Border of Fire, Border of Ice

By Sture Stiernlof

Border of Fire - Border of Ice is a romantic thriller set in Europe during the Cold War. Lena, a young violinist from the Soviet Union, meets Leo, a writer from the West, in East Berlin. An intense and erotic love affair begins, and Leo is gradually drawn into Lena´s highly dangerous plan to defect to the West with her brother and two friends across the death strip separating East and West Germany. The escape fails dramatically, and Leo and Lena seem to have lost each other forever. But later, in Leningrad, Lena develops a new, bold plan: To escape across the desolate wilderness border between Finland and Russia on skis in midwinter. However, first Lena must work at a kolkhoz on the Kola peninsula north of the Arctic Circle. It is a godforsaken, cold and dirty place, and she meets hostility, hardship and brutality. The dramatic escape takes place on New Year´s Eve. Militia checkpoints, border patrols, wolf packs, Soviet elite forces and brutally cold weather are a constant deadly threat in the dark, empty, ice-cold wilderness. Border of Fire - Border of Ice is the story of a brave, warm-hearted woman and her unflinching resolution to overcome all obstacles and find freedom and love. It is an exciting, captivating, feel-good story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785071553

Book preview

PART ONE

Chapter 1

A guard dog was barking near the death strip. Its voice was harsh, aggressive. The barking continued, persistent and nerve-racking like tormenting memories from a recent past.

The barking was just one sound amongst many in the Berlin summer night, and it had nothing to do with him. But it nibbled on his nerves, and he felt that his frail reserve of joy, elation and expectation was running out again. What was taking her so long?

The curtain stirred softly in the warm night breeze. He was standing naked at the half-open door to the balcony. The girl had disappeared into the bathroom when their playful preliminaries had reached the point of no return.

The neon lights in West Berlin sparkled in the west. The early summer night sky was pale. Not even the ugly, forgotten, weed-ridden ruin areas immediately to the west of the Wall were completely dark. He could make out shadows moving rapidly across a vacant field on the other side of the sector border. Young hooligans on the run after having vandalized parked cars or beaten up some frightened old pensioner who thought that the era of terror ended in 1945? Or one of those wild artist collectives who regard the Wall as the world’s longest canvas and keep decorating it with their bizarre graffiti during nightly raids? Individualism has many expressions in the supposedly free world.

The dog barked again, savagely and stridently. A jeep drove past slowly on the patrol road between the vehicle trench and the minefield. The four soldiers in it had pistols at their belts and submachine guns over their knees. Their comrades in the nearest high concrete watch tower suspiciously followed their journey with binoculars. He could see the dog too now, a Rottweiler. It was rushing along a running-line between the Wall and the high wire fence, the red and blue alarm lights of which could start rotating any time. The dog’s excitement was related to the jeep. Like the men in the tower, it regarded the four soldiers as potential refugees from the republic, deserving only to be torn to pieces by sharp teeth and steel-jacketed bullets. Reality had shown that it was a very plausible assumption.

The floodlights threw their cold and merciless light over the death zone, killing the warm sensuality and tender romance of the June night. The border between the two German states was a world without love and mercy, shivering in the eternal winter of maximum security prisons and closed psychiatric institutions.

What a place for a love night, he thought. His apprehension increased. The bathroom door opened. He turned around and felt his doubts disappear and the spell return. She was glorious. A slim, lithe young woman, beautiful in a somewhat careless way. To his surprise she was naked. She even coquetted with it, doing a little pirouette like a ballerina. It must be the pink Soviet champanskoye at the café, he thought. She had not given the impression of being a girl who would be spontaneously uninhibited the first time with a new male acquaintance. They hardly knew a thing about each other except for their first names, Leo and Lena.

He felt a sudden heat and heaviness in his lower belly and took a step towards her. With a small laugh she dodged him and quickly slipped into bed.

He saw her merry, brown eyes and soft, lank hair against the pillow and on the spur of the moment tore the sheet off her.

