Approaching the portal, Jutta is more nervous than she’s ever been, plagued with anxiety. Even the uncertainty of the first time had been dulled by the prize of finding Karin. Now, there is everything at stake. No pleasure ahead, with only anguish and disappointment awaiting in the East.
The memories of Rome have fallen away in past days, almost as if the trip was a true fable now etched on a page. Axel had the dubious honour of sweeping away the good in her life when he’d approached her the day after she and Danny returned to Berlin.
She’d recognised the shape of his tall, stringy form walk towards her desk in the library, his pretence of being a student on the hunt for a book. Except his engineering degree meant he would never step foot in the humanities section.
‘Hi,’ he ventured, and this time he looked to be coated in less bravado.
Still, Jutta was in no mood for niceties. Their exchanges were purely business now.
‘What can I get for you?’
Checking left and right for anyone in earshot, he virtually whispered: ‘I need a certain type of manuscript.’
Jutta almost rolled her eyes in disbelief. Did he have to play the spy quite so obviously? He was supposed to be good at this.
‘Usual bench, twelve thirty,’ she mumbled, then more loudly: ‘Sorry, we don’t have that in right now.’ Her dismissal. To scarper. Get out of her sight.
She was irritated rather than afraid of Axel then, having had time to ponder over the terms of his blackmail. But as much as she continues to dislike him and his methods, she’s forced to respect his power and the grim consequences he could pile upon the Voigt sisters.
It’s mid-afternoon when she reaches the portal, Jutta having banked long hours since returning from Rome in order to leave work early, with her plan to seek out Karin and tell her the bad news. The streets around Harzer Strasse are only mildly busy and it helps to slice off some of the angst that naturally breeds on approaching the rabbit hole.
Now, with Axel’s first task, she has two reasons to go: ‘This job,’ he’d said almost benevolently, ‘is easy. Just a message to drop. No waiting around.’
He’d casually moved an envelope between them on the bench and whispered the address of a bar in East Berlin. For a second, Jutta had felt reluctant to even touch the paper, knowing it would almost certainly infect her; the minute she placed it in her bag she would be instantly snagged in the net of subterfuge. There’s no going back, she thought. Then the phrase rankled: there’s no going back for Karin. Not yet. This is life now, Jutta.
Strangely, the anguish causes her to propel herself through the tarpaulin with renewed bravado, barely stopping to listen out for sounds in the kitchen or the corridors. Whether or not it’s for Axel, she’s truly on a mission.
Despite the sunshine, the streets of East Berlin seem equally subdued and no one appears to give her a second glance. She makes her way north, having memorised where the bar drop is. The flimsy message sits like a weight in her bag, within a hastily made compartment in the lining, fastened together again with Velcro. Karin would have easily made a better job of it, and Jutta knows it’s crude, but it could earn her vital seconds if she’s stopped and searched. Vital to do what exactly, she hasn’t quite thought out, but it gives a modicum of comfort.
She finds the chosen bar on the wide thoroughfare of Prenzlauer Allee, and is mildly surprised at how exposed it seems. But she’s sure the address is right, and Jutta swallows hard as she steps into a large noisy room, crowded with men and cigarette smoke. The barman barely notices her and, when he does, she retrieves the chosen script from her memory.
‘A Vita Cola please.’ Smiles broadly. ‘This weather certainly makes you thirsty.’
In silence, the barman reaches behind for a bottle, eases off the cap and places it in front of her. She waits for his expected response but he looks merely bored and eyes her for the money, which she hands over. This is not going smoothly.
‘Have you a phone?’ Jutta presses on with her next allotted line.
‘It’s broken,’ he grunts, moving on to another customer, and she’s blindsided, sweating and dry-mouthed. She can feel eyes crawling on her: nosy regulars at best, at worst true suspicion. She takes several swigs of the cola and turns for the door, feeling the entire bar follow her every step, a low muttering from the corner. Outside, Jutta forces her head up, feet forward and into the tiny toilet cubicle of a friendlier-looking café, retrieving the crumpled piece of paper she’s been told to destroy before today and peering at Axel’s faded scribble. She had the wrong address! It’s in a side street off the Allee. No wonder the barman seemed uninterested.
Oh Lord, Jutta, at least get it right! She wipes the sweat from her face, forces down a lungful of the stale bathroom air and resolves to do better.
