The Contract

And if that, too, offered the possibility? Then… they would shoot them here. Shoot them if they were found near the wire. The high velocity bullets in the magazine of the MPiKM, capable of killing at a range of a kilometre. What would they do at 25 metres to the body of Jutte? A sweet, clean and perfect shape. How would she seem to him when the clip of shells had dropped her.

They would butcher the two of them, the guns on the wire, the guns of the patrols. Arc lights flashing, illumination flares falling, attack dogs barking. Jutte, bloody in death and thrown into a jeep such as this one.

Ulf Becker, bones fractured, bowels ripped by gunfire, slung beside her.

No mercy inside the Hinterland fence, no pity within the Restricted Zone. He could not make the commitment until he had seen more. And he remembered her, on the platform at Schoneweide, heard her voice that was ringing and sharp, saw her eyes that were bright and bold in the dimness of the station lights.

Ulf Becker spat down onto the roadway.

There were many who had entertained the possibility, and where were they now? Shuttered in the flats and factories of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, bound to women and babies, trapped in stinking apathy. The opportunity would only come once, it would go with the sureness of night, it would-never be repeated. If he did not tind the place at Walbeck then he must stand amongst the ranks of those who had harboured a dream and who had failed to discover the determination for the final assault at the fence.

Even to contemplate it was idiocy… Then Ulf Becker was a creature of the herd.

Better alive and a machine tool worker, than dead… Then he had deceived the girl.

The driver brought the jeep to a halt. Becker waved to the earth bunker and was rewarded with a white hand acknowledging his gesture and protruding through the firing slit. The driver swung on his wheel and drove back the way that they had come.

The slow routine of holiday was settling on Otto Guttmann. The pace of Padolsk was abandoned, the endeavour of the laboratory sidestepped.

In those first three days he had been to the Palast-Theater to see an old Italian film. He had cruised at snail pace in the Weisse Flotte boat on the Elbe-Havel Kanal to Genthin – all day and for 7 marks. He had browsed in the bookshops of Karl Marx Strasse and beside the Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, handling with something like reverence the range of books in his native tongue. He had sat with a magazine and a small beer, at the open air cafe looking across the Alter Markt towards the old and renovated Rathaus. He had watched the young people of Magdeburg, laundered and fresh in their uniform of sports shirts and floral frocks. He had dreamed, and closed his mind to the slide rules and drawing boards and the firing range.

The sunshine blessed, warm and clear air bathed him.

Now he went, slowly and in his own time, to visit his valued friend at the Dom, the cathedral. A friend of his own generation and one long revered because he was a pastor of the Evangelical order, living in a dilapidated cottage sandwiched between the high cathedral walls and the sloping banks of the Elbe, a man who had not compromised.

Not easy he thought as he walked beneath the great twin towers of the cathedral, to carry on the work of a pastor under the rule of socialism.

Not simple to watch the church that one treasured stripped of its influence and authority, left merely as an institution of worship to the elderly, denied its former role of administration over the kindergartens and the youth clubs and the hospitals. The erosion of the church's position had been managed with a subtlety. No jackboots and no padlocks. The sprawling new housing estates rose without a church in their midst, young Christians found it even harder to gain the coveted places in secondary and higher education, political precepts ruled. His friend, the pastor, had struggled on through succeeding years, prepared for boldness when bravery would win the day, prepared for acquiescence when subservience dictated the greater advantage. A man who over many years had earned Otto Guttmann's admiration and love.

Men in the latter days of their lives. Men who could gossip and chuckle with a private and closed humour. The pastor would shrug with pain when the scientist told him of his work at Padolsk and put his short and muscled arm up to Guttmann's shoulder and squeeze the sparse flesh. Old men, who in their talk could offer comfort the one to the other.

Their meeting was heavy with affection and cheeks were kissed in a spontaneous happiness and they gazed into each other's faces. The advances of age were ignored and they complimented themselves on their health and put aside their misfortunes. The pastor held tight at Otto Guttmann's hand when the death of Willi was talked of.

Later there would be a salad lunch. Guttmann explained that Erica was with her friend. He had no more commitments for the day and much to speak about.