It would be a crime against humanity to cover up the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen in this Workers’ and Farmers’ State, he said softly.

With a shriek of protest, the girl bounced up from the bed. They wrestled, laughing, and fell down on the bed together. She quickly caught hold of the pillow and hit him in the face with it. He tried to subdue her with his body. She drummed her fists against his chest.

They kissed with tears of laughter on their cheeks, then became silent and earnest. Her heat and hunger were unmistakable. Her lips sucked hard against his neck. The sudden pain awakened the analytical part of his brain for a short moment and he thought, with a grimace, that this was the punishment for getting involved with such a young woman and not with someone of his own age. But what does a sucking mark matter when there is no longer anyone who can be jealous about it?

She was passive now, breathing heavily, waiting for him to take the initiative. He rolled her over on her back and entered her, simply and without further attempts to prolong the foreplay. Small puppyish whining sounds and violently increased breathing accompanied his movements. He put both hands under her bottom and lifted her against him to penetrate deeper and fill her entirely. She was very wet. He rode her with the calm, deeply sensual relaxation of a man whose body is in balance and whose soul feels harmony and happiness. It had been that sort of day, one of those rare moments in life when one knows instinctively at the moment of awakening that something momentous would occur. It must have been such a day for her too, he thought. Otherwise they would hardly have started talking in the violin shop, still less gone together to the café, joking and laughing, and finally sneaking behind a group of Hungarian bus tourists in the hotel lobby, rushing up the broad stairs with its threadbare old red carpet to his room in gay, irresponsible exhilaration. Their rapport had been immediate. They had been relaxed and joyful like old friends almost from the first moment. He had never experienced anything even remotely like it with any woman he had met. It had been a memorable, almost enchanted afternoon.

The dog barked again, a background sound from a world that couldn’t have been more insignificant at this moment. He put his hand down between their bodies and let it rest on her mound. Her pubic hair was thick, warm and dry, pleasant to play with like a furry animal. He let his hand wander on, slid a finger into her in front of his penis and caressed her swollen clitoris. On an impulse as careless and irresponsible as everything else that day he moved his fingers around, gathered the hot, slippery liquid and slowly lubricated the little muscular opening further down. She gave a violent gasp. Had nobody done such a thing before? The thought excited him further. He lifted her knees high, put his hand over her wide open, steaming sex, pulled out and slowly and tenderly penetrated the other narrow, elastic opening.

If the dog barked, they didn’t hear it. But at a tape-recorder, in a small room behind the reception desk, a man sat listening. His face carried the unhealthy dullness of the night worker. But his ears were red and his spectacles were steamy while his machine unfeelingly registered the sounds and calls of ecstasy, untranslatable into any human language but nevertheless so unequivocal that human beings as well as animals are touched deep in the innermost of their instincts. When the tape-recorder automatically started again after a long period of silence, the pale man did not understand the first words.

I never thought, the girl said, that one could lose one’s virginity twice.

She smiled and let her fingers play in his hair. She did not cover herself any longer. Their intimacy was natural and relaxed now. Between her breasts a small golden star hung in a thin gold chain. He tried to interpret the characters. They were not Cyrillic. Were they Hebrew perhaps?

What does it say? he asked.

Zion, the girl said sleepily.

The answer opened a new dimension. He knew her as Lena, a music teacher from Leningrad. She was in East Berlin with one of those strictly organized group tours that, if a Soviet citizen is very lucky, sometimes open the rare possibility of visiting foreign but preferably still Soviet-controlled countries. Levi jeans and a Cacharel blouse had revealed that she was a smart and ingenious young woman with the ability to arrange matters to her advantage even in a shortage-economy like the Soviet one. He also knew that she was a violinist, not one of those musical prodigies whom the Soviet state exploit in order to convince the world of its cultural superiority, but good enough to have made it through the prestigious Leningrad Conservatory and become an assistant teacher of the violin there. But Zion made her a rebel, a member of a persecuted and distrusted people and strong enough to be proud of it.

