Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation (24 page)

‘Why don’t they convert all this and use it for holidays today?’ Sidney asked.

‘It would be too expensive,’ Hildegard answered. ‘It might even require a large amount of investment – or even private ownership – and that’s far too capitalist a concept for this country. You could talk to Günter about it. As an upstanding member of the Socialist Unity Party, he has the philosophy of collectivisation written on his heart.’

She explained that in 1953 there had been a concerted attack on private property during
Aktion Rose
, a government initiative to nationalise hotels and holiday homes.

‘One February night a total of four hundred police set off in buses from Rostock to arrest the biggest landlords. It was a deliberate attempt to scare off anybody with money or individual ambition.’

‘So how did Günter survive? He still has a hotel,’ Sidney asked.

‘Technically he doesn’t own it.’

‘It looks like he does. How does he manage that?’

‘Collusion,’ Hildegard answered. ‘You know the saying, “
Wasser predigen und Wein trinken
”: someone who preaches water but drinks wine? That is Günter for you. And he was lucky. There were snowstorms at the time of the raids. They slowed down the police’s progress and cut off the roads. Günter and his father were able to hide evidence and make their defence. Others were not so fortunate. But it is not a good idea to speak too much about this. You can observe everything that’s going on, but keep your thoughts to yourself.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Sidney.

‘This building may be a relic of the past, but people in the East only replaced one form of dictatorship with another. Many of the judges under National Socialism remained in their posts. Only the laws changed. Günter may laugh and joke and tell you all sorts of things but he’s a dangerous man.’

‘Really?’

Hildegard looked round to check who was near them and warned that it was possible they were being followed. ‘That man over to the right behind us.’

‘Where?’

‘Don’t look now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s the shoes that give him away. He was watching us back in Binz. Now he’s tying his shoelaces. That has to be a message to another operative.’

‘Perhaps his laces have simply come undone.’

‘I don’t think so. There’s a man ahead who has just raised his hat. He’s probably going to take over. Günter could have arranged all this. He’s probably bugged the whole hotel.’

‘Including our room?’ Sidney asked.

‘And even his own. Why do you think Maria has the radio on all the time? Günter is an informer. He’s probably spying on his own wife. That’s why she answers him so provocatively. She is perfectly aware that other people can hear her, and she wants them to know just what she thinks about it all. Nowhere is safe to talk. Trust no one. Not even me.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Everything in this country is absurd, Sidney.’

‘So that’s why Günter has done so well for himself.’

‘As a good communist, he helped his father when private property was taken into public ownership. Even now, he must have the police in his pocket. But you must act as if you know nothing, and you cannot be too curious. In England, a question may be a form of politeness or a statement of interest. Here it is a form of attack. You need to be very careful what you say, Sidney. Don’t push it any more than you have already. I’ve got you out of prison in this country once before; don’t make me do it again.’

The Friendship Festival began with a parade of Young Pioneers paying tribute to their founder Ernst Thälmann and raising banners depicting a hammer and compass surrounded by a ring of rye. Jürgen sang a song about a little trumpet player who had communism in his blood and kept everyone’s spirits up with his socialist belief and his ready smile.

There was a gymnastic display, some track and field events, a family obstacle race, a tug of war and what appeared to be a showdown between a group of tractors designed to demonstrate the superiority of East German engineering. More bizarre, however, was a mass mock baptism during which groups of boys and girls were taken into the sea by a man dressed as the figure of Neptune. He was painted green, wore a fake beard and held a trident.

‘I don’t think you’d find this in the Church of England,’ said Hildegard.

‘Some priests do use the sea. But they draw the line at fake beards.’

‘The Bishop of Ely can be a bit of a show-off.’

‘I think he stops short of painting himself green.’

Jürgen recited a poem, ‘Neptune’s Prayer’, before he was dunked in the sea and christened
Schleimige Seegurke
, ‘Slimy Sea Cucumber’, which everyone found amusing. His mother and father applauded loudly when their son was presented with a certificate to celebrate a healthy initiation into the mysteries of folk tradition. Günter then left for celebratory drinks in the home of his great friend in the Volkspolizei.

