I’m not a perfect person. Arguably, not even good. But, I think it’s all subjective. Morality is always easiest in a vacuum. All the philosophers in the world never faced the kinds of choices I had to make.
I’m sorry if this tape is disjointed, if- if I have to stop, if I seem frazzled. I’m just so tired. She won’t stop crying outside my window, all night, every night. But you won’t hear a single sound. It’s my fault, so no one else can see her. I don’t know if this tape will pick up on her crying, or not, or if it’s all just in my head. I can’t sleep except with earplugs AND headphones AND blackout curtains. Needless to say, I am tired!
It’s all my fault.
I was newly minted in 1983. Did you know that the former German Democratic Republic, well, I mean, East Germany, had the equivalent of MIT? But it didn’t teach us how to code. If you’ve ever seen the beginning of the movie “The Lives of Others”, know that the scene in that classroom is pretty accurate after all.
It was a college for the Ministry of State Security. I was one of those agents of Stadtsicherheit. “Stasi” for short. A modern writer once described a similar surveillance system in North Korea today, using civilian informants on every corner, as “the nosy neighbor, elevated to an apparatus of the surveillance state.”
That was us, in a nutshell. I’m not defending myself, not really, but I tried to be humane. I let the people dragged in for interrogation nod off for a bit if I was the only one in the room. I asked the neighbors to take care of the pets that were left behind when someone was arrested. I overlooked a few small acts.
I hated it most when I had to arrest both parents. The State was meant to serve as both mother and father, to, in a sense, replace biological family, but I knew about the grey, dirty, hollow, and understaffed state orphanages. The young children often didn’t survive. How strange, to find that lack of love, of touch, alone, could kill.
I knew what “your children will be placed into state care,” as a threat, or, as a fact, really meant. Luckily, that only happened during one of my many arrests.
Her name was Natasha. No older than three, long flaxen hair, the ephemeral kind you know will turn dark as the kid gets older, green eyes.
My arrest team ripped her, screaming, from her mother’s arms. I couldn’t watch. I didn’t know there was a child when I first began investigating the parents, but once I got the apparatus of the state started, I couldn’t stop it, or risk my own arrest and loss of the only job I ever had.
But I had got the whole thing started. And I think Natasha knew that. Or, at least, she knows it now. I checked the state archives after the Fall. She died six months after the arrest and being put in an orphanage. There was a diagnosis, yes, but I knew the real reason. With all those kids and too few staff, she just got overlooked. It wasn’t even really anyone’s fault.
I tried to push away the knowledge that this had happened because of me. And, when the Wall fell, I, too, joined the stampede for a free-market economy.
But knowing what I did, and with my family gone, I didn’t want to live in Germany any more. United or not. I mean, I still had to live in the same fucking Soviet 1960s apartment and pass by a Stasi police station every day! I think it’s a memorial now, left pristine so that we can ponder that ugly legacy even today.
That’s something I always liked about Germany. They don’t shy away from confronting all of history, the grime and the shine.
Anyway. I’m getting off on a tangent here. So, I couldn’t stay. Where could I go? My English was serviceable, maybe even good. Before spying for the Stasi back home, I was posted to the United Kingdom for a few years.
I saw a flyer, a splash of full-color print against the greys and browns of my post-Soviet city, one bright cold day in March. It showed beautiful photos of prewar Bavarian architecture, birch and pine trees, a lake, and smiling children.
“Pfft. As if I can afford a vacation,” I snorted. That would have to remain a dream for several more years. But then, I saw someone examining it more closely. He wrote down a phone number.
I checked it again. It wasn’t advertising per se- rather, a job opportunity. “Use your German in the USA! Help spread German language and culture! Competitive pay, free room and board.”
I called the number at the American embassy, which put me in touch with the program over there. I won’t lie, I was worried about getting trafficked or scammed, but it was a legitimate job!
That’s how I got to now. That first summer job in the US was at a camp for children. Have you ever been to a Pioneer, er, I mean, a Scout, camp? All that outdoorsy shit. Imagine doing it all in a foreign language!
That was the idea. Do it all, in German. And the camp preferred to hire native speakers wherever possible, from all walks of life. So, they wanted to recruit the Ossis, now that they could.
I had a skill. They had a way out. They kept me on as a caretaker for the rest of the year, and eventually I was promoted to head up the year-round programs as well, after programs for business and adults began.
But apparently moving halfway across the world doesn’t allow you to escape the things that haunt you. In fact, Natasha or whatever ghost is pretending to be her, first showed up at this camp. Maybe something to do with all the mining and geothermal activities near here. Hell, my own cabin runs on that!
The point is, Natasha cries at my window all night, every night. I tried all manner of remedies, until a friend mentioned that there was a former Nazi guard who worked at the camp in the 1960s. She supposedly put a journal in the camp library somewhere, and often seemed like she was looking at something that wasn’t there.
Needless to say, I stripped the library looking for it, and I did find a journal from the right time period. But ugh, damn, I can’t read with that spectre screaming at me. Totally wrecks my concentration. I’ll have to start tomorrow.
I did see, on the fly leaf, “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” written in a shaky scrawl. It’s an untranslatable German word, meaning “past-regret” or “past-coping”. Maybe it’s really more coming to terms with it all. This word is only used in the context of discussing the Holocaust. To come to terms with what we all did. What she did.
I wonder if Maria (that was the former Nazi), ever experienced anything like I have. Being literally haunted.