This would be easier. Sleep with Markus and forget all the rest. Go home with a nice memory and move on.
She looked up at him. There was such kindness in his face, and more. If she kissed him, she knew exactly how the night would go…
‘I can’t.’ She stepped back, slipped out of his embrace. ‘I want to, but I can’t. I need to go back in there, Markus. I need to try again.’
It was a moment before he answered.
‘I know. But he won’t open up again to you, not tonight.’
‘Then what do I do?’
‘Let me try.’
Karen was about to refuse, but he wouldn’t let her jump in.
‘I’m not taking over; I’m not pushing you away. But maybe, on my own, I can drag something else out of him. Will you trust me?’
Trust. The hardest of feelings, and she didn’t need to think before she answered.
She took his arm and went down to the street, let him call her a taxi.
When she got back to the hotel, she crawled into bed exhausted, expecting to lie there picking over every word and every nuance of the night’s half-revelations. She closed her eyes, waiting for the lake and Liese’s shocked face to slide in, waiting for Lottie’s terrified cry. Instead she saw Markus, felt the warmth of his arms like an anchor.
The world steadied itself a little.
She slept without dreaming until morning.
‘Last night didn’t go the way that we hoped then?’
Markus didn’t need to answer: his face was as crumpled as his shirt; his eyes were puckered. Karen looped her arm through his and led him into the dining room.
‘Get some food into you and then you can tell me.’
She fetched warm rolls from the buffet and ordered strong coffee.
‘Have you slept at all?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Markus slathered honey on the bread and devoured it in two bites.
‘I think I dozed against the wall in the corridor while I was waiting for him to go to sleep, and then I got home and I was too wound up to try.’
He didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t making sense. Karen waited while the waiter poured their coffee. Markus drank that without noticing either.
‘I’m not following you – maybe you need to start at the beginning. What happened when you went back up to the flat?’
‘We fought. My father is a stubborn, impossible man and I am an ungrateful son. That was the outcome, although the saying took longer.’
Karen pushed her plate away, her appetite gone.
‘I’m sorry. Sorting out my family wasn’t meant to drive the two of you apart.’
Markus sighed. ‘It didn’t. This is nothing that hasn’t been said before or won’t be said again and it always starts the same way: with something personal that gets knocked down by his political dogma. “The state has given you a good life, so be glad of it.” “The state doesn’t dig up the past because to do so is indulgent, not productive. Your duty is to respect that.” On and on like a record on repeat. I love him and I admire him, I really do, but the man is a dinosaur. If it was up to him, the DDR would have swallowed up the West, not the other way round. He thinks our lives under the old regime were ordered; I think they were narrowed down to nothing. We love each other deeply, but it’s not a gap we can close.’
Karen saw the pain on his face and knew, no matter what he said, that she was responsible for part of it. There were as many layers in his life as there were in hers, although she suspected his growing up had been a far more complex thing to navigate.
‘You never considered leaving? I don’t mean escaping, I mean applying to go to the other side. People did – we saw the reports when it happened.’
Markus closed his eyes. For a moment, she thought he was annoyed at the question, then he looked at her with his soft smile and she realised he was simply trying to frame his answer in a way that wouldn’t make her feel stupid.
‘I imagine those reports made that type of legal crossing over sound easy. It wasn’t. It was just as dangerous as crawling through a tunnel or leaping over the Wall. Choices weren’t simple here, Karen. Everything had two faces: applying to leave meant rejecting the East, a conscious decision that left your card literally marked. The minute anyone raised a request, the state closed its doors. No university, no decent job, no healthcare; for the one applying and for the rest of their family. And nine times out of ten the application would be rejected. Then, unless you preferred to be sent to prison on some trumped-up and unanswerable charge, the only work available would be what the government you had turned your back on was gracious enough to provide. Working for the state was the end for too many good people: they were turned into spies to keep feeding the system.’
‘So you felt you had no choice but to stay? Especially given Michael’s position?’
‘Exactly. If I’d tried to leave, I would have broken Father’s heart and ruined his life, never mind mine. My wanting out would equal his failure. So I never really considered it. Being a good son mattered to me more, although he doesn’t believe that at the moment.’
When she reached out her hand, he hung on to it.
‘What happened last night, Markus?’
‘I tried to reason with him. To get him to understand that what happened to Liese is still causing damage. That you had a right to know, and he had an obligation to tell. I wasted my breath. He thinks “this constant talking is a Western disease”. So I lost my temper. Also a waste of breath. Never argue with a man who’s spent sixty years soaked in communism. I swear he could win a debate against Death. Anyway, I got nowhere. He asked me to leave and I went.’
Karen rolled the crumbs on her plate into a ball and refused to give into tears.
‘You tried. I’m grateful. You’ve done more for me than you needed to, and I know more than I did when I came. Lottie’s death was reason enough for my mother killing herself, whatever else did or didn’t happen. People marry for all sorts of reasons. Who knows what really causes anyone to commit suicide. Maybe it’s time to accept that I can’t find answers that don’t want to be found.’
‘Karen, look at me.’
When she did, he brushed away the tears that had escaped her furious blinking.
‘That’s a brave face, but you don’t believe what you’re saying and neither do I. Which is why I went back.’
He reached into his jacket and took out two folded pieces of paper.
‘What are those?’
‘Newspaper articles, from my father’s clippings file. Michael is a record-keeper.’
He grinned as she frowned.
‘Not in a bad way – he’s no Stasi recruit, although I’m sure they would have loved to have snared him. I told you I didn’t know much about his past. Like you with Liese, I’ve had to piece it together from snippets. I do know that he was captured at the end of the war when the Russians sacked Berlin and he survived that because he was Jewish and because he could speak their language. And then, of course, because he told them he was a communist and had worked for the resistance. He made it through. A lot of his comrades weren’t so lucky: they died or stayed missing. What I’d forgotten until you came was that Father kept looking for them, and kept records of anything that might turn into a lead. He was always cutting things out of the newspapers – trial reports and police discoveries. So last night I waited till he was sure to be asleep and then I let myself back in and went through his papers.’