by Felice Arena
‘Let me through,’ she says. ‘I need to be with my grandchildren. I’m all alone, and I’ve travelled for over two hours. Please don’t stop me now.’
But the officer doesn’t listen. He just shoves the lady backwards, along with a few other passengers. She stumbles a few steps before regaining her balance.
‘Hey!’ Peter shouts. He steps forward to help the lady, but a hand from behind grabs him by the shoulder.
‘Peter, don’t get involved.’
Peter turns to see his neighbour, Sabine Roeder. She’s a university student who lives with her mother Herta in the apartment two doors down.
‘They’ve blocked every way through to the West. This is insane,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’
‘My parents are over there,’ Peter says, falling into step beside her. ‘When am I going to see them again, Sabine?’ His voice sounds small.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, looking around as if she’s searching for someone. ‘I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t live my life here. I’m not going to let bad timing stop me. I’m getting out of here.’
‘But what about your mother?’
‘She wants me to go. Once I’m in the West, I’ll find a way to get her over there.’
‘But how will you get out?’ Peter asks, just as a young man strides towards Sabine. He’s carrying a bouquet of flowers.
‘This is Manfred,’ says Sabine.
He nods to Peter but is clearly not in the mood for a chat. ‘You ready?’ he says to Sabine, looking nervous.
‘Let’s go,’ Sabine says.
They obviously have a plan. This might be my only chance to leave, Peter thinks. ‘Bitte, please, can I come with you?’ Peter asks.
Sabine shakes her head. ‘Go home, Peter.’
Sabine and Manfred jog across the street. When they turn the corner, Peter sets out after them.
Halt!
STOP!
Peter shadows Sabine and Manfred until they reach the wall around a small cemetery. They glance back in his direction. Peter ducks behind a parked car, a little Trabant – the most common automobile in the East. Peering over the tiny bonnet, he sees them walking through the gate.
I know this place, Peter thinks. The cemetery backs on to the border. Manfred and Sabine are making it look as if they are visiting a grave. They’re obviously planning to climb over the cemetery wall and cross over into the West that way. It’s a brilliant idea.
But then he hears voices behind him. Back down the street, a group of soldiers from the NPA, the National People’s Army, are marching in his direction. They’re easy to recognise from their turtle-shell-shaped helmets. And they’re serious and stiff like their shin-high leather boots. There’s no time to waste – Peter follows Sabine and Manfred into the cemetery.
The area is dotted with large oak trees and blanketed in overgrown grass and weeds. Dirt paths wind among old cracked headstones and newer, better-cared-for graves.
It doesn’t take long for Peter to catch up. He hides behind a tree, right next to a freshly dug grave. There’s a pile of soil with a shovel stuck in it right beside the hole, but no coffin and no mourners.
Sabine and Manfred don’t seem to have spotted him. He hopes the soldiers haven’t either. Ahead, Manfred is helping Sabine to climb over a high brick wall. On the other side is the West. And freedom.
‘Halt! Halt!’
Peter turns to see more soldiers running towards them from another entrance to the cemetery.
‘Stop! Stop, or we’ll shoot!’ a soldier shouts.
Sabine pulls herself up to the top of the wall and turns to pull Manfred after her. But as he tries to launch himself up, the soldiers swarm on him and grab him by the ankles.
With a cry, Sabine jumps to the other side, and Manfred is pulled back down to the ground.
Peter’s heart is pounding. If the soldiers spot me they’ll arrest me too, he thinks. He slinks down along the trunk of the tree, drops into the grave and crouches there, frozen.
The soldiers drag Manfred right past him. Peter catches a glimpse of Manfred’s face as they pass and sees terror in his eyes. Peter holds his breath and stays motionless until he hears the soldiers’ voices fade in the distance.
Only then does he realise that he’s trapped himself. The grave is way too deep to simply step out of. Peter panics. Now what?
He jumps a couple of times, trying to claw at the top of the grave – but it’s useless. He’s still a long way off the top.
