From the Watchtower Nathaniel Barron
From the Watchtower Nathaniel Barron
Editor-in-Chief
Leslie Jill Patterson Nonfiction Editor
Elena Passarello Poetry Editor
Camille Dungy Fiction Editor
Katie Cortese Managing Editors
Fiction Trifecta
2016
Joe Dornich Sarah Viren Chen Chen
Associate Editors: Chad Abushanab, Kathleen Blackburn, Margaret Emma Brandl, Rachel DeLeon, Nancy Dinan, Allison Donahue, Mag Gabbert, Jo Anna Gaona, Colleen Harrison, Micah Heatwole, Brian Larsen, Essence London, Beth McKinney, Scott Morris, Katrina Prow, MacKenzie Regier, Kate Simonian, Jessica Smith, Amber Tayama, Robby Taylor, Jeremy Tow, and Mary White. Copyright © 2017 Iron Horse Literary Review. All rights reserved. Iron Horse Literary Review is a national journal of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. It is published six times a year at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, through the support of the TTU President’s Office, Provost’s Office, Graduate College, College of Arts & Sciences, and English Department. Photographs: shutterstock.com.
From the Watchtower
3 MARCH 2009 Of all the revelations contained in these files, it is the date on this, the oldest file, that first gave me pause. I had to look twice to be sure I wasn’t mistaken, but there it is at the top left of the page, in a strange bureaucratic font that died along with the East German Democratic Republic: 9 NOVEMBER 1986, FIRST CONTACT WITH THE OBJECT. Three years, to the day, before the Berlin Wall fell. I tell myself it’s a coincidence—it has to be a coincidence, of course, because no one knew then when the Wall would fall. We thought we would be raising our children behind that wall, would be deep in the hard Prussian soil before those slabs of concrete came down. Few of us dared to think that the end was so near. A coincidence, yes. But then again, when it comes to Hagen Finsterbusch, I’ve learned not to be surprised by anything. Even back then, when we were but two young Border Guards, fresh from the Academy, I had the sense that there was some large part of Hagen that I was missing. As if there was a whole other world hidden from view. 9 November 1986. It’s a day I remember very clearly, actually, though not because of what happened to Hagen. I wouldn’t find out about that until much later. I remember it because we were working a double shift that day, and because it was very cold, far too cold for that early in November. We—Hagen and I—showed up at the barracks expecting to put on our winter uniforms, only to be told that the winter uniforms were still in storage down in Leipzig and would not—could not—be retrieved for another week. It’s too early for winter, our commanding officers told us. The Winter Uniform Directive cannot take effect before November 15. As a compromise, we were allowed to wear two shirts. Hagen and I stood up on that watchtower all morning, stomping our boots on the steel grating to keep warm, alternating which hand had to hold the trigger and which hand got to hide out in a warm, dark pocket. We flipped up the collars on both of our shirts. Even the shepherds tied up down in the death
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strip were huddled together in a mass of brown and gray fur. We did our best not to shiver visibly, to be the stone-faced defenders of the Socialist Homeland our commanders had assured us we were. Hagen was quiet all that morning, just staring out to the west, not moving. The sky was nearly the same color as the Wall; together, they formed a continuous slab of concrete, stretching from the zenith all the way down to the hardpacked dirt running between the Wall to the west and the fences and fortifications to the east. Even from our vantage point up on the watchtower, the neon lights of West Berlin could just barely be seen through the gray. The wind whipped us hard, shaking the watchtower, causing the razor wire atop the fences to ripple like the stunted waves that tear across the North Sea on cold autumn days like these. Technically, it was our job to stare, unblinking, into the west, but it was unlike Hagen to just silently do his duty. Most days, we played games to help pass the time—in secret, of course. Some days, we chose a Western car model— Mercedes S Class, say, something sleek and new—and kept silent count during our watch. The one who counted the fewest bought beers when the shift was over. And, of course, we kept constant watch for any Western girls who might have neglected to draw their curtains as they were changing. We had a whole system of silent cues worked out. Two scrapes of a boot heel meant capitalist tits, ahoy, and then there would be a series of coughs to indicate the cardinal direction. A deep sigh meant pass the binoculars. The fact that we received regular training sessions on how to resist such Western provocation made it all the more enjoyable. I can’t remember who first started the games, but it was Hagen who always initiated them at the beginning of a shift, who thought up minor tweaks to keep them interesting. Soon it had to be an S Class and the driver had to be an attractive woman between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. He had a short attention span, or maybe it’s more accurate to say he got bored with things very
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From the Watchtower
quickly. When he got onto something, he immediately set about mastering it, figuring out every angle, every possible way of doing it better and more efficiently, before he set it aside and moved on to the next thing. “It’s done,” he would say suddenly, as we were eating lunch in the canteen or lying in our bunks, passing time. “Over. Played out. We need something new.” Though I did not share his enthusiasm for reinvention, it was a feeling I understood: in the GDR, the very notion of newness carried with it the hint of transgression. We kept the games secret, of course—as soon as our boot heels touched dirt and we were once again among our commanders, we resumed our roles as model soldiers. (How ironic that it was up there, in the watchtower, that we felt the most free.) We had careers to consider, though Hagen much more so than I. In my family, the fact that little Bernhard Hebermeyer had made it into the Border Guards at all was a triumph never to be forgotten since our family had few other triumphs of which to speak. Before the War, my grandfather had worked on an assembly line in Dresden, had been a rather apathetic communist, the sort who thought Stalin was a monster but supported the Party because he thought it might boost his wages. Then he was conscripted to fight for the Nazis, which he did apathetically, only to die—apathetically—somewhere in Poland. We don’t know how or where. After the War, my father got a job on that same assembly line, where he worked for thirty-six years. His job was to grind burrs off of little cutting tools which, in turn, were used to grind the burrs off larger cutting tools. Hagen, on the other hand, was royalty, or as close to it as we had in the GDR. His grandfather was Karl H. Finsterbusch, famed martyr to the Revolution. He’d been a communist agitator in the thirties, got shot in the head during some street battle with the fascists in 1933. Hagen’s father, Hermann, got conscripted into the Wehrmacht, just like my grandfather, but he famously turned on his own regiment as the Russians were marching on Berlin. (There was even a movie made about it—we watched it several times in school.) When the GDR
