Gerald Seymour - The Contract

The crisp rattle of the wheels on the rails. A drugging, soporific rhythm.

'Ulf.'

He was thinking only of how he would spend the time before the early morning train. 'Yes.'

'Did I tell you that I have an uncle that lives in Hamburg?'

'You told me.'

'Well it is not actually Hamburg, that is where his factory is. He lives in Pinneburg which is on the autobahn to Hamburg.'

'You told me.'

'He came to see us last summer.' The train crept into the pale-lit platforms of Treptower Park. 'He came with his Mercedes. When it was parked outside our flat many people came to look at it, not obviously, but they made the oppor- tunity to admire it.'

'So?'

'Do you know his children did not come to see us because they said it was too tedious to come to the DDR, they said it was a waste of time. My uncle said that if ever I reached Hamburg then he would give me a job.

Even a secretary, he said, is paid more than two thousand marks a month.'

'More than four times what my father takes.' Ulf could imagine it, Ulf could feel it. The pay of the NVA conscript was 44 marks a month, with food and accommodation and transport found. 'But there everything is expensive, you pay much for a flat.'

'But not for a car, not for a television, not for a pair of jeans. You see the advertisements on their television in the evening.'

Ulf sagged back, tired, in his seat. He was going back to Weferlingen, the boy who loved her and knew her, and she was talking about the price of a television set and the wage of a secretary in Hamburg. The train was edging clear of Planterwald. Still they were alone in the carriage.

'When we were in the Tierpark my uncle said that many young people were still able to leave, to go over there.'

'If someone pays then perhaps it is possible. There are criminals who will provide forged papers, will try to take people out. They charge thousands of marks, West marks, and many are caught. They are scum, filth, human traffickers.'

Jutte was close against him and her lips brushed against the lobe of his ear and her voice was as a light wind among leaves and her fingers traced patterns on the surface of his trousers. 'My uncle talked of that.

He said what you have said. But he spoke about the border, Ulf. He said it could be crossed.'

He wanted only to love her and she had teased him into j anger. 'It is one thing to talk of it, it is another to act. There is so much there, do you know that? The Restricted Zone, five kilometres deep. The Hinterland fence that is electrified. There are towers for observation, there are patrols, there are minefields, there are automatic guns. You cannot even climb the fence… It is easy to speak of it, easy only to talk of crossing.'

They passed through Baumschulenweg. No one boarded, no one left the train.

'My uncle said that it could be crossed, but that there was one requisite, one thing was necessary

'What was that?'

'One in the party that makes the attempt must know a particular place.

You cannot go as a blind man and hope to win through, but if you know the place… He had read it in Stern magazine, there are places…'

The train was slowing, the driver hard with the brakes, the wheels screaming on the rails, the illuminated sign flicking past the windows.

Betr-Bahnhof Schoneweide. Thirty-four minutes past midnight.

Departure time for Magdeburg was ihirty minutes after midnight. Ulf was on his feet and waiting furiously impatient for the doors to open, Jutte gripping his hand in a vice of possession.

'You're going to run?'

He nodded.

The doors opened. They ran, legs stretched, boy and girl, stride matching stride. Along the platform, down the steps, along the corridor, up the steps. There were carriages beside the open, stark platform on the main station. Carriages that carried the routing 'Potsdam, Brandenburg, Genthin, Burg, Magdeburg, Halberstadt'. A whistle blowing, shrieking in his ears. The train sliding forward, crawling and restless. Ulf leapt for the nearest door, wrenched it open and jumped for the high step..

He heard her voice, firm against the gathering impetus of the train.

'Find me that place, lover. Find it for me.'

He shook his head as if trying to rid himself of a pain, and she was smiling and her face was burning beacon bright, and her eyes shone at him.

'Find it, and write to me.'

She turned and did not look for him again and was lost on the descending steps from the platform.

Ulf Becker began the hunt for a seat. On the night train it would be 4 hours to Magdeburg.

Erica Guttmann had changed to her nightdress and dressing gown, had done that before she carried a pot of tea to her father. She had read a book and listened to her radio, and could not find tiredness. The worry prevented that, the worry and hurt bred from watching his deteriorating efforts to maintain the close routine of their life since the telegram had come from Geneva. An old man, and ageing, and growing in his dependence on her as the days passed.

Renate was both a relative and a friend. A second cousin and a contemporary. They'd met in the town ever since she could remember the holidays in Magdeburg. Always Renate was there from the days of dressing up and playing skipping games and taking picnics, right through to adulthood and confidence. Renate the single girl like herself, and bubbling with a cheerfulness that was champagne to Erica after the long winter and slow spring of Moscow. Bewildering that such a lovely girl as Renate, pretty as a flower, had allowed herself to become the mistress of a policeman. A policeman called Gunther Spitzer. The two girls would be swept by gales of laughter when they spoke of the affair.

But at least he was a senior officer, he was prominent in the Schutzpolizei. What a choice for her lovely friend to have made. But in less than a month they could talk of it. From the drawers of her table she took a writing pad and her pen.

My dear Renate,

You will have heard of the awful thing that happened to Willi in Geneva

…

There was pressure on the bathroom space on the Monday morning and on the days that followed. And at eight o'clock sharp Mrs Ferguson bustling into the dining room with her trays of fried food and jugs of coffee and pots of tea and racks of toast played to a full house.

The fierce jollity of the all-male working society. All together, lads, Mawby seemed to be saying, something for us all to have some pride in, and only the best will be acceptable.

'If you don't mind, the butter please.'

'Coming over, Adrian.'

'The marmalade there, Harry?'

'Wish the old lady would get some decent colfee in, right, Johnny?'

'Hear the news this morning, the bloody sewage workers' strike?'

'Nothing changes, does it, Henry?'

'Come on, lads, each to his appointed.'

'Yes, Mr Mawby.'

The men of the Service coming together with their individual areas of expertise in the operation, and all making the effort to pull Johnny into their nest.

Mawby and Carter, the last to leave the table.

'Distant, isn't he, Mr Mawby. Removed from us, like he's an untouchable, don't you think?'

'Self-dependent, and self-reliant, that's the way I see him, Henry, and that's what I'm looking for.'

'He's a cold sort of fish.'

'As he should be for what we want of him.'

'Do you know that he even brought his old army boots down here. Next to no luggage, but he insisted on the boots,

Smithson told me. You'd have thought he'd have turned them out months ago.'

'Let's hope he doesn't need them. Let's hope we're not into a cross-country scamper… Take him slowly, Henry, slowly and carefully.'

'Tell us about his health, Willi, his condition physically.'