Read Online Stasiland by Anna Funder - Free Book Online Page B

tabloid—screaming red-and-black headlines—on the control dash. Behind him sit tired-looking people for whom this day has come too soon.
    I cannot fathom why these lights make the tram halt under my window. The stop itself is half a block away at the corner. Right here, the doors never open for passengers; they just sit, arrested and accepting. It is odd, the sight of a tram with a row of cars behind it stopped here for no pedestrians, no passengers, no reason, while on the other side vehicles continue unimpeded up the hill into Prenzlauer Berg. The lights change and the driver, still looking at the paper, moves a lever and slides the tram into action.
    I go out for the paper and bread, and walk through the park. In summer this park is festooned with motley groups of drunks and punks. In winter the punks claim the underground stations for warmth, while the drunks install themselves in tram shelters. Today the corner stop is occupied by an old man with a mane of matted locks, a huge felt beard and flowing black robes. His belongings, in plastic bags around him, double as pillows. He is timeless and grand like someone walked in from another century—a Winter King. As passengers alight from trams he acknowledges them as if they were supplicants paying their respects to his throne, nodding to each and waving them on their way.
    I cross to the bakery past a billboard that reads ‘Advertising Makes Better Known’. My baker holds, to some extent, with tradition. He makes wholegrain and rye and country loaves, stacked as oblong bricks on the back wall. But now, freed of state-run constraints on his ingenuity, he appears to be conducting his own personal experiment in bestsellerdom. On the left-hand side under the glass counter are the baked goods: iced donuts and cheesecake and blueberry crumble. On the other side, also under the glass and laid out just as neatly, is a bewildering assortment of fat paperbacks with embossed titles.
    I am served by a woman with a bad perm. She’s wearing a T-shirt which has a lion’s face on it—the lion has winking sequins for eyes placed exactly where her nipples must be. I buy half a loaf of rye and ask no questions about the books. When I reach my building I see that the Winter King has crossed here to the place where the tram stops for no reason. He waits, but no passengers emerge for him to receive. Instead, as I approach, he turns to me and bows, long and dangerously low.
    Over the next week I think about Miriam and I think about Stasi men. I am curious about what it must have been like to be on the inside of the Firm, and then to have that world and your place in it disappear. I draft an advertisement and fax it to the personal columns of the Potsdam paper.
Seeking: former Stasi officers and unofficial collaborators for interview. Publication in English, anonymity and discretion guaranteed.

6
Stasi HQ
    The next day the phone calls start very early in the morning. I hadn’t thought it through—I hadn’t imagined what it would be like to have a series of military types, who had lost their power and lost their country, call you up at home.
    I’m asleep. I pick up the phone and say my name.
    ‘ Ja . In response to your notice in the Märkische Allgemeine .’
    ‘ Ja …’ I fumble for my watch. It is 7.35 am.
    ‘How much are you paying?’
    ‘ Bitte? ’
    ‘You must understand—,’ the voice says. I sit up and pull the covers around me.
    ‘To whom am I speaking?’
    ‘That doesn’t matter for the moment.’ The voice is assured. ‘You must understand that it is very hard for some of us now to get jobs in this new Germany. We are discriminated against and ripped off blind from one minute to another, in this—this Kapitalismus . But we learn fast: so I ask you, how much you are prepared to pay for my story?’
    ‘I don’t know, if I don’t know what sort of story it is.’
    ‘I was IM,’ he says.
    I am tempted. The ‘IMs’ were ‘ inofizielle Mitarbeiter ’ or