone a different, enforced revolution, one that promised a proletarian heaven on earth. Looking out over the scarred landscape it didn’t look much like paradise.

They were approaching the industrial heartland of the D/D/R and Sidney could smell the pollution from distant factories. The air had turned grey in the cool of the evening. The train ground through a series of points and chuntered on past the industrial complex of Bitterfeld before dividing at Holzweissig. The woman with the apples was sleeping with her mouth open. Sidney could not understand why she wore a coat. He couldn’t imagine Hildegard’s mother being similar. The girl with pigtails told her mother she was going to be sick.

The train stopped. Outside a party of soldiers were banging on the windows and waving to their friends. The train guard walked quickly past Sidney’s carriage. He looked agitated. Outside Sidney could see a sign:
Alle Fahrzeuge Halt!

The sun was hard and low. Parched leaves hung from the branches of the trees. An open truck took labourers home from the fields. The driver sounded his horn, and the soldiers jeered. The compartment was unbearably hot, even with the window open.

Sidney tried to read but could not concentrate. The little girl told her mother she needed the toilet. As he stood up to help her the carriage door slid open. It was Montague. He handed Sidney a sealed document. ‘Take this,’ he said, in English. ‘If anything happens, give it to the Master.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t ask questions. There’s no time.’

‘What is it?’

‘You do not need to know. If you are questioned, make sure they see your dog collar. They trust the clergy here.’

‘I thought religion was banned.’

‘They’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.’

‘I suppose it gives me an air of impartiality.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ Montague replied quickly. ‘It’s because they think the clergy are too stupid to do anything that might get them into trouble.’

The mother and daughter indicated that they wanted to get past. Montague slipped away leaving Sidney with an unknown document resting on the pages of his book. It was clearly something secret and of importance but why would Montague entrust it to him? Perhaps it was a trap? But who could want to incriminate him? The best thing, he decided, would be to hide the document as quickly as possible and forget all about it. He closed the book and put it away in his briefcase. Inside he saw the little Minox camera that Daniel Morden had given him. He took it out. Now the mother and daughter had left he could get to the window and take a picture with ease. There was a lovely image before him of wheat fields and crows. It was like a van Gogh painting. He could even see the silhouette of a church in the distance. He raised the camera, framed the image, and pressed the shutter.

As he did so, the door to the carriage opened once more. Sidney had been expecting the mother and daughter but it was the train guard. A soldier accompanied him. The large lady awoke and showed her identity card. Sidney put the camera back in his briefcase and reached in for his papers. He knew they were all in order but he had been flustered by the heat of the afternoon and by Montague’s interruption. He felt himself sweat.

The guard asked him for his name and his date of birth and the purpose of his visit. How long was he staying in Leipzig, where was he staying and whom was he visiting? The answers could be found on the papers in front of him, but the guard insisted on a slow, methodical questioning, looking at Sidney’s face, then at his passport, and lastly at the visas and permits.

Sidney tried to be helpful and spoke in German. ‘I think you will find they are all in order.’

The guard grunted but said nothing. He did not seem at all interested that Sidney was English and a clergyman. The army officer clicked the fingers of his right hand and pointed at the briefcase.

‘Those are just my working papers and a book. I am a clergyman.’

The army officer looked in the briefcase, picked out the book and flicked through the pages. Sidney was relieved that he had moved whatever the secret document was into the zipped compartment at the side. It looked like a letter. Surely it could not be too compromising; especially if it was in English.

The officer reached down into the bag and pulled out Sidney’s camera. ‘This is not a book,’ he said. ‘Nor is it papers.’