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was founded, Karl received the famed Fighter Against Fascism medal, of which only nineteen were ever given, and Hermann collected just about every accolade short of this. On the rare occasions Hagen invited friends to his house, he sheepishly showed us the mantle where his family kept all the medals, lined up in glass cases. There was a section for Hagen’s medals, which was still mostly empty. But instead of simply spreading the other medals out, the family left that space empty, as if to say, We’re waiting. When our first shift ended that day, Hagen didn’t come to the canteen with the rest of the soldiers. Usually when we worked double shifts, we killed those few hours drinking coffee-mix1 and telling crude (yet class-conscious) jokes, but Hagen had a standing appointment on Sundays to meet his childhood friend, Tobias, in a little run-down bar in one of those run-down neighborhoods near the Wall. How he secured leave each and every week I do not know—the benefits of a famous name, perhaps—but he never missed a day. It was something they’d been doing since before I met either of them, and Hagen took it very seriously. On that particular day, I saw Hagen leave the barracks through the windows of the canteen. As always, he was dressed in his civilian clothes: expensive, well-tailored items that were fashionable yet never Western. But on that day, there was something unusual about his manner, a certain seriousness to the way he climbed aboard the transport. Or perhaps I am simply imagining this retrospectively; at the time, I was concerned only with the warm cup in my hands and the long nap that lay before me. Once Hagen’s Fifty-one percent coffee, forty-nine percent mysterious “mix,” as decreed by the Party leadership after the coffee crisis of 1976. Even in 1986, long after the crisis had ended (thanks be to Vietnam), we still drank it in the barracks—as an example to the rest of the country, I suppose. It contained powdered peas, which never failed to clog the percolators in the canteen. The only upside was that it also contained a significant amount of malted barley, so if you closed your eyes (and the coffee-mix was tepid enough), you could almost imagine you were drinking a beer. 1
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From the Watchtower
transport disappeared through the gates of the compound, I headed straight for my bunk. I would not awaken until it was nearly time for our next shift. The pub where Hagen and Tobias met was called simply Janusz, after the man who owned the place. It had low ceilings and smoke-stained walls, and not a single chair matched another. Janusz was a Pole, so the bar was decorated with old Polish folk art, which he had probably raided from his grandmother’s house. The curtains on the front windows, which were nearly always drawn, were adorned with handsewn red and green roosters. A collection of decoratively painted eggs was proudly displayed on a shelf behind the bar, but they were covered in such a thick layer of dust that it was impossible to see what was painted on them. Tobias always demanded they meet here because it was quite possibly the most unpopular bar in East Berlin and because he thought this unpopularity implied obscurity. If no one of interest ever went there, he figured, there would be no reason for the secret police—the Stasi—to have the place bugged. And for someone like Tobias, a punk rock musician in a country where music was policed as closely as the borders, few commodities were more precious than obscurity. As it turns out, though, Janusz wasn’t just bugged; there was a whole infestation. Microphones, motion-triggered cameras, the full treatment. I like to think Tobias would have had a good laugh about it if he knew. He always had a ravenous appetite for irony. I should probably tell you that none of what follows was seen with my own eyes. I’ve gleaned it from videos and photographs and tapescripts, from all the records that the Stasi kept of that day. You’ve surely seen news reports and videos of those days after the Wall fell, of shredded paper piled to the ceiling like Siberian snow drifts, of the massive steel fleischwolfs grinding people’s histories into a pulp like watery sausage. And you’ve probably seen pictures of the shelves and shelves and shelves of files they left behind, a hundred and eleven kilometers of them to be precise. And that’s not counting the thousands
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and thousands of bags of shredded paper that were recovered, so many scraps that the German government won’t finish piecing them back together for another three hundred years. The surveillance of that bar—as it was in so much of the GDR—was complete. Video, audio, ambient room temperature—nothing was left over to forgetting. I might as well have been there. Let me set the scene for you, in the same way I first saw it in that grainy, black-and-white film: Tobias sitting in the corner booth, his long legs splayed out in front of him, reading a music magazine in English. Reaching up periodically to brush his blond hair out of his eyes. Wearing the T-shirt of an East German rock group that had been banned the year before. And then Hagen, standing a few paces from Tobias, shivering from the cold in a too-thin but impeccably cut denim jacket. He runs a hand over his short-cropped hair as though he just stepped out of the rain. The skin under his eyes, slightly baggy even on the best of days, today looks especially so. But he is smiling. If there was a weight to his movements before, it is gone now. He raises his hand in greeting, and Tobias returns the wave. The audio is missing, likely recorded on a separate reel that was destroyed long ago, but the dialogue has been typed up into a tapescript, so it’s easy to follow along, almost like watching a silent film. In a way, this is better because it lets me imagine their voices—Tobias’s slow, easy way of speaking, each sentence like he is telling you a well-practiced joke; Hagen’s sentences short and clipped, like he can’t wait to get on to the next one. Sometimes, I watch the video and read the dialogue out loud, almost like I’m auditioning for a part. “The illustrious Comrade Finsterbusch,” Tobias says with a smile, “to what do I owe this pleasure? Wait, does this mean I’m under arrest? If it’s because of that Western girl at the concert last week, she told me she was eighteen. And a staunch communist.” Hagen shakes his head with mock gravity. “You know the punishment for bad jokes in this country.” He passes Tobias an imaginary pistol; Tobias puts it
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From the Watchtower