Is your Jewish identity important to you? he asked.

A few years ago I didn’t care about it at all. My parents lived like Russians and felt they were Russians, and I have been brought up like any other Russian girl. For a long time it was easy. But things have become worse again.

She rolled out of the bed and dug in her handbag.

Wait, I’ll show you.

"Here. My passport is stamped with the words Jewish nationality. The authorities remind you over and over again that being Jewish is no merit. And when you have been reminded about that often enough and have been called Zhidka many times in the shop or on the tram – do you know what a Zhidka is? It means Jewish slut – then you begin to understand that the choice is between submission and defiance."

And you chose defiance?

She hesitated a moment.

No, not really. And I don’t belong to any opposition group. But I am not ashamed of being Jewish, and I am not going to let myself be browbeaten. In my country you have to be strong if you don’t want to deny your Jewish roots. Sometimes I think that the only Jews who are strong live in Israel and the Soviet Union.

He turned and groped for his little Sony. He never travelled with more than hand luggage. But the radio, proudly called World Receiver, did not take up more space than a pocket-book and was always with him. He turned the FM dial. Hier ist Sender freies Berlin, he heard. This is the American Forces Network, the next one came in. Strong senders. Neighbours. But still voices from another world, a world where the word Jew no longer exists in any passport. He knew that the radio was probably useless against the microphones he guessed were in the walls. If necessary, the conversation could always be filtered out of the disturbing background noise. But symbolic resistance felt more meaningful than no resistance at all, and he did not want the girl to keep talking freely into the tape-recorders of the Stasi, the East German secret police.

Benny Goodman’s Seven Come Eleven swung into the little room behind the reception desk with painful loudness. In the background a girl’s voice mumbled. The pale man swore, took off his headsets and let the tape-recorder run on automatic. Listening to a love meeting belonged to the few perks of the job. But he would be damned if he intended to ruin his ears by trying to hear a low-voiced conversation behind decadent capitalist music probably played by negroes. The highly paid nine-to-five specialists at the headquarters of the Staatssicherheitsdienst could devote themselves to that if they liked.

How long will you be staying in Berlin? he asked.

Twelve more days. And you?

I must leave this hotel the day after tomorrow, he said.

He saw disappointment in her eyes and followed his impulse again, knowing at the same moment that he was doing something that he shouldn’t do.

Promise to meet me every day, and I shall try to prolong my stay another week.

Promise to make me as happy as today every day and promise to make love to me as you just did at least once more and I might answer like a good girl.

And what does a good girl answer?

She tittered a little.

She says maybe. You men always think that means yes.

She blew away a lock of hair from her cheek, clutched his hair on both sides of his head, pulled him against her and kissed him on the mouth.

Maybe, she said, and kissed him again.

He felt the pulse of excitement rising again but was still distanced enough to see himself with the girl’s eyes. He didn’t think she was driven by a father complex. She seemed far too independent and strong for that. But if a young woman of 25 spontaneously enters into a sexual relationship with a man of 40, what does she then see in him? A well-trained and youthful physique, a certain nonchalant charm and the confidence and experience only an active and eventful life can provide could of course be a reason. But an abundant supply of hard currency and the ability to open doors and buy entrance to attractions which are never for sale for roubles, not even for Ostmark, might be even more tempting. He asked himself what weighed most heavily, but lost interest in the analysis when the girl smoothly slid on top of him, parted her legs, sighed with pleasure and slipped herself over his penis with a quick, wiggling movement, as naturally and easily as if they had done it thousands of times before during a long and secure marriage.

They made love gently and, he felt, with tenderness this time. The alcohol-coarse voice of Joe Cocker and the barking of the dog accompanied them. For a moment even the dog felt almost romantic.

Couldn’t this be dangerous for you? he asked afterwards.

