sorry to be the one to disillusion you.”
“There’s something wrong with this country.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“The Judo Club was bad enough. But to hear it’s in the church …”
Annagret had an older sister, Tanja, who’d excelled at judo as an Oberschule student. Both sisters were university-tracked, by virtue of their test scores and their class credentials, but Tanja was boy crazy and overdid the sports thing and ended up working as a secretary after her Abitur, spending all her free time either dancing at clubs or training and coaching at the sports center. Annagret was seven years younger and not as athletic as her sister, but they were a judo family and she joined the local club when she was twelve.
A regular at the sports center was a handsome older guy, Horst, who owned a large motorcycle. He was maybe thirty and was apparently married only to his bike. He came to the center mostly to maintain his impressive buffness—Annagret initially thought there was something conceited about the way he smiled at her—but he also played handball and liked to watch the advanced judo students sparring, and by and by Tanja managed to score a date with him and his bike. This led to a second date and then a third, at which point a misfortune occurred: Horst met their mother. After that, instead of taking Tanja away on his bike, he wanted to see her at home, in their tiny shitty flat, with Annagret and the mother.
Inwardly, the mother was a hard and disappointed person, the widow of a truck mechanic who’d died wretchedly of a brain tumor, but outwardly she was thirty-eight and pretty—not only prettier than Tanja but also closer in age to Horst. Ever since Tanja had failed her by not pursuing her education, the two of them had quarreled about everything imaginable, which now included Horst, who the mother thought was too old for Tanja. When it became evident that Horst preferred her to Tanja, she didn’t see how it was her fault. Annagret was luckily not at home on the fateful afternoon when Tanja stood up and said she needed air and asked Horst to take her out on his bike. Horst said there was a painful matter that the three of them needed to discuss. There were better ways for him to have handled the situation, but probably no good way. Tanja slammed the door behind her and didn’t return for three days. As soon as she could, she relocated to Leipzig.
After Horst and Annagret’s mother were married, the three of them moved to a notably roomy flat where Annagret had a bedroom of her own. She felt bad for Tanja and disapproving of her mother, but her stepfather fascinated her. His job, as a labor-collective leader at the city’s largest power plant, was good but not quite so good as to explain the way he had of making things happen: the powerful bike, the roomy flat, the oranges and Brazil nuts and Michael Jackson records he sometimes brought home. From her description of him, Andreas had the impression that he was one of those people whose self-love was untempered by shame and thus fully contagious. Certainly Annagret liked to be around him. He gave her rides on his motorcycle to and from the sports center. He taught her how to ride it by herself, in a parking lot. She tried to teach him some judo in return, but his upper body was so disproportionately developed that he was bad at falling. In the evening, after her mother had left for her night shift, she explained the extra-credit work she was doing in the hope of attending an Erweiterte Oberschule; she was impressed by his quick comprehension and told him he should have gone to an EOS himself. Before long, she considered him one of her best friends. As a bonus, this pleased her mother, who hated her nursing job and seemed increasingly worn out by it and was grateful that her husband and daughter got along well. Tanja may have been lost, but Annagret was the good girl, her mother’s hope for the future of her family.
And then one night, in the notably roomy flat, Horst came tapping on her bedroom door before she’d turned her light out. “Are you decent?” he said playfully.
“I’m in my pajamas,” she said.
He came in and pulled up a chair by her bed. He had a very large head—Annagret couldn’t explain it to Andreas, but the largeness of Horst’s head seemed to her the reason that everything always worked out to his advantage. Oh, he has such a splendid head, let’s just give him what he wants. Something like that. On this particular night, his large head was flushed from drinking.
“I’m sorry if I smell like beer,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be able to smell it if I could have one myself.”
“You sound like you know quite a bit about beer drinking.”
“Oh, it’s just what they say.”
“You could have a beer if you stopped training, but you won’t stop training, so you can’t have a beer.”
She liked the joking way they had together. “But you train, and you drink beer.”
“I only drank so much tonight because I have something serious to say to you.”
She looked at his large head and saw that something, indeed, was different in his face tonight. A kind of ill-controlled anguish in his eyes. Also, his hands were shaking.
“What is it?” she said, worried.
“Can you keep a secret?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you have to, because you’re the only person I can tell, and if you don’t keep the secret we’re all in trouble.”
She thought about this. “Why do you have to tell me?”
“Because it concerns you. It’s about your mother. Will you keep a secret?”
“I can try.”
Horst took a large breath that came out again beer-smelling. “Your mother is a drug addict,” he said. “I married a drug addict. She steals narcotics from the hospital and uses them when she’s there and also when she’s home. Did you know that?”
“No,” Annagret said. But she was inclined to believe it. More and more often lately, there was something dulled about her mother.
“She’s very expert at pilfering,” Horst said. “No one at the hospital suspects.”
“We need to talk to her about it and tell her to stop.”
“Addicts don’t stop without treatment. If she asks for treatment, the authorities will know she was stealing.”
“But they’ll be happy that she’s honest and trying to get better.”
“Well, unfortunately, there’s another matter. An even bigger secret. Not even your mother knows this secret. Can I tell it to you?”
He was one of her best friends, and so, after a hesitation, she said yes.
“I took an oath that I would never tell anyone,” Horst said. “I’m breaking that oath by telling you. For some years now, I’ve worked informally for the Ministry for State Security. I’m a well-trusted unofficial collaborator. There’s an officer I meet with from time to time. I pass along information about my workers and especially about my superiors. This is necessary because the power plant is vital to our national security. I’m very fortunate to have a good relationship with the ministry. You and your mother are very fortunate that I do. But do you understand what this means?”
“No.”
“We owe our privileges to the ministry. How do you think my officer will feel if he learns that my wife is a thief and a drug addict? He’ll think I’m not trustworthy. We could lose this flat, and I could lose my position.”
“But you could just tell the officer the truth about Mother. It’s not your fault.”
“If I tell him, your mother will lose her job. She’ll probably go to prison. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not.”
“So we have to keep everything secret.”
“But now I wish I didn’t know! Why did I have to know?”