to his temple and pretends to blow his brains out. It’s a running gag they have together, like a two-man stage show. Next week, it will be Hagen’s turn. Good jokes get a slow clap; bad jokes get the death penalty. Tobias drops his head to the table dramatically. Hagen pretends to mop up the blood with a beer coaster. “Comrade Christ,” Tobias says, “it’s already four o’clock. Should we move right onto schnapps?” Hagen nods, and Tobias flashes a signal in the air. Soon Janusz appears with two elegantly curved glasses and a repurposed wine jug full of a dark liquid. He’s a small man with a bald head, and he looks comically tiny next to Tobias, as though it’s some sort of trick with the lens. Janusz can scarcely fill the glasses before the two men empty them. “Lovely, Janusz,” says Hagen, wiping his mouth and grimacing. “What’s this batch?” “Beetroot,” says Janusz. “Mother’s recipe. Tastes like absolute shit. But the Ministry of Agriculture says we have an overabundance of beetroot this year. Everyone’s got to do his part, eh? Had an agent in here the other day, asking if I could feature beetroot more heavily in my menu. I said, lucky for you bastards I’m Polish.” Hagen laughs heartily, and his body sinks lower in the chair. The muscles in his face seem to reel in the slack. I cannot remember a time—either in the barracks or outside it—when I saw him so relaxed. “It’s the best thing to happen to me all day,” he says. “Another?” Janusz fills both glasses again, and again they are emptied. Hagen pulls a few coins from his pocket and slides them towards Janusz, but Janusz immediately slides them back. “On the house,” Janusz says. “You soldiers work hard for that money. Harder than I do, at least. Harder than this one does.” He gestures toward Tobias. Tobias sits up straight in his chair, feigning shock. As he does, the overhead light catches his face and illuminates his near-perfect features: the elegant cheekbones, the pale blue eyes, the strong chin that would be the highlight of
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From the Watchtower
any other face but which, on Tobias, seems almost like an afterthought. (Another of their running jokes, told only in the most exclusive company: Hagen: Look at those eyes. You’d have made a dreamy Nazi. Tobias: Nah. There’s such a thing as too Aryan, Finsterbusch. How can you be the master race when you can’t be in the sun between the hours of ten and two?) About the only imperfection on Tobias’s face is that his nose and his chin hook just ever so slightly to the right. It is hardly noticeable; in fact, it was never something I was aware of on those few occasions I met the man in person. It is only now, with the benefit of these immutable images of him, that I am able to see it. (If you fixate on it long enough, it starts to give the impression that he is perpetually about to turn and look over his shoulder.) Tobias reaches across the table and slides the coins back toward Janusz. “Well, I have no problem taking Finsterbusch’s money. Put this toward a round of beers?” Janusz frowns; Hagen pretends to busy himself with one of the buttons on his jacket. “To each according to his need, am I right, Comrade?” says Tobias. Janusz takes the money. He brings two full beers and then disappears behind the bar. “What news from the Western front?” asks Tobias. “It’s still there,” says Hagen. “What’s with the magazine?” he asks, pointing across the table. “Oh, this little thing? I thought you’d never ask. It’s an English music magazine. They say Bowie used to read it when he was in Berlin. Check out page 36.” Tobias slides the magazine across the table, tapping his finger on a paragraph. Hagen glances at it quickly but then slides it back. He takes a sip of beer to hide his embarrassment that he cannot read the English. “Impressive,” he says. “You didn’t even read it!”
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“Congratulations, you’re in a magazine,” says Hagen. Tobias pretends he hasn’t heard and begins reading from the magazine, in English. “The East Berlin punk band Police State of Mind—their secret name, known only to their most die-hard fans—dodges censorship and Stasi agents to make a splash on the Berlin music scene. With equal parts new-age metal and more traditional, Zeppelin-inspired rock sensibilities, the band is a cong— , conglom—” Tobias switches back to German. “The exact words aren’t important. Basically the article is about censorship, though, of course, the author’s a Westerner and he gets it all wrong. He says we ‘consult’ with the Ministry of Culture before each show, as though it’s some sort of collaborative meeting. Like we have any say in the matter.” Tobias sits up straight in his chair; I imagine him dropping his voice several notes here. “Next up on the agenda, how do we all feel about the song title ‘Pussy Kingdom’? Does that suggest a lack of class consciousness? Yes? How do we feel about ‘Socialist Pussy Republic’?” Tobias leans back again, runs a hand through his hair, locks his knuckles behind his head. “Anyway, point is we’re making a ‘splash.’” He repeats the English word again: “Splashhhhh. It just sounds so much more impressive in English.” “It’s exciting,” says Hagen. “Big things are happening,” says Tobias. “Big things,” Hagen repeats. “Oh, did I tell you? We’re doing a show over in West Berlin in a couple of weeks. In some abandoned meat-packing plant. I hear they still have all the meat hooks hanging and everything. I’m going to see if they can lower me down on one of them when I make my entrance, like . . . like some fucking rock god angel of death. It’s going to be unreal. You’ve got to come.” “You know I can’t apply for an exit visa,” says Hagen. “I’m up for promotion next month, and I’m going to apply for a flat again.”
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From the Watchtower
“Give it up. There aren’t any apartments to be had, even for a Finsterbusch. You just need to do what I do and resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to be living in your parents’ basement for the rest of your life. Maybe meet a nice girl, raise a family down there. The East German dream.” “I heard a few new blocks just opened up, and they’re making exceptions for officers.” “You heard that,” Tobias repeats, nodding. “Can’t imagine why the Housing Ministry would want to float that rumor.” “Still, I’ve got to try.” “Got to try,” Tobias repeats. “I guess that’s why you’re going to be a general someday and I’m going to be. . . .” Tobias pauses, finishes the rest of his beer. “Just promise me that when you’re a famous general with his own flat, you’ll still invite me over for parties.” “I promise.” “And that you’ll let me store my amps there.” “Sure.” “And that you’ll let me tell women it’s actually my flat. Just, you know, when I have a date or something.” Hagen laughs, and Janusz appears with two more beers. This time, Hagen is the one to slam his. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at a point slightly above Tobias’s head. Tobias suddenly reaches into his pocket and pulls something out. It glints in the light: a cassette tape. “Almost forgot. I brought this back for you the last time I was over there. Original UK version, not the West German one with the wrong B side. Super rare.” Hagen takes the tape and holds it up to the light, as though he’s trying to see through it. It’s a Smiths single: “How Soon Is Now?” “You didn’t have to do this,” says Hagen.
