Authors: Paul Dowswell
‘I think it’s stupid,’ continued Alex. ‘So what if you go to church occasionally. I like to sit in the silence and look at the stained-glass windows.’
‘Sometimes there’s a choir rehearsal,’ said Sophie. ‘I listen outside. It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’
‘We should go together, sneak in at the back one day,’ said Alex and squeezed her hand.
‘Mutter and Vater would kill me,’ she said.
Alex was beginning to shiver. ‘Come on, it’s getting cold.’ They walked home in the drizzle. ‘Mutti’s cooking a joint of pork in your honour.’
Arriving at the apartment it was wonderful to walk into the fug of the Ostermanns’ warm living room with its steamed-up windows and the delicious aroma of roast pork. Alex’s family greeted Sophie warmly and Gretchen took their damp coats to dry in front of the coal fire.
Sophie noticed at once the photographs Alex’s parents had placed on the mantelpiece. ‘Don’t they look sweet,’ she said. Gretchen beamed with pride. Alex particularly hated the picture of himself and Geli in their Young Pioneers outfits – both of them in an identical white nylon shirt and matching little blue neckerchief. It was a constant embarrassment when friends came to visit.
Alex wondered if that had been the last time his parents had truly felt proud of them. They were ten or eleven there. Geli was still taller than him then, and he was looking up to her with obvious affection.
When he was that age, he had really believed everything the SED told him. That the people of the DDR were all working together to build a workers’ paradise and by the time he was a grown man their country would be the envy of the world. It was like believing in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ shouted Frank, and asked Geli to open a bottle of Bulgarian wine he’d found in the grocer’s that morning.
Round the table, talk turned to fashion.
‘Are those Levi’s jeans?’ Sophie asked Geli.
‘Yes, my boyfriend gave them to me.’
‘It must be love,’ said Sophie.
Alex was slightly ashamed of his own jeans. The East German Boxer brand were made of polyester rather than cotton, the stitching was all over the place, and they never fitted quite right or faded in the wash like real Levi’s. But a pair of Levi’s would cost a week’s wages and there was no way his mother and father would agree to that.
So many clothes in the shops were exactly the same, and you had to make your own adjustments if you wanted to look different. Alex knew Sophie was handy with a sewing machine, rattling away on it to alter the fit or adding different buttons. Some of the youth group leaders and teachers disapproved. Wanting to be different was a bourgeois failing – ‘Western egotism’.
Gretchen said, ‘Ten years ago you could get arrested for wearing jeans. Too much a symbol of the class enemy – the United States! But even the Stasi have come to realise it’s just fashion, not a political protest.’
‘It’s like the pop music, or the rock music, whatever it’s called,’ said Frank. ‘Ten years ago you could get beaten up for listening to it – even be given hard labour! But we’ve moved on there too. We’re even producing our own pop groups now. I heard the Puhdys went to play in America!’
Alex felt like saying the Puhdys were insipid crap, but he didn’t want a scene on Sophie’s first visit. Besides, his parents were doing their best to show what open-minded and forward-thinking socialists they were.
Geli asked Sophie about her red blouse. ‘I found it in a second-hand clothes shop.’
‘Is it real cotton?’ Geli could hardly contain her admiration. Sophie nodded.
‘I don’t get on with
Präsent 20
,’ said Geli. Almost everything people wore in East Germany was made of man-made fibre.
Präsent 20
was the latest one. It had been unveiled at the twentieth anniversary celebrations for the East German state and hailed as the Party’s ‘gift to the people’.
‘But it’s so easy to wash,’ said Gretchen, ‘and it never shrinks.’
‘It’s sticky,’ said Geli, ‘and if you go to a dance, half an hour in it’s glued to you with sweat.’
Sophie agreed. ‘I always get cotton if I can find it in second-hand stores. I wish it wasn’t so expensive to buy it new. I can’t afford to shop in
Exquisit
. I do a lot of rummaging through second-hand clothes!’
