Stasi Child (4 page)

He turned towards her, folding his arms across his honey-and-brown striped pullover. The one his parents had bought him for Christmas. The one she hated – it made him look so old. The one he used to hate too. At the time, they’d giggled secretly with each other about the gift and how awful it was, his elderly parents’ lack of fashion sense all too clear. His wearing it now sent its own message to Müller: a private rebellion.

‘You were with him, weren’t you?’

‘Him? I don’t know what you mean.’ Faced by his silence, she found herself blabbering. ‘It just got so late, I had to sleep over in the office. I didn’t want to come back in the middle of the night and disturb you.’

He advanced towards her, his face red and blotchy. ‘I don’t believe that for a minute.’ His wire-rimmed spectacles had slipped part way down his nose. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you.’

‘It’s not what you think,’ Müller protested, moving her hand towards his shoulder. ‘And I’m sorry, I should have phoned. I missed you last night.’

He pushed her back.

‘You do know very well what I mean. You’re an attractive woman. Tilsner’s always eyeing you up. I bet you finally fell for it. Was it good?’

‘That’s not –’

‘Not what? There’s no point lying, Karin. It’s obvious something’s going on. When did he first get into your knickers? When I was in Rügen?’

Müller sighed. It was futile arguing. He was the typical schoolteacher: always certain he knew best. Worse than that, a maths teacher – inhabiting a world where everything was right or wrong, black or white. She turned around and trudged to the bathroom, slamming – then locking – the door, and turned on the cold tap. Cupping her hands under the gushing, icy water, she splashed it over her face. She wasn’t sure if she was washing herself, waking herself or trying to get rid of her guilty blush.

She hung her dressing gown on the back of the door, and slumped onto the toilet seat, head in hands. Where had it gone wrong with Gottfried? She remembered the frisson of excitement when they’d first met, playing ‘chocolate kiss’ at a family birthday party for his young niece. She just out of police college, trying to forget all that had gone on there, and he a newly qualified teacher. They’d joined in enthusiastically, feeding chocolate marshmallows to each other, until it had turned into an actual full-blown kiss, much to Müller’s embarrassment, and much to the delight of the children present.

It was true: she
had
found herself more and more attracted to Tilsner, despite the fact that he had scant regard for his own marriage, and in the workplace was more often than not arrogant and insolent. When Gottfried had been away in Rügen – temporarily banished to the reform school after failing to instil his Berlin pupils with enough party zealotry – she had felt lonely. Drawn to Tilsner with his stubbly, craggy face and well-muscled body. And now Gottfried was back, well, it was no better. The few months in Rügen had aged him, transforming him from the overgrown student she’d first fallen for into a poor impression of a crusty old professor. And now he’d started attending those infernal meetings at the church. It was all just –

Gottfried hammered on the door.

‘How long are you going to be in there?’

‘I’m just starting my shower – maybe another ten minutes,’ she shouted, above the hiss of the spray. ‘Then we should talk.’

‘I don’t want to talk. I’m going out.’

‘Hang on a minute –’ Müller turned off the taps, hurriedly slipped the dressing gown back on and rushed out. She was just in time to see the apartment door slamming closed. She ran and opened it, and shouted down the stairs. ‘Don’t go, Gottfried. We need to talk.’ But the sound of his footsteps continued downwards until the building’s front door was crashed shut in turn, and she felt the vibrations in the banister she was gripping.

A door latch clicked to the side. Müller turned. Frau Ostermann’s head peeked out. ‘Is everything alright, Frau Müller?’

Müller pulled her gown tightly together, threw the woman a weak smile and sighed. ‘Yes, yes, Frau Ostermann. Nothing to worry about.’ The woman pursed her lips and clicked her door shut again.

Müller retreated to the sanctuary of the flat and walked to the lounge window, trying to see if she could spot Gottfried up the street. He’d already disappeared from sight. Instead, on the opposite side of the road, she noticed a white Barkas van. Letters on the side spelling Bäckerei Schäfer, a small private bakery near Alexanderplatz. Müller swallowed as saliva pumped into her mouth. A shower, the one she’d been about to have, then out to buy some fresh
Brötchen
rolls. Maybe the van would be selling some? That would fill her stomach, and cleanse the row with Gottfried from her head.

