The Contract

A fat bitch with a fat arse and a fat pompous husband to sleep beside.

God, how they'd scream and howl, the pair of them, if they knew that Ulf who is nothing and has no career had spilled himself on their precious sheets. They'd rip them and burn them, and the noise would lift the roof, and the shrieks would bring the neighbours running.

'When is Father coming home?'

'Soon… he rang me at lunchtime, he has to go to the Council of State to meet with the Trade Secretariat. The Secretary is going to London tomorrow. Your father is one of a select few who are required to advise him on certain contracts that may be offered. Your father is well thought of by the Secretary… perhaps on another occasion he may even accompany a delegation.' The woman bled with pride.

' I'll go to my room, it's better I start the work before supper.'

It was the one virtue of the burden of study that she brought home that the books freed Jutte from the punishment of attending the living room seminars of the evening when her mother theatrically fed her father the cues for him to relate the anecdotes of his contacts with the high and mighty of the Central Committee and the Politburo.

She had a small room in the flat, barely large enough for the bed and her table and chair and the chest for her clothes and the hanging wardrobe for her dresses and coats. A sleeping and working place only, a room where she came as a stranger and a visitor. Not home, not her own, because her mother would root through the drawers for evidence of her life outside the flat. Not even her own pictures on the wall, those instead that her mother had wished on her. The framed photograph of Jutte in the dress of the FDJ at camp in the centre of a group of happy and toothy girls, and beside it the picture of her amongst a thousand others marching on a May Day on Unter den Linden in front of the Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism.

Jutte held the envelope and ran her fingers on the sealed flap. It had not been opened and refastened. She ripped the envelope apart and read the words written in Ulfs writing.

Had she really meant it? On the platform at Schone- weide, had it been just to tease him because he was frightened that he would lose his train, and the discipline of the military overwhelmed him? But her uncle in Hamburg had told her of a home that waited for her, and a job and a future. Her uncle in Hamburg had said that it was necessary for one in the group to have an intimacy with the border sector that would be crossed. Her uncle in Hamburg had said it could be achieved, and that was before she had met Ulf. That was not the reason that she had lain on the bed beneath the boy, and splayed her legs and caught him with her arms… That was not the reason. There were many boys she could have gone with. Why Ulf? Why the frontier guard? Why was her boy, the one she had chosen, the one who would know the sector at Walbeck?

She had told Ulf what she wanted of him, and he had done it. She had told him where she wanted to be taken, and he would guide her. She had taunted his courage, now she must prove her own.

'Jutte,' the voice whined behind her closed door.

'Yes, Mother,' she said brightly.

'What does the boy say in his letter?'

'Only that he will soon be coming back to Berlin in a few weeks' time and he asks if he can see me.'

'It is kinder if you write and are frank with him, tell him there is no chance of you meeting again.'

'I will write to him next week, soon enough then. And Mother…'

'Yes, Jutte?'

'I really have to work tonight. I have some difficult things to do. I have to be quiet.'

There were apologies and the scraping retreat of the slip- pered feet.

Shit, that would make her miserable. Back to her tea bags and cream cakes and not knowing what was in the letter. That would wound the cow. Jutte opened a book on her desk, took her writing pad from her bag

… What would they do to them, her parents, when Ulf had taken her across? How great would be the shame, how far would be the tumbling fall of disgrace? Perhaps her father would lose his job, certainly the prospects of promotion to the permanent staff of the Secretariat.

Influence gone, friends gone, because who would want to be the confidant of a man whose child had won such disgrace? Jutte would drag them down, down so that they suffocated in their humiliation.

The book lay unread.

She wondered how they would make the journey from this place called Suplingen, how they would cross. It could not be difficult or Ulf would not have written to her. There could not be great danger. She sat very still in the evening light of her room and tried to read and failed until the room dripped darkness and she heard the voices that heralded her father's return and the syrup of her mother's welcome.

It could not be difficult or Ulf would not have written to her.