Frank was looking uneasy. ‘I know everything’s a year or two behind what’s fashionable in the West,’ he said, ‘but most people don’t mind. The ordinary workers – they just want hard-wearing clothes that are easy to take care of. Like those made of
Präsent 20
.’
‘Come on, Vati, that’s ridiculous and you know it,’ said Geli. ‘The government decides what people should wear and sends instructions to the
Mode-Institut
in Berlin. A group of stuffy old
Onkel
s decides what is fashionable here!’
An awkward silence followed. ‘So where did you go this afternoon?’ Gretchen asked Sophie, changing the subject.
‘We went for a walk in the park and then sat in the church on Köpenicker Landstrasse,’ she blurted out unthinkingly. The strong red wine had gone to her head.
Frank and Gretchen looked alarmed. Sophie realised she had said the wrong thing at once and blushed.
‘Well, it was raining,’ Alex said. ‘There’s no harm in going in, is there?’
‘Alex. All that hair on your head is clouding your thinking,’ said Frank. ‘Maybe your brain is overheating. Church services – who goes to them?’
‘Christians,’ said Alex.
‘And who else?’
Alex was at a loss.
‘You know the churches are a magnet for malcontents in our society. And who do you always see outside a church on Sundays, taking photographs and keeping a note of who is coming in and going out?’
Alex nodded his head. They didn’t need to say any more.
Alex walked Sophie home. ‘I’m sorry I mentioned the church,’ she said. ‘I can’t make out your Mutter and Vater. They’re quite different from mine. You know exactly where you are with mine. You aren’t allowed to say anything bad about the DDR. Your parents seem a bit more open-minded. But then you say something and you feel you’ve really overstepped the mark.’
‘Sometimes I don’t understand them either,’ said Alex. He kissed her on the forehead. ‘Don’t worry about the church. Besides, Vati is right. Who wants the Stasi taking pictures of you? There’s no sense in inviting trouble.’
Alex returned home to a strained atmosphere. It had all started so well. And he really wanted them to like Sophie.
‘She’s a lovely girl,’ said his mother. ‘But she has some surprisingly relaxed views for the child of such strict Party members.’
His dad was still annoyed with him. ‘You in your invincible youth! You think nothing can touch you and nothing can go wrong. I think you should have a haircut.’ He always said that after they’d had any sort of disagreement about politics.
Alex grew exasperated. His hair was hardly long – not like the pictures of the hippies and freaks you saw on the pop programmes on West German television.
‘Hansi at school has hair just as long as mine,’ said Alex.
‘Hansi at school is a prize athlete, a squad leader in the Free German Youth and he gets top marks in his political theory essays. You do none of these things.’
Frank ruffled his son’s hair and tried to sound affable. ‘It’s easier now for you longhairs. When Mutti and I were young, with the Beat groups becoming popular, you could be chased by the police and put in prison if you looked like you do.’
Alex let out an exasperated sigh.
‘What do you really think, Vati?’ he said. ‘I never know with you or Mutti. Is it just a big game of doing the right thing?’
Frank looked irritated, but tried to control his temper. ‘Your mother and I live in the real world,’ he said tersely. ‘We admire the Party, we admire Comrade Honecker, and we believe in our government and country. It is not perfect, but it’s what we’ve got, and it is easy to criticise, especially if you spend half your time watching West German television. We know the rules. And we know what you and Geli need to do to get on.’
‘You are a bright boy,’ said Gretchen. ‘You have the opportunity to do something magnificent with your life, for our country and for yourself. Or you can carry on like this. You worry us, Alex. They will see you as a layabout and a troublemaker and you’ll be lucky if you get a job as a dustman.’
‘We remember what it was like after the war,’ said Frank. ‘Your mother and I, we were nine, ten. We were starving. There was nowhere to live. Hitler had destroyed our country. Now look at us. We have a fine place to live, we have food, we even have a washing machine and a colour television. Everyone has a job. That’s progress. I believe in that.’