Peter hears someone approaching and his heart races even faster. One of the soldiers has obviously stayed back, he thinks. If he finds me here, this could end up being my grave! Peter scans the ground and spots a partly buried rock. He picks it up. It’s a little larger than his fist.
When the footsteps seem to have passed by, Peter frantically begins digging small holes into one of the hard dirt walls. Standing on his toes he shovels out two holes shoulder-width apart – as high as he can reach – another around the level of his face, and one more at waist-level.
Peter drops the rock. ‘Here goes,’ he whispers, wedging his right foot in the hole closest to his waist and pushing up to grab the two highest holes. With as secure a grip as he can manage, he raises his left foot and places it in the next hole up.
Using all the strength he can muster, Peter grits his teeth and propels his body upward. He lunges for the top of the ditch, clutching at a clump of grass and pushing a foot into one of the higher holes.
‘Yes!’ he sighs, lifting himself out of the grave.
Peter looks up to see a soldier standing only a few graves away. Thankfully the man is facing away from him. He exhales quietly, then springs to his feet and bolts for the entrance.
But then he hears someone following him. ‘Halt! Halt!’ cries a man. Big boots are thumping against the ground behind him.
Peter runs faster than he ever has before. Thankfully no new soldiers appear. But he doesn’t stop running until he has put the cemetery far behind him.
‘Thank heavens!’ Oma rushes to Peter when he gets home. ‘Are you all right? We were so worried.’
Peter nods, but he doesn’t feel all right.
‘You’re out of breath.’ Oma hugs him tightly. ‘I can’t believe the government has done this to us. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink.’
Peter joins Opa at the kitchen table. Opa is shaking his head as he listens to the reports coming from the West on the radio. He’s clearly upset. He always said something like this would happen – that the Communist government would take away their rights. That something bad would happen. He mutters as the news crackles through the tiny speakers. He places his shaking hand on Peter’s wrist.
Peter can’t look at him. He knows if he does, he might not be able to control the emotions surging up inside of him.
Just as Oma hands Peter a glass of water there’s a knock at the door. Oma opens it cautiously. It’s Sabine’s mother, Herta Roeder.
‘Oh, Frieda,’ she says to Oma. ‘This is terrible. I’ve just come from visiting my friend. I’ve heard that the people who live in the apartments running along the border are going to be kicked out of their homes.’
‘What?’ gasps Oma.
‘Why?’ asks Peter, shocked.
‘The rear of the buildings are here in the East,’ says Frau Roeder, ‘but the front of the buildings are in the West.’
‘Like Bernauerstrasse?’ says Oma.
Frau Roeder nods. ‘There’s talk that the police are going to raid the apartments, evict the residents and brick up all the windows and doors. What’s this world coming to? I hope Sabine and Manfred are all right. I hope they made it across!’
Peter knows he will have to tell her, but he doesn’t know how. He looks up to see Opa staring at him. His opa knows him too well – he can tell that Peter knows something.
‘I told them it would be dangerous, but you know Sabine, and Manfred for that matter, when they set their minds to something …’
‘Sabine got th
rough,’ Peter blurts out. ‘But Manfred didn’t. I’m so sorry, Frau Roeder. He’s been arrested.’
Niemandem trauen
DON’T TRUST ANYONE
When Peter and Oma arrive at the Invalidenstrasse checkpoint, Peter sees that the guards and the police, all holding assault rifles, have now pushed the crowds farther back from the border. They hurry people along if they try to stop and look over. Peter and Oma walk slowly. There are so many people on the western side waving and calling out.
Peter scans the masses on the other side of the barbed wire. Then he spots a woman in the distance. The sun is setting behind her and there’s a hazy glare in the sky so it’s hard to tell, but he thinks it could be his mother.
Then the light shifts. ‘That’s her!’ he tells Oma. ‘It’s Mutti! And there’s Vatti. He’s just stepped up beside her, and he’s holding Margrit.’
He waves to them. Oma waves. But Peter’s parents don’t seem to see them in the crowd. Peter wants to shout to them, but he knows they’re too far away and he doesn’t want to draw any attention from the guards.
