Confession with Blue Horses Read online

  CONFESSION WITH BLUE HORSES

  Sophie Hardach

  www.headofzeus.com

  This is an Apollo book, first published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Sophie Hardach 2019

  The moral right of Sophie Hardach to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781788548762

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781788548779

  ISBN (E): 9781788548755

  Front cover photograph: Annie Spratt / Unsplash

  Back cover photograph: Bruce Leighty / Getty Images

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  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I: The Model Migrants

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Part II: Wall Power

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Part III: A More Permanent Obstacle

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  This book is dedicated to my son, Aaron

  I

  The Model Migrants

  The barbed wire fence across Potsdamer Platz – that barbed wire fence has disappeared and given way to a worse, more permanent obstacle. What we’re seeing here on the corner of Potsdamer Straße and Potsdamer Platz right on the edge of the pavement is a concrete wall of a height of about 70 or 80 centimetres, topped by two layers of hollow bricks. Eyewitnesses report that the work began last night at 1.30 a.m., when six lorries turned up with building material, and five vans with bricklayers. They have built a new stone border right through Berlin.

  RIAS Berlin, Broadcasting in the American Sector, 18 August 1961, Reporter: Rainer Höynck

  Prologue

  Summer 1987

  MY BROTHERS FELL ASLEEP after drinking Mama’s tea. Heiko lay slumped against her shoulder, his mouth half open. Papa carried Tobi in his arms. The afternoon was fading, and our lengthening shadows merged with the shadows of leaves and swaying corn stalks. A meadow stretched out in front of us. Two storks were picking their way through it, twisting their white necks and clicking their beaks.

  Beyond the meadow loomed a forest, dense with brambles and conifers. We would cross the meadow, enter the forest on the other side, slip through the barbed wire and keep walking until we saw houses. There, we would be safe.

  I gripped the hem of Mama’s jumper and whispered: ‘What if they shoot at us?’

  ‘They don’t do that here.’ She looked away.

  ‘It’s not dangerous’ – my father, now – ‘lots of people have done it.’ He paused. ‘Or at least some.’

  ‘Look.’ Mama squatted down next to me, awkwardly because she was holding Heiko. His arms flopped about, limp and heavy with sleep. ‘It’s not like Berlin, you can see it for yourself. There isn’t a wall here.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I said. Just then, the storks took off. They drew a wide circle over the corn field and vanished into the distance, away from the forest.

  Mama stood up. My brother Heiko slipped from her grip. Just a little: she caught him, snuggled him against her chest, cupped his bottom with her hand. It was the last time I saw her do that, holding him with the jagged nervousness that was typical of both my parents, who were never quite sure how to handle us. It was my grandmother who raised us mostly, and I wished she was with us to tell us all what to do.

  Mama and Papa turned towards the meadow. My two little brothers were all they carried. We did not need suitcases, tickets, passports, keys. The door to our old flat in Berlin would be opened by other people, long after we were gone. Our Trabant, which was parked on the other side of the corn field, would be found by the local villagers in the morning, with the key left in the ignition.

  Mama shifted Heiko’s weight to her hip, held out her hand and said:

  ‘Come, Ella.’

  The light was fading quickly. This was the right time, my father said. Dark enough to be hidden, light enough to see where we were going. Very safe, nothing to fear, but we had to go now. I took my mother’s hand and followed her into the meadow.

  1

  Ella

  My Mother Was Afraid of the Dark

  London 2010

  A YEAR OR SO after my mother died, I received an unexpected inheritance. At the time I was living on a boat in South London, underneath an elevated railway line; not a proper houseboat, just an old fishing boat that had been dumped into Deptford Creek. Empty crisp bags littered the towpath and blew into the water when the trains rumbled past.

  I had been stuck on the boat for almost a year. Initially it had seemed like a good solution: independent, cheap and self-contained. Not quite on land, not quite in the water. An in-between life that had suited me well, at least at first, during the warm summer months. Autumn had still felt romantic, in a creaking and storm-tossed way, but now it was spring and I had lost my last shreds of enthusiasm somewhere between February and March. When it rained, water trickled down the inside walls of the cabin. Slugs left trails across the windows. The bathroom was in a cupboard, with the shower head suspended right above the ridged footprints of the squatting loo. My most precious possession was a photo of all of us on Oma’s allotment back in Berlin. She was standing among some sunflowers and waving a little flag, probably for a Socialist holiday; my grandmother loved official holidays and never missed a march. Next to her was Mama with baby Heiko in her arms, and Tobi clinging on to her skirt. And there was Papa, dangling me by my feet so that my hair swept the grass. It was our favourite game: ‘How do the bats sleep?’ he’d ask – ‘Upside downnn!’ I’d scream and run into his arms, and he’d pick me up and turn me upside down. This is how the bats sleep!