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“Sure, I did. Can’t have an aspiring young Border Guard being seen purchasing degenerate Western music. I figure the Stasi is watching me anyway, so what’s another page in the file?” “You can’t afford this.” “I didn’t buy it. Traded for it.” “With what? What do you have to trade?” “It’s a gift, Hagen. Comrade Christ. You’d do it for me if you were in the same position.” Another round of schnapps appears, and Tobias raises the tiny glass into the air. He places the other hand to his forehead, his thumb just touching his hairline, the fingers all pointed skyward. The Young Pioneers salute, the one they used to give each other as children. “Always on guard, Comrade?” Tobias recites. Hagen lifts his schnapps glass as though it is automatic, as though he was just given a command. He returns the salute. “When are we going to stop doing this? Don’t you think we’re getting a little old?” “When I die, you can stop. Until then, say it.” “You didn’t even finish the Young Pioneers. You got kicked out.” “That makes it all the funnier.” He repeats the slogan. “Always on guard, Comrade?” “Always on guard for socialism and peace.” They both slam the schnapps, wide smiles on their faces, like children.
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From the Watchtower
A photo, not from the Stasi archives but from Hagen’s private collection: young Hagen and Tobias, getting drunk together for the first time. Taken in 1976 with the Finsterbusch family’s first instant camera. They forgot to turn the flash on, but if you look hard, you can just make out a twelve-year-old Tobias holding a glass of yellowish liquid in the air. Dandelion wine. Pilfered from Hagen’s father’s liquor cabinet. Tobias’s blond hair is cropped short, the same as Hagen’s, the same haircut we all had at that age. Tobias’s eyes are closed, his face is flushed, and there is a drunken smile on his face. The blue Young Pioneers handkerchief is around his neck; they’re fresh from a meeting. Already Tobias is over six feet tall, and his lanky appendages make him look like a marionette. His other hand is held to his forehead in the Young Pioneers salute. In the corner of the picture is another hand holding an identical glass of wine, the honey-colored liquid precariously close to spilling out. This one belongs to Hagen. At the bottom of the photo is a handwritten caption—the penmanship is slightly more childish, but it is still unmistakably Hagen’s: small, neat, controlled. TWO COMRADES! It says in capital letters. ALWAYS ON GUARD!
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From the Watchtower
That’s the order I usually watch them in: film, pause at the 10:37 mark, photograph, then back to 1986. It’s a ten-year jump, but this is the order in which they make the most sense. I’ve tried reversing the order, starting with the photograph, looking at a few other photos of their awkward adolescent years, watching them grow into the men I see in the film, but strict chronology doesn’t work as well. 9 November 1986—that’s where their story really begins. But now we have to jump back in time again, though not nearly as far. Ten hours to be precise. A different reel of film entirely: Serial no. 384858BH3. A smaller tape, much lower frame rate and quality, the kind that would have fit inside a portable camera. The scene is shot from inside a closet, looking out onto a tastefully though sparsely decorated flat. The camera must have been inside a jacket, or a shirt, because the fabric of a buttonhole is just visible at the top and bottom of the screen, as if the scene is framed by two giant eyelids. In this scene, Hagen is sitting in a low-slung, padded chair in front of a sleek coffee table with thin, pointed legs. On the table is a cup of tea, the string from the bag draped over the lip. Next to him is a floor lamp with an oversized shade. A middle-aged man sits in an identical chair just across from Hagen. The man is wearing a suit—not the gray, boxy kind favored by Party members, but something darker, something more elegantly cut. Even with the low film quality, you can see how his shoes delicately reflect the soft light from the lamp, the sign of expensive leather. For the first few minutes of the tape, there is no audio. We see Hagen slowly spinning his cup, the handle moving in small increments, like the minute hand of a clock. Hagen’s feet are both on the ground and very close together. He seems stiff and ill at ease, a stark contrast to the man I just saw in Janusz. The man across from Hagen has one leg over his knee. He holds a teacup in one hand and gesticulates slowly with the other, as though he is in no hurry to communicate his point. Hagen nods periodically but does not appear to speak. As he listens, he fixates on the cup in front of him.
