Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [90]
I look at my watch. It’s nine o’clock. ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ I say. ‘What is it you do now, Herr Bock?’
‘I am a business adviser.’
I don’t say anything.
‘You look surprised,’ he says. ‘You are wondering what I could possibly know about business.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I work for West German firms who come here to buy up East German assets. I mediate between them and the East Germans, because the westerners don’t speak their language. The easterners are wary because of their fancy clothes, their Mercedes Benzes, and so on.’
Terrific. Here he is once more getting the trust of his people and selling them cheap. Stasi men are by and large less affected by the unemployment that has consumed East Germany since the Wall came down. Many of them have found work in insurance, telemarketing and real estate. None of these businesses existed in the GDR. But the Stasi were, in effect, trained for them, schooled in the art of convincing people to do things against their own self-interest.
‘We never thought, no-one ever thought, that it would all come to an end,’ he says. ‘It would not have occurred to anyone that our country could somehow cease to be. Just like that! Up on the sixth floor over there’—he gestures again with his head in the direction of the academy across the road—‘at the end of 1989 we used to joke around. We’d say, “Last one here turn the lights out” because, at the end there’d be no-one left in the GDR.’
I think I should leave too. I thank Herr Bock and pack up and walk to the bus stop. There is only one street lamp along this road, and it is right here. So that the bus will stop for me, I have to stand in its cone of light. I can’t see much beyond it; there are no lights on in any of the buildings around. Here I am, standing in a blank on the map, lit up for all to see. According to the timetable, it is forty-five minutes until the next bus comes. In ten minutes’ time, the cold will be through to my bones.
I pick up my little pack and walk back to Herr Bock’s. There are no lights on, but where could he have gone? No cars passed. The gate is stuck and it rattles. A piece of wire I can’t see bites into my palm. I imagine Herr Bock looking through his curtains, and in fact the moment the gate springs wide he opens the door. He is chewing.
‘I think I might call a taxi, if you don’t mind,’ I say. ‘It’s three-quarters of an hour till the next bus comes, and I’ll miss the connection for the Berlin train. May I come in?’
It is dim inside. He has turned off the lamp to watch television, and now he switches that off too. He swallows and says, ‘I don’t know anything about taxis. I don’t think they come here.’
‘Let’s try calling one, shall we?’ I say.
He is enjoying himself, here in the dark. ‘It might be a while,’ he answers, ‘they probably have to come from Potsdam.’ But he finds a phone book in the gloom anyway, and calls a cab company. We sit down. My eyes are adjusting. He takes something off a plate.
‘You are not afraid of the dark, are you?’ he says, mouth full.
‘It is very dark.’
‘This way we can see the taxi come,’ he says.
I don’t see how. All his curtains are drawn and, even if there were any light in here, no chink of it could escape to the street. I start to fiddle around in my bag, looking for I don’t know what. I am buying time to think and avoiding peering at him. I am tired and hungry and this language is not coming easily any more. This man with his brown cocoon and his conspiratorial room is unlikely to touch me, but I resent his enjoyment in having me at his mercy. I am worried the taxi will see a dark house in a dark street and turn around and leave. And I am thinking of ways out of here when he gets up and peeks through the curtains. He does this in a way so as not to let any movement be seen. But he turns from the window, disappointed.
‘That