Relief arrived in the form of a summons from upstairs-Arnold Marohn wanted to see him.
The director lost no time in getting to the point. ‘I’ve been asked to loan you out for the day. You remember Stefan Utermann?’
‘Of course. We were both on the Stettin yards committee before the war. He was caught, and sent to Buchenwald.’
‘But you’ve seen him since.’
‘Only once or twice, a couple of years ago. He moved out to Rummelsburg when they started the repair works up again.’
‘But you’d call him a friend?’
‘A comrade.’ Which in the 1930s had probably meant more.
‘So he might take advice from you?’
Strohm grimaced. ‘On what?’
Marohn sighed. ‘He’s in dispute with our Soviet allies. The usual issue-one dismantling too many. Just between us, I don’t think the Russians have handled the matter that tactfully, but that’s the world we live in. And Utermann is being particularly obstinate.’
‘Why do the Russians care?’ Strohm wondered out loud. ‘Why don’t they just ignore him?’ The way they usually ignored KPD qualms, he thought to himself.
‘Apparently he’s made himself very popular with the workforce,’ Marohn said. ‘And the Party is anxious to avoid any demonstrations of anti-Russian feeling.’
‘Of course,’ Strohm said automatically. ‘Well, I’ll try of course, but it’s been a long time.’ And Utermann had seemed a different man after Buchenwald-still friendly enough, but wound a lot tighter.
‘Just do your best,’ Marohn told him. ‘And go today.’
‘Why the rush?’
‘The Russians want it settled.’
‘Say no more.’
It wasn’t a task he’d have chosen, but it felt good to be out the office. The white clouds gliding across the bright blue sky made him think of galleons, and one particular book from his American childhood. He wanted children of his own, and he thought Annaliese did too, though they’d never discussed it. But there was plenty of time, and things were bound to improve over the next few years.
The prospect cheered Strohm, as did the huge red flag in the distance, which fluttered over the Neukolln rathaus. It was almost twenty years since he and Utermann had fought all those running battles with the brownshirts on Berliner Strasse and Grenzallee, and in the end it was their flag which had carried the day.
It was gone noon when he reached the Rummelsburg repair shops. Utermann was out of his office, and the worker who pointed Strohm in the direction of the erecting shop wasn’t exactly friendly. Inside, he found two lines of locomotives under repair, and Utermann standing between them, talking to another railwayman. When he saw the suited Strohm striding towards him, his initial frown turned into a smile, but the frown came back when the pfennig dropped.
‘What’s a candidate member of the Central Committee doing here? As if I didn’t know.’
Strohm didn’t deny the inference. ‘But I’m also a friend,’ he said, offering his hand. And after only the slightest of hesitations, Utermann took it. ‘Where can we talk?’ Strohm asked.
‘Outside,’ Utermann decided. He led the way to a door at the end, and ushered Strohm through just as a freight train rumbled by. A stack of pallets outside the stores room provided somewhere to sit. ‘You’ll get your suit dirty,’ Utermann warned him with a grin.
‘Least of my worries.’ Strohm sat there for a moment, savouring the sights, sounds and smells of a working railway. This had been his life for more than a decade, and part of him still missed it.
‘Feeling nostalgic?’ Utermann asked.
‘Yes.’
‘It was simpler back then.’
‘Perhaps.’ Strohm looked at his old friend. ‘So, Stefan, tell me what’s happened. What’s at stake here?’
‘What do you know?’
‘Not a lot,’ Strohm told him. He wanted the story from Utermann. ‘That you’re refusing to accept a dismantling, and have enough support among the workforce to embarrass the Party leadership.’
‘That’s a fair enough summary, as far as it goes. It’s not just one dismantling, though. The Russians took everything last summer, and promised me that was it, that they wouldn’t be back. And I sold it to the workforce-that giving them the old works was paying our debt as Germans, and that now we could build a new one as comrades. And we did. We searched the whole bloody Russian zone for the machines we needed, begged, bought, even mounted a couple of robberies. You wouldn’t believe how hard everyone worked, what sacrifices they made. I didn’t believe it myself. We had everything up and working again in six months.’
‘And now they’ve come back again.’
‘Two weeks ago.’
‘It happens.’
‘Yeah, but they promised me it wouldn’t. And when I reminded the Russian bastard of that, he just laughed in my face.’
A suburban train rattled by, forcing a pause in the conversation. Utermann, Strohm saw, had one fist clenched.
‘So you refused?’ he said, once the noise of the train had abated.
‘I told him to fuck off,’ Utermann admitted.
‘Ah.’
‘The bastard just laughed again. And then he got really nasty. He told me that if I didn’t cooperate, the workers here would be given all the details of my payoks. He had a list of everything I’d received over the past two years-every last bar of chocolate and tin of ham.’ He looked across at Strohm. ‘You must get them, too. And bigger than mine, I would guess.’
‘I get them.’ Every high- or medium-ranking Party official did, along with government officials, scientists, even poets and artists. All those considered crucial to the building of a socialist Germany. One had been delivered to his apartment earlier that week, delighting Annaliese. He’d come home in the evening to find that she’d given half the stuff away to the old folk who lived in their block. That had pleased him enormously, but he still hated the whole idea. Annaliese had listened, agreed, and told him to let it go. ‘What can you do?’ she had asked. ‘Give it all back? What good would that do?’ None at all, as he well knew. He didn’t tell her, but it would actually do him harm. Giving them back would be seen as dissent.
‘So you know it’s not easy to refuse,’ Utermann said, as if reading his mind. ‘You give some away, and convince yourself you deserve a little pampering after all the years of struggle.’
‘Yes.’
‘But the workers don’t see it that way. They don’t see why anyone should be pampered in a socialist society. And they’re right. Even the Russian knows it, which is why he thinks I’ll swallow the medicine, for everyone’s sake. I’ll talk the workers around again, do his dirty work for him, and he won’t bring up my payoks. He’ll get his dismantling, the workers will think their interests are still being represented, and I’ll get to eat a bar of chocolate twice a month. Everyone’s happy.’
Strohm knew where this was going. ‘So you won’t change your mind.’
‘Enough is enough.’
‘I know what you mean. I do, really,’ he insisted in response to Utermann’s look. ‘But it won’t help. The dismantling will still go ahead, and you’ll get sacked. And the workers will lose a good representative.’
Utermann laughed. ‘Fat lot of good I’ve done them,’
‘The Russians won’t be here forever.’
‘You think not?’
‘Nothing lasts forever.
‘You really think I should give in?’
‘I don’t see how refusing helps anybody.’
‘Maybe so. I know the arguments for giving in. A situation like this-an individual conscience is neither here nor there. A bourgeois luxury. I know the words. I’ve been reading them since I was fourteen.’
Strohm was silent.
‘The Russian’s are coming back for my answer tomorrow.’
‘Save your strength for fights you might win,’ Strohm urged him.
Utermann gave him a wintry smile. ‘I might just do that.’ As they walked back through the erecting shop he apologised for the way he had greeted him. ‘It was good to see you,’ he said, as they parted.