Rolf Müller lived in a block on the resort grounds that had been originally designed as staff accommodation but now housed the police, officers of the National People’s Army and several local civil servants. In the early evening he took ‘the usual gang’ of Günter, Otto Pietsch and Karl Fischer back to his house for a carefully orchestrated celebration with schnapps and a crystal vodka known as ‘the blue strangler’. Despite a half-hearted invitation to include Sidney and Hildegard, it was pretty clear that this was not a night for outsiders, and the visitors were relieved to escape another evening of enforced jollity.

Günter was clearly in festive mood and told them not to wait up. He was planning to make a night of it and wouldn’t be back before dawn.

‘Will you be careful on the way home?’ his wife asked.

‘Don’t be so anxious.’

‘You are lucky to have someone to care.’

‘I always take the road along the railway line,’ Günter told Sidney. ‘It is completely straight. All you have to do is rev it up and keep on until morning. The motorbike does all the work. It knows where to go. There is no need for anyone to worry about me. The bike will get me home.’

*    *    *

The next morning they were woken with the news that Günter was dead. He had either driven off the road or been hit by a car that had not stopped. It was an accident, Rolf Müller informed the family. Every year there was some kind of fatality. It was tragic that this time the victim had been Günter. He may have been a big man but he had a very thin skull. He had not been wearing a crash helmet.

There were no witnesses, and the first motorist who had stopped confirmed that Günter was already dead when she found him in a ditch. Even though she was a nurse, there was nothing she could do. She thought he had turned over and gone into a tree. Rolf Müller was very sorry. Günter had been one of his closest friends.

Maria Jansen turned on him. ‘Why could you not look after my husband or save him from his drunkenness?’

Rolf replied, in as kindly a manner as he could, that Günter was not a man who could be told what to do.

‘Where was he found?’ Hildegard asked.

‘Just outside Binz. There is a blackspot. So many times this happens.’

‘He said the road was straight.’

‘There is a turn across the railway line; first right and then left on to the main road into town. We think he misjudged it in the darkness, lost control on the bend and went into a skid.’

‘What time do you think it was?’ Sidney asked.

Rolf Müller was surprised by the question. ‘I sent them home at three in the morning. Günter wanted to stay longer but we had all had enough.’

‘And it was still dark?’

‘Yes.’

Sidney persisted. ‘He told me that he would come home when it was light.’

‘He changed his mind.’

‘Was he very drunk?’

‘He was good at hiding it. Because he is, he was, so convivial, people could never tell.’

‘There was no rain last night, the roads were dry,’ Sidney continued. ‘And he knew that road so well. It’s very unfortunate.’

‘It certainly is,’ Müller snapped in German.

Sibilla Leber turned to her son-in-law. ‘You are being too nosy.’ Again, she used the word
neugierig
.

Hildegard put her hand on her husband’s arm and apologised on his behalf. ‘Sidney is upset when people die, needlessly, in pain and alone.’

‘As a priest he must be used to it.’

‘Every death is different,’ said Sidney. ‘And each one matters.’

Hildegard told Anna to play quietly in their room. She was going to have to support Maria when she broke the news to Jürgen but, at that moment, she was more concerned about her husband. ‘It could have been you, Sidney. You could have been riding with him. I cannot bear to think how he died.’

‘Pray for him.’

‘I am anxious about you. I am sorry that I have not been kind.’

‘Nonsense. You have behaved perfectly to all of us. This is your home.’

‘Coming back makes me nervous. I can admit that now.’

‘And now we have more important things to think about.’

‘One accident and everything is changed.’

‘I think someone must have hit him,’ said Sidney. ‘Even when drunk Günter knew the road too well to just veer off like that.’

‘If that was the case then why didn’t the driver stop?’ Hildegard asked.

‘He should have done. He must have felt the impact on his car.’

‘You are assuming it was a man? A woman found him. A nurse.’

