22

Jörg Optenheide and Gregor Wossilus had been forced into early retirement almost simultaneously. Jörg because the registry office in Sassnitz was being ‘downsized.’ Gregor because the Rasender Roland had been snapped up by the Bergener Tageblatt and contrary to promises made, was not continued as part of the Sunday paper. Because the staff only comprised him and his wife, an enthusiastic hobby photographer, this affront had not lead to an outcry from the national union of journalists. Instead, Karin could finally take care of the cottage, while Gregor met up with Jörg in the attic of the train station in Sassnitz during the week, making a hobby into a mission: the complete 1:100 scale reconstruction of the old berth at the harbour.

Gregor, a man with a carefully trimmed white beard and the beginnings of a comfy paunch, who liked to wear short-sleeved shirts and Bermuda shorts in the summer, was inspecting a group of trees Jörg had glued next to the tracks the day before.

‘But those aren’t beeches!’

Jörg, a slender man, half-bald and with a massive pair of Medicare glasses on his hawk nose, placed his index finger in the official railway timetable for West Germany, 1953, closed it and looked up.

‘There weren’t any beeches left.’

Gregor snorted furiously. He took a pair of tweezers and tried to shake one of the match-sized trees, but it stood as firmly as only epoxied German oaks can. If there weren’t any more beech trees, then you ordered more. You didn’t just plant replacements that couldn’t be justified after the fact and would be spotted as inauthentic by anyone who knew what they were talking about. There hadn’t been any oaks next to the loading tracks in the harbour, even the greatest fool could see that even today.

Jörg looked for a Mitropa menu, of which they had several boxes stashed away, and placed it as a bookmark in the timetable book. He stood up with a groan and pushed through the narrow gap between the individual models. He looked at Gregor over his shoulder.

‘No one will notice.’

‘I noticed.’

‘You old nitpicker. Coffee nip?’

Coffee nip was coffee with Asbach brandy. Gregor looked at the clock – an original from Huai’an, a city whose name no one here could pronounce, but which had been Sassnitz’s twin city for three years now, together with Trelleborg, Cuxhaven and Kingisepp in Russia. The representatives from Huai’an had apparently done their research well before their inaugural visit. As a present for the hosts, the small, friendly men had brought along an old train station clock. Manufactured in England in the 1920s, it still worked, or had at least been repaired. It might have been a veiled reference to the broken clock in the station tower, which had been stuck at seven thirty for as long as anyone could remember. Perhaps the reputation of the Model Train Association of Sassnitz had already spread to China, and they had had tried to come up with something extra special for them. No one seriously believed that but it was still a good joke. The celebratory handover ceremony had been covered at length in one of the last issues of Rasender Roland. Carefully framed, the picture of the first, and to date only, visit by the mayor to the Friends of the Model Train Association hung over the counter of the little bar in the side room, where Jörg was now headed, moaning and groaning, to make the coffee.

‘Almost midday,’ Jörg said in his high, nasal accent.

Gregor watched him go and wondered when Jörg would finally go to the doctor. Retirement appeared to be a watershed in people’s lives, one he didn’t think was properly recognised by society and medicine. Some blossomed – Karin had recently even started taking dancing lessons – others became smaller, withdrawn, invisible. Gregor feared that in another year or two, Jörg would simply disappear.

Shaking his head, Gregor wanted to get back to uprooting trees, when he heard the door below bang and then footsteps on the wooden stairs. He put down the tweezers. Unexpected visitors were rare. Their membership meetings still took place regularly, but there weren’t many young recruits. Young people just weren’t interested in trains.

The noise made it sound like someone doddery was forcing himself up the stairs, step by torturous step. Gregor had time to get up and go to the landing before he had even made it halfway up.

She, Gregor corrected himself. A woman. And a young one at that. At least at first glance she looked like one of those eternal students: pony tail, flats, dark dress. As she climbed up out of the shadow of the steps into the light, Gregor could see that she was in fact older than he’d first thought, and looked like she had just climbed out of a boxing ring. He had rented Million Dollar Baby from the video store once. She looked exactly like that American actress. Not quite as thin and not as grouchy as . . . the name escaped him. Besides, this one was blonde. But the way she clung to the rail and kept pausing for breath, she could have come straight out of the movie.