  *

  Every evening, I cycled over to Canary Wharf, where I worked as a cleaner at an investment bank. My shift started just before midnight. The banks were beautiful at that time, tall lightboxes in the dark. Often a few traders were still tapping away on their keyboards, striking frantic deals with New York. They lifted their feet, I mopped the floor under their desks, they put their feet back down and thanked me, all with their eyes fixed on the screen. My shift ended just as the earliest traders came in to catch up with their colleagues in Singapore and Hong Kong.


  My mother had also worked as a cleaner for a while, after she’d been released from prison. Later, in London, she left most of the chores to us, especially the things she couldn’t bring herself to do, like fetching bottles of fizzy water from the cellar. Mama did not like the cellar. There was no proper light in it and she was afraid of the dark.

  *

  One morning I came home from my night shift, shouldered my bike and carried it across the narrow wooden plank to my boat, when I heard someone cry out behind me: ‘Ella Valentin? Hey! Ella Valentin?’

  A postman in a hi-vis jacket jogged up to me, his crown of coiled black dreadlocks wobbling dangerously with every step. ‘Parcel for you.’ He stopped and passed me the box across the water.

  I smiled at him. ‘Well done for finding me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, tell them to put a postcode on it next time. This almost went back to the sender.’ He paused to fix his hair, then nodded at the boat with amused curiosity. ‘Not too damp in there?’

  ‘It’s all right.’ I wanted to say something else, to stretch out the conversation, because I rarely spoke to anyone in those days, and he was being friendly. But I could not think of anything, and so I just wished him a nice day and he walked back to his wheelie bag.

  I went into the cabin, kicked off my shoes and lit the stove. It was a heavy parcel, solid and well packed, like the ones we used to get from West Germany when I was a child. Inside were brightly coloured art books, and a note from the new owner of my mother’s flat in Finsbury Park. He was converting the attic and had found a bunch of her art books there. Tobi and I must have overlooked them when we cleared out the place. One by one I spread them out on my mattress, letting them light up my cabin with their saturated cheerfulness. German Expressionism, the Bauhaus, Dada, but also more obscure East German movements. A slim, worn paperback celebrated the programme of the Bitterfelder Weg, which encouraged artists to go and work in the factories, feel the weight of a spanner and learn about ‘real life’. I was surprised Mama had kept that one. An envelope fell out, and crumpled bills and bits of paper. How typical of my mother, who had always used makeshift bookmarks, to leave these little traces of herself behind. I found a hair band between the pages of the Bauhaus book, and a notebook wedged into the back of the Dada catalogue.

  The notebook was filled with long lists in her familiar, rushed handwriting:

  Barking dogs: that never used to be a problem, it is now.

  ‘Privileg’ (the smell)

  That accent from Dresden, I heard it on the tube this morning, had to get off and walk.

  Ach, Mama! I put the notebook aside and went through the other scraps, the bills and the envelope. They were nothing special, just utility bills and an admin-type letter from some office in Germany, but it touched me to read her name on them. The envelope contained a photograph, of a painting of three blue horses. They were standing in a meadow, massing against a storm, necks curved, hind legs tucked under. There was a dark shape at the edge of the meadow, a curled-up body in the grass. No, it was only a shadow, the shadow of a cloud.

  So it really had existed, the painting of the blue horses, even though Oma had tried to convince me otherwise.

  I picked up the German letter. The phrasing was complex, bureaucratic, and I had to read it several times before I understood the gist of it. Apparently my mother had corresponded with an archive in Berlin; I could guess what this was about.

  The door to the deck swung open and let in a gust of wind and water, a fishy tang, a smell of chip shop and wet metal. I stepped outside and looked up at the brightening London sky, at the grey weeds that clung to the cracks in the concrete. On the other side of the canal loomed the old Deptford sewage pump, its windows smashed, its loading dock abandoned.

  I climbed onto the roof of my cabin to get a better signal, and then I called my brother Tobi.

  2

  OUT OF ALL OF us, Tobi truly was the model migrant. We had all hoped for a fresh start when we moved to London in the early nineties, sponsored by Mama’s supporters, but Tobi was the only one who really seized the opportunity. He assimilated to the point of sprouting freckles. Whenever I spoke in German to him, he replied in English. He even spoke English to Mama. And we let him, because we were proud, I think, that at least one of us had really made it.

  I had to call twice before Tobi answered the phone, sounding cross and sleepy. ‘It’s six in the morning.’

  ‘Time to get up and lay some turf!’

  ‘I don’t actually lay turf, Ellz, I have people who do that for me.’ He yawned. ‘Mind calling me again a bit later?’

