Gooney87
Well-Known Member
Nina, a young East-German girl goes back to her home town of Berlin, 5 years after West-Berlin was invaded by the German Democratic Republic to look for the family she lost in the chaos of the Wiederanschluß. Along the way she finds way more than she ever barginned for.
Chapter One - Secrets
The doors of the subway open with a mechanical sigh. Out pour the many travellers riding the Moscow subway daily. From the steamy cars the people move from anywhere to everywhere. Though the station of Borostivkaya lacks the grandeur of some of Stalin’s more opulent ‘palaces of the people’ there is a certain style and elegance in the stark white walls, sparsely decorated with colorful images of the Soviet Union’s mostly fabricated past. Here in Moscow the travellers hardly take any notice of it anymore. They just go about their daily lives under the watchful eye of Lenin and the other great names in communism.
The station is warm and sticky, despite the early September cold. It makes Nina Müller uncomfortable and sweaty in places one does not desire sweatyness. The young woman is trying to elbow her way through the crowds, her long dark-brown hair tied in a messy knot only mostly covered by her baret. Or rather; it was until this subway ride, where the tight bun has managed to drop a few strands in her face.
“Verdammte Ratte hier alle!” It’s a good thing that the Soviet Union doesn’t teach German in school, or Nina’s angry muttering might have actually gotten her in trouble with her fellow passengers.
She eventually manages to find her way out of the labyrinth of underground passages and narrow hallways, and into the fresh cool air of the outside. A few steps up the staircase leading to street level has Nina turn up her collar and hide away in her long brown coat. Father Winter has arrived early in 1994, despite a long and hot summer. Normally Nina doesn’t mind the cold. it’s a great excuse to hide away in long coats and fuzzy sweaters. Every spring she has an ongoing battle with the scales to get her body ready for skimpy summer dresses and revealing tops, so having a valid excuse to wear something that doesn’t require her to suck in her belly just to get it on, or has straps that have to be adjusted just right so that they hold everything in, but at the same time don’t try to saw a way through her shoulders is a godsend. Problems like that simply do not occur in a turtleneck sweater.
Today her plans were simple.This morning she got up at the same time as Natalya, her bestie and roommate of the cramped apartment they’ve been calling home since that fateful day in 1989. Natalya works in a large hospital near the edge of the city, and is usually up before the crack of dawn. On most mornings Nina stays in bed, but not today. She had breakfast with the Russian girl, gone over the daily papers and more of those suburban things one does in the morning. After Natalya left Nina drug herself under the shower, got dressed, and commenced battle with Moscow public transport to get to the stores in the centre of the city.
Here in the USSR stores seem to be better stocked than in her own city of Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic. Where in the DDR buying something like a loaf of bread meant standing in all kinds of queues for hours on end, here in Moscow things seem to be running a bit more smoothly. Whether that was due to the fact that the communist planned economy just simply worked better than socialism, or the fact that here and there some Moscow party members greased a few palms here and there to keep the populus happy was unclear to Nina, and none of her particular concern. All she knew was that she could get better food at lower prices than back home, and that made her happy.
Nina enters a small side street about a block away from the sweaty subway station. Here, in this residential street, all is quiet. It’s a Tuesday, so all of the men are away at work, children in school, the women out doing groceries and other chores, and there are but a few cars lining the streets. Excellent, she thinks to herself while looking over her shoulder. The less people see her out and about with her large shopping bag full of illegally grown fruits and vegetables, the better it is for all parties involved.
The rusty gate squeels while Nina squeezes her body through the narrow opening between the wall and the ‘Do-Not-Enter’-sign. It’s been a little over two years since she found this place, a small patch of uninhabited land in the middle of the large city, surrounded by concrete walls and apartment buildings. She walked past the gate by coincidence and saw someone enter holding a spade and a canvas bag. She decided to follow the woman, and saw her tending to this small patch of dirt, pulling large tomatoes from the ground. Moscow has been filled to the brim, every last bit of soil is in use for either a building, a park commemorating the many great things the USSR allegedly did, or with playgrounds for the young and old. But this little bit of land seemed to be left over in all this planning. Like the city simply forgot about this roughly 10 square meters located between garages from the apartment buildings on one side and the raised concrete wall of the adjacent road on the other side. Located just right for the correct amount of sunlight, and well irrigated from the water drains of the large buildings.
It started off small. A few seeds quickly grew into some cress. After that came the lettuce and the radishes. The meager harvest went into a colorful salad. But after a heated discussion at the Konsum on weather or not cucumbers existed within the confines of the Soviet Union Nina decided to fully go for this. An old cassette player was traded for some basic gardening implements and some seeds on the black market, and her little vegetable patch was in business.