‘Hello?’ He let the greeting end like a question.

She was still climbing the last steps. Admittedly, the stairs were steep, but even he made it up without collapsing.

‘Hi,’ she huffed. ‘Is this the Sassnitz Model Train Association?’

Gregor cast a brief glance toward the kitchenette. Jörg was still fiddling around and hadn’t caught wind of the unannounced visitor. The woman didn’t look like she wanted to steal the association funds. But something about her was off. She was sober, but didn’t seem completely herself.

‘Whom do you want to see?’

She reached the attic floor and looked around.

‘Wow.’

The exclamation was so astonished and admiring that Gregor instinctively took a step back in order to not block her view.

‘What is that?’

She pointed at the massive set-up: the twenty-metre model of the stretch from Sassnitz to Stralsund. It took up the entire length of the garret.

‘That’s our exhibition piece. Six circuits, analogue controls, seven commuting tracks, two narrow-gauge tracks.’

‘With real water?’

‘Of course,’ Gregor answered proudly. ‘That’s the only way ferry transport works, if you take it seriously.’

She stepped up to the spread and walked past every single yard, from Stralsund to Sassnitz.

‘Amazing. Is that the old ferry port to Trelleborg?’

She indicated section eight at the left-hand side of the model.

‘Just as it was in operation until the early nineties.’

She nodded. ‘The old fish factory. It’s still standing.’

‘Yes. We pay special attention to original details.’

Jörg appeared in the door, two cups in hand. Gregor hoped that he had caught the last few sentences. This woman knew her stuff. She would certainly notice oaks standing where beeches were supposed to be.

‘I’m Judith Kepler,’ she said and smiled.

‘Gregor Wossilus. Deputy Chair. And that’s Jörg Optenheide. Our Treasurer.’

She extended her hand. Gregor was astonished how rough and firm it was, and that she had bandaged it. Mason’s hands, he thought. A boxer’s mug. But she was interested. That was the only thing that mattered for model train enthusiasts. Jörg placed the cups on the trolley and also greeted the woman.

‘A coffee nip for you too?’

‘Certainly.’

Jörg handed her his cup and went back to the kitchen to make another.

‘May I enquire what brings you here?’

Judith lifted her cup, sniffed at it, and then took a sip, without making a face. So she could take her brandy.

‘I’m looking for Lenin.’

‘Oh.’ Gregor raised his cup and tried it. Good heavens. Was that brandy thinned down with coffee? ‘I’m sorry, but Lenin isn’t here anymore. If you mean that Lenin.’

‘How many are there?’

‘No idea. Two, three… Jörg? Do you have a clue where the Lenins are? And how many of them there are?’

Jörg came over to them.

‘We have one of ’em here. In the boxes in the attic. Should I go have a look?’

The woman placed her cup back on the trolley.

‘If it’s not too much trouble. How many boxes are up there?’

She looked sceptically at the ceiling, as if trying to estimate the size of the storage space in the attic. Jörg scratched himself on his head and mussed the last of his remaining strands of hair.

‘Well, dear me. Forty? Fifty?’

‘And what is in them?’

‘Models. Deconstructed sets and stuff.’

‘Would it be too much of an inconvenience for me to ask you to take a look at Lenin? I’d even climb up myself.’

‘No need,’ Jörg answered. ‘We’d be happy to.’

Gregor thought it was time he took part in the conversation. ‘Why are you interested in it?’ No one voluntarily climbed up to the attic. Cobwebs, mice, dirt.

The woman smiled again. It lit up her face in a wonderful way. For a moment she was almost beautiful.

‘A childhood memory. I was five years old. The train station, Lenin and his palace . . . I can’t put it together. It could be very important for me, if I could only remember it.’

‘There wasn’t a palace,’ Jörg said. ‘Just a Pullman. The only thing we have is the model.’

‘In one of the boxes up there?’

Jörg nodded. He picked up the cup and emptied it with a slurp. A soft glimmer coated his eyes.

‘You’re from Sassnitz?’ Gregor asked.

The woman nodded. ‘I was a Gagarin.’

Gregor and Jörg exchanged a quick look of the kind that can only mean something for old, old acquaintances.

‘A Gagarin,’ repeated Gregor.

He bent over and lifted a curtain that ran along the far edge of the ferry display, designed to hide the clutter that there was no room for in the attic. He groped for the ladder, found it, and pulled it out.

