The Doll’s House Read Online Free PDF

didn’t run to more than a modest three-bedroomed third-floor flat on the Eser Strasse. It was a noisy street in an unfashionable suburb of what used to be East Berlin, and his mother hated it. She complained about the central heating, the stairs, the surly attitude of the caretaker. And, of course, the loss of the official car. Rilke made excuses. She was old, she wasn’t prepared for the drop in their living standards. He didn’t mind so much, he was ascetic by nature. He had simple needs. But he minded for his mother. Even when she blamed him he was patient.
    She heard the front door open and called out to him.
    â€˜Hermann?’
    â€˜I’m here, Mutti,’ he called back.
    He went into the sitting room, hanging his jacket on a hook in the front hall. He was very tidy. His mother had brought him up to be neat and he was obsessive about order. In the old days there was hell to pay if any object on his desk was a centimetre out of line.
    He bent down and kissed his mother on the cheek. She had white hair and she smelled of face powder and cologne. That smell was his earliest memory of her when she held him as a boy.
    â€˜There’s a letter for you,’ she told him. ‘Came by messenger. It’s over there.’ Rilke took up the envelope and saw that it was addressed with his name and his old rank.
    â€˜What is it? Who’s it from?’ His mother always wanted to know everything.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I’ll open it and see.’
    â€˜I suppose you didn’t get the job?’
    â€˜No,’ he admitted. ‘They wanted a younger man.’
    He’d trained as an accountant before he joined the Security Services. Sometimes she wished he’d never changed careers.
    â€˜I don’t know how we’re going to manage if you don’t get something soon.’
    She had bright blue eyes and they focused angrily upon her son. What a fool to get himself dismissed from that wonderful job in the Ministry. Losing their nice apartment, the car, all the privileges that made life so comfortable. Now nobody wanted to employ him. The world was so changed since the two Germanies had merged into one nation. And not for the better in Frau Hilda’s opinion. The stability, the discipline had gone. Now it was anarchy, with people running round doing and saying anything they liked … and how rich those Westerners were. She would always separate them in her mind. And her son had been such a devoted servant of the East German State, he couldn’t fit into the new system. That’s what he’d told her. He couldn’t compromise his ideals.
    Not realizing the consequences, she’d agreed with him. Now she blamed him. He was a good son and he’d always looked after her, but she still scolded him as if he were a child.
    â€˜What’s the letter say?’ She raised her voice, demanding an answer.
    There was no signature on the single sheet of paper. Just a code word. His sallow face had become even paler.
    â€˜Someone wants to see me,’ he said.
    â€˜A job? Decent money?’
    â€˜It doesn’t give details,’ Rilke answered, taking his time, not listening to her.
    He read the letter again. ‘Contact me at Hotel Prosser if you are interested in a substantial sum of money. My room number is eight-seven. Between six-thirty and nine this evening.’ And the code word at the bottom: ‘Freedom’. He had reason to know it. Only the British with their unpleasant sense of humour, would have given such a name to that particular operation.
    â€˜Well, it must say something,’ his mother insisted.
    â€˜I’ve to ring them this evening.’ She looked irritated and he compromised. ‘It mentions good money.’
    â€˜Then take it, whatever it is,’ she snapped at him. ‘I won’t last another winter in this wretched place. I had one cold after another from January on. I’d like