Thirty minutes later and she was actually out on Schönhauser Allee, but the bread van didn’t appear to be selling anything. She set off at a fast walk, hoping the couple of kilometres to the office would energise her, overtaking families ambling along in the winter air. A girl of about ten suddenly bumped into her, dodging her brother’s snowball. Müller smiled, but inside she felt a sharp pang of loss and guilt. Children with their parents, playing happy families, just as the Tilsners had been doing in that pose at the campsite. Something she and Gottfried would never be able to do.

4

Nine months earlier (May 1974).

Jugendwerkhof Prora Ost. The island of Rügen, East Germany.

Someone near me is crying. Awful sobs that make me want to join with them.
Mutti!
She has to leave. They’re taking her away. I’m trying to pull her back, but I seem to have no strength in my arms, as though I’m just a small child again. I look down at my hands and realise they
are
a little girl’s hands. Still I try to cling on, but her fingers slip through mine. Why are these men pulling her away? She lives with me and Oma, here on the campsite, in our flat above the reception. This is where she belongs, running on the beach, with our matching red hair blowing about in the wind. Don’t go! Don’t go! I need her. I plead with them. She reaches out for me, but something is holding me down, stopping me from helping. With all my strength, I break free and run out onto the stairs after them. But they’ve disappeared. And something’s wrong. These are the stairs at the
Jugendwerkhof
, at Prora. Where has our little white campsite house gone? I turn around in panic to get back into the flat, but the same giant men are there and are trying to take me away too. I want to run, but something’s holding me down. Covering me. It’s heavy and I can’t breathe and –

I wake. Sweating. Heart thumping in my chest. I throw the heavy blanket aside, and take deep, deep breaths. The nightmare recedes, but the crying is still there, those same awful sobs. I turn and I realise it’s Beate, in the bunk next to mine. I gather my nightdress about me, recoiling from the smell of my unwashed body, and climb from my bed into hers, drawing the blankets around us. I stroke her jet-black hair, sweat-drenched like mine. I try to be as quiet as possible, not wanting to wake the other girls in the dormitory, but with these triple bunk beds and their creaking metal frames, I know that’s unlikely.

‘Shh. Shh. Beate, it’s OK. It’s OK,’ I whisper as I wrap my arms around her slight body, my own larger frame dwarfing hers. ‘Please stop crying. Every night you are crying. You’ve been like this ever since the field trip. What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ she whispers between her sobs, as I stroke her back, marvelling at the way I can feel the bones under her skin, not covered by the layers of fat that I know hide mine.

‘Why not? I’m your friend. I won’t repeat it. I won’t tell anyone else. What are friends for if we can’t share secrets?’

The noise of Beate’s crying and my whispering starts to wake the others.

‘Shut up, Behrendt. Just shut up and get back to your own bed!’ hisses Maria Bauer, the dorm leader. ‘And you, Ewert. Stop your snivelling. Both of you get back to sleep, otherwise we’ll all get put on extra work duties.’

Beate quietens, responding to Bauer’s bullying threats rather than the comfort of my body next to hers, but I stay there. In her bed. My fingers tracing the indentations of her spine. Counting the bumps. Stroking her hair. Wondering why every night it is like this.

Then suddenly footsteps outside the dorm door. Louder. Closer.

The bolt of the lock is thrown back.

Light on.

I try to jump back to my own bunk, but too late. Frau Richter’s huge frame fills the doorway, her eyes trained on me, as I’m frozen half-in, half-out of Beate’s bed, shielding my eyes from the bare electric bulb above.

‘What’s all this noise coming from here?
Jugendliche
Behrendt!
Jugendliche
Ewert! Get back to sleep immediately. Behrendt, get back in your own bed – and see me in my office tomorrow morning, straight after breakfast.’ She clicks the light off again. ‘And I do not want to hear another word from this room otherwise it will be even more serious.’

The door slams shut, the bolt is locked. I climb slowly back into my bunk, turn away from Beate and listen to the waves of the Ostsee below, crashing onto the beach. I think of Mutti. Of Oma. Of better times far away from
Jugendwerkhof
Prora Ost.

