they worried he will use the broken glass of the light bulb to cut himself or anybody else.
They just aren’t worried. Well, if they aren’t why should he be?
Reassured, Karl lies back down again. These jailors, whoever they are, are certainly unlike any others he has encountered on either side of the curtain, but it could be a mistake to misinterpret their kindness as weakness. In all likelihood the contrary is closer to the truth.
The silence, though, is something else. The silence, the total absence of sound, is something he will have to get used to. Where on earth is it ever this quiet, quiet enough to listen to his own breathing, quiet enough to make him aware of his own beating heart?
Exhausted now by all the brain activity, Karl closes his eyes and dozes off again.
He wakes startled only minutes later. He sits up and looks around, more lucid than before, alert, vaguely remembering his earlier thoughts about being safely imprisoned and cocooned in silence. His toes find the ground and he struggles to his feet, slowly approaching the wall to listen. Nothing. No sounds at all.
His memory starts to come back and he pictures his jailor, that ridiculous individual who claims not to belong to the Stasi. The deductions begin. He must be still in the West, in the capitalist part of Germany, locked in a room in a private house. This conclusion is based on the fact that even the larger holding cells he has slept in since crossing over to this side of the border, in the villages where local policemen scooped him up from outside some Kneipe, drunk into oblivion, have always been smaller and colder than this, and none of the Stasi lock ups he has been in resemble this place even remotely.
What does that amount to? He can’t quite work out whether he is here against his will or voluntarily. Suppose the man didn’t lie – Karl quietly recalls the scene that started all this. He remembers being released from yet another local caboose, walking the walk of shame towards the nearest bus shelter like he had done at least a dozen times before, already thinking about how to raise a bit of cash for his next bender. Was there anything else he could sell? Wasn’t the monthly money order due soon?
Then a green car with a rental sticker, an Audi or a Ford, stopped next to him. The driver opened the door on the passenger side and beckoned him to climb in.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t bite. I’ll drive you home, to your apartment. We talk a little, no strings,’ he said.
Karl hesitated. The man had said nothing that concerned him. He wasn’t worried about being bitten, but there was nothing to talk about, either. On the other hand, it was cold, he was freezing in his damp, pale denim jacket, and the wait for the next bus could be half an hour or more.
‘Look,’ said the man. ‘I’m not queer and I’m not trying to get you to do a…job, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Karl was still hesitant. He said, ‘Are you Stasi?’
The man laughed, relieved. That thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. He shook his head and the seat squeaked under him.
‘No, I’m not Stasi, nor am I with the BND. In fact and for the record, I’m not with a secret service of any persuasion. FBI, KGB — all of the above I’m not.’
He laughed some more and shook his head, a little too energetically. The seat made the high-pitched noise again.
Until then Karl had barely glimpsed him, but now something caught his eye. The man’s hair moved. That big curly thing on his head was a rug. The beard was probably false too, and the nose and those big sunglasses on this grim winter’s day. Whoever he was, he did not want to be recognised by Karl. Hence he wasn’t planning on killing him.
Reassured, Karl climbed into the car while the man fixed his wig.
The voice sounded familiar, though, didn’t it? Well, it should have. Then again it could have been disguised like the rest of him. They had technology for almost anything, those people from the West. Karl now saw that the man had a big belly that almost touched the steering wheel and that his hands were gloved.
When they drove off, the man glanced in his rear-view mirror once, and again a little later and a third time after a minute or so.
‘It’s probably safe to assume that those friends of yours, the ones you mentioned earlier – State Security of the German Democratic Republic – are behind us. Don’t turn around. Here, use this,’ he said.
The man adjusted the rear-view mirror so that Karl could look without being seen. There was no doubt. A conspicuous car followed at a certain distance, two men in grey overcoats inside. Müller and Schmidt, maybe? Was it possible the Stasi had caught up with Karl? The Volvo was too far away to recognise the faces, but he instinctively felt that the man next to him was more trustworthy than the two men that followed them.
‘We’ll worry about them later. For now, have a look at this,’ the man said, and then pulled the mirror back into position and leaned over to open the glove compartment. ‘In there,’ he said, gesturing with his gloved hand.
At last Karl did look, stretched out his arm and slid his hand into the opening. At first all he felt were maps and a piece of cloth, a window wiper.
‘It’s a small box, a pill case,’ the man said.
Karl rummaged some more and then he pulled it out. What was this, a joke? Was he proposing? The case looked like it contained jewellery of some sort, possibly a wedding ring.
‘Open it.’
Karl did as he was told while the man steered the car towards the centre of the town. Inside the case there was a small, oval shaped white pill.
Karl didn’t ask. He knew in time the man would volunteer all the pertinent information. Only that, no more. The man seemed sure of what he wanted and couldn’t be coaxed into saying any more than he planned – that much was apparent.
Well, neither could Karl.
Both men waited for the other to break the silence. Karl won in this instance.
‘Okay, here’s the deal. I drop you at your flat and drive around the block to lose those clowns behind us. I’m back in fifteen minutes, plenty of time for you to pick up your stuff –well, your toothbrush. You don’t own much else. I stop the car and you get in and swallow the pill. No questions, no explanations. Just this: life as you know it will be over. Something better awaits you on the other side. If you do as you’re told you’ll end up comfortably rich. And that’s a promise.’
Karl studied the man while he spoke in order to grasp the whole meaning of his words, but his voice was motionless and his face might as well have been a mask – what he saw was less than met the eye.
Karl wanted to ask what would happen if he didn’t come back and get into the car, didn’t choose to swallow the pill, but the answer was all too obvious. He would continue slipping like before. He’d resume the unstoppable decline that had started when he was set free into the Golden West, object of a ransom deal between the two Germanys, a political prisoner of the East sold to the West for a handful of deutsche marks, the hard currency the communists craved so badly due to their failing economy.
It was true, Karl didn’t like it in the West, but he knew he could never go back east. If he didn’t take his chances with the strange man he would continue his downward spiral until he really hit rock bottom. Eventually he would probably let himself be recruited by the two guys in the car behind to spy for the Workers’ and Farmers’ State he used to call home.
Neither of them said a word until they reached the Mozartstrasse where Karl rented a small apartment. He was behind on the rent and would have to act fast if he wanted to avoid a confrontation with the landlord, if he hadn’t changed the locks already. It didn’t matter. There was nothing in the flat Karl wanted. Not a thing.
He made his decision.
‘I don’t need fifteen minutes. See if you can shake them in less,’ Karl said and got out of the car.
As he approached the dark building