Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [20]
Most recently, the DA wrote to Miriam saying that the investigation was to be suspended because a former employee of the Southern Cemetery had ‘credibly assured’ him that there had been nothing untoward about the Weber funeral. She sent him in the file, highlighting the parts that referred to the body coming from ‘Anatomie’ (code for the Stasi mortuary, as if somehow the corpses coming from custody were coming from the medical school); the surveillance detail for the funeral; the part about Herr Mohre knowing the true identity of the Stasi man who was making arrangements with him; and the part about the cremation, scheduled to take place the next day. ‘That stopped them,’ she says. ‘I wrote, “Do you still think there was ‘nothing untoward’ about the Weber funeral?”’ The DA replied that he hadn’t yet read that section of the file. When Miriam inquired at the Stasi File Authority she found that he hadn’t even lodged a request to see it.
‘Do you ever run into any Stasi men you recognise in the street?’ I ask. I think that is what would terrify me, in the nonsensical way in which it is horrible to run into someone who has wronged you.
‘No, thank goodness. But I did try to find the people involved in Charlie’s case.’
Shortly after the revolution in 1989 Miriam went to the cemetery to find Herr Mohre, but he had vanished as soon as the Wall came down. ‘The Stasi cremated a lot of people at the Southern Cemetery,’ she says.
Miriam did find Major Maler. She rang him and said she would like to meet to discuss the Weber case. They met in a cafe. Miriam took a friend along so she would have a witness. The friend sat at the next table, unknown to Maler.
Maler said he didn’t know anything. ‘No, the name Weber doesn’t say anything to me.’
‘Well why did you come here then?’ Miriam asked.
‘Uhh, I just wanted to see what you wanted.’
‘But I told you on the phone that what I wanted was to talk about the Weber matter.’
‘Oh, I thought you were going to tell me something.’
Did he want to know how much she knew, whether he was going to be uncovered, or whether he was to be blackmailed?
‘It is amazing,’ Miriam says, ‘what a revolution can do to people’s memories.’ A cloud of smoke covers her head and the high back of the chair. ‘There are some compensations though, for being here. This apartment, for one,’ she says, and she’s right. A siren wails past and subsides. She is a maiden safe in her tower.
‘And I think about those Stasi men. They would never in their lives have imagined that they would cease to exist and that their offices would be a museum. A museum!’ She shakes her head and butts out her cigarette. ‘That’s one thing I love to do. I love to drive up to the Runden Ecke and park right outside. I just sit there in the car and I feel…triumph!’ Miriam makes a gesture which starts as a wave, and becomes a guillotine. ‘You lot are gone.’
5
The Linoleum Palace
It’s past midnight when I get back to Berlin. I’ve been on a tram, a regional train, the local line, and then walked through the park where things are only shapes, dark on dark. Miriam’s story has winded me. My head, no longer consumed by listening, started to pulse again as soon as I left her apartment. I dislike being made aware that my heart is just a small pump, pushing all that blood around. I am beyond tired. As I reach my place I’m in slow motion, crossing a finishing line.
My building is covered in grey sprayed-on concrete, but still has grand arched doors at its entrance. At the end of the carriage hall a matching set of doors leads into the yard with its chestnut tree and weedy cobbles. I live on the first floor past the letterboxes up the stairs on the right. I don’t check the mail but turn on the hall light and go straight up. The stairwell walls are covered in bright but inscrutable