Perhaps, the girl said. But not if you mean the organs.

She used the Russian expression. It sounded obscene in English. She appeared unconcerned. Young people are always expected to discipline themselves and show consideration – in the Arab world to their parents, in Catholic countries to the church, in the East Bloc to the party and the organs. And still they manage to make love, find outlets for their rebelliousness and their desire to challenge life and play forbidden games. He reflected that the risk must be small so far. Not even security organizations as large and well-equipped as the KGB and the Stasi could possibly find it purposeful to waste their resources on keeping a detailed watch over the holiday adventures of a young Soviet musician in East Berlin. And he himself hardly filled their criteria for a Western visitor worthy of special supervision or perhaps a recruiting effort.

Nobody even knows that I am here. But now I shall go and meet two boys, she said, and looked at him with teasing eyes that told him that he ought to look wounded and disappointed. He put on his most broken-hearted expression but realized at the same time that he really was a bit hurt. Am I 14 or 40? he muttered angrily to himself and asked:

What boys?

She giggled and dug in her handbag for her hairbrush.

It is my brother Tolya and our friend Ruslan, she said.

She went to the mirror and started brushing her hair, soft, touching and very young in her nakedness now that sober matter-of-factness had replaced desire.

We have agreed to meet at midnight. We must return to the youth hostel together. We left together and must return together. Otherwise our group leader will make sure that we are never allowed to travel abroad again.

She disappeared into the bathroom and returned, it seemed, almost immediately. The washed-out jeans were discreetly tight in a way that a man probably needs to be 40, not 14 or 24, to appreciate fully. The top two buttons of the blouse were open. She radiated the provocative freshness and inviolability of a woman who has had a deeply satisfying love meeting but now considers it time to be practical about things again.

Wait, he said. I’m coming with you. You shouldn’t pass the reception desk alone.

He dressed. Jeans, denim shirt, a deliberately scratched and worn leather waistcoat with wallet, DM-cheques, credit cards and passport in the inner zip-pockets. He was well aware that it was not the latest fashion west of the Wall. But he didn’t care as long as he found his dress practical and comfortable. The touch of cowboy style had probably been no disadvantage in East Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR, when it came to attracting the interest of a young East European woman in the violin shop earlier today, he thought cynically. On this side of the Wall, men with designer stubble and dressed in baggy suits would be regarded as losers or tramps. Not like in the West, where the style was seen as sexy and a mark of success.

He locked the door behind them. The corridor was empty. Through a door they heard the late TV news: ‘Der liebe Genosse Erich Honecker hat heute...’ he managed to catch before he saw that she was about to press the elevator button. He leapt forward and caught her hand. She looked startled.

Wait. Let’s walk down. Then perhaps we can take the night receptionist by surprise, he said.

They crept down the carpeted stone stairs. The receptionist sat absorbed in an Italian men’s magazine, one he ought not be able to read. However, free access to decadent Western pornographic publications was one of the silently accepted perks for these nocturnal hotel watchmen who serve both the Stasi and the state tourist authorities.

They were halfway through the lobby when the man started, raised his head and called out.

"Herr Graz, klein Moment bitte!"

"Später. Ich bin bald zurück," Leo said coolly and waved his hand in a deprecating manner.

He was certain that he had never seen the night receptionist before. The man could of course have studied his passport in the 24 hours that had passed since he handed it in for registration. But to be able to identify him so quickly would have demanded more of an eye for faces and more of a presence of mind than was reasonable to expect of a man who, entirely without warning, had been torn from his erotic dreams. A far more likely explanation was that the room had been bugged. The receptionist had known that he had not been alone and had possibly also been reprimanded for letting an unidentified woman sneak unseen into the room of a male capitalist guest. Now the receptionist wanted to slow them down long enough to obtain details of her appearance.

The entrance door slammed shut behind them. Why can’t the Communist states construct a decent door-closer, he wondered with irritation. Inside in the illuminated lobby, the receptionist stood up, glaring angrily in their direction. They saw him picking up the telephone.

