Displaced Read online

  Lee lit another fag and took his phone out of his pocket.

  ‘I do not pry, as you know,’ her father said, ‘but I think you should maybe be the bigger person and make this thing, whatever it is, up with Shazia. The girl looks so miserable and she should be happy. She is about to go to university! You must do something!’

  Mumtaz flopped back on her bed, her phone jammed against her ear. She’d just got off the line to Shirin Shah, who expected her to do something about the fact she still didn’t like the refuge. Why did people always want her to have an answer for everything?

  ‘What can I do if she won’t take my calls?’ she said.

  ‘She won’t?’

  ‘No. I’ve rung her four times since I got to Berlin and she just cuts me dead.’

  ‘So try again. I will tell her she must speak to you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that, Abba!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can’t interfere in this,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve no idea what it’s about! All I know is that your mother and I suddenly find ourselves parents again!’

  Of course they did. Guilt made Mumtaz end the call and then she closed her eyes. It was great that Shazia had felt confident enough in her parents’ love to go to them after ‘that’ talk, but it had to be a strain for the old couple. And they hadn’t asked for a penny towards Shazia’s keep, which was just as well. Skint, yet again, she didn’t dare ask Lee for a pay increase, not because he couldn’t afford it, but just because she was afraid to talk to him about anything personal.

  ‘Mumtaz.’

  And now here he was, knocking on her door! How could she both want and not want him to come in?

  She fixed her hijab and then said, ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘Frau Metzler?’

  Sara had thought the building was empty. She looked up from her computer screen. Like her, Horst Klein was a volunteer archivist at the Centrum Judaicum. Older than her, he’d been born in 1934 in the Berlin district of Scheunenviertel, an old Jewish enclave near the centre of the city. When the war began, his family went into hiding. Miraculously, they had all survived. Herr Klein was like a beacon for Berlin Jewry, Sara always felt. Intelligent, kind, knowledgeable and tough.

  ‘Herr Klein.’

  ‘What are you doing burning the midnight oil?’ he said.

  She told him about the Austerlitz family, their house, and about the people who had come from London to find them. He shook his head.

  ‘One of those families where everyone died. I didn’t know them.’

  ‘You were a child.’

  ‘I was.’ He looked down at the floor. Then he said, ‘But I do recall that house on Grabbeallee. It was pointed out on one of those endless educational trips they used to put us on.’

  Like Sara, Horst was an East Berliner. He’d worked as an engineer at the Klingenberg Power Station until the Wall came down.

  ‘Do you remember anything about it?’

  ‘Oh, only that it was one of those places where one of their “Heroes of the Revolution” was born.’

  ‘Do you know who?’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t listen. The Stasi dragged me in once. I tried to “mend my ways”, but in reality I just got better at hiding my boredom.’

  Sara smiled. They’d all done that to a greater or lesser extent. But then she thought about what he’d just said.

  ‘Do you know who brought you in?’ she said.

  He shrugged again. ‘Some Stasi officer. I don’t know. Who were those people? Well, they were people we now see walking the streets and we do not know. They were our neighbours, our friends even …’

  ‘Do you know the name Beltz, Herr Klein?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Beltz? Was there a Beltz in the Politburo?’

  ‘Joachim Beltz, yes,’ she said. ‘A very minor member. Later it was discovered that he owned that house on Grabbeallee. His son still lives there. He was a Stasi officer.’

  Herr Klein leant back in his chair. ‘So many were,’ he said.

  ‘That “Hero of the Revolution” you were told about was born in that house. It wasn’t Beltz, was it?’ she said.

  He thought for a moment and then he said, ‘I’m sorry, Frau Metzler, I really don’t know. This was back in the fifties and I was day-dreaming. For all I know the devil could have been born in that house.’

  He found a chair as far away from her as he could and sat down. Mumtaz looked at his face and felt her heart ache. Doing the ‘right’ thing made him frown.

  He said, ‘I’ve been looking at Irving’s old man’s military service. He was in the 131st Infantry Brigade during the war. It was a territorial unit, apparently, which must mean that Manny Levy had been too old for regular service or he’d been in Reserved Occupation for some reason. Now that lot were amongst some of the first British units to enter Berlin in 1945. Course the Soviets were already there; they’d staked their claim to what they wanted.’

  It wasn’t easy sitting upright on the bed and so Mumtaz sat slightly nearer to Lee on a chair over by the wardrobe.

  ‘Then on 7th September 1945, once all the Allies were in the city, the Soviets suggested a victory parade,’ he continued. ‘The US, France and the UK weren’t keen, but they went along with it to please Stalin. So all the top-notch Russians were in town as well as General Patton from the US. But the British and the French sent small-time generals. It was lip service and the Russians knew it. They call it the “Forgotten Parade”, apparently. And, by us of course, it has been largely forgotten.’

  Mumtaz said, ‘OK. How is this relevant?’

  He’d bustled into her room like someone who’d just found the Holy Grail.

  ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it was during and around the time of the Forgotten Parade that the Western Allies and the Soviets got to meet and greet and go where they wanted.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so Manny Levy could have entertained himself or been entertained by Soviets in their sector,’ he said. ‘He could have met a pretty girl in a house on a street called Grabbeallee.’

  ‘But that doesn’t automatically place him there.’

  ‘No, but it opens up the possibility that he was there,’ Lee said. ‘It doesn’t mean that he actually was, but he could have been.’

  ‘And yet the girl could have been anyone,’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘She could. But she must’ve known the name Rachel Austerlitz, at the very least.’

  ‘Because she used that name.’

  ‘Yes.’ He paused for a moment, a hand at his lips and then he said, ‘The girl was a Gentile, as we know now, but she gave the name of a Jew to a soldier she may or may not have known was Jewish and …’

  ‘And so she must have either known of or known Rachel Austerlitz,’ Mumtaz said. ‘And Lee, she lived as a Jew and so she must’ve had some knowledge about their customs …’

  ‘Maybe she was a friend?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They sat in silence for a moment and then Lee suddenly blurted, ‘Mumtaz, I’d like things to be … between us …’ He shook his head. ‘I’d like things to be back the way they were, before …’

  ‘Me too,’ she said.

  ‘I mean it’s not ideal …’

  ‘Please don’t say any more.’ She turned away. Then she said, ‘It’s how it must be.’

  ‘I know that’s how you see it.’

  ‘It’s not something that can happen,’ she said. ‘Whatever we may feel.’

  She felt his hand on her arm and she pulled it away. Then she looked at him and saw that he was in pain. It made her want to cry.

  ‘Mumtaz …’

  She stood up and moved away from him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please go now, Lee, for God’s sake.’

  She heard him stand and walk across the room. He stood, just for a moment, at the foot of her bed – it was unbearable – and then she heard the door open and close behind him.

  Mumtaz threw herself onto her bed, burying her face in her pillows, a
nd howled without even a thought about what Irving, whose room was next door, might think.

  They were outside his van; he could hear them, sniggering. What were they up to now? In the old days they’d gone out at night to gather wood and try to find a rabbit or someone’s chicken for the pot. Later it had been rats. He’d eaten more rat than he cared to remember. They all had.

  Bela Horvathy opened his bedroom window and saw that they were lighting a fire.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. ‘Fires are forbidden on the site these days!’

  They both looked at him. The made-up faux oriental eyes had become part of them and he now found it hard to see past them or even tell them one from another. They didn’t speak. Even Hungarian seemed to be beyond them now. He wondered sometimes whether they were dementing.

  He tried again. ‘Put the fire out,’ he said. ‘Go back to your van and go to bed!’

  Neither of them moved. The bastards were like statues.

  ‘We break camp tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Go to sleep. You’ll need energy to pack up.’

  But they just carried on staring at him, unmoving.

  Eventually, he said, ‘There is a limit to my patience, you know.’

  And then they both laughed at him until he shut the window.

  THIRTEEN

  Frau Metzler and her English people would go away. Gunther Beltz threw the note, and her mobile phone number, into the fire. Over the years, a few people had come to the house looking for something – never this – but something. That was why he occasionally employed Rolfe. Young, he may be, but he knew everyone and had many, many interests in the city. Armed with Rolfe’s information he was usually able to make such people leave.

  Why would they stay? In 1989 he’d seen the writing on the wall – literally – and he’d made arrangements to expunge himself. Of course, people could still recognise him, make accusations, but there was nothing to back them up. Let the occasional lunatic yell at the house. Every fourth East Berliner had been in the Stasi. Some of those who accused him probably among them. The issue was not what he had done, but that he had this house. They were jealous.

  What none of them knew was that he had this house for a reason. But then maybe, if Frau Metzler had her way, that was about to change. Maybe, he thought, he should give her her way. But it was too late now. Her number was on the fire. Gunther Beltz put her from his mind.

  The taxi driver understood his weird German pronunciation, thank God! Maybe it was because he was a Turk and so accustomed to non-standard German voices. He took him straight there.

  Now standing outside number 67 Grabbeallee, Irving didn’t really know what to do. He’d come to see the house again, on his own, mainly because he wanted to know whether the feeling of dread he had felt coming from it that first time had been real. Frau Metzler was a wonderful guide and an enthusiastic advocate of Berliner Jewry, but she was also an East German and so she had, naturally, reacted to the house of a former member of the Stasi with fear.

  Irving knew that, compared to her, he was fortunate. Born in the 1950s, he’d been raised in a Britain that had been poor and shabby but free. His father had been well-off and had owned his considerable home long before home-owning became the norm in the UK. No one had spied on anyone, as far as he knew, and there had certainly not been any ominous knocks on the front door in the early hours of the morning. He’d lived in a Britain that had been an essentially good place, and he was grateful. With luck, the country would survive the recent upswing in mindless nationalism, but then he probably wouldn’t be around to see that much of it.