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The audio cuts in at the three-minute mark, and we catch the end of the man’s sentence: “—understand me falsely; your country greatly appreciates your work on the Wall. Someone has to man the front lines, to be down in the trenches, if you will. But there might be other opportunities for you to serve the Homeland. You’re from a loyal, military family, so I imagine I don’t need to explain to you the sort of opportunities to which I am referring.” The man’s manner of speaking seems at odds with his relaxed posture; there is a certain deliberateness to his speech, as though he is choosing each and every word with great care. Even the smile he flashes Hagen seems carefully considered. “No, Comrade,” says Hagen, sitting up straighter in his chair. “I understand what an opportunity this is, and I appreciate having been considered.” “Not at all,” says the man. “We are, after all, an organization that depends crucially on knowledge, so it is our job to recognize talent when we see it. The apple, it would seem, has not fallen far from the tree.” Hagen pauses for precisely four seconds, looking down at his hands folded neatly in his lap before returning his gaze to the man in front of him. “What sort of work would I be doing?” “That depends on you, to a certain degree. The Ministry provides opportunities for talented individuals that are not offered to the general public. Overseas positions, for instance.” The man takes an extended sip of his tea, as though allowing the information to sink in. He sets the cup down, opens the folder on his lap. “Now, are there certain departments in which you would not be willing to work? Or certain activities you are not willing to undertake? If so, I will make a note in the file.” He clicks his pen. “No,” says Hagen. “I’m willing to serve in whatever capacity is deemed best.” “Wonderful,” says the man. “Flexibility is a very important quality.” The man takes a sip from his cup and then, seeming to sense Hagen’s unease, adds, “I can understand your apprehension, of course. This is a large decision, and there is
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From the Watchtower
quite a bit of misinformation out there about what we do. The reality, I think you will find, is far different.” “I am not apprehensive,” says Hagen. “Just giving the decision due consideration.” “Of course,” says the man. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. The foil packaging catches the light for a moment and flashes as though aflame. He places one between his lips and then extends the pack to Hagen. “Cigarette? I find it helps clear the head in moments like these.” “Are these Marlboros?” “Yes,” says the man. “Real Marlboros?” The man laughs. “Yes, they are very real. Please, take one. Take two.” Hagen hesitates, and again the man laughs. “Don’t worry,” he says. “This is not a test of loyalty or anything of that sort. It’s just one of the side benefits of the job. A perk, if you will, to use the English phrase. Besides, it’s just a cigarette. Wars are not won or lost because of a cigarette.” Hagen places a cigarette between his lips. The man strikes a kitchen match, lights Hagen’s cigarette and then his own. Hagen inhales deeply, leans back in his chair, and then exhales an enormous cloud of smoke, as though it comes from somewhere inside him, as though he has kept this smoke in reserve, waiting for this moment to release it. For a moment, it obscures both their faces so that they look like headless mannequins, propped up in identical chairs. Suddenly, Hagen is seized by a coughing fit. The man smiles and uses the file to fan away the smoke. “The real thing takes some getting used to,” he says. “Does it not suit you?” “No,” Hagen chokes. “It suits me just fine.” “Good,” says the man. “Would you like another for after your shift? I like to think of these as fair exchanges for all the loyal service we provide the Homeland. And you, of course, are no stranger to service. I’d say you’ve earned it.” Nathaniel Barron
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Hagen takes another cigarette and places it in his front shirt pocket. The man pulls a sheet of paper from his file and sets it down on the coffee table. “This is just a formality, of course. I just need a short statement to confirm what we’ve discussed here. It doesn’t have to be exact. And a signature, of course.” Hagen accepts the pen from the man, clicks it, and begins to write. His hands move swiftly, confidently. When he is finished, he snaps back in the chair, as though coming up for air. I’ve paused the tape here a thousand times—to the point where I’ve worn it dangerously thin—looking for a cringe, a hesitation, an extra blink of the eyes, anything that would suggest that Hagen is struggling with what he has just done. Being a member of the Border Guards was one thing—we were simply soldiers, though our place of deployment was somewhat unusual—but willingly joining the secret police was another thing entirely. Even amongst the soldiers, the Stasi were spoken of with a mixture of fear and veiled contempt. Standing guard with a gun, we all agreed, was something far different than listening in on a man’s most private secrets. But Hagen calmly smokes the rest of his cigarette as the man in the suit explains various logistics: Hagen would be contacted in several days, would be given a cover story to explain his frequent absence from the Wall, though he would need to work sporadic shifts so as not to raise suspicion. And, of course, he could not tell anyone of his work—not co-workers nor friends nor even family. “But I don’t imagine I need to tell you that,” says the man as he stubs out his cigarette. “You’re a Finsterbusch, after all.” He reaches the ashtray across to Hagen. Hagen stubs out his cigarette. “Of course.” The man in the suit stands up and slips the file under his arm. “I imagine you need to be going now, yes? Your shift starts at nine, if I’m not mistaken. Let me get your coat.”
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From the Watchtower
The man walks toward the closet, giving us a close-up of the fine stitch work on his lapels. He removes Hagen’s coat, the gray, woollen one that his mother bought him for his eighteenth birthday, just after he was accepted into the Border Guards Academy. “Thank you, Comrade,” says Hagen as he slips on the coat. He steps forward to shake the man’s hand, and only the bottom half of his face can be seen through the closet door. “Very much looking forward to working with you,” he says through a smile. That smile tends to stay with me for many hours after watching this film, for it is a smile that I am not equipped to process. It is not difficult to understand the appeal that such a job would hold for a young man like Hagen, the power and the freedom and the access to Western goods, but that smile is from a different man than the one I knew from the barracks, the one with the famous name who enjoyed universal respect amongst the rest of the soldiers. That smile belongs to a man I do not know. Someone shuts the closet door—Hagen or the agent, I cannot tell—and the film goes black. The film continues for precisely another three minutes and forty-six seconds before the reel finally runs out.
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Jump ahead ten hours. Everything and nothing has changed. Hagen has opened the cassette he received from Tobias and is puzzling over the liner notes, pretending that he can read them. Tobias is asking him questions about the lyrics: “What does Morrissey say in that second line? I’ve been dying to figure it out. He says he’s the son, and then he says he’s the . . . the air? That’s never made any sense to me.” “It says here heir,” Hagen says. “Like the stuff on your head? That makes even less sense.” “That’s what is says. Maybe it’s an English expression.” “Ah,” says Tobias, nodding. “I grew up speaking the wrong language, Finsterbusch. How amazing would it be to automatically understand the lyrics to any song that comes on the radio? What I wouldn’t give. Think of all the things we’ve probably been missing, all the lyrics we’ve misunderstood over the years.” Hagen doesn’t respond, his face buried in the liner notes. Tobias pulls out a small notebook, the one in which he keeps all his lyrics, and begins to write. They are silent for five minutes and twelve seconds before Tobias speaks. “I need your opinion on these lyrics, Finsterbusch.” “Why? You never take my advice anyway.” “Because you’re a government stooge,” says Tobias with a smile, “and I need to get these lyrics approved by other government stooges. Try to think like a censor. It might help to stick your thumb up your arse.” Hagen smiles. “Shoot.” I strip off your pants, part the curtain so the neighbors can see. They’re watching anyway, so let’s give them a show. (It’s slightly more elegant in German, though only slightly.) Keep fucking me like that, and I’m soon going to blow. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. “There’s no way they’ll allow that first line. The metaphor’s plain as day. At least make curtain plural.”