Are you a spy? the girl asked, and he was aware that it was only partly a joke.

No. But I don’t like people spying on me. And you have already risked too much today.

Graz, the girl said. Leo Graz. I didn’t even know your surname.

Leopold Graz, he corrected. "Franz Josef Leopold Graz. And if you think that sounds pompous, blame the fact that I am Austrian. We are all pompous like Lipizzaner stallions, Wiener Sängerknaben or Kaiser monuments."

She laughed and put her arm around his waist and her head against his shoulder.

Imagine if I were to fall in love with a living Kaiser monument, she said.

They came out into Unter den Linden. Formerly it was Stalin-Allee. Its old name had been restored when the GDR at long last started to realize that its German historic heritage perhaps weighed heavier after all than the fraternal, socialist strait-jacket provided by the Soviet Union with comradely greetings. To the left, the flood-lit Brandenburger Tor rose against the nocturnal sky. They went to the right, still with their arms around each other. After a few blocks the girl stopped.

I’ll go alone now.

They embraced and for a moment stood very still, cheek to cheek.

I want to see you again, he said. He looked at his watch and noted that it was already past midnight.

Today. Couldn’t you come to the violin shop? Nobody will be suspicious if you do, and I must go there anyhow to find out if he really was serious about getting me a Landolfi.

Are you a collector? the girl asked.

No, he said. My daughter plays the violin. I want to give it to her.

The girl’s face darkened. She looked disappointed and angry.

You said you were alone. Then you have a wife too, of course?

I am alone, he said. My wife is dead. And I see my daughter very seldom. She is at a boarding-school in England.

The girl’s face brightened like a summer day when the clouds scatter.

Landolfi, she said dreamily. You must be very rich. Even if I hadn’t liked you, I would have come for the sake of the Landolfi. I’ll try it out for you.

Come for my sake, too. I’ll be there around five o’clock. Promise to call me if you can’t come. It would make me very sad to lose contact with you now, he said.

He walked back to his hotel. He felt a joy in his heart that he thought he had lost forever. But he also felt a sadness, which he understood would become more painful, much more painful, very soon.

Over the divided city, in the light skies of the summer night, a flock of geese flew, free and heedless of human walls and borders.

Chapter 2

Leo!

She came from the other side of the street like a vision of summer and joy. She was wearing the same blouse as the night before but had a light blue skirt and simple, white low-heeled shoes. She took a shortcut in front of a Trabant, causing the driver to hoot angrily, and gave Leo an eager and impulsive hug as if they had been lovers for months and not only for a day.

Franz Josef Leopold Graz, she said, and kissed him on his mouth. Are you tired today?

I feel younger, happier and more energetic than I have for years, he said, and meant it.

She laughed. He glimpsed the little golden chain under her loosely buttoned blouse. He felt a sudden surge of heat at the pleasant thought that he, and only he in this street, knew the secret of the amulet that this beautiful and infectiously light-hearted young woman carried in the cleft between her breasts.

They turned into a side street and stopped in front of the violin shop. The window was artlessly decorated with some sheet-music, two new bows, a dusty cello and four shiny, freshly varnished, mass-produced violins of the cheap kind that parents and teachers put in the hands of reluctant children, killing their interest in music forever.

But in the middle of the display there was an instrument which made many of the passers-by stop and look. It was a black violin with a tenderly carved scroll, pegs with mother-of-pearl intarsia and an artfully made band of mother-of-pearl around the belly. Nicht zu verkaufen, not for sale, someone had printed on a piece of paper. A melancholic, tragic beauty surrounded the instrument. It was obvious that it was very old and had been very expensive. It was also obvious that someone had destroyed it completely, crushing it by putting a foot in its case when it was on the floor or by placing a fat behind on it when it was in a chair. Whoever had owned it had been unable to throw away the debris but had made a pathetic effort to glue the splinters together again.

