Edge of Eternity (128 page)

Karolin felt the same. She and Lili were close enough to share secrets, and Karolin had confessed that her marriage had been a mistake. She was not miserable with Odo, but nor was she in love with him. He was kind and gentle, but not sexy: they made love about once a month.

So the holiday group was six people. Werner, Carla and Lili took the bronze car and Karolin, Odo and Alice went in the white one.

It was a long drive, especially in a Trabi with a 600cc two-stroke engine: six hundred miles all across Czechoslovakia. The first day took them to Prague, where they stayed overnight. When they left their hotel, on the morning of the second day, Werner said: ‘I’m pretty sure no one is following us. We seem to have got away with it.’

They drove to Lake Balaton, fifty miles long, the largest lake in Central Europe. It was tantalizingly close to Austria, a free country. However, the entire border was fortified by 150 miles of electric fence, to prevent people escaping from the workers’ paradise.

They pitched two tents side by side at a campsite on the southern shore.

They had a secret purpose: they were going to meet Rebecca.

It was Rebecca’s idea. She had spent a year of her life looking after Walli, and he had succeeded in giving up drugs. He now had his own apartment near Rebecca’s in Hamburg. In order to care for him, she had turned down a chance to stand for the Bundestag, the national parliament; but when he got well, the offer had been renewed. Now she was an elected member, specializing in foreign policy. She had travelled to Hungary on an official trip, and seen that Hungary was deliberately attracting Western holidaymakers: tourism and cheap Riesling were the country’s only means of earning foreign currency and reducing its massive trade deficit. The Westerners went to special, segregated holiday camps, but outside the camps there was nothing to stop fraternization.

So there was no law against what the Francks were doing. Their trip was permitted, and so was Rebecca’s. Like them, she was coming to Hungary for a budget holiday. They would rendezvous as if by accident.

But the law was merely cosmetic in Communist countries. The Francks knew there would be terrible trouble if the secret police found out what they were up to. So Rebecca had arranged everything clandestinely, through Enok Andersen, the Danish accountant who still frequently crossed the border from West Berlin to East to see Werner. Nothing had been written down and there were no phone calls. Their greatest fear was that Rebecca would somehow be arrested – or even just kidnapped by the Stasi – and taken to a prison in East Germany. It would be a diplomatic incident, but the Stasi might do it anyway.

Rebecca’s husband, Bernd, was not coming. His condition had deteriorated and his kidneys were malfunctioning. He was working only part-time, and could not travel far.

Werner straightened up from hammering in a tent peg to say quietly to Lili: ‘Take a look around. They didn’t follow us here, but maybe they felt they didn’t need to, because they had sent people on ahead.’

Lili strolled around the site as if exploring. The campers at Lake Balaton were cheerful and friendly. As an attractive young woman, Lili was greeted and offered coffee or beer and snacks. Most tents were occupied by families, but there were some groups of men and a few of girls. No doubt the singles would find one another over the next few days.

Lili was single. She liked sex and had had several love affairs – including one with a woman, which her family did not know about. She had the same maternal instincts as other women, she supposed, and she adored Walli’s child, Alice. But Lili was put off the idea of having children of her own by the dismal prospect of raising them in East Germany.

She had been refused a place at university, because of her family’s politics, so she had trained as a nursery nurse. She would never have been promoted if the authorities had had their way, but Odo had helped her get a job with the church, where hiring was not controlled by the Communist Party.

However, her real work was music. Along with Karolin, she sang and played guitar in small bars and youth clubs, often in church halls. Their songs protested against industrial pollution, destruction of ancient buildings and monuments, clearing of natural forests, and ugly architecture. The government hated them, and they had both been arrested and cautioned for spreading propaganda. However, the Communists could not actually be
in favour
of poisoning rivers with factory effluent, so they found it difficult to take drastic action against environmentalists, and in fact usually tried to co-opt them into the toothless official Society for Nature and Environmental Protection.

In the US, Lili’s father said, conservatives accused environment campaigners of being anti-business. It was more difficult for Soviet bloc conservatives to accuse them of being anti-Communist. After all, the whole point of Communism was to make industry work for the people rather than for the bosses.

