The River Flows Both Ways

CONFIDENTIAL FILE

• FROM: C.
• TO: Iris Obscura
• DATE: February 24, 2025
• SUBJECT: Swan & Aster Files

Iris,

I found this while digging where I shouldn’t have. A love story written in fragments — Swan and Aster, separated by a wall and stitched together with codes.

It reminded me of us.

You, free in the open — and me, tucked away, hidden behind my work, my codes, my lies. Like Swan, I can’t say the things I want to. So, I’m leaving them here, between the lines, hoping you’ll see them.

— C.

-

START OF COMMUNIQUÉ

Berlin, 1962.

The city bleeds concrete and barbed wire, its spine snapped by a wall that wasn’t there last year. On one side, grey faces and grey uniforms. On the other, neon flickers and jazz that never quite drowns out the sound of boots.

She’s East — Swan, a Stasi informant with sharp eyes and sharper secrets.

He’s West — Aster, an MI6 agent who drinks his coffee black and his lies even darker.

Aster works both sides of the border.

Swan is trapped.

They don’t have the luxury of long letters or tender confessions. Just fragments — tucked in books, hidden in bricks, or smuggled through forbidden airwaves.

One wrong word, and they’re finished.

Now read on:

COMMUNIQUÉ ONE: The Photographic Message

Leipziger Straße – Sunday Market

Aster’s camera clicks, each shot another lie. Ostensibly, he’s documenting daily life in East Berlin — markets, workers, children. But his real focus is the Stasi agents hiding in plain sight.

Through his lens, he spots her — Swan — selling lilies at a flower stall, wearing the blank face of a loyal citizen. Their eyes meet through the glass. A moment too long.

Later, in his darkroom, he notices something off in one photo: a folded note nestled within her bouquet. He enlarges the image until the words appear:

“The river flows both ways. Watch for the bridge.”

His response — written on the back of a developed photo, slipped into a hollow frame and smuggled back East:

“Some bridges collapse under too much weight. Will yours hold?”

Bridges. Between cities. Between lives. Between lies.

COMMUNIQUÉ TWO: The Hollowed-Out Book

Humboldt University – Philosophy Department

Goethe’s Faust sits on a shelf — hollowed out, stuffed with microfilm documenting troop movements. But there’s something else inside: a pressed aster flower, delicate, brittle. A token.

Beneath it, a note in her neat script:

“The bloom is fragile, but it persists.”

He slides the flower into his jacket pocket — too soft a thing for the work they do.

His reply comes tucked into a hollowed-out copy of Rilke’s poetry:

“Fragility isn’t weakness. Sometimes it’s what makes it beautiful.”

COMMUNIQUÉ THREE: The Audio Recording

Safehouse – Prenzlauer Berg

Intercepted Stasi communications usually hum with cold static and numbered codes. But this tape is different. Beneath the official chatter, there’s faint humming — then, softly, her voice bleeds through the static, thin and fragile, like light through bullet holes — singing “Lili Marleen”.

A forbidden song.

Hidden under the melody, in barely perceptible Morse code:

“When the light dims, find me where the song lingers.”

Aster splices his response into a different broadcast — a risk, but the message slips through:

“I heard the song. I’m still listening.”

COMMUNIQUÉ FOUR: The Chalkboard Code

Abandoned Classroom – East Berlin School

The dead drop is supposed to be behind the chalkboard — notes about agent transfers, clean and clinical. But when Aster arrives, he sees writing scrawled across the dusty board:

“What is freedom, if not a lie we tell ourselves?”

It’s not part of the plan. He picks up the chalk and writes beneath it:

“Then perhaps love is the better lie.”

Days later, when she returns to retrieve the documents, she sees his addition and adds another line:

“Some lies are worth living for.”

Even in this — especially in this — they don’t meet. Only their words touch.

COMMUNIQUÉ FIVE: Coded Letters in Plain Sight

East Berlin Post Office – Dead Letter Section

Their letters pass through government-controlled hands, disguised as mundane family correspondence. Invisible ink carries the true messages.

Her first letter:

“Aunt Frieda’s birthday was quiet this year. The lilies bloomed late. Perhaps next spring will be kinder.”

Under heat, the real words appear:

“My daughter is in Hohenschönhausen. She won’t survive the winter.”

It’s the first time the job breaks through the veneer. This isn’t just cat-and-mouse.

His response is colder, calculated, but layered with something else:

“Prison walls can crumble, but it takes patience and leverage. I’ll see what I can do.”

Whether it’s mission or mercy — even he isn’t sure.

Her next letter comes days later, edges frayed:

“The river froze today. I almost forgot how to cross.”

A crack in the armour — a subliminal text which digs into his spy brain and burrows deep.

COMMUNIQUÉ SIX: The Coded Annotation

Staatsbibliothek Unter den Linden, Berlin State Library in East Berlin

In Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, she underlines:

“Only in the realm of Praising should lament walk, the nymph like a shadow behind you.”

And writes in the margin:

“The fountain still runs.”

He finds it, fingers lingering on the page. Beneath her note, he adds:

“I hear the water. Midnight?”

A place. A time. A risk.

COMMUNIQUÉ SEVEN: The Brush Pass

Gendarmenmarkt Square – Saturday Afternoon

Their brush pass is meant to be clean — no eye contact, no hesitation. But as she hands him a matchbox with the note inside, her fingers linger.

Inside:

“Asters bloom where swans gather. Hotel Grenzfall. Midnight.”

His hand closes over the matchbox too tightly. The plan wasn’t to meet again. But now, it’s tempting.