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“Perfect,” says Tobias, snapping the book closed. “That’s what I was hoping for. It’s the second line I want anyway. Can’t wait to see the size of the censor’s erection when he comes across this elephant.”2 “Clever,” says Hagen. “Has anyone ever told you you’re too clever for your own good?” “Just every teacher since I was eight.” “A true genius is rarely acknowledged in his own time,” says Hagen, and then he laughs. Tobias, too, starts to laugh, and soon they are both leaning back in their chairs, laughing as though it’s the funniest thing they have ever heard. Janusz can be seen in the background, wiping down glasses behind the bar. He appears unamused. Tobias flashes two fingers in the air, and Janusz soon appears with two more glasses of schnapps. Hagen puts up a half-hearted protest, claiming he has to be sober for his second shift. Tobias waves him off. “You’ve always been so conscientious. Remember when I used to copy your essays before class, and you’d insist on bringing along a different color pen so the teacher wouldn’t suspect? Like they cared anyway. I copied it from you, you copied it from the teacher, he copied it from some Party bureaucrat, who pulled it from the deepest recesses of his arse.” “It’s a wonder you graduated,” says Hagen. 2 It took me quite some time before I understood this reference, but it seems a “green elephant” was a trick for slipping subversive lyrics past the censors. The idea was to place the lyrics you wanted to keep directly after lyrics that were intentionally offensive. The hope was that the censors would excise the more offensive lyrics while overlooking what came directly afterward. “If a green elephant suddenly walks into the room,” went the saying, “no one’s going to notice a little mouse sneaking in behind it.” Even now, I uncover these hidden messages in East German songs I used to love and thought I understood. Metaphors about windows, or even a simple phrase like over there can suddenly mean something very different. It’s enough to make one cringe at our naivete. If something so obvious could be slipped by so many of us, what else could we have missed?
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From the Watchtower
“Trick is to set the bar very low,” says Tobias. “From each according to his abilities.” Another pair of salutes, another pair of empty glasses. Tobias’s head has begun to loll slightly. Hagen’s remains rigid. “Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen if you show up slightly drunk? I’ve played loads of shows while drunk off my tits.” “This is slightly different than playing a concert in front of nearly fifteen screaming fans.” “Yes, but if you count the undercover Stasi agents, the last show had over thirty. Anyway, you’re a Finsterbusch. You can do whatever you want. What are they going to say to you?” Hagen pauses for a moment, just looking at Tobias with his head slightly tilted. “Are you seriously asking what would happen if I showed up drunk to one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world? There would be consequences.” “Like what?” “Like I don’t get the promotion.” “So you’re in exactly the same boat you’re in right—” “Or I get reported by another soldier,” Hagen says, cutting him off. “And then I get court-martialed, lose my job, get sent to prison up in Hohenschönhausen.” Hagen pauses, fiddles absentmindedly with the army of empty glasses that have accumulated on the table—beer mugs, schnapps glasses, and two tall, thin raki glasses that Tobias ordered just for fun. “Shall I go on?” Tobias sits back in his chair. “Please do.” “Or I don’t get reported, but there’s an incident at the Wall tonight. Now, were I thinking clearly, I would remember my extensive training—just over five hundred hours, if you tally it all up—and I’d work through the sequence of engagement. First verbal warning. Second verbal warning. Warning shot.” While
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he is speaking, Hagen organises the glasses into regiments—the beer mugs with the beer mugs, the schnapps glasses with the schnapps glasses, the raki glasses up front, leading the charge. “Shall I continue?” His face reveals neither anger nor amusement. “Oh, absolutely, Finsterbusch. It’s just getting good.” “But I’m not thinking clearly, because I’ve had too much to drink, so I panic and shoot. By law, I have to shoot—Article 27 of the Border Act, as a good citizen like you would surely know—and I have to aim on target; otherwise, I’m back at Hohenschönhausen. But I’m not so drunk that I miss, so I hit my target. The search lights come on, and it’s just some stupid kid. Eighteen years old, told his mother that he was going to a friend’s house for a sleepover, which is why he brought along a backpack. The bullet hits him in the chest, but by some miracle, it misses all his vital organs, so he can be saved.” “Hooray,” says Tobias, clapping lightly. “I love stories where everything works out.” “Problem is I’m not allowed to leave my post, in case this is a diversion and other escape attempts are to follow. A coordinated act of Western aggression, or something of the sort. But the boy’s lungs are filling with blood, and there’s a half-hour wait for an ambulance.” “Why do I get the sense this is no longer theoretical?” Hagen gives no indication of having heard him. “I get to watch him slowly suffocate on his own blood. I toss him a cigarette and a lighter just so I don’t have to hear him gasping.” “You can stop, Finsterbusch.” “They discharge me, give me a flat way out of town so I’m nowhere near the border. I’m a hero, but I’ve also got an itchy trigger finger. You can come live with me out there, if you like.” “Fuck you, Finsterbusch. I said you can stop.”
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From the Watchtower
Hagen breaks up the regiments again, puts them back into their original places, having seemingly memorized where each glass was located. Finished, he relaxes back into his chair. “You asked about consequences,” he says. Tobias takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket—the ubiquitous Juwels, the favorite of every cost-conscious GDR citizen. His hands are shaking slightly as he lights one. “Fucking dark, Finsterbusch.” “Not dark. Real. Do you remember Gustav Lenz? He was in our Young Pioneers troop for one summer, before his parents moved to Leipzig. Do you remember him?” “Sure. The asthmatic kid who was always coughing. That kid’s a Border Guard?” “No,” says Hagen, “because he’s retired now. Honorably discharged at age twenty-three. It was his birthday, and someone smuggled a flask of vodka into the barracks. Either command never knew he was drunk, or they didn’t care. He even got to meet Chairman Honecker. They gave a speech about his courage under fire.” Tobias snorts. “Under fire.” He stubs his cigarette out, even though he’s just started it, and lights another. He offers the pack to Hagen. “Bulgaria’s finest tobacco?” Hagen waves him off. “Come on,” Tobias says. “You used to smoke these all the time when we were kids. Couldn’t get enough of ’em.” Hagen reluctantly takes one and puts it in his breast pocket. “They even gave him a commemorative gold watch,” says Hagen. “Gustav showed it to me before he left the barracks. Fancy thing, Swiss-made. Had an engraving on the back: For distinguished service.” Hagen laughs, but I can tell it is forced because his eyes do not move. “Well,” says Tobias. He looks as though he is about to speak, but then he stops himself. Both men are quiet for forty-eight seconds.