  He pulled his coat closely round his body and shivered. It wasn’t yet 6 a.m. and the grey streets of Berlin had yet to warm up. He told himself he hadn’t been able to sleep, but it wasn’t true. He didn’t want Lee or Mumtaz to know where he was. He was paying them, yes, but he felt they were kind people as well. Both of them wanted to help and because they had their own troubles too – he’d heard them arguing and then Mumtaz crying in the night – he was especially grateful. Now, at sixty, he realised what huge amounts of time people wasted denying themselves what they really wanted and needed. He’d seen the way they looked at each other, and how, sometimes, they didn’t. Was it religion that kept them apart? If it was, he’d tell them what he thought about that. Religion was why he was standing here now, torturing himself by looking at a house that made his blood freeze. A proper Jew. What was that even, anyway? What did being one matter?

  He began to feel tears sting his eyes and it made him feel stupid, old and alone. This house was just a house. Bricks and mortar with a dash of stucco and wood. What did it have to do with him?

  But as Irving looked at it, he saw that the front door had opened. Just a crack.

  Lee watched him go in. He hadn’t slept and so, when Irving left the hotel, he was already out in the street lurking by the ashtray. He’d heard him tell the taxi driver where he wanted to go and had jumped in a cab himself. Although the Stasi no longer had any power, he’d not felt that his client was entirely safe. But now Irving was inside and so Lee would just have to wait. Fortunately, if Herr Beltz was anything like the operatives he’d read about at the Stasi Museum, he’d know he was there. Also, in terms of harming Irving, that was unlikely. Why call attention to himself by having an ‘incident’ with a foreigner? It didn’t make sense.

  But then he had been in the house when they’d called the previous day and so it was likely he had something to hide. That or he was afraid. That was possible. How did one live in a democratic nation like Germany when one had worked for a previous, repressive regime? Where had old Stasi men and women gone? Unlike Russia, where the former KGB had simply morphed into instruments of repression on behalf of Putin, ex-Stasi operatives were, as far as he could tell, looked upon with distaste if not outright hostility. Christ, you could even get access to the files they’d once held on you. The new Germany aspired to transparency.

  He looked at the house and saw the two men framed in a window on the first floor. Sara Metzler had told them that few East Germans spoke English even now and so he wondered how they were communicating.

  ‘Your friend outside,’ Herr Beltz said, ‘would you like him to join us?’

  ‘What friend?’

  Irving looked out of the window into the street, but saw no one.

  ‘The tall, dark man who followed you here,’ Gunther Beltz said. ‘I will admit he is well hidden, but I can see him. Behind the tree.’

  He looked again and then he saw something. A movement, the edge of what could be a coat. Had Lee Arnold followed him? Irving said nothing. In one way he hoped that Lee had tailed him but, in another way, would that make a difference to what was going to happen with this very ordinary, if slightly unnerving, man?

  ‘I was trained by an agency that taught people to be very aware of their surroundings,’ he continued. ‘But then I imagine Frau Metzler has told you that.’

  Irving realised that this man would know Sara’s name, after all she had written it next to her phone number and posted it through his door. But he seemed to be suggesting that she knew he had been in the Stasi. How did he know that?

  ‘So, you are here to see this house,’ Beltz said. ‘You have a family connection?’

  ‘My mother, yes,’ he said. ‘She was German. She met my father, who was a British soldier, in this house in 1945. Or rather, that was what she always said. I’ve since discovered she wasn’t, or rather couldn’t, have been who she said she was.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  He couldn’t go into all that with this stranger. The more time he spent in his company the more uncomfortable Gunther Beltz made him feel. Or was that just his imagination? Number 67 Grabbeallee was a dark, old-fashioned house; it was cold and Herr Beltz had not so much as offered Irving a seat.

  ‘You think you are related to the family Austerlitz?’ Beltz said. ‘If you are …’

  ‘I’m not. I thought I was, but I’ve discovered that I’m not,’ Irving said. And
then, unable to stand any longer, he plonked himself down into a large armchair and sat. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not well …’

  Beltz ignored him.

  ‘If you are,’ he said, ‘as I was saying, then you would be related to one of the minor heroes of the DDR.’

  Irving didn’t care. ‘My mother called herself Rachel Austerlitz,’ he said. ‘I now know she was no such thing. Herr Beltz, I don’t care that you were in the Stasi; it’s not my business what you may have done in your past. But I am dying and I need to find out who my mother was. For all my life I thought she was Rachel Austerlitz. But she wasn’t. I saw her grave when I got here. My mother was a Gentile and if you know of any way such a person could have come from this house, then I ask that you take mercy upon me and tell me.’

  Mumtaz picked up her phone and, when she saw who was calling, she answered immediately.

  ‘Shazia!’

  ‘When do you get back from Berlin?’ the girl said.

  She sounded shaky. And, although Mumtaz was overjoyed to hear from her, she wondered what was wrong. ‘Shazia …’

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said. ‘I need to see you before I go to uni.’

  ‘Well, yes. Yes, that’s what I’ve always wanted. I—’

  ‘Don’t think everything’s all forgiven because it isn’t, but we have to get back to normal and … and I do love you.’

  Mumtaz leant back in her chair. The breakfast on the table in front of her untouched and entirely forgotten. She said, ‘And I love you too. All I’ve ever done has been—’