Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [13]
‘I wanted to sleep.’
Fleischer said her conduct amounted to Deception of the Ministry, which was a criminal offence. She would now be up for an even longer sentence. And it was going to be bad enough for her, considering she could have started a war.
Miriam thought he must be crazy. Had she jumped over the last railing, he continued, the East German soldiers would have shot at her from behind, and the West Germans would have shot back. She could have been responsible for the outbreak of civil war. Then he softened. ‘But for your sake I will take this little episode out of your file. Never let it be said we didn’t give you a fair go.’
Later, it was clear to Miriam that he had been protecting himself. Had she been asked in court why she invented such a story, she would simply have said, ‘Because they wouldn’t let me sleep.’ Apparently, even in the GDR, sleep deprivation amounted to torture, and torture, at least of minors, was not official policy.
As it was, the judge gave her one and a half years in Stauberg, the women’s prison at Hoheneck. And at the end of the three-day trial he said to her, ‘Juvenile Accused Number 725, you realise that your activities could have started World War III.’
They were all crazy and they were locking her up.
4
Charlie
‘When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human,’ Miriam says.
On the first day at Hoheneck Miriam was required to undress, leave the clothes she came in and take in her hands the blue and yellow striped uniform. She was led naked down a corridor, into a room with a deep tiled tub in it. Two female guards were waiting. This was the Baptism of Welcome.
It was the only time she ever thought she would die. The bath was filled with cold water. One guard held her feet and the other her hair. They pushed her head under for a long time, then dragged her up by the hair, screaming at her. They held her down again. She could do nothing, and she could not breathe. And up: ‘You piece of filth. You little upstart. You stupid traitor, you little bitch.’ And under. When she came up the insults were what she breathed. She thought they would kill her.
Miriam is upset. Her voice is stretched and I can’t look at her. Perhaps they beat something out of her she didn’t get back.
Miriam says the prisoners were brutal to each other too. She says the criminal prisoners received privileges for abusing the politicals. She says that for eighteen months she was addressed by number and never by name. She says there was a hoard-and-barter system, in fact a whole economy, in sanitary napkins. I can’t stay focused on the awfulness of it all, and my mind wanders, disobediently, to sitcoms. I think of the old TV series ‘Prisoner’, set in a women’s prison: clanging metal gates before each ad break and a kindly lesbian in the laundry, steaming away.
But Miriam has found her stride again. She tells me at Hoheneck the prisoners worked in a sweatshop making sheets. An ordinary day started at 4.30 am with an alarm. When the warden’s key rattled in the door all the prisoners stood to attention against the wall. This was roll call by number. They were counted as well. They went to breakfast, and then to the workroom, where they were counted again. ‘To make sure no-one had run off between the cell and the canteen.’ If Miriam wanted to go to the toilet, she stood to attention and called, ‘Juvenile Prisoner Number 725 requests toilet permission.’ When she got back she stood to attention again. ‘Juvenile Prisoner Number 725 requests permission to resume.’ Before going to lunch they were counted. After lunch they were marched around a yard for exercise and then counted again. The prisoners were counted and re-counted from the moment they woke to the moment they went to sleep, and, as Miriam says, chuckling, ‘You know what?—the numbers were always right. Everyone was always there.’
‘Prison left me with some strange little tics.’ She has taken all the doors off their hinges in all the apartments she has lived in since. It’s not