His mother turns and drops her head on to his father’s chest. Even from this far away Peter can see that she’s shaking, crying. Peter’s chest tightens. He feels hopeless and lost and afraid. He turns and sees tears streaming down Oma’s face. She wipes them away quickly when she notices Peter looking at her.
‘Let’s go!’ she says, turning abruptly.
‘But we just got here,’ Peter says.
‘There’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing any of us can do. They’ll send us away soon anyway. And we must get back to Opa.’
Peter waves one more time to his parents and sister. He doesn’t want to take his eyes off them. But Oma has already walked on. Peter tells himself that he’s not going to cry. He hears Max’s voice in his head: ‘You didn’t even go home when your mother called you. You’ll move away, leave us here, and never think about us again. You think you’re such a hero. But you’re not. You’re a rat.’
Well, I’m stuck here now, Peter thinks, waving one more time to his family before running after Oma. But I’d rather be a traitor.
Oma doesn’t talk on the way home. She’s marching ahead at a quick pace. Just before they reach the entrance of their building she stops abruptly and turns to Peter.
‘Now I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ she says sternly, her face hard. ‘If you have any thoughts at all – even the slightest inkling – of trying to escape to the West, put them right out of your head. This government means business. Never forget what happened here during the last war.’
Peter bites his bottom lip, feeling afraid. The war ended before he was born and he has never heard his Oma talk about it before.
‘Governments like this one kill people who don’t agree with them. And those soldiers at the border will shoot you without even thinking about it because it’s their job.’
Peter starts to turn his face away from her, but she grabs it tightly, squeezing his cheeks.
‘Listen, Manfred’s family might never see him again. I’m sure he’s been locked away in a cell, maybe chained up like a dog. He had his whole life ahead of him and now has nothing. And, what’s worse, the silly Dummkopf has drawn the attention of the Stasi, the secret police, to his family and to our building too. Mark my words. We haven’t seen the end of this.’
But Peter doesn’t think Sabine and Manfred are silly. They seem brave to him.
‘You’re all we’ve got now,’ Oma says. ‘And we love you very much. So keep your mouth shut. Don’t trust anyone. And promise me you won’t do anything dämlich!’
Peter nods, ‘Yes, Oma,’ he says. But behind his back he crosses his fingers. It depends what you mean by ‘idiotic’, he thinks.
Later that night, as Peter helps his opa get into bed, a thought crosses his mind. Opa has been a prisoner before – in the First World War when he was a young man.
‘Opa,’ he says. ‘When you were in the prison camp, did you ever try to escape?’
Opa squints his eyes and then nods.
‘Really?’
Opa nods again. Peter doesn’t know much about the horrors Opa experienced in the Soviet camps. But he knows that lots of Germans didn’t survive them. And he knows that’s why Opa detests the government and why moving to the West can’t come soon enough for him.
His parents would never tell Peter any detail about what happened to Opa. His father had only said, ‘Think of evil, and then multiply it by a hundred. That’s how bad it was.’ Peter has never had the courage to ask Opa about it before.
‘Will you tell me the story?’ Peter asks.
Before Opa can attempt an answer, Oma walks into the room.
‘Gute Nacht, Peter,’ she says. ‘Time for bed. It’s been an emotional day for all of us.’
Peter sighs heavily as he leaves his grandparents and goes to the bedroom he shared with his family. He sits on his bed, but he’s in no mood for sleeping. His mind is spinning.
He looks at his parents’ bed and at Margrit’s bed, which is pushed up against his. Six people living in a two-bedroom apartment had felt crowded, but now Peter feels so alone. He looks forlornly at the stuffed toys on Margrit’s pillow. One is a bear, the other a duck.
He loves his oma and opa, but how can he live without Margrit and his parents?
Suddenly he has a brilliant idea that pushes his sadness aside. He lunges forward and grabs the toy duck.
That’s it, he thinks. The river! I’ll swim across to the West.