Jutta’s true destination is nearby in a crumbling alleyway, seemingly untouched since the war’s end. It has an almost identical name, but is one of those fusty, ancient kneipe that old men are apt to use as their living rooms, only minus their wives. The door even creaks as she pushes it open, and for a second she is squarely transported into the film version of The Third Man, fully expecting Orson Welles to be sitting in a corner waiting for her, hat pulled down low.
Instead, there are one or two regulars planted on seats around the poorly lit bar. Grimy, lacy curtains at the windows make the room even gloomier, which is oddly more comforting for Jutta, as no one can possibly see in. She’s the only female, and her presence brings the average age down by about forty years.
The barman at least has a smile for her. Here we go again.
‘A Vita Cola please,’ she ventures. ‘This weather certainly makes you thirsty.’
‘Yes, it’s a good summer we’re having,’ he replies brightly. ‘And they say it might go on into September.’
It’s banal small talk, but music to Jutta’s ears; on hearing the crucial words she can hand over the envelope, though not in plain sight over the bar.
‘Do you have a phone?’ Jutta ploughs on, taking unwanted sips of the sweet, sickly drink. The man points to a corner booth behind a thin wall, where she fumbles in her bag, back to the bar, cursing the effectiveness of Velcro for a minute and the rasping sound it makes as the lining comes away. Her reflex is to swivel and look for any reaction among the men staring into their beer glasses, but she works hard at keeping her focus. Natural, Jutta. Act like you do this every day.
As instructed, she slips the envelope between the pages of the dog-eared phone book and makes a play of picking up the receiver and dialling, then replacing it with a clunk.
‘Thank you,’ Jutta sings as she emerges from the booth, smiles and turns tail through the door.
‘Have a good day,’ the barman says.
It’s done, and properly, but when the air hits her skin it’s apparent that she’s still sweating, the sheen on her forehead instantly drying to dust as she walks, perhaps too fast, away from the kneipe. Only when she’s around the corner does she slow and force out the air kept hostage in her lungs. Now I’m a criminal. Officially.
Previously, ghosting through the Wall had felt like opportunism, sneaking behind the teacher’s back. A crime in the eyes of the GDR yet morally sound.
Now, they – she – had entered a different world. A place where the captured suffer the full force of the Stasi’s power.
Jutta takes a deep breath to steady herself. She wants a brandy, but coffee is necessary to combat a sudden wave of fatigue. There’s still an hour or so before Karin finishes work – she’s memorised her sister’s rota, and even though she knows Karin keeps a spare flat key tucked in the second plant pot by the door, she daren’t risk Frau Lupke’s eagle eyes.
The Presse Café is the nearest, most familiar place to the Charité, and Jutta ploughs towards it, glad when the square, ornate entrance comes into view. The café is half full, and she orders coffee and a piece of apple cake that looks unappetising but will give her the sugar boost she badly needs.
Jutta buries her head in the day’s copy of Berliner Zeitung with the pretence of being absorbed, though her mind wanders to various conversations in the tables alongside. On one, a younger and an older man are arguing the politics of the enforcement, whether the Wall is both moral and legal. She’s surprised to hear the younger man arguing in favour of segregation, for the youthful GDR to be allowed to ‘find its feet’ amid the richer more powerful socialist nations, while the older man paints a nostalgic picture of his portion of the city. ‘I think even under Hitler I felt more free than I do now,’ he grumbles. ‘The Gestapo were child’s play alongside the Stasi nowadays.’
They banter back and forth while, on the opposite side, one woman tells another of her recent trip to Prague and how the shops were ‘a dream compared to the dregs you find here. I found a pair of leather boots – real leather! Cost me a month’s wages, but it’ll be worth it in winter when they don’t fall apart.’
Finally, it’s twenty to four and time to head to the Charité. Karin has no office or department base as such, so Jutta’s plan is to engage the receptionist (praying it’s the fierce Frau’s day off) and ask for Walter Simms. She reasons that Karin’s safety is important enough to call the doctor away from his duties.
Fate is on her side; the receptionist on the Charité desk is much less stocky and surly, with a softer air to go alongside.
‘I’m a family friend of Dr Simms,’ Jutta says, friendly but purposely assertive. ‘Would you be able to put out a call for him, please?’
‘I’m really not sure I can summon him away from his duties …’
‘Trust me, he will want you to,’ Jutta smiles, lips pursed in a no compromise expression. She watches for any sign of recognition in the woman’s face, but Jutta has guarded against it with a pair of large, dominant earrings slipped on in the toilet, plus a thick coating of maroon lipstick. She knows that, at work, even the vibrant Karin looks dowdy in her uniform. The woman reads her tone and the lobby echoes to a loudspeaker message: ‘Dr Simms to reception please’, her words diffusing through the corridors.
