Florian's Gate (20 page)

All around this compound, and down the barbed-wire fencing as far in each direction as they could see, rose tall prison watchtowers.

The border-control buildings were thoroughly trashed. The lower windows were all smashed in with a violence that had torn many of their frames from the walls. Huge chunks of the buildings themselves had been hewn out, leaving gaping holes and corners that looked gnawed by a raging giant.

The entire border area was gripped in a deathlike stillness. Nothing moved. Nothing at all. There must have been a dozen buildings in all, with no sign of life anywhere.

“Where is everybody?” Jeffrey asked.

“Trying to convince anybody they can find that they had nothing to do with anything,” Katya said, her voice very small.

He glanced over. “Are you all right?”

“Drive on, Jeffrey. I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to.”

By the time they reached the turn-off for Schwerin, the worst of the storm had passed and the sky was clearing. It was a good thing; the road leading to the capital city of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was little more than a rutted country lane. Ancient cobblestones vied with sloppily poured asphalt, and the covering of rain hid potholes of bone-jarring depth. The road passed through tiny villages of unkempt houses, their front doors just inches away from the stumbling traffic and clouds of diesel fumes. Trucks loomed up from time to time, slowing for no one, demanding most of the road as their right; Jeffrey reduced his speed to a crawl, hugged the curb, and hoped for a safe passage.

They passed a sign identifying the Schwerin industrial estate, a series of factories with dirt-clouded windows and filthy facades. Then they became thoroughly lost in a Schwerin housing development—scruffy multicolored high-rise buildings that dominated a hill on the edge of town. Three sets of directions finally took them through a tiny forest and down to the edge of one of the city's lakes.

The sun was forcing its way through the scuttling clouds as Jeffrey turned onto a narrow road that ran alongside a dirty sand beach. A number of heavyset people in shapeless sweaters and rolled-up trousers were making their way down to the lakeside, eager to soak up whatever meager good weather they were granted. Jeffrey pulled up in front of an attractive white-stucco three-story building with yellow trim, bearing a small sign announcing itself to be the Strand Hotel.

The woman staffing the reception desk was as heavyset as the beach-goers, and gave them a dubious look when Katya confirmed that they wanted two single rooms. She led them upstairs and showed him cramped chambers barely large enough to hold the narrow bed and small corner desk. He dropped Katya's bags off, went to his own room, opened the window, and spent a few moments looking out over the lake to the distant skyline of Schwerin.

When he came back downstairs, Katya was on the hotel's
only phone, speaking in what he assumed was German. He walked out and sat down on the hotel veranda.

Now that the sun was out, the weather was balmy. Every veranda table was taken, the people talking softly and gazing out at the lake. The body of sparkling water was wide enough for its farthest shore to be beyond the horizon. Its border was mostly forest, except for where Schwerin rose to his left. The people walking along the narrow beach and seated on the veranda seemed all cut from the same mold—overweight and pasty-skinned, older than their years, wearing clothes of muted colors and clunky shoes.

“I tried to call the numbers you gave me,” Katya said as she appeared on the veranda. “There wasn't any answer. They must be taking a late lunch.”

Jeffrey had a fleeting sensation that at the sound of Katya's English every face turned their way, then just as swiftly ignored them. A lifetime habit, he supposed. “Why don't we have a bite to eat here?”

The waitress watched with half-hidden curiosity as Katya explained the German menu to him, took their orders, gave Jeffrey another of those fleeting glances, and left. He turned back and found Katya watching the other tables.

“Why are you smiling?”

“This is a holdover from another era,” she replied.

He reached over and took her hand. “Tell me what you see.”

She looked down at his fingers covering hers. “This is supposed to be a business trip, remember?”

He left his hand where it was. “Tell me, Katya.”

She looked back out at the veranda. “Those ladies over there have been coming here for forty years. They come to breathe the good sea air—that's what they would call a lake this big, an inland sea. Their doctor once told them it was good for the lungs, and they still believe it. Their husbands all died during the war. And the one real pleasure left in life is to get in a bus and come to the Strand Hotel once every summer.”

“And the rest of the year?”

“Life in a little gray village, somewhere unmarked on any map.”

The waitress returned with their food. Jeffrey waited awkwardly while Katya bowed her head for a moment. No matter how often she did that in public, it did not become easier for him to endure. When she lifted her eyes he pointed toward a distant table and said, “My grandmother used to have a hat like that one. A straw boater lacquered with white enamel and a couple of fake flowers on one side.”

“Don't point.”

“Why not? Nobody's looked our way since they heard us talking English.”

“Yes, they have. They've seen we're foreigners and that's all they need to know. They have a lifetime's practice of not appearing to look where they're not supposed to.”

“But that's all gone.”

“The reasons for it might be,” Katya agreed. “But it's one thing to say it and another to relearn habits so ingrained they are instinctive.”

Jeffrey looked around, said, “There's more gray hair here than I've ever seen in one place.”

“Clairol's campaign for youth in a bottle didn't reach to the East,” Katya said. “People look a lot older here than Westerners of the same age. They don't think about looking chic. They can't. They struggle too hard just to arrive at being comfortable—or at least as close to comfortable as they can ever come.”

She tasted her food, then went on. “They wear orthopedic shoes and use canes when they're in their fifties, twenty years earlier than in the West. They'll never think it strange or embarrassing, though. Look at the people on the street when we go out today. You'll find eyes that slide over to one side of their head and bad scars and worse teeth. All products of a system that lifts the welfare of the state above all else.”

“I thought the state was for the people.”

“Don't be sarcastic. Many of these older people believed that with all their hearts. It has been extremely difficult for them to accept that the basis for a Communist society was nothing more than a lie.”