One night Lili and Karolin had sneaked into a recording studio and made an album. It was not officially released, but cassette tapes of it in unmarked boxes had sold by the thousand.

Lili made a circuit of the campsite, which was occupied almost exclusively by East Germans: the camp for Westerners was a mile away. As she was returning to her family she noticed, outside a tent close to theirs, two men of about her own age drinking beer. One had receding fair hair, the other was dark with a Beatle haircut fifteen years out of date. The fair one met her eye and looked quickly away, which aroused her suspicion: young men did not generally avoid her eye. These two did not offer her a drink or ask her to join them. ‘Oh, no,’ she muttered.

Stasi men were not hard to spot. They were brutal, not smart. It was a career for people who craved prestige and power but had little intelligence and no talents. Rebecca’s first husband, Hans, was typical. He was little more than a nasty bully, but he had risen steadily and now seemed to be one of their top commanders, driving around in a limousine and living in a large villa surrounded by a high wall.

Lili was reluctant to call attention to herself, but she decided she needed to verify her suspicion, so she had to be brazen. ‘Hello, guys!’ she said amiably.

Both men grunted a perfunctory greeting.

Lili was not going to let them off easily. ‘Are you here with your wives?’ she said. They could hardly fail to recognize that as a come-on.

The fair one shook his head and the other just said: ‘No.’ They were not clever enough to pretend.

‘Really?’ This was almost confirmation enough, she thought. What were two single men doing at a holiday camp if not looking for girls? And they were too badly dressed to be homosexual. ‘Tell me,’ said Lili, forcing a bright tone, ‘where do you go for a good time in the evenings here? Is there anywhere to dance?’

‘I don’t know.’

That was enough. If these two are on holiday, I’m Mrs Brezhnev, she thought. She walked away.

This was a problem. How could the Francks meet Rebecca without the Stasi men finding out?

Lili returned to her family. Both tents were now up. ‘Bad news,’ she told her father. ‘Two Stasi men. One row south and three tents east of us.’

‘I was afraid of that,’ said Werner.

*  *  *

They were to meet Rebecca two days later at a restaurant she had visited on her first trip. But before going there the Francks would have to shake off the secret police. Lili was worried, but her parents seemed unreasonably calm.

On the first day, Werner and Carla left early in the bronze Trabi, saying they were going to reconnoitre. The Stasi men followed them in a green Skoda. Werner and Carla were out all day and returned looking confident.

Next morning, Werner told Lili he was taking her for a hike. They stood outside the tent with rucksacks, helping each other adjust them. They put on stout boots and wide-brimmed hats. It was clear to anyone who looked that they were setting out for a long walk.

At the same time, Carla prepared to depart with shopping bags, making a list and saying loudly: ‘Ham, cheese, bread . . . anything else?’

Lili worried that they were being too obvious.

They were watched by the secret policemen, who were sitting outside their tent, smoking.

They set off in opposite directions, Carla heading for the car park, Lili and Werner for the beach. The Stasi agent with the Beatle haircut went after Carla, and the fair one followed Werner and Lili.

‘So far, so good,’ said Werner. ‘We’ve split them.’

When Lili and Werner got to the lake Werner turned west, following the shoreline. He had obviously scouted this the day before. The ground was intermittently rough. The fair-haired Stasi agent followed them at a distance, not without difficulty: he was not dressed for hiking. Sometimes they paused, pretending they needed a rest, to let him catch up.

They walked for two hours then came to a long, deserted beach. Part way along, a rough track emerged from trees to dead-end at the high tide mark.

Parked there was the bronze Trabant with Carla at the wheel.

There was no one else in sight.

Werner and Lili got into the car and Carla drove off, leaving the Stasi man stranded.

Lili resisted the temptation to wave goodbye.

Werner said to Carla: ‘You shook off the other guy.’

‘Yes,’ said Carla. ‘I created a diversion outside the grocery store by setting fire to a rubbish bin.’

Werner grinned. ‘A trick you learned from me many years ago.’

‘Absolutely. Naturally, he got out of his car and went to see what was happening.’

‘And then . . .’