How sad, Lena said. I feel like crying, looking at it. I think it is an old gypsy violin. Or perhaps it is the work of an old master for some violin-loving prince. Now it’s dead. A violin that has been broken like that will never ever be whole again.

A man who has been broken will never be a whole man again either, Leo said thoughtfully.

The only customer in the shop left, carrying a few small envelopes with strings. They entered, nodding to the owner, a man of about 35 with unframed glasses and thin hair that was already receding at the temples. They addressed him in English. They could have spoken German, but avoiding clues about one’s identity was an instinctive reaction to the conspiratorial atmosphere of East Germany where even the language, with its tendency to prefer the indistinctive subjunctive mood, was affected.

The man opened the door at the back of the shop. It led to a repair workshop with the small round planes, thin-bladed wood chisels and other special tools of a violin maker. It smelled of glue, talcum and old wood. The man opened a scraped and battered case, took out the violin and gave it to Leo with slow and reverential movements. He suspiciously satisfied himself that nobody was in the shop or on the pavement outside and closed the door to the workshop.

I can of course give no guarantees, he said. But I think it very likely that it really is a genuine Landolfi.

Leo held the violin under the lamp. It was a small, graceful instrument. The neck was entirely without varnish, and the left upper side of the body was also badly worn. This was obviously an instrument that someone or perhaps many had loved very much and frequently played. He let the light fall down through the f-holes. In the dusty darkness near the sound-post he could dimly see a yellowed strip of paper with the printed text Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi a D 1779. He knew that it meant nothing. Stradivarius, Guarnerius and lesser 18th century masters like Landolfi certainly used to put printed trade-marks in their unique instruments. But innumerable labels had later been falsified or moved in order to increase the value of anonymous old instruments and make unsuspecting buyers believe that ordinary factory violins had come from a master’s hand.

Try it and tell me what you think, he said to Lena.

She took the violin with a practised grip, tuned it with a few fast fifths and let her fingers run through the G major scale in four ascending octaves. She fine-tuned, took down the instrument, sniffed through its sound holes and examined it long and thoroughly.

The shop-keeper looked worried. He kept stroking his thin hair. Yesterday he had established contact with a capitalist buyer who evidently had plenty of hard currency and seemed to know a thing or two about violins but who evidently wasn’t a professional musician or a dealer in antique instruments. Today the same customer had returned, not alone but with the young woman who had come alone to his shop yesterday and who he already had guessed must be an advanced violinist. It did not bode well for the business tactics he had intended to use.

It is beautiful, and it is old, Lena said. But I don’t think it is a Landolfi, although it looks very much like one. Perhaps from Mittenwald. Or from the lesser known masters in Vogtland or Markneukirchen. They often made excellent copies of the old Italian master violins, you know. It can’t be from Klingenthal, though. My own violin probably comes from there, and it is very different.

She raised the instrument and started to play. It was one of Bartok’s Romanian dances, an andante in D minor. She played with half-closed eyes, deeply concentrated. The instrument filled the little room with an almost painful volume of sound. She exaggerated her vibratos as if she wanted to remind them of the sad fate of the broken gypsy violin. It rendered the music an intimacy that would have felt artificial in the cool atmosphere of a concert hall, but now transmitted a peculiarly sensual mood to the two men in the room.

She had beads of perspiration on her forehead and damp spots under her arms when she finished. Leo had a quick vision of the naked, panting young woman he had embraced in his bed little more than twelve hours ago. The shop-keeper must have felt the erotic tension too. His eyes fluttered up and down from her breasts to her lips.

Slowly, as in a trance, she put down the violin.

No, it isn’t a Landolfi. The overtones in the upper register are more accentuated on them. But it’s a marvellous instrument, better than most I have played, she said.

The shop-keeper’s English was bad but he had understood enough to realize that his original plan was doomed to fail.