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Janusz appears with schnapps, sets one in front of each of them. Tobias explains that it was a mistake, that they didn’t actually mean to order this round. “Like hell,” says Janusz. “I already poured them. Unless you’ve got a funnel, someone is drinking them.” “It’s okay,” says Hagen. “I can drink it.” “No, no, no,” says Tobias. He snatches Hagen’s glass from across the table. “I don’t want to be responsible for starting World War III.” He lifts a glass in each hand and shoots Hagen a knowing look. “Always on guard, Comrade.” He pours them both into his mouth before swallowing. “We should go,” says Hagen. “Right,” says Tobias. “I’ve got work to do anyway. These lyrics aren’t going to censor themselves.” He stands to leave, and the camera struggles to take in his full height. He towers above Hagen, above the cigarette smoke hanging about them like nimbus clouds, above everything else in the bar. Hagen rises, too, presses some bills into Janusz’s hand, and then together, he and Tobias walk toward the door, out of view of the camera.
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From the Watchtower
But they do not leave the bar. On screen, we see only Janusz, his bald spot turned toward the camera as he scrubs away the stickiness left by the schnapps. But on the tape script—those ten sheets of paper held together by one oversized paperclip—the conversation continues for another two pages. There is a small note at the point when they move off-camera: visual surveillance of the object no longer available. To make up for this, someone has typed up little notes, almost like stage directions, describing the tenor and tone of the men’s voices, as if to capture what they were thinking and feeling. I sometimes think of the poor entry-level agent—someone like Hagen—who must have spent hours listening to the tape, meticulously typing every word, each and every sound. He (for at the Ministry for State Security, it was always a he) even copied down Hagen’s hesitations and his frequent ums, made note of Tobias’s habit of showing disdain by forcing air through pursed lips. It’s as though he wanted to pin these men down on paper like insects, to capture exactly how they spoke, how they expressed hesitation, how their little tics betrayed their fears. I am getting old and sometimes forget small details, so I am thankful for these little reminders. At this point, I usually switch off my projector, sit back in a chair, and turn off all but my reading lamp. I run my finger along the yellow cigarette stains at the edges of the paper, and suddenly I can see those clouds of smoke again, that fog that seemed to hang over everything in those days. I can smell the Bulgarian tobacco. I can hear Tobias’s laugh, loud and free, always the loudest and clearest sound in the room. I read these pages to remember, and each time, I am amazed anew at how they seem to bring these men back to me. I am amazed at how well that entry-level agent did his job, and I find myself filled with gratitude toward him, in spite of everything. TM: [Sounds inebriated] So do you think you’ll make it to the show? HF: [Hesitates for precisely seven seconds] I’ll do my best. TM: You have to come. It wouldn’t be the same without you.
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HF: I’ll see if I can get the exit visa. Like you said, we’ll be living in our parents’ basements for the rest of our lives anyway. Might as well enjoy it. [No speech for eighteen seconds, though light rustling can be heard. Author suspects that objects are embracing, though this is purely speculative.] TM: [TM’s voice, normally loud, has decreased by several decibels.] Thank you, Finsterbusch. This keeps me going. HF: Don’t thank me, Tobias. Don’t thank me. TM: I know it’s a risk for you. Meeting me, staying friends with me. HF: Everything’s a risk. TM: You don’t have to. HF: Of course I do. [Sounds of door opening. Wind blowing. HF coughs twice.] TM: That sounds bad. Stay warm. HF: Not to worry. Command has benevolently decreed that we are allowed to wear two shirts. TM: [Laughs loudly, happily.] Amazing. [Pauses for precisely eight seconds.] It almost doesn’t seem real, does it? How could any of this possibly be real? HF: And yet it is. END OF RECORDING.
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From the Watchtower
And here is where our stories intersect again. I awoke groggy from my nap, had just enough time to shower and swallow a mug of coffee-mix before the shift. Hagen arrived just a few minutes before the mounting of the guard. He showed no signs of being drunk; in fact, his behavior betrayed none of what had transpired that day. He simply slipped into rank beside me, without a word, his eyes fixed firmly on some imaginary horizon. A blast of frigid air was coming through an open door, but we forced ourselves not to shiver, to remain perfectly still. Captain Minz stood before us and read the oath while we squeezed our boot heels together tightly: We pledge, from this moment until the moment we are relieved, to remain vigilant and resolute in our defense of the Socialist Homeland, to prevent any provocation or threats to the sovereignty of the German Democratic Republic, and to protect the integrity of this section of the border to which we are assigned. Border Guards: Mount! We retrieved our Kalashnikovs from the armory and walked silently to the truck that would take us to our post. We sat in the back with several other soldiers, waited for the hatch to come down and darkness to envelop us. Once in the darkness, I tapped Hagen’s boot three times with my toe—our signal for Continue the score from last shift? Hagen tapped my toe once. No. I tapped his toe four times. Start over from zero?
