Stasiland

On her train ride back to Berlin, Funder decides to get off in Leipzig. She wanders through the city, noting the new buildings and museums. The government has funded an “effort to put the history of the separation of Germany behind glass.” One museum, the Contemporary History Forum Leipzig, contains samples of the Wall and interactive displays of important episodes in Berlin history. Funder is the only person in the museum, however.

Funder leaves the museum and walks through the streets. She notices a girl, probably about sixteen years old. This would mean that she’s barely old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. Funder thinks about how the girl is the same age that Miriam was when she tried to cross into West Berlin.

Funder calls Miriam and, to her amazement, Miriam answers and explains that she’s back in Leipzig. Miriam agrees to meet Funder. Over tea, Funder tells Miriam about her research, culminating in her visit to the Stasi File Authority office. Miriam tells Funder that, lately, there’s been a lot of nostalgia for East Germany, though many of the nostalgic people are too young to remember what the East German state was like. Miriam tells Funder that recently she found a copy of a poem Charlie wrote years ago. Funder suddenly realizes why she found the Leipzig museum strangely frustrating—“Things have been put behind glass, but they are not yet over.”

Miriam shows Funder a photo of herself with Charlie. Funder gently asks Miriam what Charlie was like, and she says that Charlie was sensitive but reserved, with a good sense of humor. She loved her marriage, because she and Charlie were comfortable with being alone. Miriam recalls how hard life became when she and Charlie tried to leave East Germany—people harassed them in the streets.

Miriam hasn’t given up trying to exhume Charlie’s coffin. Recently, she’s spoken with a witness who was in prison with Charlie on the day he supposedly hanged himself. That morning, the witness recalls, there was some kind of “commotion” in Charlie’s cell. Miriam guesses that the guards beat up Charlie and left him to die, slowly and painfully. Funder imagines that Miriam could be right—but she wonders, “will digging him up reveal anything?” Miriam, Funder realizes, wants “some kind of justice,” even if she doesn’t know exactly what.

Funder spends the night at Miriam’s house, and the next morning Miriam takes her to the station. On the train back into Berlin, Funder reads Charlie’s poem. It reads, “In this land / I have made myself sick with silence / In this land / I have wandered, lost / In this land / I hunkered down to see / What will become of me. / In this land / I held myself tight / So as not to scream. / - But I did scream, so loud / That this land howled back at me / As hideously / As it builds its houses. / In this land / I have been sown / Only my head sticks / Defiant, out of the earth / But one day it too will be mown / Making me, finally / Of this land.”

Back in Berlin, Funder watches people play in the park: “People shake infants up and down to make them calm, and children spin on swings and roundabouts I never noticed were there.”