When they had finished eating, Katya went to try the two numbers again. A few minutes later she returned and reported, “There isn't any answer at the antique shop. But I did reach the lawyer, Frau Reining. She will meet us at the Café Prague in one hour. Do you want to leave now and go by the shop first?”

The city of Schwerin was a jarring mixture of old and new. Jeffrey's progress was slowed to a crawl by the surrounding traffic; plastic-looking cars bearing names like Trabant and Moskovite and Lada puttered by in clouds of blue smoke, smelling and sounding like poorly tuned outboard motors.

Their way took them back by the new section—the apartments were nicknamed
Arbeitersschliessfächer
, Katya said, or filing cabinets for workers. From a distance they loomed in irregular patterns of multicolored brick and pastel concrete. Up close Jeffrey saw that the yellows and blues and pinks were gutted and peeling and shabby. The roads were scarred and potholed, the sidewalks pitted. Weeds grew everywhere in unruly clumps, giving the entire area an atmosphere of abandonment.

Forty thousand families lived in the housing project, Katya said, reading from a pamphlet she had picked up at the hotel. The buildings stood like tired bastions to a forgotten dream. They were crammed one against the other, balconies strung with laundry and old flowerpots and frayed curtains.

“This looks like the punishment block to an inner-city housing project,” Jeffrey decided, looking around as he drove.

“In East Germany,” Katya told him, “the average waiting time for an apartment in these developments is five years.”

“You've got to be joking.”

“At least they have a bathroom for each family,” Katya said.
“And indoor plumbing. And running water in the kitchens. Most of the time, anyway.”

Farther along, the road leading to the city center was lined on one side by the Russian military compound and on the other with the dilapidated Russian officers' apartments. Both were encased within concrete walls and razor-wire and metal gates topped with bright red stars. The stars were the only recently painted item along the entire mile-long stretch.

They parked their car at the outskirts of the city's old section and walked, soon coming upon a vast eight-story palace—the former residence, according to Katya, of the Dukes of Mecklenburg. The castle dominated an island situated in one of the city's lakes. The island was connected to the city proper by a narrow bridge, its surface paved with cobblestones and its sides decorated with ancient sculptures and gas-lit lamps. Everything, from the street to the carvings to the palace itself, suffered from a severe case of neglect.

The city was no different. All but the main streets were laid in uneven cobblestones. All but the tourist areas were lined with buildings buried under decades of soot. Ornate facades protruded at odd intervals from beneath layers of filth.

The antique store stood on the central square. According to a small card taped to the door, it was owned by the central East German Ministry for Art, Subsection for Paintings and Antiques. A fly-blown sign tilted against the front window announced that it was closed, and from the looks of the dust blanketing every surface, Jeffrey could see through the window it had been for some time.

He stepped back from the window and scanned the square and connecting streets. The shop was a couple of businesses removed from what appeared to be the newest and gaudiest store in town; flashing lights surrounded a sign announcing that it sold pornography. A line of customers waited patiently by the door, gawking at the relatively conservative display in the windows.

Many of the stores were undergoing radical innovation,
with bright new displays gracing the windows of tired gray buildings. Katya followed his eyes. “Under socialism,” she said, “ all the shops had names given to them by the department that ran their section. They were all generic names, like grocery, watch repair, and so on. These buildings you see around here, the old ones with the sort of shadow writing above the store, are all left over from before the war. They probably haven't been painted in forty years, since they were all nationalized and placed under central control.”

Jeffrey nodded distractedly, then pressed his face to the antique shop's window and spent several minutes carefully scanning the room.

Katya watched his expression, asked, “What's wrong?”

“Something doesn't add up,” he said, using his hands to shade his eyes from the sun's reflection. “I can see almost the whole shop.”

“So?”

“There's nothing in there that I would even think of having in our shop. It's all second-rate stuff. Worse. Some of it's barely above junk. Not even antiques at all, just used furniture.”

Katya moved up closer. “It stands to reason that a shop like this would hold its best pieces and send them out where they can get better prices. And Western currency.”

But Jeffrey wasn't satisfied. “This is a state-run store. The guy who spoke to Alexander had all sorts of documents saying it was official state business. Nowadays they could get Western currency selling goods directly from the store, couldn't they? I mean, they're using the German mark here now. So why isn't there at least one piece like the stuff he sent us? It's a completely different collection. Worlds away.”

“What are you suggesting?”

He turned away. “I don't know. It doesn't add up, that's all. Come on, let's go meet the lawyer.”

The Café Prague was a recently remodeled little gem across
the street from one of the central ministries. The ceilings were thirty-five feet high and supported by a series of pillars. The upper windows were arched and set with lead-lined stained glass; the lower windows were broad and high and cast a lovely light through the interior.

They had been at their table only a few minutes when a bird-like woman came up, inspected them with sharp nervous eyes, then leaned over and said something in German.

“She wants to know if we are the ones from London,” Katya said.

“Yes,” Jeffrey replied, standing and extending his hand. “Nice to—”

The woman seated herself and spoke again in the same abrupt manner.

“She wants to know if she can trust us.”

Jeffrey lowered his hand and sat down. “She should have already decided that before asking us to come all the way here.”

“I can't tell her that. And you behave.”

“If she can be rude, why can't I?” Jeffrey turned to the woman. “Yes.”

“Good,” the woman replied in English. She extended her hand. “Frau Renate Reining. Excuse. Few words English only. Russian, yes. German, yes. Czech, some. You speak Russian?”

“No.”

“No. Nobody speak Russian. A new world. People speak Russian last year. This year, all forget. World change.”

The lawyer was a tired dark-haired woman in her middle forties who clearly gave little concern to her appearance. Her fingernails were chewed to the quick, her gestures nervous and as abrupt as her words. She wore a pair of dusty double-knit pants, an unironed white shirt, and an open sweater with two of the buttons hanging by raveled threads.