Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [117]
‘But you know what happened,’ Koch says. I turn back to him. ‘The family eventually fought—it was two brothers, I think. They fought so badly that in the end all they could do was to put a fence down the middle of the garden and split it into two separate zones!’ His face is alive with the irony of it. ‘Come here, look.’ We walk to the middle where a two-metre-high cyclone fence runs right through the little field, separating the part with the hut from the part with the swing, and no way of going between.
Our last stop is at the Oberbaum Bridge. Berlin is a wasteland here, where the tram lines between east and west have only recently been knitted back together. The longest strip of remaining Wall is along this river-bank—more because it was forgotten than deliberately preserved. At the end of it are what look like, at first glance, a small array of circus tents. As we approach I see they are a couple of souvenir stalls, with flags flying atop and signs in English saying ‘Souvenirs for You’ and ‘I Stamp Your Passport’. For one mark you can have your passport stamped with a GDR entry visa, as if you had stepped into this tent and miraculously been admitted to that place in the past. Elderly American tourists are climbing out of a bus. They seem to match—in pressed pale clothes and overly clean running shoes. ‘Betty,’ one woman asks another in a broad southern accent, ‘is that the same jacket you were wearing that day at Auschwitz?’
Herr Koch bounces into the main stall. ‘Gerd!’ he cries.
‘Hagen, my friend!’ The stallkeeper jumps up and runs from behind his wares to greet him. Herr Koch introduces me. Gerd is a suntanned man of sixty wearing a blue shirt unbuttoned to the navel and a smile with the wattage of a vaudevillian. Herr Koch later told me he had been a theatre actor in the east.
Gerd’s stall is a reliquary of his country’s memorabilia. He has Russian and GDR soldiers’ caps; Russian medals issued as reward for service in the Berlin invasion of 1945 (‘genuine, genuine,’ he says winningly); old enamel signs that read, ‘You are leaving the American Sector’ in English, Russian, French and German and ‘Beware—Mines! Closed Area: Danger to Life!’ He has matchbox-sized Trabant cars, teddy bears, bottle openers, car stickers and coffee mugs; and on one side of the stall in tiny pigeonholes he has lots and lots of pieces of Wall.
‘You must take this as a gift from me,’ he says, and he presses a piece of the Wall into my palm. It is in a small plastic bag, complete with a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’. It looks like a forensic sample. The two of them are staring at me, grinning and excited. I fear at any moment they will break into song.
‘How do you know this is genuine?’ I ask.
‘Oh, it’s genuine,’ Gerd says, twinkling like a daytime television host.
There have probably been enough ‘genuine’ fragments of the Wall sold to build it twice over. Herr Koch leans in, as always, interested in the documents. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘there’s a certificate to prove it.’
I thank them both and walk up to the new tramstop at Warschauer Strasse. When I look back, I see Herr Koch has corralled the tourists, and is giving them his side of history.
27
Puzzlers
I catch the train to Nuremberg. When I arrive, I drink an espresso standing up at a bar in the station. A beautiful young woman wearing a fast-food wimple is serving behind the counter. The man next to me orders a Riesenbockwurst. The barmaid reaches first for potato salad and a bun, and then the boiled sausage. ‘Mustard or ketchup?’ She holds the paper plate high for an answer, reaching with her free hand above the bar to where the bottles would normally be, upturned for nips. Instead, there hangs a giant yellow rubber udder. The barmaid does a neat squeeze-and-twist action on one of