“No message is also a message,” Andi surprises me for the second time. “Eureka!” I hiss enthusiastically. “Of course, that's the key,” I slump down in my chair.

Twice I have unmistakably asked to greet Uncle Werner, Aunt Erika and Karin – our relatives in Wuppertal. My mother never mentioned it.

She could have distanced herself with political phrases by reprimanding me to refrain from such greetings to relatives in “capitalist foreign countries”.

Writing that she had passed my regards would have been dangerous. As soon as the Stasi found out who these relatives really were, she would have been just one step away from jail.

That's why she kept quiet “out loud”.

The next opportunity would arise anyway, when my parents go to the Czech Giant Mountains for their annual winter sports vacation in February.

Sending an anonymous postcard from the Czech Republic to Wuppertal in West Germany is less risky than trying to make contact from East Germany.

“I hope you're not a snitch,” I growl at Andi. “Definitely not,” he growls back. I ask him why I should believe him. “Because I've just beaten someone's face in,” he hisses at me.

Then he tells me his story: one of his buddies has let something slip while drunk. Andi kept digging until the snitch whined and admitted that he had “signed”. Then he went crazy.

I'll never know if it's true or not. But there's no reason to make life in the cell unnecessarily difficult for us by being hostile. On the contrary. Whether he's a snitch or not, we still have to get along well either way.

Udo Lindenberg's song “Satellite City Fighter” comes to mind:

“Freddy sitzt jeden Tag am Hafen(Freddy sits at the harbor every day) /Und die Schiffe fahr’n vorbei(And the ships pass by) /Nach Rio de Janeiro und nach Hawaii…(To Rio de Janeiro and to Hawaii...)”.

Then I bury myself in my first prison reading, “Die tötende Welle” (The Killing Wave). An adventure novel by Otto Bonhoff.

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