“Only those who have guilty secrets!”

“And what’s my secret, Hans? Come on, you must know.”

“You are a social parasite.”

“So you prevent my getting a job, then you threaten to jail me for not having a job. I suppose I’d be sent to a work camp, would I? Then I would have a job, except that I wouldn’t be paid. I love Communism, it’s so logical! Why are people so desperate to escape from it, I wonder?”

“Your mother told me many times that she would never emigrate to the West. She would consider it running away.”

Rebecca wondered what he was getting at. “So . . . ?”

“If you commit the crime of illegal emigration, you will never be able to come back.”

Rebecca saw what was coming, and she was filled with despair.

Hans said triumphantly: “You would never see your family again.”

• • •

Rebecca was crushed. She left the building and stood at the bus stop. Whichever way she looked at it, she was forced to either lose her family or lose her freedom.

Despondent, she took the bus to the school where she used to work. She was unprepared for the nostalgia that struck her like a blow when she walked in: the sound of young people’s chatter, the smell of chalk dust and cleaning fluid, the notice boards and football boots and signs saying: NO RUNNING. She realized how happy she had been as a teacher. It was vitally important work, and she was good at it. She could not bear the thought of giving it up.

Bernd was in the head teacher’s office, wearing a black corduroy suit. The cloth was worn but the color flattered him. He beamed happily when she opened the door. “Have they made you head?” she asked, although she could guess the answer.

“That will never happen,” he replied. “But I’m doing the job anyway, and loving it. Meanwhile our old boss, Anselm, is head of a big school in Hamburg—and making double the salary. How about you? Take a seat.”

She sat down and told him about her job interviews. “It’s Hans’s revenge,” she said. “I never should have thrown his damn matchstick model out of the window.”

“It may not be that,” Bernd said. “I’ve seen this before. A man hates the person he has wronged, paradoxically. I think it’s because the victim is a perpetual reminder that he behaved shamefully.”

Bernd was very smart. She missed him. “I’m afraid Hans may hate you, too,” she said. “He told me you’re being investigated for ideological unreliability, because you wrote me a reference.”

“Oh, hell.” He rubbed the scar on his forehead, always a sign that he was worried. Involvement with the Stasi never had a happy ending.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad I wrote that reference. I’d do it again. Someone has to tell the truth in this damn country.”

“Hans also figured out, somehow, that you were . . . attracted to me.”