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From the Watchtower
Hagen coughed twice, followed by a sharp exhale. This was our signal for silence, for when commanding officers would pass within earshot. No games. I tapped him again, looking for an explanation, but I got no response, just the rustling of his uniform as the truck rumbled down the cobblestone streets toward the Wall. The truck came to a stop, and the hatch opened. Hagen and I were the first ones out. We stepped onto the tiny concrete road that ran through no-man’s land. (Only those who have never been there call it that; Hagen and I, when we were among like-minded individuals, simply referred to it as the office.) Though the sun was firmly below the horizon, that little strip was bathed in perpetual daylight by the thousand-watt searchlights angled down upon us. To the west was the main wall, the first one to go up, its concrete slabs shining bright white in the glare. To the east were all the fortifications we had erected since: the razor wire, the trip-lines hooked up to machine guns, the towers, the landmines, the shepherds with their leashes staked down into the hard-packed earth. As I did at the start of every shift, I imagined myself running that gauntlet, compelled to visualize all the ways I could die. I lost a leg to a landmine, bled out into the dusty ground. I took a .22-calibur bullet to the clavicle, then had my throat ripped out by an angry and frightened dog. These little reveries had started as a way to occupy my mind on the long walk to the tower, but they had eventually turned into something of a compulsion. By now, they were practically involuntary. There was a small stretch where the office widened, where the fences dipped far into East Berlin and our path traversed a patch of dirt nearly twenty meters across—wide enough that a microphone was unlikely. It was here that we often exchanged a few words, a few logistical details for the games before eight hours of silence. I wanted to ask Hagen what had happened that would force us to put our games on hiatus, but there was something in his manner that stopped me.
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As we approached the point where the fortifications narrowed again, just a few dozen meters from the tower, Hagen finally spoke. “Cold?” he asked with a smile. I didn’t respond, or if I did, I do not recall what I said. “Me neither,” Hagen whispered. “Want to hear something my father told me once, Bernhard? We were up at the North Sea, and I didn’t want to go in the water because it was too cold. Soldiers don’t get cold, my father said. They stash it away in their packs, bury it down in their foxholes. The only time a soldier is cold is when he’s dead. Again, my response eludes me. I have to assume I was silent. “The bastard picked me up by the ankle and threw me in at high tide,” said Hagen. “And it was cold as hell.” The strip narrowed until we were once again hemmed in between wall and fence, and Hagen fell silent. I followed him up the ladder to the tower; frost had begun to appear, so I stepped deliberately, checking each boot heel for secure purchase before continuing on. And as it did before every shift, the world became visible to us in increments, the towers and shopping centers of West Berlin, the darkened residential blocks of the East, like neon and concrete shoots rising from the hard, frozen ground. There are no photographs from that shift, no recordings, and while my memory is shockingly clear in some areas—those words of Hagen’s still come back to me, over twenty years later, as though they have just left his lips—it is woefully inadequate in others. When I try to recall the eight hours of that shift, eight hours spent watching the horizon, waiting for the sun to rise, my mind fills in the gaps with images that I couldn’t possibly have seen with my own eyes. I see the two of us in that watchtower, Hagen facing west while I faced east, machine guns in our hands and the faintest stubble on our chins. We are young, impossibly so, and for a moment, I can’t believe that we ever looked like that. I see Hagen’s baggy eyes, the slight pout to his lower lip. I see my own face, the
32
From the Watchtower
patchy stubble, the sideburns that I let grow exactly two centimeters longer than regulations allowed because I thought they lent me an aura of mystery. They must have worked, for I find that I can no more enter into that man’s mind than I could into a stranger’s. I do recall a feeling, though it is Hagen’s feeling, not mine; I wasn’t smart enough, at that time, to have this feeling. I’ve borrowed it from him, as I suppose I’ve borrowed so many things over the years. It is a feeling of looking out over the railing of our little watchtower and seeing two worlds that are just out of reach, both receding away as the ground beneath you splits open to swallow you up.
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Nathaniel Barron lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his veterinarian wife and their growing menagerie of pets. He completed his MFA at Colorado State University in 2016 and is now finishing the novel from which this chapter is excerpted. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and in SAND, a bilingual literary journal based in Berlin. When not working on his own writing, he earns his living as a freelance translator of German. About the genesis of his novel, Barron says, “The idea for this novel started when I was living in Berlin from 2007 to 2011, though I did not start writing it until much later. Around 2008, I read an article about the ‘Puzzle Women,’ a group of retired German women who volunteer to help piece together shredded secret police (Stasi) files using nothing more than their wits and an endless supply of cellophane tape. At their current rate, the article stated, they are scheduled to finish in just over three hundred years. That set the whole novel in motion. I was fascinated by the sort of society that could produce such a vast volume of information on its own citizens. I was also drawn in by reports that as many as fifty ex-Stasi agents have been caught working under false identities in the agency tasked with reconstructing the files, presumably destroying evidence. Clearly, this is a history that is not yet settled, and that feeling of open-endedness—of a past that will not relinquish its hold on the present—continually drew me back to the desk. “In 2014, I visited the Stasi archive in Berlin, and suddenly, the whole story changed for me. I was looking at a booklet published by the archive in which a widely known historical event—a famous concert in East
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Berlin—is instead told through the reports, transcripts, and photographs the Stasi created during and after the event, with no external context. Viewing these historical artifacts and seeing the paranoia and obsession displayed by the agents made me realize that our act of observing a story is every bit as important as the story itself. How we relate to a story—be it a novel, a memory, or an official history—can tell us everything about ourselves. “That was the genesis of the narrator, Bernhard. In this piece, which will serve as the first chapter of the novel, Bernhard is telling the story of his old friend, Hagen Finsterbusch, based on Stasi documents and videos that were acquired under mysterious circumstances. My hope is that, in exploring how this act of observing transforms Bernhard, I will be able to uncover parallels not only to German history (how it chooses to ‘observe’ its own troubled past) but also to our own society’s obsession with documentation and surveillance, both state-sanctioned and private.”
Iron Horse Literary Review would like to thank its supporters, without whose generous help we could not publish Iron Horse successfully. In particular, we would like to thank our benefactors and equestrian donors. If you would like to join our network of friends, please contact us at ihlr.mail@gmail.com for information on the various levels of support. Benefactors ($300) Wendell Aycock Lon and Carol Baugh Beverly and George Cox Sam Dragga Madonne Miner Charles and Patricia Patterson Gordon Weaver Equestrian ($3,000 and above) TTU English Department, Chair Brian Still TTU College of Arts & Sciences, Dean Brent Lindquist TTU Graduate School, Dean Mark Sheridan TTU Provost’s Office, Provost Rob Stewart TTU President’s Office, President Lawrence Schovanec