“What were you teaching them before?”
“Mathematics. Science. History. Literature. To ask questions and to think critically. After, I kept my lessons to the benefits of socialism, and still do.”
His father watched him, waiting for it to sink in: the new understanding that, for much of Conrad’s lifetime, his father was not exactly whom he’d seemed to be. “I see now why you don’t want me to appear to be an IM.”
“Don’t let them turn you into a monster,” his father whispered, hands gripping his knees, eyes sharp as crystal, “like they did me. I can’t live with that. Do you understand?”
“I’ll go right now and find Gabi. I’ll walk to her apartment, leave the bike here, and when I have Muller’s address I’ll wait until dark and return it.”
Conrad rode shakily to Muller’s, and in the twenty minutes it took to get there, he tried but couldn’t digest his father’s confession. All these years, his father, the man he loved and respected above all other men, the man he emulated, the man he’d hoped to make proud by wearing the uniform of the GDR, had sustained his loyalist persona under duress. Conrad felt trapped in a quicksand of bewildered disappointment.
Muller’s elderly sister answered the bell by peeking through the curtains onto the street. In moments, Muller himself appeared at the door.
“What’s this? I thought we agreed on tomorrow.”
“I’ve already decided. Thank you, but I don’t want it.” Conrad leaned the bicycle against the bullet-scarred wall of the Mullers’ building. In the moonlight, he was able to see that someone had left a thimble in one of the holes. It made no sense to Conrad. Nothing made sense tonight. He turned to leave.
Muller stepped forward and grabbed Conrad’s arm. “I won’t take no for an answer.” In the strange shadows of night, Conrad noticed jowls on the man, who seemed to age rapidly with every conversation.
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“I don’t care about money. I’ll tell you the truth.” And here Muller leaned in to whisper in Conrad’s ear. “It’s my sister. She told me if I don’t get rid of the bike, she’ll toss me out. You’ll be doing me a favor by taking it off my hands.”
“I wish I could help you, Herr Muller. My father asked me to return it. Good night.”
“When Emilie fled for the west, she was pregnant.”
Conrad turned back to look at Muller, who stood now in a pocket of darkness, his face blackened. Behind him, the thimble glimmered.
“Who ended it?” Muller continued. “You, or her? Or did she leave you high and dry without mentioning she was going to the other side?”
Conrad stared at Muller, but the inscrutable thimble kept intruding on his attention. Why was it there? How did this man know anything of Emilie? He struggled to recall exactly when he had last been with her. How long now since she’d fled to the west? Fifteen months, he guessed, was the answer to both questions.
“I don’t understand why you’ve mentioned Emilie,” Conrad said, “when our business only concerns this bicycle.”
“Your girlfriend’s defection might look bad for you, don’t you think so? Especially now that she’s given birth to your child.”
Given birth. Child. Was it really possible that he, at nineteen, was already a father? His gaze melted against the hard thimble in the bullet hole.
“It seems to me, Herr Schumann, that someone could think you’d have good cause to follow her over. Who wouldn’t want to see his own child?”
“I’m not sure why I should believe you, Herr Muller.”
“But are you sure why you shouldn’t?” He stepped out of the darkness now, his old face pallid in the weak moonlight. “I can fix this problem for you, if you let me.”
“I’m not yet convinced it’s a problem, with all due respect.”
“All due respect.” Muller laughed. “I’m not your father, boy. Trust me. Take the bike.”
“No, thank you.”
“I insist. You’ll take the bike, and I’ll protect you from the powers that be. One hand washes the other. You understand?”
Finally, Conrad did understand.
“And if I refuse?”
“I’ll have no choice but to report that fact. How will it look? Someone could think that your uniform is just a costume to keep you near the border, giving you an opportunity to get to the other side before the wall is fully built. It could look very bad for you, Herr Schumann. Refusal to cooperate. Baby on the other side of the wall. If that isn’t begging to be put under suspicion, I don’t know what is.”
None of that had ever occurred to Conrad. He guarded the border out of pride as the wall was constructed, to please his father, and himself. Never once had he considered his daily proximity to the west as a temptation of any kind. His father’s words rang in his ears, “Don’t let them turn you into a monster, like they did me.” But his father was not a monster. Who was a good man, if not his father?
“You’ll be better off if you accept the bicycle,” Muller pressed, “as will your entire family. Your sister also has children now, I understand?”
The barely veiled threat against Gabi’s children startled Conrad. Apparently he was to become an informer, or else. Without considering it another moment, he took the bike from the wall, got on, and rode home. He did not, however, bring it into the apartment. Instead, he leaned it against a tree around the corner, hoping that when he returned for it, it would be gone. But to his dismay, the next morning, the bicycle was waiting exactly where he’d left it. He decided he was better off riding it to work than chancing his father seeing it abandoned against the tree, or Muller intercepting him on his way home without it.
“Did you hear the news?” Axel greeted Conrad as they prepared to assume their posts.
“What news?”
“The woman bomber. She’s been caught.”
“And?”
“She’s a baker’s wife with three children at home. She’ll be hanged.”
Conrad wondered briefly what the woman’s name was. He could still see the curve of her cheek. If he knew her name, he would mourn her, so he decided not to find out. Instead, impulsively, he asked, “Since you know everything, Axel, what can you tell me about Emilie?”
“Emilie?”
“Never mind. I don’t know why I asked.” Would anything Axel said to him now be fodder for the Stasi, that great iron ear that hovered above them and forgot nothing? Conrad tried not to listen to the answer, but found he couldn’t resist.
“I heard she had a child. Didn’t you know?” Axel stepped so near, Conrad was sure he caught a whiff of the currant and raspberry pudding Frau Bauer used to make them sometimes after school. The familiar yet distant fragrance sent a cascade of regret through him. He was to lose his friends, all of them, he was sure of it. He needed to keep quiet, say nothing, hear nothing, but there was one more thing he felt compelled to ask.
“Boy or girl?”
“I’ve heard both, so I can’t tell you.”
“Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”
“Only to hurt you?”
The morning progressed, and for the first time he wondered what he was doing and whom he could trust. How was it, for instance, that Axel had heard about Emilie and the baby but Conrad hadn’t? Was Herr Muller already an IM when he and Gabi were together, and if so, had he spied on his sister and perhaps the entire Schumann family? What, if anything, did Gabi know about it? Now, as the day passed, minutes mounting to hours, each one compounded his distress. It didn’t help that the same band of reporters had taken up their usual spots, waiting for something new to happen.
“A baker’s wife!” One of them tried to capture Conrad’s attention. “What do you think of that?”