Today is the day when the tomatoes and garlic are ready to be harvested. When she visited her patch last time she saw the little plants change color , so she gave them one more week to truly become these wonderful veggies that are so desired by her clientele.
She never had any issues finding buyers for her products. After she gave her neighbor radishes in exchange for a bag of coffee the word spread out pretty quickly that this German girl could get her hands on these wonderful products, Her little address book quickly filled with restaurant owners, market salesmen and of course people who appreciated the finer arts of cooking and grew tired of the stale products the staterun stores had to offer. Her address book turned into a database of code names, numbers, and assorted prices. Todays harvest is as good as sold before the plants even left the damp earth. The challenge now lies in getting the goods to the center of the large city near the Red Square and the all-seeing eye of the State, unseen and unharmed, where her contacts are waiting with eager eyes and hopefully opened wallets.
There are several occasions where she got too careless and almost ran into trouble. At a random checkpoint in the subway she had to explain to a young KGB-officer why she had the telltale black lines under her nails from digging in the earth and a massive cauliflower in her shopping bag. In want of a decent excuse she found that opening up the top button on her dress, staring at him with the saddest blue eyes she could muster up and pouting her face worked equally well. And then there was that one time where someone bumped into her in a crowded subway car and squashed a few tomatoes she had carefully concealed on her body, causing a suspicious red stain on a questionable location on her dress. Not the proudest moment of her life. She got more careful after that incident, and modified a wooden box to look like a packet of cereal. In that box she’d carry her goods, and to the casual observer she just had a box of breakfast cereal stuck in with the rest of her shopping.
She keeps a sharp eye on her surroundings as her hands root through the soil. Though her little garden is situated well away from prying eyes one can never be too careful. After all, someone could have followed her in unseen by her, and there is no guarantee that they are potential gardners like she was all that time ago. Though she has no suspicion of her little patch being in any danger there’s nothing wrong with keeping a clear line of sight at all times. She pulls out some great-looking garlic, and the tomatoes look wonderful. They all get carefully stashed away in her specially-prepared shopping bag after receiving a good cleaning by the German girl. This order is reserved by a local greengrocer from the market, a pleasant man in his late fifties. She’s been dealing with him for a while, and he always gives her a fair price without too much haggling. When she first started out she’d often trade her goods against other hard-to-find articles, but lately she prefers cold hard cash.
Backs against the Wall
by Gooney87
(In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. But what if the wall fell in the other direction? What if the GDR had grabbed back West-Berlin? This story is about one of my characters, set in that alternate timeline. It's an adaptation of a sequel to a novel I've published, modified to work as a standalone erotic story.)by Gooney87
Chapter One - Secrets
The doors of the subway open with a mechanical sigh. Out pour the many travellers riding the Moscow subway daily. From the steamy cars the people move from anywhere to everywhere. Though the station of Borostivkaya lacks the grandeur of some of Stalin’s more opulent ‘palaces of the people’ there is a certain style and elegance in the stark white walls, sparsely decorated with colorful images of the Soviet Union’s mostly fabricated past. Here in Moscow the travellers hardly take any notice of it anymore. They just go about their daily lives under the watchful eye of Lenin and the other great names in communism.
The station is warm and sticky, despite the early September cold. It makes Nina Müller uncomfortable and sweaty in places one does not desire sweatyness. The young woman is trying to elbow her way through the crowds, her long dark-brown hair tied in a messy knot only mostly covered by her baret. Or rather; it was until this subway ride, where the tight bun has managed to drop a few strands in her face.
“Verdammte Ratte hier alle!” It’s a good thing that the Soviet Union doesn’t teach German in school, or Nina’s angry muttering might have actually gotten her in trouble with her fellow passengers.
She eventually manages to find her way out of the labyrinth of underground passages and narrow hallways, and into the fresh cool air of the outside. A few steps up the staircase leading to street level has Nina turn up her collar and hide away in her long brown coat. Father Winter has arrived early in 1994, despite a long and hot summer. Normally Nina doesn’t mind the cold. it’s a great excuse to hide away in long coats and fuzzy sweaters. Every spring she has an ongoing battle with the scales to get her body ready for skimpy summer dresses and revealing tops, so having a valid excuse to wear something that doesn’t require her to suck in her belly just to get it on, or has straps that have to be adjusted just right so that they hold everything in, but at the same time don’t try to saw a way through her shoulders is a godsend. Problems like that simply do not occur in a turtleneck sweater.
