Not that Lena wanted to watch anything literally burn, mind you. She loved her country; she loved the trees, the rivers, the winters, the rocks, the birds, the animals—anything other than the government. While she didn’t put much energy into hating the government in particular, she didn’t feel like she owed it anything in particular either. Sure, her country had provided for her and her family’s basic needs. Everyone worked, no one went hungry. That was a benefit no one denied. But was that a reason for Lena to feel any sort of obligation? It was the government’s job to provide, that’s what it was supposed to do. Why should Lena thank it for doing what it was supposed to do?
Yet Lena (like most of the German youth) wanted more. More music, more beer, more people, more, just more. But not anything particularly awful, mind you. Drugs were non-existent in the GDR, and the rumors of Western appetites for sex raised as many shudders as they did eyebrows. Maybe she wouldn’t even like it when she heard, tasted or tried anything—music, drugs or sex—but she wanted to make that decision herself without the state wagging its finger at her, or the Stasi chasing her shadow. She shuddered at the thought of what they often threatened to do to people with radical ideas, thoughts or actions. Perhaps it was the Stasi and the State that really made her want so many different things. Perhaps that’s why her latching on to the Sex Pistol’s music was so very ironic indeed.
The Stasi was an ever-present fact of life, much like the damned Wall they loved so much. “Oh, that wall,” Lena mused. That wall was where all of this really stemmed from.
During the last World War, Germany had been bombed. Then it had been sacked. After the city was divided up between the former Axis and Allied powers, things only got worse. The Soviets raped and beat the women in the city, shot and arrested many of the men, and stole anything that wasn’t nailed down. In the bread lines women would talk with each other about how many times they had been raped since last seeing each other. Needless to say, East Germany had been a squalor-filled and dangerous place to live well into the late 60’s and early 70’s. People fled the city in droves destined for refugee camps in the rest of the European world. So many, in fact, that the Communist authorities put up the Wall to keep the remaining few trapped inside.
What had begun as fences and a few guards in the 60’s were now lines of complex concrete corridors, towers with searchlights and machine-guns, minefields, razor-wire, rabid dogs running the line and (should you somehow make it past all that) automated turrets. All of this to keep the people of East Germany trapped inside where a quibbling Politburo could pretend it was providing for them.
That was then, of course. While the wall was no less fortified in the present day of 1981, it no longer served to stem the flow of starving people leaving. People never starved in East Germany anymore. And while life here could get bloody boring for the youth, well, it was still a good life either way. The main problem (at least for the youth of east Germany) had nothing to do with the wall between East and West Germany, but East and West Berlin.
Oddly enough, West Berlin (which was more-or-less capitalism incarnate) was also inside East Germany, separated from East Berlin only by that goddamn Wall. On the West German side, the eyesore was more of a nuisance and a joke than anything else. From what Lena had heard, the youth on the other side painted murals on the Wall and taunted the GDR guards when they were reasonably sauced. They would also hold concerts next to the Wall, or blast records with powerful speakers of musicians that Lena vaguely recognized, like David Bowie, Iggy Pop and the Rolling Stones, just to taunt the Politburo.
In East Berlin, however, the Wall wasn’t just a nuisance—it was a symbol of oversight and stupidity. When a series of popular bands played concerts on the West side of the Wall, several of Lena’s friends had poked their heads over the concrete sections to watch through the concertina wire. All of them were summarily arrested by the Stasi and ‘disappeared’ without explanation. When her friends appeared later, they were not the same. Most were much paler and had lost a lot of weight. They would also speak in hushed tones with darting eyes when they were around her. When Lena questioned them, they would make excuses and walk away abruptly. They were nervous of her and nervous of their previous friends.
“He is a Spitzel,” a friend told Lena concerning one of these previous friends, “A Stasi narc. Avoid that one… he will tell the Stasi about your band and about all of your friends!”
Informants were the greatest fear in East Germany. While a few of them were professional agents of the Stasi, most were regular folks that had somehow run afoul of the government. It didn’t take much—smoking western cigarettes, speaking out against Socialism in any way or writing letters to Western associates would quickly do the trick. Sometimes merely being down in the subway at the wrong time could land you in one of the Stasi’s ‘black cells.’ Terrible things happened in those cells; everyone had heard the stories. No one lasted more than a month, she had heard, and when the prisoner finally broke, they were given a choice: a lengthy prison sentence or become an informant. Of course, no one chose the prison sentence, but once you were found out as a Spitzel you were ostracized from the community.
Practically anyone could be an informant, this was a fact that everyone knew, and surely informants were even at her shows; but this was a fact that only Lena seemed to concern herself with. While most everyone simply ignored the possibility (believing that true members of the scene would never rat each other out), Lena often worried. Punks and hip-hoppers were prime targets as of late and with churches being the primary location they played, well, it wasn’t hard to gather dirt when you really wanted it. But so far, nothing had happened, and you couldn’t treat everyone with a sense of suspicion, after all. A person has to trust, or else what is the point of life? Still, Lena felt an overwhelming sense of paranoia at times.
“Isn’t it a little cold out for a smoke?”
Lena quickly hid a smile when she again heard the voice of Hans. “Every show,” she thought to herself. Indeed, every show she would perform, and he would mosh. Then she would sneak outside for her cigarette and he would interrupt her very last drag. It would have been annoying if he didn’t have that dimple in his chin. No, the dimple really made up for it.
“My smoke keeps me warm,” Lena said sarcastically, pretending to ignore him.
“Perhaps a jacket would keep you warmer?”
“I know something else that would keep me warmer…” Lena stopped the thought in its tracks, “Oh, if I needed my jacket, I would have brought it out.”
“Well then,” Hans scoffed, “I’ll just bring this back inside.”
Hans really did know how to interrupt her, and Lena considered this before grumping, “Well, I suppose since you brought it all this way.”
“For you, Lena, I would bring your jacket at least twice the distance! Maybe even more.”
“Twice the distance? You mean, twice the distance from the other side of the door, right over there?”
“I said maybe even more.”
“How much more?” Lena raised an eyebrow.
Hans thought about this for a moment. Actually, he probably wasn’t thinking at all, he was just toying with her. She knew it, he knew it, they both knew it. It was the long, protracted “hmmm” he uttered that gave it away along with the stroking of that perfect chin of his.