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about getting an escape organisation that they swallowed it. All I wanted to do was sleep.’
    Auerbach’s Cellar is a famous Leipzig institution. It is an underground bar and restaurant with oak bench tables in long alcoves under a curved roof, just like a cellar. The walls and ceilings are covered with dark painted scenes from Goethe’s Faust : Faust meeting Mephistopheles, Faust betraying Margarethe, Faust in despair. Goethe used to drink here. It is a good place to meet the devil.
    This is the story Miriam told the Stasi.
    It all began when she was going to meet a friend in Auerbach’s Cellar to eat goose-fat rolls. Her friend did not appear, so she sat down at one of the long tables by herself, and started in on the food. The place was full; it was nearly Christmas. Four men came and asked if they could share the table. They sat down to eat. Miriam listened to them talk. One of them had a Berlin accent in which ‘ gut ’ is ‘yut’ and ‘ ich ’ is ‘icke’.
    Miriam is enjoying herself at this point. She looks at me and her face is bright. She is imagining herself at sixteen and it makes her happy.
    ‘So I said to the man—the one who looked like the leader, “Are you from Berlin?”
    ‘And he said, “Yes.”
    ‘“How is it going in Berlin then?” I said.’ Miriam’s eyes widen and she looks like the cartoon boy again.
    ‘“Fine thanks.”
    ‘“Where do you live in Berlin then?”
    ‘“Pankow.”
    ‘“Is, uh, is that near the Wall?”
    ‘“Actually, it is…You’re not thinking of making a run for it are you?”
    ‘“Yes, I am.”
    ‘“Well! You can’t just front up to the Wall and expect to find a spot to climb over! Come with me and I’ll give you a tip.”’
    Miriam said, ‘OK.’ So the five of them left and jumped in a cab. They travelled in a southerly direction, but she wasn’t sure where because it was already dark. They went to an apartment on the second, or was it the third storey of a building? Hard to remember exactly. There was no name-plate on the door so unfortunately she couldn’t say whose place it was. The man and his accomplices produced a map of Berlin, and showed her the spot to get over. Then they called another taxi, dropped her back at Auerbach’s Cellar and she caught the tram home.
    Miriam is laughing. She looks at me as if to say, ‘Have you ever in your life heard such a ridiculous story? Can you believe they swallowed that?’ I look back, confused. I try to rearrange my face. What is so improbable about someone offering handy hints on wall-jumping? I feel I am about to have something basic explained to me. My head is cocked like a dog watching TV: it can’t make out what’s happening, but it sure is interesting.
    Miriam explains, gently, that in the GDR it was inconceivable that a person would ask a stranger, a total stranger whether they lived near the border. It was also inconceivable that the stranger would ask you whether you were thinking of escaping. And it was more inconceivable still that they would then proffer handy escape tips on the spot. Relations between people were conditioned by the fact that one or other of you could be one of them . Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existence. Miriam could have been denounced by the man for having asked a question about the border and admitting she was thinking of going over, and she could have denounced him in turn for offering to show her how. Underground escape organisations existed in the GDR, but you needed an intermediary to communicate with them. It would never happen so blithely over goose-fat rolls and beer.
    Fleischer wanted a name. ‘That I couldn’t tell you,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t hear them call each other by any name.’
    ‘What did he look like, the leader?’
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he was about so tall.’ She puts her hand in the air above her head. ‘And strong looking, well-built, you know.’ She is