“Strawberries are my favorite.”
The way he eyed Faith as if she were a juicy berry herself made her want to pummel him with rotten fruit, but she smiled instead. “If I get a chance, I’ll bring you some.”
“Only once is a tease.”
“With the visa I could drop by every now and then with a few vegetables as a gesture of my gratitude for pushing the paperwork through within the week.”
“You do know we have plenty of apples, onions, potatoes. And do not bring cabbage-we need no more cabbage here.” He picked up the bowl and slurped lentil soup.
“So am I going to be a visiting art professor or not?”
“The outlook’s improving.”
“But I see we’re not there yet. Did you get a chance to look over the Ozark U. literature I gave you last time?”
“Such a clean campus. I’d love to visit there sometime-maybe for a semester.”
“And we’d love to have you. If this year goes well for me, I’m sure we can work something out. So what is the status of my visa?”
“Undecided, but there is one small thing. Our computer is broken. It’s a Western model and no one here can repair it. You could transport it to the West for service. It would speed our work along. We can be of mutual assistance to one another.”
“Sorry, but I’m already schlepping around too much today.” She patted her packages as she eyed the exit.
“If it’s not fixed soon, our visa backlog will continue to grow.”
“I understand. Sometimes it can take Ozark U. forever to process paperwork for foreign exchange scholars.”
“We can arrange for someone to help you carry it and your packages to the checkpoint. You could take a taxi once you’re over there. We have West marks to reimburse you.”
Red flag.
“I’m afraid I’d have problems on the border.” Like being arrested and coerced into spying. She stood, debating with herself whether to abort or play things out as far as she dared. “I didn’t declare a computer on my way in.”
“I’ll write a letter with an explanation of everything.”
She stepped away, but her investment in the project stopped her and she paused. “I know a few things about computers. Let me have a look inside.”
Neumann whisked Faith past his secretary. His private office was a memorial to all things Soviet. Framed posters exalted the Soviet chemical industry. On his desk was a stack of recent issues of Izvestia, Pravda and other Soviet newspapers she didn’t recognize. Neumann hurried to plug in a model Sputnik rocket with blinking lights trailing behind it.
“Frau Muster mixes herself into everything. She doesn’t approve of women, let alone foreign ones, in my office,” Neumann said in a low voice. “She’s an old-timer. When I tell her about some of the things that come out about Stalin, she warns me to burn the Russian papers before it’s too late.”
“Maybe she knows something you don’t.”
“She’s seen a lot. Her husband was a prisoner of war who never came home from the SU. Her kids weren’t allowed into the university. But she’s right that Gorbachev threatens a lot of powerful people.”
“Let me have a look at the computer.” Faith knelt in front of the metal case and flipped it on its side. “You have a screwdriver?”
“I don’t. You might as well go ahead and take it as is.” He moved closer to her while she fished a Polish Army knife from her purse. “I love women with wide cheekbones. You look so Slavic.” He brushed the back of his hand against her face.
She slid away from the touch. He acted as if nothing had happened and left the room. She sighed as she wondered if anything was worth putting up with such awkward passes. She popped open the antique computer and stared inside.
No dust.
She wiggled the cables to test if they were seated on the motherboard. They weren’t. The floppy drive wasn’t even connected to the power supply. It wasn’t a computer, but a jumble of broken parts. Faith fumed at the insult of such an amateurish setup, but she wasn’t sure whether to direct her anger toward Neumann or the Stasi. He deserved it, but her gut nagged her. The Association’s fingerprints were all over the machine.
Neumann returned, carrying a letter. “What are you doing?”
“This appears to be your problem.” Faith picked a card at random and pivoted it until it released from its slot.
“Put it back and take the whole machine.”
“The info I need is right here.” She scrawled down numbers onto the back of a used U-Bahn ticket.
“Take it. I’ll personally see your visa receives top priority.”
“You have to work with me. I take the card or nothing. Your choice.” She reached toward the desk to set down the part.
He grabbed her wrist. “The card. But the visa might be delayed.”
Outside the air was stained from soft brown coal and it filtered all warmth from the sun’s rays. A few blocks from the ministry, Faith boarded a streetcar. The filthy orange tram jerked into motion and her parcels slid a few inches, but she steadied them against her leg. She looked around for a place to sit. A mesh bag with shriveled carrots poking through it occupied the only empty seat. Its owner faced the window, but something about her seemed familiar.
The hair. The chemical-blue hair.
Faith tore off a ticket and stuck it in the machine and slammed the button with her fist. The teeth of the primitive contraption pressed holes into the ticket like a medieval torture instrument shoving spears into a heretic. The streetcar lurched forward. She grabbed a pole to steady herself. Her sweaty palm smeared the grime. Maybe she was being paranoid thinking the card was a setup for the Stasi to nail her on the border. Neumann could’ve insisted upon it only to save face after the failed pass. After all, the man was desperate.
The streetcar carried her past blackened façades cratered with bullet holes from the Second World War. Almost forty-five years later, the East Germans still couldn’t afford to repair their capital. Aesthetics were not a communist priority. She looked away from the window and decided it was time to lure the Stasi out into the open. She aligned the wheels of her cart with the exit. At the next tram stop a man hobbled down the steep steps. Seconds before the automatic doors slammed shut, she bounded from the car.
The blue-haired woman forced the doors open and jumped to the street.
Faith walked down the avenue and the woman paced her along the other side. Faith stopped at a kiosk to buy a newspaper. The woman paused to look into a toystore window. Faith shoved the thin Junge Welt under her arm and continued down the sidewalk. The woman followed her. Faith had found a single tick crawling up her leg; now every little itch felt like the Stasi.
Abort.
Fifteen minutes later, Faith crossed under the railway trestle at Friedrichstrasse. Leaded exhaust fumes clouded the entrance. Each breath scorched her lungs and she tasted metal. She slipped the computer card and Neumann’s letter into the newspaper and dropped it into the rubbish. In front of a bookstore a wizened man was hunched over a dented pail of mums. She dug into her pocket for the last remaining East German coins and selected a prop. Flowers add innocence.
The first wave of Western day tourists was pouring into the customs hall, returning from their own stale taste of the communist world. With each tourist, the odds tipped a little more in her favor. Faith adored Checkpoint Charlie’s Cold War glamour, but no real professional would choose it over the crowds of the Friedrichstrasse. She plunged herself into the comforting masses. Her muscles struggled to compact her body into invisibility. She concentrated upon her breath and almost convinced herself her body was under her control. But she knew better.