COMMUNIQUÉ EIGHT: The Dead Drop

Cracked Wall, Friedrichstraße Station

Loose bricks. Hollow spaces. Their words are buried where no one should find them.

Her note:

“The swan longs for open water. But wings are heavy.”

His response:

“I will carry you. Across ice, if I must.”

But the cracks between them widen. In her next message, more desperation:

“They’re moving my daughter. I don’t know where.”

His reply comes with a promise he isn’t sure he can keep:

“I’ll find her. No matter the cost.”

COMMUNIQUÉ NINE: The Graffiti

Alley Behind the Hotel Grenzfall

A chalk swan marks the wall — a signal of safety. But when she returns, it’s been slashed through the neck with a chalk line.

The hotel is compromised.

Without missing a beat, she keeps on walking.

COMMUNIQUÉ TEN: Classified Messages

Die Welt – Neutral Ground

Their ads get bolder, more desperate.

Her ad:

“For sale: Porcelain swan, minor crack, still floats. Best offers in lilies. Box 482.”

His reply:

“Wanted: Aster seeds for spring planting. Prefer hardy blooms that weather storms. Box 156.”

Her next ad:

“Lost: Silver key, last seen near ivy wall. Sentimental value. Reward offered. Box 482.”

His response:

“Found: A key that opens more than doors. Safe if claimed soon. Box 156.”

COMMUNIQUÉ ELEVEN: Radio Waves

Western Radio Broadcast – 98.3 FM

The radio hums with static before the DJ's voice cuts through, warm and casual — too casual for a city split in two.

Aster sends in the song request, veiled like all the others.

“For the swan still waiting by the river — clearer skies will come.”

The DJ spins the record.

“We’ll Meet Again” — Vera Lynn. A wartime relic, filled with hope and impossible promises.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day…”

The song drifts across the divide, over concrete and wire.

Swan hears it. Somewhere deep inside the East, she turns up the volume. The melody, hollow and heavy, fills the room.

Two days later, a reply comes. A new song plays, her message buried in the dedication:

“For the aster growing in the shadows — the nightmare will end. Survive. I’ll be waiting.”

The DJ plays “Dream a Little Dream of Me” — Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

“Stars shining bright above you,

Night breezes seem to whisper ‘I love you’…”

Not just a message of survival, but a promise — fragile and dangerous.

COMMUNIQUÉ TWELVE: The Escape Plan

Classified Ad – Die Welt

“Invitation: Garden party by the ivy wall. Entry at dusk. Bring only what grows wild. Box 156.”

She knows the place — an abandoned courtyard rumoured to have an escape tunnel. This is it.

COMMUNIQUÉ THIRTEEN: The Betrayal

Abandoned courtyard by the Landwehrkanal

He has a hunch — his spy subconscious burrowing back up to warn his lovestruck frontal lobe.

Instead of waiting by the ivy-covered wall, the planned escape point, he sits at the park across the street, his breath heavy in the damp night. The silence is all wrong — too still, too expectant.

When he spots the Stasi ambush, they are not clumsy or rushed — they are waiting. A trap.

Aster slips away, his heart pounding, his mind racing.

Later, from his notes:

“She set me up. Or worse… she believed I’d understand. Like the bridges — some things just aren’t meant to hold.”

The thought carves through him deeper than the cold.

COMMUNIQUÉ FOURTEEN: The Final Message

Weeks crawl by. The city feels colder, the walls higher. Aster keeps moving, always watching, always on guard.

One evening, drawn by something he can’t quite name, he returns to one of their old dead drops — the cracked wall near Friedrichstraße Station.

There, wedged between the bricks, is a folded, stained note.

Typed. No softness in it.

“We know who you are. This is your only warning. Desist. There will not be another.”

No signature. No need. He crumples the paper, jaw tight. But then he sees it — just below where the note had been wedged — scratched into the brick, rough and fast.

Two swans: a mother and a daughter. The daughter behind bars. The mother crossed over. A faint line traced between — a thread, almost invisible — connecting them, but stretched thin, like it could snap at any moment. Wings spread wide, uneven lines, but unmistakable.

He presses his fingers to the etched lines, feeling the jagged grooves beneath his skin. The cold stone bites back. For a moment, he just breathes — slow, shallow — his thumb tracing the swan’s wing as though the motion could bring it to life.

Of course, she had no choice. They have her daughter.

Aster reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pressed aster flower, now crumpled and fragile. The edges browned, petals curled inward, but still whole. He places it into a crevice near the swans — a piece of her, of them.

He crouches low to the wall and picks up a shard of broken clay brick to use as makeshift chalk. For a moment, he hesitates. Then he presses the clay down, drawing a crude sun above the swan. Simple. Childlike. Rays jagged and uneven.

Terracotta dust clings to his fingertips, brittle and ephemeral — as if even the sun he drew might crumble under the city's weight.

He steps back, pocketing the clay shard, and as he walks away, he begins to whistle.

Soft, low, but clear.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day…”

The melody floats through the empty street, mingling with the cold air. No one’s there to hear it.

But maybe, one day, she will.

And so he walks away.

Not for closure.

Not for forgiveness.

But for the promise of one sunny day.

END OF COMMUNIQUÉ

-

Iris,

Turn this into something beautiful. You always do.

And maybe, in these words, you’ll find me too.

Like Aster, I’ll be here, waiting.

Always,

— C.

-

FINAL NOTE — FROM I.O. TO C.

C.,

I wrote the story into your notes — but I added you too. You’re part of this, like Swan, Aster, and me.

I’ll find you in a freer world, my love.

— Iris