Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

Author:Anna Funder
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-fiction, Travel, Politics, Biography, History
ISBN: 0062077325
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

Herr Christian

Several days pass in which my main activity seems to be feeding and emptying the heater. Now I’m rugged up and off to the station. Near the entrance there’s a photographer’s studio. I always look in the window at the prints on display to see the locals as they want to be seen. There are bald babies with ribbons around their heads; there’s a wedding shot with the bride on a motorbike like a package deal; there’s a young man with a mullet haircut holding proudly onto his girlfriend as if he just caught her. The photos change from time to time but today, as always, there is one of a woman of staggering beauty, beauty so fine I stare at it as if it were a puzzle, or an answer.

On the train another beautiful woman sits opposite me. She has a baby in a halter on her chest. I wonder whether others notice the loveliness of the women here, or are used to it. The Turkish man next to me is otherwise absorbed. He can see his own reflection in the window next to the woman, so he pulls a comb from his pocket and draws it lovingly through his moustache. The young mother is looking down at her baby and I can’t take my gaze away from them. When she raises her head I see she has a pierced nose and that her blue eyes are crossed, just slightly, drawn to the stud as to a magnet.

I stand at the edge of the carpark at Potsdam station. All the other passengers stream ahead past me, to cars and trams and places they know. When they’re gone I am alone, except for a man in jeans leaning on the bonnet of the biggest, blackest BMW I have ever seen. He waves at me. This is my lift. This is my latest Stasi man.

Herr Christian shakes my hand warmly. He has a big crooked smile. ‘I thought a tour would be a good idea,’ he says, his voice airy and smoky, ‘to show you some of the places we operated.’

‘Great.’

He opens the car door for me, springs around the other side and jumps in.

I look across. It’s quite a long way. Herr Christian is in his mid-forties, with a young flat face and a nose that has been broken several times. His hair is bunched in wiry blond curls close to his head, his eyes are small and blue and sparkly. He looks straight at me, smiling his lopsided smile like a gangster, or an angel.

‘Let’s go,’ he says and I notice he lisps. He puts his sunglasses on, and turns the ignition.

The machine coasts the roads like a cruiser. He handles it lightly, more like a boy with a toy than a man with a vast black asset. We drive through the streets of Potsdam, over cobbles we don’t feel and past grand buildings in various states of disrepair. The windows are dark and no-one can see us in here.

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