Cold War

The tavern was already crowded. Customers were standing around the bar and sitting squashed together on small, straight-backed wooden chairs that stood haphazardly around the black-painted tables. The smell of beer, broth, and heavy tobacco smoke dominated the air. The soup smell was not appetising, but then no food in Berlin public houses was tasty these days. The men were smoking roll-your-own cigarettes with terrible quality tobacco. Christian and Sperl found a table in a corner and sat with their backs to the wall, the kneipe spread out before them.

Christian tried to hear what the other customers were talking about. Prices seemed to be the main topic of conversation. In low murmurs, men exchanged black market prices and muttered about an exchange rate of 8 or 9 east-marks to one D-Mark. Someone claimed the D-mark was replacing cigarettes as the preferred method of payment. Someone else complained, “If they aren’t sending anything to the Western Sectors any more, why isn’t there more for us?”

The speaker was hushed up by his companions, who nervously looked over their shoulders. When one of them met Christian’s eyes, he whispered something in his friend’s ear, and abruptly they downed their beers, clunked the glasses on the table, and left.

At last Christian caught sight of Voigt in the door, but as he started to squeeze his way past the men at the bar, he was stopped by a young man with a hawkish face. “You’ll be at the rally, won’t you, comrade?”

“Of course, comrade!” Voigt answered, fingering his hat more submissively than he had ever saluted an officer.

“I’ll be watching for you!” the man replied in a menacing tone. Then with an artificial smile, he clapped Voigt on the back and turned to go. Voigt continued to where Sperl and Christian were sitting and sat with his back to the rest of the room. He opened the conversation with a nervous, “Didn’t you want anything to eat or drink?”

“We wouldn’t mind a beer,” Sperl answered, slapping a couple of east marks on the table to pay for all three of them. Voigt took the money and went over to the bar. Christian eyed Sperl questioningly. “Men talk easier over alcohol,” Sperl explained.

Voigt returned with three murky-brown, watery beers with little foam. He set them on the table and sat down again. Looking earnestly at Christian he professed, “I thought you were dead, Herr Major.”

“Oh. You mean no one at the squadron heard about my survival?” Christian was surprised.

Voigt shook his head. “What happened?”

“Nothing miraculous. I was badly shot up by an American P-47 and took some shrapnel to the back of my head. The next thing I knew I was aboard a hospital ship in mid-Atlantic with two broken legs. The alarm was going off as we zig-zagged frantically to avoid being sunk by a U-boat.” He ended with a reproachful look at Sperl. That was the sanitised version, of course. In fact, after realizing he’d been badly shot up in the dogfight, he’d made the decision to crash-land at an American field. He’d consciously chosen imprisonment over fighting another day for Hitler and his thugs.

Sperl, meanwhile, was laughing. “So that’s why you developed such a strong dislike for our cute little boats. I note, however, the U-boat didn’t sink the hospital ship you were on.”

“No, I told the Americans to turn the damn sirens off because no officer of the Kriegsmarine would sink a ship with large red-crosses on it — only to learn that some U-Boat captain had done exactly that the week before. It was very embarrassing.”

Voigt was looking from one to the other confused.

“Herr Meyer has a past — as do we all,” Christian explained, adding, “But I came to talk to you about the future.”

“Future? What’s that?” Voigt snapped back with withering bitterness.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow — and the day after,” Christian answered.

Voigt leaned so close to Christian that he could not really be heard; his words seemed only to form in Christian’s head from lip reading. “Eating SED shit for breakfast, lunch and dinner so I can get the morphine my mother needs.”

“What happened to your mother?” Christian asked.

“She was caught under a beam when the ceiling collapsed at the armaments factory where she had been conscripted. It broke her back and hips. She’s crippled and in constant pain — unless I can get her morphine. Do you know what morphine costs?”

Christian shook his head slowly. “Not a clue.”

“Well,” Voigt answered in a low, even voice like molten lava, “enough morphine to keep my mother pain-free for a week, costs more than a man like me, working in a Peoples’ Own Factory producing gearboxes, can earn in a month. Which means my mother can have one week of relief and then lie in agony for the next three while I beg for my dinner — or I can earn a little extra by showing up at SED rallies, helping to trash voting booths, beating up students that say the wrong thing, making sure scientists and engineers are dragged from their beds at night to be shipped to the Worker’s Paradise or—” with a glance at Sperl he added “digging around in forgotten mass graves for baubles that appeal to our American friends.”

Both Christian and Sperl responded with silence. The pain, the bitterness and the helplessness burned like acid.