‘A debt that was never paid.’

Judith followed Gregor up the ladder. Halfway up he removed the bar over the hatch, propped it up and climbed into the attic. Then he bent over and gave her his hand. He pulled her up with such momentum that she landed almost nimbly on the wooden boards.

‘Keep your head down,’ the model maker muttered.

Hunched, Judith looked around. Only a little light penetrated the dusty skylight. She could make out a large number of removal boxes, carefully labelled and pushed under the roof. She tried not to appear too curious. That, she sensed, would not be welcomed by these gentlemen.

She thought of Kaiserley and what he would imagine was in all those boxes. The missing Rosenholz files? The Stasi files? What did she care? He had gone, finally. Actually, she should have been happy. Instead . . .

She followed Wossilus, who was scurrying through the narrow middle passage to the north side of the attic as if he knew what he was looking for. Lenin’s lounge car. She was annoyed she hadn’t thought of it before. While the man dragged one of the boxes into the bright light under the window, she tried to remember what she had once been asked to learn in socialist history class.

Comrade Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin arrived at the port of Sassnitz in a sealed lounge car belonging to the Royal Prussian Railroad Administration on 12 April, 1917, in order to board the ‘Drottning Victoria’ and reach St. Petersburg on 16 April. There he proclaimed the Russian Revolution.

‘Good Lord.’

Dust flew as Wossilus opened the box. He removed a bundle of scratchy woollen blankets and placed it on the floor. Carefully, almost reverently, he pulled away the corners.

‘Green express coach, six axles. Eight compartments and a baggage car.’

The model was made of metal. A sturdy, detailed copy of the original. Judith stared at her nightmare in miniature . . .

‘One to forty-eight, standard size zero. You won’t find workmanship like that these days.’

She took the coach out of Wossilus’s hand and held it up to the faint light. Red velvet on the benches. Brass luggage racks, sparkling like embossed gold. Would a five-year-old girl think it was a palace? Clearly, yes. Anyone who had only spent their life in the sticky, uncomfortable trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn would have had saucers for eyes at the sight of this special edition. She moved the shiny silver wheels. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

‘At the time, the people of Sassnitz thought they were being visited by some kind of Russian Grand Duke,’ Wossilus said. He must have noticed her astonishment because he viewed the model and Judith with the same kind of benevolence. ‘Not bad for the old comrade, eh? Looks as good as new, right?’

‘Yes,’ Judith said and carefully returned the coach. In doing so, a small door fell open. ‘Sorry, I hope I haven’t damaged it.’

‘The baggage part. There’s always a weak link.’

With a surprisingly sharp eye given the gloom, he closed the door with a tiny hook that was barely visible to the naked eye.

‘The original had a specially made key. There were once four copies of it, but only one of them is still here. And just guess where.’

‘With you?’ Judith asked.

Like Alberich, hiding the sparkling Rheingold under the earth, Wossilus bundled the coach back into its cardboard box. After it was pushed back into the right place, he patted the dust from his hands.

‘Yep,’ he said.

‘And the coach? The original?’

Wossilus grimaced. Apparently Judith had reminded him of something painful.

‘Come back down. The coffee’s getting cold.’

She went ahead, Wossilus following her and closing the hatch carefully. Down below, Jörg was already waiting with the next round. Judith took the cup offered and drank it in a single gulp. After all her body had been forced to process over the past forty-eight hours, it could only do her good. But she declined when Jörg offered the next strong coffee.

‘I still have to drive.’

‘Where to?’ the small railway man asked.

‘Berlin.’

Both men nodded, as if they wanted to express their sympathy for a long prison sentence.

I was in that coach, Judith thought. Finally I know what it means.

‘Where’s the real Lenin now?’

‘No one knows. Gone.’

Wossilus shrugged his shoulders regretfully. ‘We would have liked to have kept it. Truly. But when they tore down the old locomotive shed no one knew where to put it. There were plans to make a Lenin museum out of it. But you try explaining that to the people at the ministry of culture.’

Judith grinned. The solidarity surcharge was a burden for East and West equally. In the days when freshly paved roads unleashed fits of envy, a Lenin museum would have been truly difficult to negotiate.

‘I understand. But a coach like that doesn’t just disappear.’

