I still felt the need to talk to someone about Kaminsky (and I guess about Schimmel too) but wasn’t sure who. Normally I’d talk to Martin but it didn’t feel fair to pile all this stuff on him when he was on sick leave.
So I decided to talk to his daughter, Katrin. I’d only known her since last autumn, same as Martin, but I really liked both of them. Martin could be hard work but Katrin and I got along really well, and it felt like we’d got close back in March when the fash were targeting her dad and the shit was really hitting the fan. We’d seen each other a lot back then, but not so much lately—too busy with work. Now I was in West Berlin, ringing her doorbell, hoping she’d be in.
Katrin opened the door, and when she saw me on the stairs she gave me a lovely big smile and opened her arms for a hug. That felt good, just what I needed after the last few days.
“You got time for a visitor?”
“For you, always. Come in, I’ve got cake.”
I followed her into the kitchen, and helped myself to a bottle of Apfelschorle from her fridge.
“Just as bad here as where I’ve come from,” I nodded towards the kitchen table.
Pieces of paper were everywhere, and a tiny tape recorder lay on top. I picked it up—it was a bit longer than my hand, thick as a well-made sandwich. I was going to try out the buttons but Katrin took it off me.
“Don’t—you’ll lose my place. I’ve got to transcribe all these interviews for my dissertation, it’s so boring, people just say the most banal things.”
“I know all about people talking shite, at least I don’t have to write it all down!”
Katrin smiled, but I didn’t want the conversation to head towards work so I changed tack. “What you listening to?” It was something poppy, but kind of nice too. The singer had a terrific voice.
“Everything But The Girl, new album came out today. Do you want me to change it? Something heavier?” Katrin had given me the tea pot and two mugs, and was carrying a couple of slices of Linzer Torte into the living room.
I told her the music was fine and we sat together on the couch. It was nice and cool in her flat, she had the windows closed and the curtains drawn, keeping the heat out. It was cosy.
We talked a bit, and I told her about Schimmel, and she listened. She was a good listener, didn’t interrupt, just sat there and paid attention. After a while I’d said everything there was to say.
“What about you?” she asked.
I gave her a whaddyatalkingabout face.
“Well it can’t be easy on you either, seeing your friend like that.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re fine?” Katrin laughed at me. “You say me and my dad clam up when it comes to talking about feelings but you’re just as bad!”
I slouched down a bit further on the sofa and crossed my arms.
“Karo, I’m just trying to help. I’m sorry I laughed at you.”
I ignored her for a moment or two, but couldn’t ignore the fact that she was right—this whole thing about Schimmel was stressing me out.
“It’s like I can’t get through to him. I’m beating myself up about it because it feels like I’m not doing enough, or not doing the right things. And that hurts. We’ve known each other for years, Schimmel and me. He’s my best friend, he was my first proper friend. Now all of a sudden it’s like he’s not there any more. It used to be so good, we got up to all kinds of stuff, we put up with loads of hassle from the cops and the Stasi but we never let it get us down.”
“Was it bad for you, back then?”
“Just the usual.” I thought back to a few years ago, when the Volkspolizei would patrol Berlin, looking for punks to hassle. We’ll have to ask you to accompany us to the station. We need to verify your identity. Like ten times a week, more if there was some state celebration coming up. They’d beat us up on Alex, or on the way home, pretty much all the time. “Just constant harassment. It’s not like we’d ever have admitted it but I guess it did wear us down.” God, I was glad those days were over! “What about you?”
“Wasn’t too bad. The thing I’ll never forgive them for is the way they made me leave school at 16. I really wanted to go to university, but there was never any chance of that happening.”
“Was that why you left the country?”
“No.” Katrin hesitated, her eyes fixed on the cup of tea between her hands. “They asked me to spy on my dad. That was the last straw, that’s when I knew I had to get out. So we went to Hungary, me and this boy. We got out that way. I’ll never forget the date: twenty-seventh of September 1989.”
“Did you tell Martin? About what the Stasi asked you to do?”
“I should have done, I should have shouted it from the rooftops. I know that now, but I didn’t then. I left instead. Hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
I put my hand over Katrin’s.
“Thing is, those same bastards are still around.” I could hear the tension in Katrin’s voice, winding itself up, tighter and tighter. “And it’s like they’ve still got it in for my dad. That thing with Evelyn last year, and you can bet they were behind the fascist stuff in spring. They’re definitely helping Kaminsky, right now. They’re never going to give up, not until they’re back in power. Will we never get rid of them?”
“Is that why you’re still in the West?”
Katrin lifted her cup of tea to her lips, shaking my hand off. She sipped, then lowered the cup again.
“There’s no way I can be in the same country as those Stasi bastards.”
***
“What do you know about this Becker guy?” After a long silence Katrin had started talking about Schimmel again. “Are you sure he’s responsible for how Schimmel is now?”
I didn’t know the answer to that. Wish I did. I told Katrin I was going to find that out: along with who he was, what he’d done, where to find him.
“Is that wise? You might rake up more than Schimmel can handle.”
I thought about that for a while, but it was obvious that the only way to go was through Becker, and it was already weeks and weeks ago that I’d promised myself that I’d find that man and do bad things to him. I mean, it was the whole reason I’d agreed to work with RS in the first place, I thought being in the Republikschutz would help me find him. But I’d been sidetracked into meetings and other stuff like all this shit around Kaminsky. I’d lost sight of my main mission.
So it was time to stop saying I was going to track that bastard down and actually start doing it. Talking with Katrin had helped me see that I really, really needed to get my shit together. I needed to get on Becker’s case.
“Katrin, I’ve gotta go, I’m meant to be meeting up with Schimmel. Look, thanks for the chat.” I gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’m glad we talked. It helped.”
“Do you want to come round sometime, dinner maybe?”
“Dinner? Ooh, how bourgeois!” But then I saw Katrin’s face, and that made me shut my stupid gob. “I mean, yeah, sounds great. Tell you what, I’ll bring you a tape—broaden your musical horizons a bit!”