Alain Xalabarde - The Berlin Paradox - Chronicles of a Soviet Time Traveler

I follow the man, as ordered. Why are they taking me? What have I done? What do they think I’ve done? I remind myself that I have nothing to hide. I try to sound convincing in my head, but I am not completely sure.

I’m afraid of asking where we are going. Just follow him. Don’t make it any worse. Show them you still have discipline. Don’t look suspicious. Why would I look suspicious?

A car awaits for us. I get in. At first I think they will drive me back to my apartment so I can pack my things, but that’s not the case. We drive away from the site. Out of town. Too far for my comfort. The man keeps silent. So do I. I prefer it that way.

We drive south. My thumbs are fiddling with each other. After an hour of driving I finally summon the courage to ask where we are going. The man who guided me to the car says he is not authorized to answer that. He is just following orders.

I finally start putting the pieces together and realize we’re driving to Berlin. Back to Berlin. I can’t believe I had been here this morning and I was now returning for no apparent reason.

Once in the center, we pass by Volkspark Friedrichshain. We stop right beside it. This seems like an odd place to stop. I get off the car and follow the stranger. He tries to walk with me, side by side, but I keep allowing him to stay a step ahead of me. We reach the end of the trees and the broken-down Resurrection Church rises before us. It was heavily bombed during the war, and it’s still in ruins. Hasn’t been touched. Obviously, Berlin has other more important things to worry about than God.

We walk right by it and enter the cemetery beside it. What are we doing here? I follow obediently, but alert. Looking at the gravestones reminds me of my mother. It’s sad that this will now represent her.

We reach a small mausoleum with a pyramidal cupola and two infant angels mourning melancholically. He opens the door to the mausoleum and we enter the humid interior. They’ve dug up the floor and a ladder leads further down into the ground. I am nudged to climb down. We reach the bottom, and I set foot on what seems like a hidden chamber, where two soldiers are standing, patiently waiting for us. They let us in through a large, crumpled hole in a cement wall. It seems out of place, as if someone was trying to cover something up. Unlucky for them, someone found a sledgehammer and I can tell they had a blast breaking through the dubious-looking wall. Inside of it, on the other side, is a heavy metal door. It also looks like it doesn’t belong in a mausoleum. The man presses a button resembling some sort of bell, but it is silent. He waits. I wait with him. Where the hell is he taking me? What is this place?

The metal door screeches and finally opens. The uniformed man turns around and leaves. Should I follow him? What is this place? Why am I here? Why did I let myself get taken all the way here? My eyes follow the stranger as he walks away.

I turn my head forward. The door is now fully open. Behind it is an attractive, blond, German woman in her late thirties. She welcomes me in German, but wears a serious face. Behind her is a long, rudimentary tunnel, lit only by working lights hanging from the sides.

I step inside. But why? Maybe it’s because she’s a woman and I’d like to be polite. Maybe it’s because I find her attractive. I don’t know... yes, I do know.

The door slams behind me. She turns her back to me and walks deeper into the tunnel. I follow her cautiously, trying to avoid tripping over the uneven floor. She wears very casual clothing. It’s hard to make out what she is doing here or what her role is. I thought I would be able to find some clue as to what was happening at this point. I still don’t. It is getting too weird. I feel uneasy. Too uneasy. I reach my limit. I realize how bad this situation is getting — it might even be too late. I stop walking.

The woman notices and stops too. She turns around and asks if there’s a problem. I reply with a question. I demand some explanation before I continue. She says that I need to speak to the Doctor for that.

The Doctor? What Doctor? Before I am able to react, she has already turned around and continues walking down the eery tunnel.

It’s humid. It smells like this tunnel has been closed for decades. I lose count of the corridors and corners we take, and of the metal doors we cross. I am trying to make a mental map, but it is very disorienting. I would never have expected this sort of structure built under a graveyard. Although, at this point, I’m not even sure we’re directly under the cemetery anymore.

Finally, we enter a bright room. Looks like an office. My eyes adjust and I make out another person in the room. A slender man is standing with his arms crossed. He is clearly waiting for me. His casual clothing is made up of at least five different tones of brown. I get a glimpse of a smile on his face. I think it’s a smile. I’m not sure.

He takes a step towards me and stretches out his hand. I shake it politely. His hand is freezing cold, like a cadaver. He pronounces my first name with a perfect accent. He is Russian. I can tell.

He pulls up a worn-out chair and lets me sit on it. I suddenly realize that the female I walked in with is not in the room anymore. I look around for her, but she has vanished.

The man leans against an old desk, crosses his arms and stares down at me. I wait for him to start talking, but he doesn’t. His eyes are scanning over every detail of my body. It makes me very uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than I already was. I need to stay strong. I stare back at him, defiant.

I win the battle. He talks. He speaks to me in Russian. He introduces himself as Doctor Vodnik. He doesn’t look like a doctor. He doesn’t speak like a doctor either. He explains that he is a scientist. He came from Russia to work exclusively on a very important project. Sure. It’s always an important project. He stops there and lets his words linger.

He grabs some papers from beside him, puts on a pair of glasses and reads from them. He mentions my hometown, my military training, my mother and even my father’s full name. It’s at that point that he looks back up at me. He asks me what happened to my father. I would imagine he has this information already and is probably testing me. I have nothing to hide, so I give him the answer he wants to hear. I tell him my father died in Königsberg, fighting for the red army. The doctor asks me where I got this information from. I pause for a moment, confused by his unusual inquisition. Before I am able to reply, he asks me if my father had ties to the Nazi government. My blood boils. How dare he? I’ve had to put up with these accusations my whole life. I’m about to give my many-times-rehearsed speech on how my father was a hero when he stops me in my tracks. He fiddles through the papers and says there are no records of my father fighting for the red army. I am speechless. That can’t be true. He must be missing some documents. However, the doctor doesn’t seem to give it any importance. Instead he says he knows the remote Russian town my mother was born in. He has been there. I take a breath and try to calm myself down.

He assures me that I need not to worry about my father’s past. He holds the papers up in front of me. He can ask the KGB to forget about all this if this meeting goes well.

Why is he telling me all this? Is he blackmailing me? A moment ago I had nothing to be blackmailed for. Has the KGB fabricated claims about my father in exchange for something?

He asks me about my experience in the Soviet Air Force. I don’t answer. I don’t want to talk about it. I definitely don’t want to talk about it with him. I want to find out how much he knows. He asks me how I like my current job at the GSSD (Soviet Armed Forces in Germany). That comment painfully hits me straight in the lungs and I don’t know how to react. He asks me if I like working there.