than we were. So they shot her instead. Right there and then. I don’t know what they did with the body — nothing much, I imagine. There were thousands of dead bodies lying around Berlin. And that was the end of Silke Krause, proud founding member of the famous Saturday Club.’
Otto wanted to say something but could think of nothing remotely adequate. More tobacco was the only comfort he could offer.
‘If only she could have waited,’ Dagmar went on. ‘It only lasted another day or two, although it was a hard two days for me with twice as many soldiers coming at me as before. But after that they just went away. Simply walked out and never came back. Moscow had finally decided that enough was enough and had sent in the military police to restore discipline. Believe it or not, the soldiers left me some rations and a bottle of vodka. My pay, I suppose. What they thought a German girl was worth for more than a fortnight of pack rape. That and gonorrhoea. Thank God for penicillin, say I. I understood, of course. They were peasants, and after what the Nazis had done in the east I couldn’t really blame them for wanting to rape a few German girls.’
‘And you were left alone?’ Otto said.
‘Yes, all alone. And do you know what I asked myself?’
‘No.’
‘I sat there and I asked myself what Pauly would have done.’
Otto laughed. Dagmar laughed too, and their laughter sounded sadder to them than tears.
‘Pauly would have made a plan,’ Otto said.
‘Exactly,’ Dagmar replied. ‘I needed a plan. The Russians were all over Berlin. This was way before the Allies arrived. Germany hadn’t even surrendered. I was hungry and all alone. And I was scared too.’
‘Of the soldiers?’
‘Not so much, that period seemed to have passed. I was scared of what I’d done. Betraying Silke and her comrades. I couldn’t know for sure who’d survived and who hadn’t. Who might have seen me at that police station. And there was the report the Gestapo had written. Had it been destroyed? I hoped so but I didn’t know. I was destitute and without protection. The Russians didn’t like Jews and they didn’t like millionaires’ daughters either. I was alone and dazed from hunger and weeks of rape. I needed food and I needed to find a way to make my home secure. Dagmar Fischer couldn’t get those things from the Soviets, but it occurred to me that Silke Stengel probably could. What was more, Silke Stengel had not been written up by the Gestapo as a traitor. On the contrary, Silke was a hero of the
‘Wow, Dags,’ Otto said, almost in awe. ‘You really are something.’
‘I’m still alive, aren’t I?’ Dagmar replied. ‘I searched the apartment and found all the stuff that poor old Silke had tried to show to the soldiers. It was all there, scattered about, her whole Red Orchestra identity. Even her pre-war secret party card. Everything I needed to be a Communist heroine. It was a risk, I knew, but not so great a one. I was pretty certain Silke’s stepfather would be dead, and if her mother was alive she’d have gone back to the countryside, where she came from. Silke had always told me that the Orchestra acted in cells. Only her immediate comrades would have known what she looked like, and they’d all been killed by that lucky Allied bomb. So I made myself look as pretty as I could and I took my evidence to the Red Army authorities. I demanded that I be clothed, fed and given status befitting my lifetime’s commitment to the German Communist Party. Pauly’s rules, you see, walk with confidence. I guessed that they’d be looking for German Reds to help them run things, and I was right. They sent me straight to a German KPD man, who’d just arrived from Moscow as part of the team charged with re-establishing the party and making sure it got its people into the places that counted before the West could do anything about it. Astonishingly, this man knew of Silke. He’d been her Moscow control right back to the days when she’d been a young girl posting off
Otto closed his eyes. Remembering the happy golden-haired girl who’d lain beside him near the stream on the night of their great bicycle adventure. She’d tried to tell him about the Red Help then. That had been twenty- one years ago.
Good old Silke.
Poor old Silke.
‘Of course, he’d never seen her,’ Dagmar went on, ‘although being a man he’d fantasized that she would be a peach, and I could see how pleased he was when that’s exactly what she turned out to be. I became his lover that night and he saw to it that I was given a new party card and a rank that reflected my long and heroic service.’
Otto stared up at the darkening clouds.
It was beginning to get late. They’d finished the whisky and his head was starting to ache. There had been so much to take in. And so many cigarettes. But of course the story wasn’t over or he would not have been lured to Berlin.
‘And you’ve been Silke all these years?’ he said. ‘It’s… it’s astonishing.’
‘Not really. Can you even begin to imagine how many lives got reinvented or stolen in Year Zero? A whole continent had something to hide. I wasn’t alone in keeping secrets, Ottsy. When the Allies arrived and the big four divided up Berlin, I could see I was better off where I was. My apartment, which, of course, as Silke Stengel I legally owned, was just inside the Russian zone and it was all I had. There was nothing for me in the West. Nobody was talking about compensating Jews then. There was nothing to compensate them with. This was the end, not the beginning. Germany was completely destroyed and utterly destitute. In the West I’d have been a homeless, penniless refugee alongside a million others, and of course there was still that Gestapo report to worry about. If it ever came to light I’d be put on trial for sure. So I bided my time in the East, which was when I was approached to join the newly formed, Soviet-run German police. I was the perfect candidate, of course. Silke Stengel, nee Krause, Red spy since 1935. So I grabbed it. And for the first time in my adult life, I was in control. Overnight I had security, status and power. Imagine how that felt, Otto, to a Jew in Berlin in 1945. A Jew who’d been through what I’d been through.’
‘But, Dags,’ Otto found himself protesting, almost as if they were back in her pink bedroom arguing about their futures together instead of picking over their past, ‘a police woman? It’s just so unlike you. I mean, you must have absolutely hated it.’
‘Hated it, Otto?’ Dagmar replied, her eyes suddenly gleaming. ‘I
‘And that was it?’ Otto asked, startled by the sudden venom. ‘That’s where you’ve been ever since? Making life miserable for the people of Berlin?’
‘Exactly,’ Dagmar replied. ‘I couldn’t have turned back even if I’d wanted to. By the time the West began to prosper I was in too deep and I knew too much. I’d made my bed, Otto. They don’t let you leave the Stasi. If you try, they kill you.’
‘So you’re trapped.’
‘I suppose so. But don’t feel sorry for me, Otto. My life is good — better than yours in Britain, I think. As a Stasi girl I have the best food and the best wine. Caviar if I want it. We party people keep all the luxuries for ourselves, you know. I still live in Pauly’s flat with my fashion magazines and any books I want and Western music too, all the stuff we deny to everybody else we keep for ourselves. I wonder what dear Silke would have made of that? Of the shitty corrupt little world her beloved Stalin made? And best of all, I still get to persecute the good citizens of East Berlin. The ones who let Hitler steal my life. The ones who looked away. The ones who stood in a circle around me and my parents and shouted that we should be made to lick the street.’
‘Dagmar, you can’t hate for ever.’
‘Can’t I? Try and stop me. I will hate for every second I’m on this earth. And when I’m gone and my body turns to dust, then each molecule of what was once me will still be hating.’
It was getting dark now. Young couples had replaced the children on the path through the gardens.
The story was almost over.
Otto had all of his answers now but one.
‘And me, Dagmar, when did I re-enter the picture?’