‘But they have all these things in West Germany too,’ said Alex, careful to sound reasonable rather than provocative.
‘Yes, but they have no care for each other. If you turn up late for work, you are sacked immediately. Thousands of people are thrown out of work when the capitalists are not making their precious profit. Rents are extortionate. There is no free childcare, no free nurseries, they only think about themselves. It is a selfish place, Alex. People do not look after each other. And the industrialists, the politicians, the council leaders, they are all former Nazis. It makes my flesh creep to think that the old men running the West have all spent their early years strutting around in Nazi uniforms
Sieg Heil
ing with the worst of them. Here in the East, at least, we have purged and punished our Nazis. I would not want to live over there.’
Alex was getting more and more wound up. ‘Wouldn’t you like to go out of the house and not have to remember to take a carrier bag with you – in case you saw something in the shops you hadn’t seen for six months? Wouldn’t you like to be able to buy fresh fruit and vegetables whenever you wanted instead of making do with jars of pickled stuff?’
Alex had had enough. He was tired and he wanted to go to bed. He knew his friend Anton would have been beaten black and blue by now if he’d argued with his father like this.
‘I’ll stay clear of churches when there’s a service on, Vati. I promise.’
Frank watched his son leave the room with a sinking heart. Alex was in his final year at school now, and his future was uncertain. Only a few of Alex’s year group would be going on to higher education – and they all knew that this had only a little to do with their ability. It was mainly down to how loyal their family was to the State. Geli had managed to get into the
Erweiterte Oberschule
– Extended Secondary School – thanks to Frank and Gretchen’s impeccable Party record and her own academic excellence, but things were looking doubtful for Alex.
He didn’t have the fear – the stomach-tightening chill of falling foul of the regime – that was always there in the background. Frank and Gretchen knew. Alex and Geli had yet to learn. Especially Alex.
Alex sniffed the air during the morning break and decided that today was the first day of spring. There was a warmth to the sunshine and you could imagine the crocuses coming up and buds appearing on the trees. Spring usually filled him with hope and energy, but today he found it hard to summon either. Last night he had been to visit Holger’s apartment. His mother ushered him in swiftly and immediately scolded him for coming to see them. But she made such a half-hearted job of it that Alex could tell she was glad he was there.
‘Look at this,’ said Frau Vogel and thrust a document at him. It was a statement from the State Bank. ‘We opened a savings account for Holger on his sixteenth birthday. Now it has been closed and they’ve sent us this.’
The word ‘Deceased’ had been stamped across it.
‘I went to the bank and asked if we could withdraw the money,’ she said, her voice rising in exasperation. ‘They said only the account holder could authorise a withdrawal.’
‘But it says he’s died,’ said Alex, who wondered why she wasn’t more upset. He was beginning to feeling increasingly bewildered.
‘He’s not dead,’ said Frau Vogel. ‘I’m his mother. I’d know. I’d feel it in my bones. They’re just playing with us. I don’t care about the money, it’s only a few hundred Marks. I’d just like to know what’s happened. He’s either in prison here, or he’s escaped to the West. They’re just not going to tell us. I know they’re bastards, but I can’t believe they wouldn’t tell us if he’d been killed.’
Alex left soon afterwards, asking her to promise to tell him if she heard anything. He lay awake that night and thought about how awful it must be for Frau Vogel – when every knock at the door or postal delivery might bring faint hope of news of her son. His sadness was soon eclipsed by anger. He had a terrible feeling that Holger had been shot dead. A sixteen-year-old boy, in cold blood. No wonder they wanted to keep that quiet.
It was Dr Richard Sorge Day at the school. Sorge, the celebrated German-Soviet spy who had been stationed in Japan during the war, was a national hero. Stamps, postcards, school textbooks were all devoted to his exploits. The Young Pioneers crowded on to the assembly hall stage in their white and blue uniforms and sang songs about him under the slogan
Dr Richard Sorge, Unser Vorbild
– Dr Richard Sorge,
Our Model.