The Notebook

Co-erced into spying on her neighbours, Beata must find a way to protect her son’s future…

Frau Bruner narrows her eyes and focuses through the flimsy gauze of her curtains onto the grey concrete of the East Berlin street below. Despite being in her late fifties now, she’s pleased that her eyesight hasn’t aged like the rest of her body, that she can still see with clarity, and without glasses.

She pencils in the small notebook perched on her windowsill 8.30Frau Mund,totheshops–alone and then tracks her gaze to the far end of the street. A sudden scrabbling on the stairwell outside the front door catches her attention and Beata Bruner is soon at the stoop, picking up the dustpan and brush that she keeps as a prop for such times. There’s all manner of things you can discover as people go up and down the five floors of her apartment block.

However the third floor landing is empty, with no Herr Kube, who always leaves for work about now.

Instead, his rangy marmalade cat creeps out from behind the upturned pot plants that she works so hard to keep nice, their dirt spewed across her lovely clean floor.

“Shoo! Get out of it,” she hisses, “You’ll be the death of me, cat.” The orange fur scarpers down a flight, and Beata is left to tidy the mess.

Inside, nursing a cup of weak Rondo kaffee, she looks at her notebook scratchings and sighs. It’s not much to show for a whole week’s watching. Herr Wolff will not be impressed when he comes to collect her records. But the comings and goings of her block in the Mitte district have been purely routine, no clandestine meetings that she can tell, passing of goods or secretly planning an escape over the ugly concrete wall that had divided their city for the past two years. With groups now tunnelling deep under Berlin to escape from the East to West, she’d even trudged down to the basement to check there was nothing untoward. Silence, save for rats scuttling in the gloom.

Herr Wolff will want more from her. Because he’s Stasi and they – East Germany’s notorious secret police – want to know everything about everyone. Whether she likes it or not, Beata Bruner is their reluctant spy.

What is she supposed to do? Invent subterfuge that isn’t there? It’s bad enough spying on her own neighbours, without fabricating lies about them too. You wouldn’t send your worst enemy to the Stasi Prison.

He comes at precisely three o’clock on Thursday, as he always does, declines her offer of coffee (he probably hates the sour, feeble taste too) and sits.

“So, Frau Bruner, what have you for me today?” Herr Wolff begins. There are never any niceties, and Beata Bruner often wonders where he lives, if he has a wife or children? His spiny, fox-like teeth protrude though his fake smile. Maybe he lives in a lair on his own, she muses.

“It’s been oddly quiet here,” she says apologetically, watching him flick through her official block register, then at her notebook that is anything but official. “Nothing much of interest to report.”

His sigh is heavy with disappointment. “You know, Frau Bruner, it never ceases to amaze me the lengths people will go to hide their misdemeanours, from a government that is doing its utmost to give the East German people a stable life, the best that communism can offer. Sadly, it’s our job to weed them out.”

She remains silent in the face of his steely glare.

“I do wonder, though, if perhaps it’s too much for you,” he prattles on. “That we need someone with a keener eye.”

Beata freezes. The dense black bread she’d had for breakfast gurgles in her gut. She can only think of Klaus and what it could mean for her son, his career prospects as a “Vopo”, an officer in the East German People’s Police. He’s a junior rank now, but he has high hopes, and she’s so proud to see him in his uniform every morning, defending a country that – aside from the Stasi – she does truly love.

Yet one word from Herr Wolff and Klaus’ chances of promotion will disappear. Kaput!

“It’s sure to pick up, Herr Wolff,” she blusters. “There’s a new family moving in downstairs next week – he’s a writer and I’ve heard she’s West German by birth. I’ll be sure to befriend them, perhaps offer to do a spot of babysitting.”

“Hmm.” He makes heavy weather of mulling it over. “Well, that’s hopeful. Do let me know if they’ll need an appointment with the electricity company.”

She sighs inwardly. In the early days, Beata herself had suffered a visit from the “electric suppliers”, those that arrive in secret with their wires and drills, channelling neatly into the walls and laying their minute microphones and bugs. The “ears” in her flat had disappeared gradually as she became firmly under the Stasi thumb, but she wouldn’t put it past Herr Wolff to order another visit.

“I’ll keep a look out, Herr Wolff.”

The next week, however, brings the same poor pickings. The week after too, and Herr Wolff’s patience is clearly is running thin. He’s itching for something of substance to take back to his own hungry bosses.

Yet Beata doesn’t tell him about the new family on the second floor that she has befriended… about the woman’s mother who lives in West Germany, whom they haven’t seen since the Berlin Wall went up overnight in August 1961, now too sick to visit, or the request for travel permits repeatedly returned to the family, stamped “Refused” by the Stasi.