‘He should be here in a minute,’ she says curtly. ‘Unless he’s with a real emergency.’
Jutta is genuinely sorry for having to draw the doctor away, but it’s necessary, she reasons. It’s all too necessary.
Within five minutes, Walter Simms is taking long strides towards the reception desk, a stethoscope flopping from the large pockets of his white coat. Jutta watches the receptionist point at her, and a range of expressions wash across his face in a matter of seconds: recognition, alarm and puzzlement.
She stands as he approaches. ‘I’m sorry to call you like this, Doctor, but I need to see Karin. I’ve no way of contacting her, aside from sitting in her flat.’
His wrinkled forehead flattens and his eyes lose their alarm. ‘Walter, please, and it’s fine,’ he says. ‘It’s just that when I catch sight, my brain still can’t take it in, whether it’s you or Karin – underneath all that jewellery and make-up. I hope there’s nothing wrong, with your family?’
‘No. It’s something else.’
Like the near father he is, Walter clearly senses Karin will be upset at Jutta’s latest news. He’ll go in search of her, he says. ‘Likely, she’ll be near her locker at the shift’s end. And I have a small room in the staff quarters for when I’m working overnight. I’ll give Karin the key, and you can go up the back stairs to talk in private.’
‘Thank you,’ Jutta says, a hand on his arm. ‘I hate to think where my sister might be without you and your wife.’
‘She’s a lovely girl,’ he says, ‘and I hope one day we come to know you as well. Through all this.’ His eyes raise to the ceiling, but they both know what he means.
He gives her directions to a small bench behind the main building, and she waits with her face directed into her book and pulling her small curtain of hair across her features.
‘Hi.’ The voice, and the feet, she can see are all too familiar. ‘Just follow a few paces behind,’ Karin says in a low voice and walks smartly away.
They make it up the metal fire escape and into the doctor’s room without seeing anyone. As the door is shut, Karin throws her arms around Jutta, almost squeezing the life out of her.
‘Hey, what a wonderful surprise! I thought you were coming at the weekend?’
Perhaps she senses a stiffness in Jutta’s body, or the small release of her sister’s breath in her neck, but she draws away. ‘Is everything all right, Ja-Ja? Is it Mama? Something wrong?’
Jutta urges her to sit on the bed. There’s no delaying it. She tells her about Axel, his discovery and his conditions. The guillotine on all their plans.
Sadness and anger colour Karin’s face. And then a look of horror, the realisation not of Jutta’s sacrifice in coming, or the urgent task in persuading Otto, but of the damage already done.
‘What does this Axel know?’ she demands, eyes wide with alarm. ‘If he’s seen us, does he know any more? About me and Otto. What does he know, Ja-Ja?’ Karin is trapped in a frenzy of paranoia, gripping at Jutta’s flesh with her shaking arms. ‘He could easily tip off the Stasi about Otto, and then …’
‘Calm down, Karin,’ Jutta says, forcing their eyes to lock together. It’s when the thread is the strongest, the point at which they connect fully, though now it feels taut and strained. ‘Axel has no interest in betraying us – he needs me.’ He needs the portal the most, she thinks, but for now she and it go hand in hand.
‘As long as you do what he says?’ Karin hisses bitterly.
‘Yes! And I know that. And I will. I’ll do what he says, if it protects us – you, me and Otto.’ Jutta stares hard into her sister’s face. ‘I will give him no reason to betray us.’
‘But what if he has someone watching the entrance all the time, watching what you do?’
‘If he has, then he will see just me going through,’ Jutta asserts. ‘No one else, won’t he?’
Karin sniffs and nods, the years suddenly stripped back to when they were small and she would fold herself in Jutta’s cradling arms each time she was upset. From birth, they took on and accepted their individual roles without question – Jutta as the more outgoing, seemingly stronger one, Karin as the caring provider, more sensitive, though with an iron will deep in her core. Now, Karin weeps with the full appreciation of not seeing Mama until … until she can achieve what still seems impossible right now.
For Jutta, cloaking her sister’s thin body, a fleeting memory pushes up – no, not even a memory, the mere taint of an image, the flicker of a feeling. It could be entirely within her head, but Jutta has sensed it before, and now it seems more tangible, as if it really could become a proper recollection, were she to pinch at a corner and pull it properly into consciousness: that this is how they started, in their mother’s womb, she wrapping her limbs around the baby who was to become Karin. And she wonders: was it strength or protection? And which one is it now?