Johnson was not as inspiring as Kennedy, but he seemed equally determined to defend West Berlin, which was what mattered most to Germans on both sides of the Wall.
As Lili was taking the cake out of the oven, her mother arrived home from work. Carla had managed to keep her job as nursing manager in a large hospital, even though she was known to have been a Social Democrat. One time, when a rumour had gone around that she was to be fired, the nurses had threatened to go on strike, and the hospital director had been obliged to avert trouble by reassuring them that Carla would continue to be their boss.
Lili’s father had been forced to take a job, even though he was still trying to run his business in West Berlin by remote control. He had to work as an engineer in a state-owned factory in East Berlin, making televisions that were far inferior to the West German sets. At the outset he had made some suggestions for improving the product, but this was seen as a way of criticizing his superiors, so he stopped. This evening, as soon as he arrived home from work, he came into the kitchen and they all sang ‘Hoch soll sie leben’, the traditional German birthday song meaning: ‘Long may she live’.
Then they sat around the kitchen table and talked about whether Alice would ever see her father.
Karolin had applied to emigrate. Escape was becoming more difficult every year: Karolin might have tried to cross, all the same, had she been alone; but she was not willing to risk Alice’s life. Every year a few people were allowed out legally. No one could find out the grounds on which applications were judged, but it seemed that most of those allowed to leave were unproductive dependants, children and old people.
Karolin and Alice were unproductive dependants, but their application had been refused.
As always, no reason was given.
Naturally, the government would not say whether any appeal was possible. Once again, rumour filled the information gap. People said you could petition the country’s leader, Walter Ulbricht.
He seemed an unlikely saviour, a short man with a beard that imitated Lenin’s, slavishly orthodox in everything. He was rumoured to be happy about the coup in Moscow because he had thought Khrushchev insufficiently doctrinaire. All the same, Karolin had written him a personal letter, explaining that she needed to emigrate in order to marry the father of her child.
‘They say he’s a believer in old-fashioned family morality,’ Karolin said. ‘If that’s true, he ought to help a woman who only wants her child to have a father.’
People in East Germany spent half their lives trying to guess what the government planned or wanted or thought. The regime was unpredictable. They would allow a few rock-and-roll records to be played in youth clubs, then suddenly ban them altogether. For a while they would be tolerant about clothing, then they would start arresting boys in blue jeans. The country’s constitution guaranteed the right to travel, but very few people got permission to visit their relatives in West Germany.
Grandmother Maud joined in the conversation. ‘You can’t tell what a tyrant is going to do,’ she said. ‘Uncertainty is one of their weapons. I’ve lived under the Nazis as well as the Communists. They’re depressingly similar.’
There was a knock at the front door. Lili opened it and was horrified to see, standing on the doorstep, her former brother-in-law, Hans Hoffmann.
Lili held the door a few inches ajar and said: ‘What do you want, Hans?’
He was a big man, and could easily have shoved her out of the way, but he did not. ‘Open up, Lili,’ he said in a voice of weary impatience. ‘I’m with the police, you can’t keep me out.’
Lili’s heart was pounding, but she stayed where she was and shouted over her shoulder: ‘Mother! Hans Hoffmann is at the door!’
Carla came running. ‘Did you say Hans?’
‘Yes.’
Carla took Lili’s place at the door. ‘You’re not welcome here, Hans,’ she said. She spoke with calm defiance, but Lili could hear her breathing, fast and anxious.
‘Is that so?’ Hans said coolly. ‘All the same, I need to speak to Karolin Koontz.’
Lili gave a small cry of fear. Why Karolin?
Carla asked the question. ‘Why?’
‘She has written a letter to the Comrade General Secretary, Walter Ulbricht.’
‘Is that a crime?’
‘On the contrary. He is the leader of the people. Anyone may write to him. He is glad to hear from them.’
‘So why have you come here to bully and frighten Karolin?’
‘I’ll explain my purpose to Fr?ulein Koontz. Don’t you think you’d better ask me in?’
Carla murmured to Lili: ‘He might have something to tell us about her application to emigrate. We’d better find out.’ She opened the door wide.
Hans stepped into the hall. He was in his late thirties, a big man who stooped slightly. He wore a heavy double-breasted dark-blue coat of a quality not generally available in East German shops. It made him look larger and more menacing. Lili instinctively moved away from him.
He knew the house, and now he acted as if he still lived here. He took off his coat and hung it on a hook in the hall, then, without invitation, he walked into the kitchen.
Lili and Carla followed him.
Werner was standing up. Lili wondered fearfully if he had taken his pistol from its hiding place behind the saucepan drawer. Perhaps Carla had been arguing on the doorstep in order to give him time to do just that. Lili tried to stop her hands shaking.