‘While he was distracted, I put a nail in his tyre. Left him changing the wheel.’

‘Nice.’

Lili said: ‘You two did this stuff in the war, didn’t you?’

There was a pause. They never spoke much about the war. Eventually, Carla said: ‘Yes, we did a little bit, nothing worth boasting about.’

That was all they ever said.

They drove to a village and slowed down at a small house with a sign in English saying ‘Bar’. A man standing outside directed them to park in a field at the back, out of sight.

They went inside to a small bar too charming to be a government enterprise. Right away Lili saw her sister, Rebecca, and threw her arms around her. They had not been together for eighteen years. Lili tried to look at Rebecca’s face but could not see for tears. Carla and Werner hugged Rebecca in turn.

When at last Lili’s vision cleared she saw that Rebecca looked middle-aged, which was no surprise: she would be fifty next birthday. She was heavier than Lili remembered.

But the most striking thing was how smart she looked. She wore a blue summer dress with a pattern of small dots, and a matching jacket. Around her neck was a silver chain with a single large pearl, and she had a chunky silver bracelet on her arm. Her smart sandals had a cork heel. Slung over her shoulder was a navy-blue leather bag. Politics was not notably well paid, as far as Lili knew. Could it be that
everyone
in West Germany was this well dressed?

Rebecca led them through the bar to a private room at the back where a long table was already laid with cold meat platters, bowls of salad and bottles of wine. Standing by the table was a thin, handsome, wasted-looking man in a white T-shirt and skinny black jeans. He might have been in his forties, or perhaps younger if he had suffered an illness. Lili assumed he must be an employee of the bar.

Carla gasped, and Werner said ‘Oh, my God.’

Lili saw that the thin man was gazing expectantly at her. She suddenly noticed his almond-shaped eyes and realized that she was looking at her brother, Walli. She let out a small scream of shock: he looked so old!

Carla embraced Walli, saying: ‘My little boy! My poor little boy!’

Lili hugged and kissed him, crying all over again. ‘You look so different,’ she sobbed. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Rock and roll,’ he replied with a laugh. ‘But I’m getting over it.’ He looked at his older sister. ‘Rebecca sacrificed a year of her life – and a great career opportunity – to save me.’

‘Of course I did,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m your sister.’

Lili felt sure Rebecca had not hesitated. For her, nothing came before family. Lili had a theory that it was because she was adopted that she felt so strongly.

Werner held Walli in his arms a long time. ‘We didn’t know,’ he said, his voice thick with emotion. ‘We didn’t know you were coming.’

Rebecca said: ‘I decided to keep it a complete secret.’

Carla said: ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘It certainly is,’ said Rebecca. ‘But Walli wanted to take the risk.’

Then Karolin walked in with her family. Like the others, she took a few moments to recognize Walli, then she gave a cry of shock.

‘Hello, Karolin,’ he said. He took her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘It’s so good to see you again.’

Odo said: ‘I’m Odo, Karolin’s husband. I’m very glad to meet you at last.’

Something flashed across Walli’s face. It was gone in a split-second, but Lili knew that Walli had seen and understood something about Odo that had shocked him, and had then covered up his shock instantly. The two men shook hands amiably.

Karolin said: ‘And this is Alice.’

‘Alice?’ said Walli. He looked dazedly at the tall sixteen-year-old girl with long fair hair draping her face like curtains. ‘I wrote a song about you,’ he said. ‘When you were little.’

‘I know,’ she said, and kissed his cheek.

Odo said: ‘Alice knows her history. We told her everything, as soon as she was old enough to understand.’

Lili wondered whether Walli heard the note of righteousness in Odo’s voice. Or was she being oversensitive?

Walli said to Alice: ‘I love you, but Odo raised you. I’ll never forget that, and I’m sure you won’t either.’

For a minute he choked up. Then he regained control and said: ‘Everybody, let’s sit down and eat. This is a happy day.’ Lili realized that Walli had probably paid for everything.

They all sat around the table. For a few moments they were like strangers, feeling awkward, trying to think of something to say. Then several people spoke at once, all asking Walli questions. Everyone laughed. ‘One at a time!’ Walli said, and they all relaxed.