‘Are you really asking me that? Are you so blind to the past it’s wiped out your memory? Because she was sick, you silly girl. Not right in the head. Seeing things, scared of her own shadow, threatening to kill herself so often, Andrew thought he was going mad too with the strain of it. I swear to God he should have left her in Germany and saved us all the bother.’
The slap wasn’t a hard one, but Mrs Hubbard screamed as if she’d been slashed with a knife.
Karen stormed away, screeched her car out of the drive and only slammed to a stop when she realised she had run a red light and nearly caused a collision. Her hands were shaking, not least from the fact that she had just slapped an old lady. She couldn’t carry on like this – that much was clear.
There could be horrors in her past that she couldn’t live with, that your father can’t tell.
Well, someone had better start telling: that she was still scrambling round for the truth was only making things worse.
Karen picked up the letter from the passenger seat where she had flung it and smoothed the thin paper out. After six weeks of waiting, she had convinced herself that her letter, with its guessed-at address and no surname, had no chance of finding a home. Then an answer had arrived, not from Michael, but from his son, Markus Wasserman, replying to Karen’s tentative request for information – which she had couched in overly formal German – in perfect English.
It wasn’t long and it didn’t directly deal with her questions. It expressed his father’s deep sorrow that Liese had died. It made no mention of a previous correspondence or any lack of it. It did say that Karen’s letter had ‘disturbed’ Michael, that his reaction had made him unwell and had ‘dismayed’ his son, which was why he, Markus, was replying. The tone was clipped, not impolite but not welcoming. Karen had feared a dismissal until she read the last lines.
My father has said very little; he is in fact reluctant to say much about your mother at all, but it is clear that she mattered a great deal to him. Her death has affected him deeply. Despite what has clearly been a shock, he does, however, wish to remain in contact with you. By letter or, if you are ever in Berlin, in person. I will leave whatever the next steps will be up to you.
Karen closed her eyes as rain began to drum against the windscreen.
If you are ever in Berlin. She had been pulling at the phrase since she first read it. Perhaps Michael didn’t mean it; perhaps it was a politeness. Perhaps, if he was reluctant to talk, she would get no more from him than from her father. But she refused to believe that or why would Michael want to stay in contact when the letter hinted this son of his wasn’t exactly in favour?
She switched the engine back on and rejoined the traffic, manoeuvring onto the slip road heading to the M3 and London. She was tired of it all. Of being in the wrong; of causing pain and feeling pain; of being no nearer to the mystery that was her mother than she had been twenty years ago. Berlin was opening; Michael was no longer just a face in a photograph. That had to mean something. That must mean her mother was closer.
Karen joined the motorway and accelerated away from the too slow-moving traffic. She was tired, most of all, of waiting to trip over answers.
If you are ever in Berlin.
Karen relaxed her grip on the steering wheel as she suddenly realised what she needed to do. It was hardly the warmest invitation; it was hardly an invitation at all, but she didn’t care. Haphazardly probing at the past wasn’t going to cut it anymore. It was time to end that. It was time to take control, dive in and dig.
Twelve
Karen
Berlin, May 1990
I will await you at the Schillerbrücke crossing point at 14.30 tomorrow. I would prefer an opportunity to discuss your situation before you meet with my father.
Markus Wasserman.
His message had been waiting at the hotel and had chipped at Karen’s concentration through a long business dinner with one of the prospective clients her company was courting. Such an irritating choice of words. Your situation, as if she was some kind of problem. I would prefer, implying she had a voice and then completely ignoring it.
Continuing the pattern of the first contact three months ago, Markus, not Michael, had replied to the two further letters Karen had sent. His communications had been sparse and had all followed the same formula: short, factual, impersonal. He hadn’t asked her anything about herself or responded to the details she had offered. He had said little about Michael; he had revealed almost nothing about himself. His only comment about her visit to Berlin was that it was ‘sooner than anticipated’. Karen couldn’t decide if he was uninterested, or busy, or simply rude. In the end, she followed his lead: her most recent letter had contained no more than the address of her hotel, her flight details and her meeting schedule.
A man of mystery. It was the last thing she needed. Even his choice of meeting place was, as the map-scouring receptionist put it, ‘an unusual one, a bit out of the way’. Perhaps he simply didn’t like a fuss, and there was certainly plenty of fuss going on in Berlin. The camera-wielding crowds engulfing Checkpoint Charlie had been proof of that.
As her first day in the city continued, so did its contradictions. The meetings her company – who were eager to get a foothold in this rapidly changing Berlin – had arranged for her took her in and out of polished restaurants and shiny offices that sat at odds with the graffiti-covered streets they looked out over. Every conversation started with the Wall’s official demolition, which was still a month away, and the opportunities that would bring, but no one could quite define what exactly they were. To Karen, it felt as if the city was rejoining in fits and starts, without any sense of coherence beyond the hope of it. She couldn’t escape the impression that this new Berlin didn’t yet know what to make of itself.
People passed back and forth through the crossing points in grinning unchallenged groups, but their clothes and hairstyles marked out who was East and who was West and, for all the talk of regeneration, much of the city was still a wasteland.
She paused in the middle of the Schillerbrücke and gazed across the water to the Fernsehturm’s ugly-beautiful grey needle. Whatever the city’s disjointed mood, it felt right to be back, to have not given up. In another few minutes, she would be at the checkpoint, then, at last, she would be in the East, where the television tower stood. It seemed momentous; a moment needing marking. The one guard on duty waved her through without speaking and barely glanced at her passport.
‘You look disappointed. Most people do. Now it’s safe to do it, everyone wants to cross with a little more drama.’
It was neither the greeting nor the man she expected.
Karen had constructed Markus from his letters and made him rigid and stern, buttoning his suit up tight and pinching his face into disapproving lines. The figure leaning against the parapet could be only a year or two older than she was and was far more at ease with the world than his writing suggested. Her dinner companions the previous night had mocked the clothes worn by the Ossis, playing a game in the bar of spot the cheap suit and fake Levis. Markus was dressed in dark brown corduroy trousers worn loose enough to suit his rangy frame and a cream shirt rolled up at the elbows. Add to that his stubbled chin and toffee-coloured eyes and Markus Wasserman was textbook handsome. Karen couldn’t tell yet if he knew it.