  ‘I’m about to go to sleep.’

  ‘Speak at the weekend, then?’

  ‘It’s kind of urgent. Well, not urgent, but…’ I told him about the notebook, the photo, the letter. The more I talked, the more excited I became, and the more certain that these documents were meaningful and important.

  ‘Or they could just be bookmarks,’ Tobi pointed out.

  ‘Even so, they’re worth looking into. Why don’t you come over for dinner? And then you can take the books home with you. I don’t want to keep them here, everything’s damp.’

  ‘You can always stay with me, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘OK, I’ll come over.’ He paused. ‘What did you say the notebook was? A diary?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  We hung up. I went back into the cabin and put on the woolly hat I wore to bed. The photo of the blue horses I placed on an upturned crate, with a circle of salt around it to keep the slugs at bay.

  3

  IN THE AFTERNOON I got up and tidied the boat for Tobi. I washed the plastic windows, emptied a bucket of soapy water over the deck, banged against the clogged stove pipe with a frying pan until it puffed more freely. Last, I aired the old green gaberdine coat that I inherited from my grandmother, Oma Trude. It was shiny with age and hung on me like a wet sail, but I liked to wear it anyway. At art school I had used it for a performance in which I dressed in a blue boiler suit and the old gaberdine coat, then piled broken bricks on top of each other. The tutor asked if it was a comment on 9/11, and I said no, it was a piece about my grandmother.

  Oma always proudly referred to the coat as her ‘OdF coat’. OdF stood for Opfer des Faschismus, or Victim of Fascism. Many of Oma’s friends were fellow OdFs, elderly people who liked to start sentences with ‘When I was in Buchenwald…’

  They formed a little aristocracy, so it seemed to me at the time, these men and women who had proved their worth in the fight against Hitler. But there was also something lonely about them, or perhaps I see this only now, how mistrustful they must have been of the people around us, the same people who in the old days had hounded them. They gathered around the samovar in Oma’s living room, warmed their hands on delicate painted tea glasses and talked about Gorky and Lenin, about pickled mushrooms and the melting snow in Moscow. East Germans, all of them, though their German was embroidered with Russian words from their years in exile. The women stroked the fringes of their Russian shawls, the men held out their shot glasses for more of Oma’s sloe vodka.

  When it was time to leave, they put on their furry schapkas and plastic headscarves with the greatest reluctance, and there was always that moment when one of the men put his hand on the door and left it there for a few seconds before turning the handle, as if to plead –Do we have to go out there? Can we not stay here, in this warm and friendly place, and talk a little more about the Soviet Friendship Day of 1963? Officially, their side was all-powerful then. The red star ruled. But as they hurried through the streets, past the empty shops and long, grey queues, they must have sensed how little love there really was for them. The Germans had not truly embraced Real Socialism; they were simply going along with this regime as they had gone along with the one before. Still, I for one was very proud of Oma’s courage, for which our government had rewarded her with a flat, a job and a green gaberdine coat.

  A balled-up spider fell o
ut of one pocket when I aired the coat, but otherwise it was still perfectly wearable.

  I remembered how Oma and I had queued outside the shops back in Berlin. It started to rain, and she opened her green gaberdine coat so I could slip under it. Then I remembered how in the mornings she let us stay under our duvets while she lit the coal in the tiled stove, and by the time we got up, the kitchen would be almost warm. I sniffed the coat. It still smelled a little of her, or perhaps I was imagining that.

  *

  The tide was low now, and the boat sat stuck in the cat-litter silt. The concrete canal walls were painted with a graded wash of green algae. A thin ribbon of water ran through the slick and two ducks were waddling towards it, the emerald-headed male and his discreet, brown-feathered partner. When the water receded, all sorts of rubbish emerged. Seven squashed and mangled shopping trolleys had risen from the mud and formed a wonky semicircle around my boat. This – I thought – is the beginning of the apocalypse, when shopping trolleys emerge from the riverbed and round you up. I climbed down the side of my boat and walked over to the first trolley. It lay half submerged in a pool of water, upside down, forming a little cage, and when I peered into this cage I saw that there in the water, tiny fish flitted about. The trolley had become a nursery. How clever of the fish, how adaptable, but how depressing too, that this was their first experience of the world. I went over to the next trolley and prised open the little grey tray. It still had a quid in it. Victory! Clutching the coin in my fist, I looked up at the white sky and considered my situation.

  Had I not always been quite good at spotting details? How many people would have waded past that trolley and never noticed the fish? Tobi had sounded sceptical on the phone, but surely he would eventually accept that there was something significant about the notebook, the photo, the letter; that these had to be clues of some sort.