As I’m sure you know, there isn’t any Landolfi to be found under a price of at least 30000 D-mark, he said. But since I can’t completely guarantee its genuineness I would, under certain circumstances, be willing to sell it to you for half that price.

Yet another one who does not even consider a deal in the currency of his own country, Leo thought with irritation.

What special circumstances do you mean? he asked, although he knew the answer.

There are certain restrictions concerning foreign currency in our country, as you know. Therefore it will be necessary to pay cash and in used bank-notes of normal denomination. And I can’t give you a receipt.

What you are suggesting is illegal, and you expect me to take the risk, Leo said brusquely.

The shop-keeper looked dejected. Leo continued:

I am interested in buying the instrument. But I am not prepared to pay the high price you are asking. I might give you 6000 D-mark. But I shall need a receipt of at least 2000 to show when I pass the border on my way back. I can’t come with a violin and pretend that I’ve had it for a long time when all they need to do in order to call my bluff is to ask me to play.

He knew that 6000 D-mark was a shamelessly low bid for an instrument that in West Germany would cost four or five times as much. But he also knew that a sum of 6000 D-mark was worth four or five times its nominal value on the black currency market in the GDR.

The shop-keeper looked pained and said that he might possibly go down to 13000 but not one Pfennig less. Leo assumed that the man had come across the instrument in the shady ways of the black market and was eager to get rid of it fast. It was likely to be a long time before another rich and sufficiently bold buyer would find his way to the shop from the inaccessible world on the other side of the Wall. No reason, therefore, to be soft. It took some ten minutes of haggling before the man finally accepted a price of 8000.

I’ll be back in a few days, Leo said.

The man opened the door to the shop. It was still empty. He scanned the street outside and returned.

"Auf Wiedersehen. Bis bald," he said sourly.

They came out into the heat of the summer afternoon and walked away, aimlessly at first, content to be together. Lena took his hand.

Tell me about your daughter, she said.

She is called Christine. She is thirteen and attends a boarding-school in Brighton. Her mother was English. I live in Germany now, and I couldn’t bring Christine. She speaks very little German, she has all her friends in Brighton and she took the death of her mother very hard.

But she should be with you, Lena protested.

Perhaps. But she says that she likes her school. I’m not so sure. I feel bad about it. It’s a very collective, disciplined and regulated place. But it might have contributed to increasing her interest in music. The violin makes her unusual. I think she has realized that. That gives her an advantage over the other children.

I know, Lena said. I have grown up in a collective environment too. Don’t you think I understand how to stand out from the crowd with the help of music? Is she good?

She is no wonder child. But she loves her instrument, works hard and is regarded as a talent by her teachers. She plays the first violin in the school orchestra and she will audition for the Brighton youth symphony orchestra in the autumn.

They walked along the Spree, which smelled of mud and diesel in the heat.

Is she pretty? Lena asked unexpectedly.

Leo smiled.

Yes. She might turn out to be as pretty as you are when she grows up. As a matter of fact, you look a little like each other.

The banality of the situation struck him. His feelings of guilt towards his daughter and his love for her. The unsolved dilemma of how to be near her, help and support her. The obvious parallels between her and Lena. The stuff for cheap short stories in pulp magazines but perhaps part of the explanation why something that started as a playful game twenty-four hours ago already felt more serious than he really wanted. Banal but genuine. Even a melodrama can be real.

She ought to be extremely happy to get a violin like that. Do you think she will appreciate it?

I know she will. It might seem a bit extravagant to buy her a Landolfi or something almost as good as that, but right now I can afford it, and it will be a great stimulus to her. Besides, that violin is also a good investment.

Capitalist, Lena said. There was more admiration than reproach in her voice.

They turned into Jerusalemer Strasse. A few blocks away the border came into sight. The evening sun shone like a theatre spotlight in their eyes and painted a surrealistic, sharp black shadow of the Wall on the ground. It looked like a bottomless cleft. They walked towards the sector border, still hand in hand, silent