Another Kind of Country by Kevin Brophy Read Free Book Online

usual job of applying your expertise to General Reder’s work.’
    ‘General Reder?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘General
Hans
Reder?’
    ‘Which other General Reder is there?’
    ‘I mean . . .’ Miller swallowed. ‘I didn’t realize that the general was still – still with us.’
    ‘Perhaps not for much longer, which may be why he wishes to see his story in print.’ Hartheim pushed the file across the desk to Miller. ‘General Reder has cancer but is presently in remission. His daughter cares for him. The daughter is also looking after the general’s manuscript and has asked if she might be told personally of any changes we think necessary. Of course, we wouldn’t normally agree to any such thing but, in view of the general’s standing in our country, I have agreed to this. I have therefore arranged for his daughter to call at your office on Thursday.’
    ‘But that’s the day after tomorrow.’
    ‘Which means, Herr Miller, that you and I will have time to discuss your written comments on General Reder’s manuscript tomorrow.’ There was no attempted smile now on Hartheim’s face.
    ‘Of course, Herr Direktor.’ Hartheim pushed his chair back another inch. The interview was over.
    The file underMiller’s arm felt like a ticking bomb as he made his way back to his own office. Commenting on the memoir of a retired general, a hero of the German Democratic Republic, was a task to be avoided. Miller knew that he would have to be at his most bland: this required fence-sitting of the highest degree. It was a truth he had learned quickly after arriving in East Berlin: the truth was a movable feast. General Reder might be today’s hero but he could also be tomorrow morning’s scoundrel.
    The phone on his desk rang.
    It was Frau Siedel.
    ‘The Director wishes you to know that General Reder’s daughter’s appointment is for three o’clock on Thursday afternoon.’
    ‘I’m sure I’ll have everything in order for Frau Reder.’
    ‘Actually it’s his stepdaughter, Frau
Rossman
– Frau Rosa Rossman.’
    Miller didn’t realize the secretary had hung up. He didn’t hear the buzz of the dead line in his ear. He was hearing, seven years ago, Redgrave’s hee-haw tones telling him that his arrival in East Berlin would be ‘a match made in Communist heaven’. For good measure Redgrave had thrown in a handful of plummy ‘old chaps’.
    Miller put the phone down, crossed to the window. If he stood on tiptoe and craned his neck, he could see a tiny stretch of Unter den Linden.
    East Berlin was going home in the September evening. His father would be in the Wolverhampton surgery, rheumy eyes still ogling his private patients. And soon Miller himself would be lodged in his functional flat, turning the pages of General Hans Reder’s typescript.
    It was going to be a long night in Berlin. But he had to get something suitably non-committal ready for Hartheim.
    He didn’t give asecond thought to Frau Rosa Rossman.

Seven

    Thursday, 14 September 1989
    East Berlin
    German Democratic Republic
    On Thursday afternoon Miller was asking himself how he would ever get Rosa Rossman
out
of his thoughts.
    The woman waiting for him under the watchful eyes of the porters in the entrance hall of 64A Wilhelmstrasse was of medium height, slim, with straight, jet-black hair that hung below her shoulders. Her rucksack sat on the small bench that was the institute’s grudging concession to waiting visitors; Rosa Rossman herself stood beside the bench, arms crossed, looking almost puzzled, as though she had been placed there by mistake. Vulnerable, Miller thought, a porcelain figurine, eminently droppable, breakable.
    And then she moved, unfolded her arms, extended her hand to him, and what Miller was aware of was the overwhelming physicality of her, the electricity of her smile, the very
presence
of the body stirring beneath the simple white T-shirt and the navy pencil skirt.
    Open your ears as well as your eyes: the woman is talking to