Today her plans were simple.This morning she got up at the same time as Natalya, her bestie and roommate of the cramped apartment they’ve been calling home since that fateful day in 1989. Natalya works in a large hospital near the edge of the city, and is usually up before the crack of dawn. On most mornings Nina stays in bed, but not today. She had breakfast with the Russian girl, gone over the daily papers and more of those suburban things one does in the morning. After Natalya left Nina drug herself under the shower, got dressed, and commenced battle with Moscow public transport to get to the stores in the centre of the city.
Here in the USSR stores seem to be better stocked than in her own city of Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic. Where in the DDR buying something like a loaf of bread meant standing in all kinds of queues for hours on end, here in Moscow things seem to be running a bit more smoothly. Whether that was due to the fact that the communist planned economy just simply worked better than socialism, or the fact that here and there some Moscow party members greased a few palms here and there to keep the populus happy was unclear to Nina, and none of her particular concern. All she knew was that she could get better food at lower prices than back home, and that made her happy.
Nina enters a small side street about a block away from the sweaty subway station. Here, in this residential street, all is quiet. It’s a Tuesday, so all of the men are away at work, children in school, the women out doing groceries and other chores, and there are but a few cars lining the streets. Excellent, she thinks to herself while looking over her shoulder. The less people see her out and about with her large shopping bag full of illegally grown fruits and vegetables, the better it is for all parties involved.
The rusty gate squeels while Nina squeezes her body through the narrow opening between the wall and the ‘Do-Not-Enter’-sign. It’s been a little over two years since she found this place, a small patch of uninhabited land in the middle of the large city, surrounded by concrete walls and apartment buildings. She walked past the gate by coincidence and saw someone enter holding a spade and a canvas bag. She decided to follow the woman, and saw her tending to this small patch of dirt, pulling large tomatoes from the ground. Moscow has been filled to the brim, every last bit of soil is in use for either a building, a park commemorating the many great things the USSR allegedly did, or with playgrounds for the young and old. But this little bit of land seemed to be left over in all this planning. Like the city simply forgot about this roughly 10 square meters located between garages from the apartment buildings on one side and the raised concrete wall of the adjacent road on the other side. Located just right for the correct amount of sunlight, and well irrigated from the water drains of the large buildings.
It started off small. A few seeds quickly grew into some cress. After that came the lettuce and the radishes. The meager harvest went into a colorful salad. But after a heated discussion at the Konsum on weather or not cucumbers existed within the confines of the Soviet Union Nina decided to fully go for this. An old cassette player was traded for some basic gardening implements and some seeds on the black market, and her little vegetable patch was in business.
Today is the day when the tomatoes and garlic are ready to be harvested. When she visited her patch last time she saw the little plants change color , so she gave them one more week to truly become these wonderful veggies that are so desired by her clientele.
She never had any issues finding buyers for her products. After she gave her neighbor radishes in exchange for a bag of coffee the word spread out pretty quickly that this German girl could get her hands on these wonderful products, Her little address book quickly filled with restaurant owners, market salesmen and of course people who appreciated the finer arts of cooking and grew tired of the stale products the staterun stores had to offer. Her address book turned into a database of code names, numbers, and assorted prices. Todays harvest is as good as sold before the plants even left the damp earth. The challenge now lies in getting the goods to the center of the large city near the Red Square and the all-seeing eye of the State, unseen and unharmed, where her contacts are waiting with eager eyes and hopefully opened wallets.
There are several occasions where she got too careless and almost ran into trouble. At a random checkpoint in the subway she had to explain to a young KGB-officer why she had the telltale black lines under her nails from digging in the earth and a massive cauliflower in her shopping bag. In want of a decent excuse she found that opening up the top button on her dress, staring at him with the saddest blue eyes she could muster up and pouting her face worked equally well. And then there was that one time where someone bumped into her in a crowded subway car and squashed a few tomatoes she had carefully concealed on her body, causing a suspicious red stain on a questionable location on her dress. Not the proudest moment of her life. She got more careful after that incident, and modified a wooden box to look like a packet of cereal. In that box she’d carry her goods, and to the casual observer she just had a box of breakfast cereal stuck in with the rest of her shopping.
She keeps a sharp eye on her surroundings as her hands root through the soil. Though her little garden is situated well away from prying eyes one can never be too careful. After all, someone could have followed her in unseen by her, and there is no guarantee that they are potential gardners like she was all that time ago. Though she has no suspicion of her little patch being in any danger there’s nothing wrong with keeping a clear line of sight at all times. She pulls out some great-looking garlic, and the tomatoes look wonderful. They all get carefully stashed away in her specially-prepared shopping bag after receiving a good cleaning by the German girl. This order is reserved by a local greengrocer from the market, a pleasant man in his late fifties. She’s been dealing with him for a while, and he always gives her a fair price without too much haggling. When she first started out she’d often trade her goods against other hard-to-find articles, but lately she prefers cold hard cash.
