Sektion 20 by Paul Dowswell

been hearing about their army service in school just the other day. This time Alex was listening. Herr Würfel told the class about the Wall. ‘In a year or two, you boys will be called up for service in the National People’s Army. There is every chance you will be one of those chosen to man the border towers. The guards who protect us consider it their patriotic duty to shoot any traitor who tries to breach the Protective Barrier.’
    Alex had heard stories about how guards who didn’t shoot were sent to the prison at Bautzen. And how those that did shoot were rewarded with extra leave and luxury goods – or better apartments for their families. How much was true he couldn’t say, but he knew he couldn’t shoot someone who was doing exactly what he would like to do himself.
    Alex had a cousin who had recently finished his army service. ‘If you are lucky, you’ll spend eighteen months in a barracks in Dessau peeling potatoes and lighting farts for entertainment. That’s what we had to do.’
    ‘Sounds unmissable,’ Alex had said, with a sinking feeling. ‘At least we don’t have a war to fight.’
    He’d heard that the regular soldiers made a point of victimising the new recruits – sticking their heads down lavatory pans and stripping them naked and tying them to lamp posts in the middle of winter. Alex knew he’d have to toughen up a bit if he was going to survive conscription. Just thinking about it made him want to escape. If he played his cards right, Kalb could be his ticket away from all that.
     
    Erich Kohl flexed his fingers and began tapping away at his typewriter.
     
    Subject shows increasingly negative attitude. Recent criminal activity includes doggerel song lyric exhibiting brazen false consciousness for unofficial music ensemble ‘Black Dog ’. This attempt to spread anti-State propaganda through Western pop music plainest evidence yet of negative-decadent tendencies and clear betrayal of DDR.
     
    “We’re up against the Wall
    and heading for a fall
    But I’m still standing tall
    Up against the Wall.”
     
    Ensemble’s name ‘Black Dog’ – British folklore term for deep depression – clearly a reference to subject’s own internal psychosis regarding attitude to living in DDR.
     
    Suggest interventionist action.

Chapter 14
     
     
    As Frank Ostermann approached his workplace, he was astonished to be confronted by three men who got out of an anonymous white car and asked him to accompany them. The older one, with the lank dark hair, had flashed an identity card at him, but too quickly for Frank to read it.
    The car pulled into Stasi HQ at Normannenstrasse. Frank had seen the sprawling offices from the outside – a whole block’s worth of buildings – but he had never imagined he would find himself on the other side of those road blocks and barbed wire.
    They took him to a small white-walled room and gave him an uncomfortable chair to sit in. It seemed intentionally low off the ground – as if eight or nine centimetres had been sawn off the legs.
    ‘I am at a complete loss as to why you have brought me here,’ said Frank Ostermann. ‘This is no way to treat a loyal Party member.’
    Kohl didn’t like his certainty. He’d soon put a stop to that. He showed him pictures of Alex and Geli. One was of Alex emerging from Holger Vogel’s apartment block, the other of Geli out in the street.
    ‘Why have you taken these photographs of my children?’ said Frank. His voice betrayed his anxiety.
    ‘You might be a loyal Party member, Herr Ostermann, but neither of your children have been a credit to you or your wife, Gretchen. Some might say that is ill fortune. Others might think this reflects badly on you as parents. I’m inclined to think it’s the former, but my opinion is not what matters here.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Frank. He could feel his legs swimming in sweat as he sat in the plastic chair.
    ‘Both Angela and Alexander have been under observation for some