His face wears everything he feels.
‘My father is the same. Apart from the one picture of his parents I’ve seen, and that he was always in the army, I know almost as little about him as I do about my mother. I certainly know nothing about his feelings.’
Karen stopped. She knew her father’s feelings all too well at the moment: he was angry and upset and disappointed in her. He had recovered his voice a week or so after her last visit, but he hadn’t wanted to see or speak to her. She had left word with the hospital that she was going to Berlin, that she was going to meet with Markus and, she hoped, Michael. He hadn’t responded – not that she expected him to. Since her last disaster of a visit, she had been forced to get the news of his continuing recovery from whichever overworked nurse could spare any time for her calls.
She looked up, conscious she had lost the thread of the conversation. Markus was smiling. It took years off his face.
‘Our systems must be more similar than I thought, at least when it comes to parents. I used to get so cross with how closed Father was, how easily he would shut down a conversation he didn’t want to be having. My mother always sprang to his defence. She said his silences were normal. That no one who lived through the war wanted to remember either it or the miseries that came after. She said the way he lived, forgetting the past, focusing on what the DDR offered us and what he could offer it, was the right way to be. That was everyone’s line, the party propaganda we were all fed. I went along with her for the sake of peace, but now you are here…’
‘The past is shifting. And you’d rather it didn’t.’
He nodded. ‘Maybe it’s the timing of this. Right now, for those of us brought up in the East, the past isn’t just shifting, it’s breaking down. Everything we were brought up to value is disappearing. There’s very little left to count on, except family. And now I find out my father isn’t the solid man I thought he was. I don’t know if I need that. More importantly, I’m not sure he needs his life questioned and picked over.’
The smile vanished; his face suddenly grew stern.
‘I won’t let you hurt him, Karen. If any of this exploring of yours causes him pain, no matter what you need, I’ll stop you.’
Karen stared into her cup, where a skin had formed across the cold coffee. The Michael he described, the relationship they had, sounded so familiar it was like listening to her own thoughts about Andrew. She had been right to come; there were answers here. She sensed that from Markus’s agitation, from his need to set the rules of engagement.
She nodded as if she agreed, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t plan to hurt anyone, but neither did she plan to shy away from asking Michael questions that might prove uncomfortable. If doing one caused the other, she would have to live with it.
For all his charms and his apparent empathy with her situation, how gatekeeper Markus felt could not be her problem.
The building Michael lived in was a time capsule. The hallway was tiled in faded blues and underwater greens, forming a hushed retreat from the outside bustle. Postboxes fashioned like miniature houses marched along one side of the entranceway. The lift creaked behind stout double doors.
‘I hope you’re feeling fit. The lift looks impressive, but the stairs are always the safest option.’
Karen’s first impression of Michael’s flat as she entered the hallway was that it was spacious, but the interior was visibly aging. Markus must have seen her frown as he steered her down the corridor towards the living room where he said Michael was waiting.
‘He won’t decorate. He abides by party directives too strictly. This was the best on offer in 1953, so it’s still the best on offer. His pig-headedness used to drive my mother mad.’
The once-cream walls were nicotine-tinged. The turquoise units Karen could see as she passed the open kitchen door were scuffed and shabby, and the sparse furnishings in the living room left the flat feeling half-finished. As they entered, Michael rose from a chair by the window. He was tall and smartly dressed and he would have seemed composed except for the tightness round his eyes and mouth.
‘You are her image. You could be nobody’s daughter but Liese’s.’
His English was heavily accented and tripped clumsily over his tongue. When Karen thanked him in German, his face relaxed into soft creases.
‘Other than Russian, I do not have my son’s language skills. That he speaks English so well was his mother’s doing. She loved languages – she was fluent herself, and she loved your literature. She never thought Russian and German gave a wide enough view of the world. It was hardly a popular view to hold here, but on that she wouldn’t be argued with.’
He embraced Markus and led them into a sitting room furnished with books and two sagging green armchairs. A photograph of a smiling woman holding a laughing little boy took centre stage on the bookcase.
‘You will take some coffee and apple cake? I baked it myself – one of my newer skills.’
I was right. He looks in charge of the situation but he’s as nervous as me.
Karen tried to sit without hovering, while Michael fussed in the kitchen and Markus fetched a plastic chair and a small table.
‘Let me speak to him alone, tell him what you told me about your mother’s death. Get that done with.’
He left the room. Karen heard a few muffled words, and then a cry and a cup smashing and was glad Markus had taken the details away from her watching.
When Michael returned, his age-softened but still handsome face was twisted, and his tall frame was hunched over. Markus led him to a chair, brought him coffee; sat at his side while he drank it.
‘I have explained that you have questions and you have a working knowledge of our language. We have agreed that he will speak in German and I will translate whatever is needed. I have told him we will end this whenever he wishes.’
Karen nodded, although Markus’s prescriptive manner chafed.
‘I am so sorry.’ Michael’s voice was as dry and cracked as a summer river. ‘That she did such a thing was my fault – her misery was all my doing.’
Markus translated as Michael spoke and then reared as he took in what had actually been said.
Karen shot forward, pulling Michael’s attention onto her before Markus could instantly close down the conversation.
‘How could that be? Markus said she never replied to your postcard. If you weren’t in touch, how could you have known what she would do?’
Michael’s gaze was so intense, Karen wished he would look away.
‘I always knew. After Lottie was lost, I knew one day Liese would follow.’
The curtains fluttered against the open window. Karen caught the movement and felt it like the walls trembling.
‘Who is Lottie?’
Michael flinched. ‘You don’t know?’
She’s not here; she won’t answer.
Karen bunched her hands into fists as if she could ward off the answer she knew instinctively was coming.
‘Lottie was Liese’s first child, my dear. Lottie was your sister.’
The sky outside the window hadn’t switched from its earlier clear blue. The hands on the clock had eaten away little more than an hour. How had a lifetime not passed?
Michael’s eyes were closed, his breathing thick. Karen was bone-chilled, her teeth chattering. She didn’t know how to be in her own skin. She wanted to howl, for her mother, for her lost little sister, but the tears stuck like ice in her chest.