‘Whoever it was, I suppose they will not have wanted to stop and spend any time with the authorities. If they had been drunk as well, then they would be charged. It’s just odd that it happened on such a straight road.’

Hildegard began to weep.

Husband and wife were silent for a while, holding each other and taking the news in when they heard Jürgen cry out. He was shouting that it couldn’t be true, his father was a brilliant driver; he had promised his son that he was going to live for ever. He screamed at Maria: ‘Someone has taken Father. I will find out who it was and I will kill him. I will kill. I will kill. I will kill.’ The boy banged his head against the door until it bled.

Anna started talking to the moon again.

‘Mr Moon, what makes you so bright?’

‘I have a light inside me.’

‘Do you ever go out?’

‘No, I don’t.’

She began to whirl herself round and round in circles. ‘I go round and round and round and round and round for ever and
ever and ever and ever until everyone goes dizzy and falls down dead.’

And she fell to the floor.

Sidney and Hildegard attended Sunday morning service at the local Protestant church with Maria and Lena Jansen. Sibilla Leber had already been to the early service and stayed behind to look after Jürgen and Anna. The church was an austere late-nineteenth-century red-brick building resting on a hillock of woodland on the road to Putbus. The choir sang Bach’s Cantata for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity: ‘Behold and see if there be any sorrow like my sorrow’. Lena and Hildegard wept. Günter’s widow stared blankly ahead. She was so pale, so still.

Sidney prayed for the dead man’s soul, hoping his prayers would reach God in a country so hostile to belief. He wondered what price the priest had had to pay for accepting the notion that an alternative socialist heaven was being built on earth. What compromises did he have to make? Would it mean a double life? Was that the same kind of existence that Günter had led, pretending to be one thing while being another? As he contemplated the communion service he remembered Hildegard’s observation about their host’s hypocrisy:
he preaches water but drinks wine
.

Günter must have had enemies. But this was not the way to think, Sidney chastened himself; not now, in church, in a foreign land where no one wanted him to raise the questions he was burning to ask.

The music continued to tell the story of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. It was a tale of sorrow, sin and zealotry, exploring the tension between God’s anger and Christ’s mercy, and built up to a deluge of destruction and despair. The text,
taken from the Book of Lamentations, spoke of punishment, judgement and storms of vengeance before a final sorrowful chorale asked that sinners should not be allowed to get away with their wrongdoing. It was a grim message for a Sunday morning, with a quietly prayerful ending, and the family returned home in an even more sombre mood than when they had left.

On reaching the sea front they found that Jürgen’s grief had manifested itself in the strangest of ways. He was sitting on the roof of the Villa Friede, refusing either to speak or come down.

Sibilla Leber was in despair. She had been so busy looking after the children she hadn’t even started on the lunch. ‘There is nothing we can do or say. I don’t even know how he got up there. I can’t see any ladder.’

Anna explained what had happened. ‘He keeps talking about a sparrow in a nest. I think he wants to be a bird.’

‘I will speak to him,’ said Maria. ‘Go inside, everyone. I think we need to be alone.’

It took her almost an hour. After she had persuaded her son to descend, Jürgen went to his bedroom, slammed the door and refused to come out. His mother left him some food on a plate. The family only saw him the next morning when he sat out at the front of the house with a tape recorder, listening to the same section of tape again and again, leaning forward with an earphone in his right ear. Play. Stop. Rewind.

Sidney asked the boy what he had recorded and what he was listening to.

Jürgen did not answer but concentrated on his tape. Perhaps he was listening to his father’s voice. Play. Stop. Rewind.

*    *    *

Maria told Hildegard that she was almost relieved her husband was dead. Now she didn’t have to worry what might happen to them all. The worst had happened now. People might even leave them alone.

‘Don’t say such things,’ Hildegard counselled, tacitly pointing out that the kitchen was likely to be bugged.

‘I can’t help it. I speak my thoughts. I can be less afraid.’

‘You have always dreaded such a time?’

‘I expected it would happen one day.’

Hildegard tried to comfort her. Maria had known love and it would come back to her. She would remember the best of her marriage, the happy times.