‘Disappears like copper and tracks and cable and scrap does,’ Jörg said with a giggle, as if he knew exactly what he was talking about. Wossilus gave him a stern look. Jörg choked, coughed, mumbled something about sugar and milk, and disappeared into the kitchen.

‘Are you telling me that you tore the coach apart and sold it as junk?’

‘No. Of course not. No one with a heart for the railways would do that.’

Judith believed him. Wossilus sat down on a chair next to the car and studied the smaller display. The sight of a group of trees caused his gaze to darken.

‘What is that?’

‘The Sassnitz train station as it used to be.’

‘The locomotive shed is still there.’

‘It’s the model of the thirties.’

‘Do you have one from the eighties?’

She suddenly realised what a gold mine of memories this represented.

‘Eighties? With restricted zones and such?’

‘Yes.’

Wossilus shook his head. Judith felt the disappointment in the pit of her stomach. It felt like the elevator in the Rügen Hotel when it stopped.

‘But we still have pictures. And a couple of Super-8 films that are on DVD now. Available for purchase.’

‘Yes,’ Judith said quickly. The DVD sales were probably not that brisk. She wanted to do the man a favour. ‘I’d like one.’

Wossilus stood up again and went to the other end of the room. Judith followed him curiously. Behind a door was something like a club room: a little bar, benches from the railway coaches, signal lanterns, route signs.

‘You have made it pretty nice here.’

Wossilus grumbled something in agreement and ducked under the counter.

‘Under-the-counter goods,’ he said, and giggled. He straightened up holding a brochure and a DVD in his hands.

‘Sassnitz Station . . .’

‘. . . through the ages,’ Judith completed the title. She smiled. ‘Thanks a lot. What does it cost?’

‘You’re from Sassnitz?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing.’

Judith nodded, and Wossilus grumbled something unintelligible again. He led her back to the stairs. They said farewell, and Jörg came out from the kitchen and waved goodbye.

As Judith left the train station building, she stopped and studied the area. The locomotive shed had once stood just opposite her. It had disappeared, and with it the railcar in which Lenin had come to Sassnitz. She closed her eyes and tried to remember. How often had she stood here as a child and searched for the missing piece of the puzzle? The erased memory hadn’t let her be. Maybe they had been able to destroy the what, but not the where. And not the that. That thing that had happened one night twenty-five years before, when she’d stood here once before, holding her mother’s hand with one hand and a stuffed animal with the other. Kaiserley had told her that she and her mother had been in the same train and something had gone wrong. They had pulled her off and taken her somewhere else. Not far from here. Actually just a couple of steps past the tracks.

She opened her eyes and saw the shed in front of her, the faded mirage of a memory. There. A tall wooden door. Rusty hinges. Old lights that cast ghostly shadows on the high walls. And in the middle of it all, a palace made of gold and velvet. And then?

The pain shot through her brain like a bolt gun. She bent over and pressed the DVD in front of her stomach. An elderly couple with a travel bag looked over at her concerned, but didn’t come any closer. Judith clenched her teeth and took a deep breath. She was slowly able to stand up straight. Good Lord. What was that? As if a part of her brain was sealed with high voltage. Like an electric fence that kept cattle from leaving the meadow.

She stumbled into the small station foyer, took an ice-cold bottle of water from the shelf in a newsstand and sneaked past the cash register without paying. On her way to the cemetery she opened it, drank greedily and poured the rest of it over her head. She slowly began to think clearly again. The van was still there. Relieved, she groped for the small receptacle underneath the bumper and found the replacement key. When she opened the vehicle her nose was met by an overpowering smell of the putrefying, damp rags, and other unidentified ingredients. She rolled down the window, drove off and only after putting Stralsund in her rear-view mirror did she look for a car park so that she could climb into the back and get Borg’s autopsy report and the skeleton keys to get back into her apartment. She stuffed it all into an old work bag. When she drove on, she thought for a moment about what it would be like to have another name now, a passport, credit cards. How it would be to keep on driving to Usedom to Świnoujście and then down to Wrocław and Prague until Vienna. And then even further. Always further. So far that she couldn’t think of turning back.

Then she remembered what she had told Kaiserley about travelling. Everything was true, but she had lied about one thing: she really would like to see the Eiffel Tower.