He knows. What’s more, he knows that she knows. And they both realise exactly what that means

“My mother’s close to dying and I may never see her again,” the woman, Hanna, had sobbed on Beata’s shoulder. In the next breath she had hinted – unwisely probably – that they “knew someone” who could get them out. Under or over the Wall, Hanna didn’t specify, or even swimming across the River Spree with their baby in a bathtub, as some other couple had bravely managed to do.

Either way an escape attempt amounts to treason, a crime against the German Democratic Republic and punishable by death or a long spell in the hellhole of a Stasi jail. Who will look after their two-year-old daughter then, with both parents broken in prison?

And yet it’s the treasured information Beata needs for her notebook, a sure-fire lead for the Stasi to break up a ring of Wall-jumpers and escapees. Certain to regain her standing in Herr Wolff’s eyes.

Such information is even more valuable after Klaus arrives home one evening in a foul mood, telling her that he’s been refused promotion for the second time. “I don’t understand why!” he says angrily.

But still, Beata Bruner keeps silent in Herr Wolff’s heavy presence, even when he tells her they’ll give it “one more week, and then review the situation.”

She’ll be sacked as a spy – and left to face the consequences.

After he leaves, Beata takes herself out, for groceries and a release from the oppressive air of her flat.

Even after standing in a long shop queue, the sparse shelves offer up nothing appetising, aside from a jar of Spree Pickles, the East’s speciality. What she craves most is the soft sweetness of a banana, like gold dust in the city today. They’d been a rarity in the war, much like apples and oranges, and almost impossible to find afterwards. Now, in the communist-run Berlin of 1963 they’re like hen’s teeth, more so since the Wall went up and the East of the city was forcibly cut off from any access to the West. Still, the mere thought of a banana on her tongue makes her salivate. Except they’ve already been her downfall, leading her into Stasi slavery, having been caught buying some off a black market trader. He turned out to be a Stasi foil, and they gave her an ultimatum: either face her punishment and say goodbye to Klaus’s future, or begin spying for them.

And so that was when Herr Wolff’s weekly visits began.

Beata’s stringed “just in case” bag (just in case you come across anything worthwhile to buy) hangs limply by her side as she walks homewards. Her eyes, though, are trained to be on alert always, and it’s then she sees him.

Something about his stance isn’t right; tentative, hovering, not the swagger demonstrated in her flat just an hour or so before. The spy in Beata prompts her to follow at a distance, though Herr Wolff’s quickened pace makes her huff and puff.

Several times he slows to look over his shoulder, causing her to dart behind a concrete column. She stands, breathing heavily, then spies the familiar scruffy tail of Herr Kube’s ginger cat sidling up. Instantly, she scoops it up and brings the pungent fur upwards just as Wolff spins full circle, only for his eyes to fall an old lady with her face buried in cat hair.

Saved by the old rangy moggy!

At last he comes to a stop under the arches of a bombed-out building, hesitates and begins talking to someone out of sight. Beata Bruner, however, knows exactly what is occurring; the hand signals, the low, secretive hum of voices – familiar to plenty of East Berliners, she imagines.

When Thursday comes again, she is oddly excited. She’s swept the doorstep and laid out cups for coffee. Her piece de resistance is arranged on her best china.

“Morning Frau Bruner,” he enters with his usual arrogance, “What have you got for me to–”

“I thought we’d have a little treat,” Beata says with pride, sitting in front of her perfectly sliced orange, the segments set out like a clock. “I got this from a nice man on Acker Strasse, and he happened to mention you like oranges. A lot.”

Herr Wolff’s face is an odd combination of fury, embarrassment and fear. He knows. What’s more, he knows that she knows. And they both realise exactly what that means.

Ilike Thursdays now, Frau Bruner thinks, as she boils the kettle for her morning coffee. There’s a rap on the door and she jumps up to receive a package delivered weekly now, on time and without fail.

Once the coffee is brewed, she pulls out her treat – a vibrant yellow, just ripe, just right to peel. She takes a sip from her cup, a rich roast made from good beans in place of the usual rubbish; another sweetener from the generous Herr Wolff. Everyone, whether communist or capitalist, has their weakness, it seems.

“And sometimes, Beata,” she mumbles to herself through a mouthful of soft banana flesh, “It does well for a woman to have a few secrets of her own.”

Two sisters are torn apart when the Berlin wall goes up, separated by the Cold War. If you loved The Berlin Girl, you’ll be swept away by the historical detail, warmth of characters and edge of your seat plots. Another great book from this bestselling author! The Girl Behind the Wall by Mandy Robotham, Avon, PBO, £7.99. Out

September 2nd