Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [125]
Voices float up from the street, single notes of human music. ‘Our friends said, “But that’s no sort of marriage!” For us though, it was the only way we could be. That’s why it worked so well.’ She spits a cherry pip into her hand. ‘I think it came, at least on my side, from my experience in prison. I reacted extremely when I got out of there. I just couldn’t plan ahead. I couldn’t say to someone, “I’ll meet you on Sunday”—I found that sort of thing an unbearable obligation.’ She laughs. ‘I’m sure I was hard to get on with!’
I can’t imagine her being hard to get on with, but I know she is hard to pin down. And I know all of a sudden that she really is pleased to see me; that this is the continuation of a conversation begun three years ago. She got my messages and my letter and, from an impulse I now understand, did not tie herself down with a response. Having had her every move anticipated by them for so long, these days she just wants to let things unroll. And my turning up here is part of the unrolling.
‘After we wrote our applications to leave, things got pretty awful,’ she says. ‘They began to harass us on the street—we were constantly stopped. We were followed in the car quite a lot too—they really wanted to make life unpleasant for us. Eventually, Charlie was called in to the Department of the Interior for questioning. He said he just wanted an answer to his application: yes, or no? That was the first time they locked him up. After he was released the cards started appearing in the letterbox, calling him in to Room 111 at Dimitroffstrasse.’
Dimitroffstrasse was the police building, but Charlie Weber came to know that Room 111 meant an appointment with the Stasi. The complex had an internal yard, and ‘You could walk in thinking you were going to clear up an administrative quirk and suddenly find yourself in a room being interrogated by the Stasi, or even locked up on remand in a cell out the back.’ Miriam pauses. ‘The last time Charlie went in there, he went to his appointment in Room 111 and ended up in one of those.’
‘You wanted to exhume Charlie’s coffin,’ I ask. ‘What happened?’ She unwraps a new packet of cigarettes from its plastic. Her fingers are hard-looking and blue from lack of oxygen.
‘The district attorney’s office here just want to cover up everything that happened then, and most of all they don’t want to pursue any of the Stasi. There are a lot of reasons for this I imagine, but in part it must be because they are still working with people who were with the Stasi—they are their colleagues! The judge, for instance, who signed the warrant for Charlie’s arrest that last time he went into remand is still on the bench.’
But, it seems, there has been a development. The DA has found a witness to what happened in the cells the day Charlie died: another prisoner. ‘According to that person’s account,’ Miriam says, ‘there was a commotion in Charlie’s cell early in the morning. Something happened, and the guard called others who came running. Then they all left. The witness says everything was quiet until midday, when they came to bring the meal. Then the guard had to call more guards again, and voices were raised in the cell. You’d think this new evidence would give some impetus to the inquiries, but no. The DA later informed me that he’d found another former prisoner who “credibly assured” him that he heard nothing from the other cells that day. Once more, he wanted to use that as a reason to close the matter.’
Miriam has lost faith in this investigation. About a month ago, she sent the file and all the correspondence over the years directly to the Minister for Justice. ‘I haven’t got an answer from him yet,’ she says, ‘but I