Red Love by Leo Maxim

Author:Leo Maxim [Maxim Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782270683
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2013-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

I visit Sigrid. She’s now living in an old people’s home run by the workers’ welfare organization, in Hohenschönhausen. Visiting her is fun, because she’s always so delighted. I owe Grandma Sigrid my first serious experience with alcohol. When I was fourteen, I emptied half a bottle of advocaat with her in the campsite. She only ever talked about the war, and I couldn’t get a word in. When I was a child she was my favourite grandma, because she let me watch television until closedown at her house, and eat cheesecake till I was sick. I could do what I liked, she always thought I was great, because I was like her Wernerle. Sigrid still clearly remembers her first few years with Werner. The boat trips on Lake Tegel, the skiing holidays in Carinthia, the cycling trips to Birkenwerder and the visits to the cinema on the Kurfürstendamm. She worked as a shorthand typist in the Raddatz & Co. department store on Leipziger Strasse. They went on outings with the gymnastics club and did amateur theatricals. Sigrid’s eyes gleam when she talks about those times. “All the confusion was over, my mother cooked very nicely, and I had Werner. They were the happiest years of my life.”

The only nuisance, says Sigrid, was the constant political discussions. If Werner was convinced about something, he always had to convince everybody else as well. Werner was very keen on National Socialism, he had raved about the new age, about new possibilities. “He liked order, he liked punctuality.” And at last he had work again. “Nazism is posh Communism,” he used to say. Sigrid didn’t really understand what he meant, and she didn’t ask because she was much happier dancing with Werner than talking to him about politics. But Werner had argued with her father Fritz, she says. He banged on at him evening after evening, but Fritz, who was more inclined to sympathize with the Communists, wouldn’t be convinced.

Wolf even says that the arguments once got so violent that Werner threatened to inform on his father-in-law for anti-government propaganda. Werner actually ran to the police station, but it was already shut. The next day his fury had vanished, so Fritz was free from the threat of denunciation.

Sigrid can’t remember this affair. It strikes her as a bit of an exaggeration. On the other hand, she says, she does like to remember the nice things. Wolf says the story of the denunciation happened exactly as described. Fritz had told him everything, and Fritz hadn’t been inclined to exaggerate. I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe. Can you forget that the man you’ve loved wanted to throw your own father to the lions? Or did Sigrid forget it because she wouldn’t have been able to live with Werner? If that’s true, what would have happened to Fritz if the police station had in fact been open?

Sigrid talks about an argument with Werner after their marriage, when they had found their first flat, a room in Pankow.

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