Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [50]
‘It is clear to us on the evidence, Miss Behrend, that you take after your mother,’ he said. ‘Which, if I may be so bold as to say so, is a good thing.’
‘He was showing me that he had me in the palm of his hand,’ she says. Julia draws her knees up to her chest and places her heels on the seat. She stretches her jumper over the knees, making herself into a small black ball. ‘The only thing—’ she says, ‘—it’s ironic but the only thing that they seemed not to know, was that I’d broken up with my boyfriend!’ Since their split in Hungary, the Italian boyfriend had written several imploring letters. Julia had replied to the first one but then stopped writing.
‘Or at least the Major acted as if he didn’t know that we’d broken up,’ she says. ‘I thought it was strange that he didn’t know. Maybe he’d been on holidays and had missed the last couple of letters.’
Or, I think, he might have known, and thought his prospects with her then were better.
N. put the manila folder to one side next to the love letters. He joined the tips of his fingers together and leant forward. ‘As I’m sure you will have picked up, we are interested in your friend.’ And then it came. ‘We would propose,’ he said, ‘if you would assist us, that we meet every now and again. For a chat.’
Julia says, ‘I thought it was absurd. I thought: what on earth could interest them in him?’ She could not imagine that the Italian boyfriend was in any way a bigwig. ‘He did not have any high-up connections he ever mentioned, or any special expertise or training at all.’ It did not occur to her until she got home that it could have been her they wanted.
There was no question for Julia. She would not inform on him, or at all. ‘I am terribly sorry,’ she told Major N., ‘but I can’t help you because we split up on this last trip to Hungary. I want nothing more to do with him. He wanted to own me. I knew if I stayed with him I would not be able to determine my own life.’ She added, ‘I never want to see him again, even as a friend.’
N. smiled. ‘If,’ he said, ‘after giving the matter some further thought you reach a different decision, you should not hesitate to call at any time.’ He gave her his card with his phone number on it. ‘Oh and Miss Behrend,’ he said, ‘one more thing. You must not discuss our little talk with anyone—not your parents, not your sisters, not your closest friends. If you do, we will know about it. This afternoon has not occurred. You have never been to Room 118. If you see me on the street you are not to acknowledge me—you must walk on past. All this for obvious reasons, as I’m sure you will have understood long ago.’
She nodded.
And that was it. He had shown her that with one phone call to him she could be in, or she could be out. She could be with them, or she could be gone.
‘And then he let me leave.’ The street was another world, the daylight bright and unnatural. Julia watched a class of small children being herded along the pavement. She felt sundered, suddenly and irrevocably, from life. ‘It was as though all at once I was on the other side,’ she says, ‘separate from everybody.’
Julia seems to have run out of words, so I pick up the plates and place them behind me in the sink. I look in the fridge for something else to eat, as if it might yield possibilities missed at first glance. There’s only a saggy old condom of liverwurst and an apple. I throw out the liverwurst and cut up the apple. Whilst I have my back to her, she starts to speak again. To listen to her is to witness the process, almost mechanical, of pulling things up from the past.
Her voice is slow. ‘I think I’d totally repressed that