Werner did not hide his hostility. ‘I’m surprised to see you in this house,’ he said to Hans. ‘After what you did, you should be ashamed to show your face.’
Karolin was looking puzzled and anxious, and Lili realized she did not know who Hans was. In an aside, Lili explained: ‘He’s with the Stasi. He married my sister and lived here for a year, spying on us.’
Karolin’s hand went to her mouth and she gasped. ‘That’s him?’ she whispered. ‘Walli told me. How could he do such a thing?’
Hans heard them whispering. ‘You must be Karolin,’ he said. ‘You wrote to the Comrade General Secretary.’
Karolin looked scared but defiant. ‘I want to marry the father of my child. Are you going to let me?’
Hans looked at Alice in her high chair. ‘Such a lovely baby,’ he said. ‘Boy or girl?’
It made Lili shake with fear just that Hans was looking at Alice.
Reluctantly, Karolin said: ‘Girl.’
‘And what’s her name?’
‘Alice.’
‘Alice. Yes, I think you said that in your letter.’
Somehow this pretence of being nice about the baby was even more frightening than a threat.
Hans pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table. ‘So, Karolin, you seem to want to leave your country.’
‘I should think you’d be glad – the government disapproves of my music.’
‘But why do you want to play decadent American pop songs?’
‘Rock and roll was invented by American Negroes. It’s the music of oppressed people. It’s revolutionary. That’s why it’s so strange to me that Comrade Ulbricht hates rock and roll.’
When Hans was defeated by an argument he always just ignored it. ‘But Germany has such a wealth of beautiful traditional music,’ he said.
‘I love traditional German songs. I’m sure I know more than you do. But music is international.’
Grandmother Maud leaned forward and said waspishly: ‘Like socialism, comrade.’
Hans ignored her.
Karolin said: ‘And my parents threw me out of the house.’
‘Because of your immoral way of life.’
Lili was outraged. ‘They threw her out because you, Hans, threatened her father!’
‘Not at all,’ he said blandly. ‘What are respectable parents to do when their daughter becomes antisocial and promiscuous?’
Angry tears came to Karolin’s eyes. ‘I have never been promiscuous.’
‘But you have an illegitimate child.’
Maud spoke again. ‘You seem a little confused about biology, Hans. Only one man is required to make a baby, legitimate or otherwise. Promiscuity has nothing to do with it.’
Hans looked stung, but once again he refused to rise to the bait. Still addressing Karolin, he said: ‘The man you wish to marry is wanted for murder. He killed a border guard and fled to the West.’
‘I love him.’
‘So, Karolin, you beg the General Secretary to grant you the privilege of emigration.’
Carla said: ‘It’s not a privilege, it’s a right. Free people may go where they like.’
That got to Hans. ‘You people think you can do anything! You don’t realize that you belong to a society that has to act as one. Even fish in the sea know enough to swim in schools!’
‘We’re not fish.’
Hans ignored that and turned back to Karolin. ‘You are an immoral woman who has been rejected by her family because of outrageous behaviour. You have taken refuge in a family with known antisocial tendencies. And you wish to marry a murderer.’
‘He’s not a murderer,’ Karolin whispered.
‘When people write to Ulbricht, their letters are passed to the Stasi for evaluation,’ Hans said. ‘Yours, Karolin, was given to a junior officer. Being young and inexperienced, he took pity on an unmarried mother, and recommended that permission be granted.’ This sounded like good news, Lili thought, but she felt sure there would be a twist in the tail. She was right. Hans went on: ‘Fortunately, his superior passed his report to me, recalling that I have had previous dealings with this –’ he looked around with an expression of disgust – ‘with this undisciplined, nonconformist, troublemaking group.’
Lili knew what he was going to say now. It was heartbreaking. Hans had come here to tell them that he had been responsible for the rejection of Karolin’s application – and to rub it in personally.
‘You will receive a formal reply – everyone does,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you now that you will not be permitted to emigrate.’
‘Can I visit Walli?’ Karolin begged. ‘Just for a few days? Alice has never even seen her father!’
‘No,’ said Hans with a tight smile. ‘People who have applied for emigration are never subsequently allowed to take holidays abroad.’ His hatred showed through momentarily as he added: ‘What do you think we are, stupid?’
‘I will apply again in a year’s time,’ said Karolin.
Hans stood up, a smile of triumphant superiority playing around his lips. ‘The answer will be the same next year, and the year after, and always.’ He looked around at all of them. ‘None of you will be given permission to leave. Ever. I promise you.’
With that he left.