I do sleep, and when the morning bell rings I almost forget why this overwhelming sense of dread is hanging over me. As the girls start to put on their work clothes, I dawdle and move towards the window. I pull myself up, tensing my arms against the grey-painted iron bars that fill half the frame, and on tiptoes I peer out over the top of the grille to the Ostsee below. The beach stretches to left and right for kilometre after kilometre, but so, I know, does this building. I know it all too well from our anti-fascist lessons. How this was supposed to have been Hitler’s seaside playground for his workers. Tens of thousands of them in these grey, forbidding walls. But tens of thousands of them who – if it had ever been completed – would have been able to look out on a beautiful seaside scene. To splash in the water, play in the sand, things that are now just memories to me.

‘Irma!’ shouts Beate behind me. ‘Come on. We’ll be late. After last night we don’t want that. Richter’s already got it in for you.’

I turn, retrace my steps to my bed and start pulling on my clothes.

As I take my usual place next to Beate at breakfast, I realise that my plate is empty. Everyone else’s plate has its usual contents: roll, sausage and cheese. I see bully girl Bauer smirking at me at the head of the table. I look towards Frau Schettler, who’s still finishing putting out the plastic cups full of margarine and jam. She will help me. She’s one of the few friendly adults. Her and the new maths teacher from Berlin, Herr Müller. He usually has a kind word for me.

I put my hand up to attract her attention. ‘Frau Schettler. My plate is empty.’

She looks at me apologetically, then raises her eyes to a point somewhere behind me. I turn to follow her gaze, and there is Richter.

‘You should know by now,’ Richter says, ‘that the roll, cheese and sausage are a privilege. A privilege unique to this establishment. A privilege lost for bad behaviour.’ She reaches over to the other bread basket, the one with the stale sliced bread in it, and passes it to me. I shake my head. She slams the basket down on the table. ‘Very well then,
Jugendliche
Irma Behrendt. But I fear your strong-willed nature will be your undoing. It is many hours until lunchtime. Many hours of hard work in the workshop. But it’s your choice. And remember. My office. Straight after breakfast.’

Bauer sniggers at the end of the table. Beate lays her hand gently on my arm to console me. But it will take more than that. I hate this place. And I hate Richter too.

As the others head off towards the workshop, I trudge along the corridor towards deputy director Richter’s office. I purposely try to walk as slowly as possible. To delay the meeting. To try to rile her. Eventually, though, there is no option but to knock on the obscured rippled glass set into the white-painted metal door.

‘Come!’ she calls, and as I enter, she gets up. ‘Ah, Behrendt. I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long.’ She puts on her jacket and straightens herself in the mirror, adding some lipstick and powder to her face. ‘I think it’s time for a little discussion about you. Follow me!’ She marches down the corridor briskly, and I almost have to run to match her strides. I know where we are heading.

Richter raps on the grey metal door. I hear Director Neumann’s voice asking us to wait. There are the sounds of lowered voices inside: his, and a female voice that’s familiar.

The door opens. I gasp as Beate comes out, touching her hair, fiddling with the buttons on her work shirt. I start to ask her why she’s here, but Richter grabs my arm and drags me into the office before she can reply. In any case, Beate seems reluctant to meet my eye. Richter virtually hurls me in front of her, and then pushes me forward to stand in front of Director Neumann’s desk.

‘
Jugendliche
Behrendt. I’m getting a little sick of seeing you here. What have you to say for yourself?’

I stay silent, looking down at my work shoes. Richter grabs my chin and forces my head upwards so I can’t avoid Neumann’s ravaged face, feeling that instinct of revulsion I know I shouldn’t show as I look down from the black eyepatch to the distorted, blotchy flesh below. ‘Answer the Herr Director,’ she barks.

‘I don’t know,’ I say, meeting his one-eyed gaze levelly. ‘I do not know what I have done wrong.’

‘Well, Behrendt, that is simple. You were found by Frau Richter in another girl’s bed after lights out. That’s against the rules. You know that very well.’ Neumann rocks back on the legs of his chair, fiddling with his eyepatch with one hand, while clicking the end of his pen with the other. I let the noise fill the silence for a moment.

Click, click, click.

‘Well, girl?’ he says finally. ‘Have you lost your tongue?’

‘No, Herr Director. I was simply comforting Beate. Nothing more. She was crying. I was afraid she would wake up the other girls. I was just doing what any good citizen would.’ I hear Richter tut and sigh behind me. Neumann places his pen down on the table and folds his arms across his stomach.