‘I know. I’m not really serious. But this isn’t easy. We think before we speak here; we choose language that fits inside party parameters – we are always aware that someone is likely to be listening. The Wall that physically ringed our lives might be down, but I’m not sure that’s the one that matters. I don’t want to live with those restrictions anymore, so I am trying to shed them, but my father? He will tell you the version of the past he believes that you need, but, no, he won’t tell you everything. I’m not sure that he’s capable.’
Karen could feel her skin tightening.
‘He has to. I came to Berlin once before and ended up with more confusion. I can’t go away from here again without the answers I want.’
‘You may have to. My father is stubborn – he sets his mind and it stays there.’
Markus shook his head as Karen began to argue. ‘It’s what I said yesterday: you have to try and understand him or you won’t get anywhere with him at all.’
‘Then explain him better to me.’
There was a pause and then Markus nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll do what I can. Let’s say then that you met him in a different way and tried to talk, like everyone is doing, about Berlin’s reunification. He wouldn’t engage in a discussion; he would walk away or he would deliver the same lecture on the miseries of capitalism he’s been quoting for years. He won’t go to the West, even though he’s past pensionable age and no one would bother. He still won’t call the barrier between the sectors the Wall. Every time he hears it called that, he corrects the name back to the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”, like a DDR robot. When I was a child, he would make me turn my back on it and pretend there was nothing beyond the concrete but more East Germany. It was ridiculous, but he was unshakeable.’
Karen laughed at the image of the West-defying little boy – she couldn’t help herself – and relaxed even further when Markus joined in.
‘Exactly. Stubborn to the point of madness. He lives his life inside strict boundaries and strict beliefs – he always has. Your needs won’t push him outside those.’
Markus drove into Karl Marx Allee’s wider road and stopped the car outside Michael’s apartment, his voice and face all seriousness again.
‘I’m sorry, Karen, but I would be lying if I promised you a different man.’
‘What if whatever he tells me isn’t enough?’ Karen hovered on the pavement, her energy for this next bout already draining. ‘What if none of it is ever enough?’
Markus could have offered platitudes; Karen knew other men would. Instead, he simply took her hand as he pressed the buzzer.
There was an unexpected comfort in his silence.
Thirteen
Liese
Berlin, September 1943–May 1945
The guard wiped her hands and walked away as everyone screamed except Liese. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t believe her heart hadn’t immediately stopped. She stood in the middle of the screams and the shouts and waited for the end that had to be coming.
‘Liese Elfmann. Is that really you?’
The voice cut through the clamour, as clear and crisp and as full of delight as if its owner was hailing her across a dance floor.
‘Come here.’
Everyone fell back; a pathway opened. When she didn’t move, a guard dragged her forward.
‘Gently now, especially with those pretty hands.’
The man tapping his foot as he waited for her was tall and blond and dressed in a black uniform so exquisitely tailored it looked as if he had stepped from a magazine.
‘I was right – I knew it. I’d recognise you anywhere, despite that rather strange hair colour you’re sporting. But you’re frowning: don’t you remember me?’ He smiled. It made him look colder. ‘Fritz Suhren? Commandant Suhren now, to be accurate. No? No matter. You were rather dazzled by that French buyer the last time we met, or so I recall. Such extravagant hosts the Elfmanns – always the finest foods, the most expensive champagne.’ He clapped his hands so suddenly, the guard next to him jumped. ‘And that’s why I had my idea, when I saw you there. I could barely believe it was you, to be honest, but the strangest people are turning up here these days. Anyway, this little kingdom you’re standing in is all mine, so here is my thought: why don’t I return the favour and extend you some hospitality in return for all your family showed me? What do you think?’
Liese couldn’t make any sense of his manner or his words. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think about anything, except the guard. About her vicious little eyes and the brick-sized scarred hand that had blotted out Lottie’s precious life. Whatever this Suhren was saying was drowned out by the noises she couldn’t shake from her head. The scream that ended almost as soon as it began, and the snap, and the splash that had taken her child away. Nothing was as real to her as any of that, so Liese stared at the bright-eyed Commandant in silence and wondered what he wanted with her, and how soon he would stop whatever this nonsense was and kill her.
‘She’s speechless with her good fortune, how charming! Well, I shall take that as a yes. Off you go, my dear – off you go!’
Suhren turned away before Liese could catch up with him, his attention caught by some other distraction.
‘Up the hill. Do as the Commandant says. Move.’
Not knowing what else to do, Liese stumbled up the slope towards the row of houses looking down onto the lake, another of the female guards panting behind her.
‘Why is he doing this?’
What she really wanted to ask was, Why am I still alive when my daughter is dead?, but the words were beyond her.
‘How should I know? The Commandant thinks he knows you; he thinks you have some value. You should be grateful: he probably just saved your life.’
And then the pain finally hit, raw and red and wearing Lottie’s face.
‘Still no news. Still looking.’
Commandant Suhren had made the same solemn pronouncement at least twice a month, waiting until Liese nodded and smiled in the grateful way he preferred. By February 1945, she must have heard it at least thirty-four times. She had long since stopped believing that the looking was true, but on he went with the lying. Liese rarely wondered anymore why he bothered. Presumably, it was all part of the games he loved to play. Or perhaps he still thought she was going to turn her scissors into a weapon and mess up his pretty house.
Doing that had been her first thought, seventeen months ago, when she was marched from the horror that had engulfed her outside the camp gates and up the hill into Suhren’s home. He had appeared shortly afterwards and looked her up and down as if she were a prize cow.
‘Liese Elfmann. What a delight. Finally, I get your undivided attention. I once asked your father for permission to court you, did you know that? He laughed. Can you imagine how much that hurt my feelings? He was happy enough for my family to supply textiles to the great Haus Elfmann, apparently, but to provide a husband for its heir? The idea was “an outrage”. What a lucky escape I had, when you think about it: what a horror to have been saddled with a filthy little Jew for a wife! The swings of fortune favoured me in the end and now look how the tables are turned. Liese Elfmann, my own little seamstress. Oh, we will keep you so busy. Dresses for my wife and her friends; uniforms for me. You’ll have a salon’s worth of clients again. Isn’t that lucky?’