Der Fluss
THE RIVER
The cuckoo clock ticks loudly in the hallway – it’s a little after midnight. Peter tiptoes past his grandparents’ bedroom. Their door is ajar. He hears Opa snoring, and turns to see them snuggled into each other. Oma has her arm flung over Opa.
Peter sighs. Opa was a prisoner of war in an actual prison and he tried to escape, he tells himself, hurrying towards the front door. There’s no way I’m going to give up and be a prisoner in my own city.
When Peter steps outside, he edges along the wall of his building and down the street, hiding in doorways whenever a car or army jeep drives by.
When he reaches the district of Friedrichshain, he makes his way towards the River Spree. The Spree snakes through the city of Berlin, but this part of the river forms a natural border between the East and the West.
On the other side of the river Peter can see the district of Kreuzberg, which is in the West. Over there he sees lights twinkling and hears the sounds of life: a car door slamming, laughter echoing, music blaring from an open window. On his side it’s dead-still, stark and ghostly. The wide streets are empty and most of the lights are out.
Everyone is hidden away – in our prison-cell apartments, Peter thinks, as he slips in behind a clump of reeds. He takes a moment to catch his breath. He’s sweating. It’s taken almost an hour from his home in the neighbourhood of Mitte to get here.
Peter scopes out the area. Visibility is low – he can just make out the riverbank on the other side. It’s about a hundred and fifty metres away. The river has a strong current, but he can definitely swim the distance.
Peter thinks back to when he was swimming there last summer. When he was doing his best cannonballs with Hubert and Max, he couldn’t have known that his next swim would be so dangerous.
‘Why did dumb politics have to get between me and my friends?’ he mutters.
Peter kicks off his shoes and takes off his shirt. He doesn’t want anything to drag him down or make it harder to swim across the current.
He will have to swim in a way that won’t draw attention. That means minimal splashing. Best if I do breaststroke, he thinks. It’s slower, but I have to cross this river like a water rat – not a ripple in sight.
As Peter steps towards the river’s edge, there’s a rustle in the tall reeds. Peter thinks the worst – a border guard? A border guard’s ferocious dog? Both?
‘Who are you?’ comes a shaky whisper, startling
Peter.
A young man emerges from the darkness. He’s barefoot and he doesn’t look much older than Sabine and Manfred.
‘Are you going to swim across too?’ he asks, starting to unbutton his shirt. ‘My fiancé’s over there, and there’s no way I’m going to live here without her.’
The young man is wearing shorts under his trousers. He pushes past Peter.
‘I don’t think we should swim together,’ he adds, wading in waist deep. ‘Two of us will be spotted more easily than one. The river patrol boat cruised by here about five minutes ago – downstream. You’ll just have to wait.’
‘Why should I?’ said Peter, defiantly. ‘My family is over there. I’ll go first.’
‘No, you won’t. I’ve been waiting hours for the right time. Get in line, kid.’
The young man dives into the water and starts swimming as fast as he can.
Peter curses. He grabs his shoes and shirt. He will have to look for another spot to enter the water. He looks out at the river and sees that the young man is about halfway across. But just then he hears the sound of an engine approaching fast from around the bend. It’s the river police!
Peter drops to the ground and peers through the reeds. The patrol boat beams a huge spotlight onto the young man.
‘Halt! Halt!’ the police shout.
The young man dives below the surface.
Peter’s entire body is frozen with fear. He imagines what it would be like to be in that cold water, lit up by a spotlight, with police shouting at him.
The patrol boat glides to where the man disappeared beneath the surface. There is no sign of him now. There’s a lot of shouting from the police on board the boat, and then … they fire their guns, spraying bullets into the water.
Peter’s heart feels as if it’s been shoved into his throat. He can hardly breathe. He wants to run but can’t move. He closes his eyes and covers his ears to block out the terrifying gunshots.
Peter stays still as a statue for a very long time, shivering in the darkness. Even after the patrol boat’s motor fades into the distance, his mind is in overload, his hands trembling, his heart still beating furiously. He tells himself that the young man must have swum underwater to the other side. That the bullets missed him. That he hasn’t been shot, or caught and taken away. That he has made it to safety.