Walls

by L. M. Elliott

  Before Drew could figure out what the German word meant, two carriages pulled up at the same time, depositing a crowd of rosy-cheeked riders, bundled up and laughing. Both top-hatted coachmen looked very happy to have another fare so quickly. “Guten Abend. Bitte komm,” they beckoned.

  “Good luck,” Drew called to the GI and his fiancée as he took Shirley’s hand to help her onto the carriage’s narrow step.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she said softly, smiling at him.

  Drew caught his breath a little as she gracefully ascended. The carriage swayed and dipped gently as she nestled next to Joyce on the red leather seat, pulling a thick wool blanket up around them. After gesturing for Matthias to climb in next, Drew waved goodbye to the engaged couple, who settled into their own carriage behind them, exuding an aura of blissful romance.

  That’s when Drew spotted a pair of middle-aged American men stumbling toward the GI’s carriage, each dragging by the hand a young German woman wrapped in a full-length mink coat.

  “Hey! We’ve been waiting!” one of the men bellowed. He was clearly drunk.

  Matthias and Drew paused, still on the ground, sensing trouble.

  Now the obnoxious middle-aged man stood gaping at the couple, his mouth hanging open. He pointed angrily at the American GI and shouted at the coachman, “You’re taking that Negro before us?”

  Passersby froze.

  The man’s companion strode forward and grabbed the bridle of one of the carriage horses. “My friend asked you a question,” he roared up at the coachman. This man was dead sober. He continued threatening the couple’s carriage driver. “I suggest you tell this Black man to get out of your carriage. Show some respect for American rules, since we’ve rebuilt your sorry-ass country. Back home, it’s the back of the bus for that guy. Whites up front and definitely”—he paused for emphasis—“first.”

  It was the GI who replied through gritted teeth, “Maybe you haven’t been home in a while. The Supreme Court ended segregation on public buses four years ago.” He added sarcastically, “Sir.”

  The man didn’t let go of the horse. “Last time I checked, boy,” he countered, “mixed-race couples were still verboten in America—in thirty states, I believe. Does the Fräulein know that?”

  “Yes, she does,” the soldier answered calmly. “She judges a man for who he is, no matter his nationality or his race.”

  He and the American glared at one another, neither relenting.

  After a moment, the coachman spoke haltingly. “Bitte. I want no trouble.” He beckoned to a pair of West German policemen standing on the corner.

  The American smirked. “That’s right. Call in the cops. Police respect authority.”

  “You can call whoever you like. I have the right to this seat and this carriage ride.” The GI didn’t budge. His fiancée shifted nervously.

  Time seemed to freeze as the Landespolozisten approached. Drew was filled with dread. Police back home weren’t exactly friendly to Black Americans pushing for equality.

  Suddenly, Shirley’s voice pealed out. “Good evening!” Drew looked up at her in astonishment as she stood and waved at the German policemen. “Isn’t it wonderful? This American soldier has just proposed to this lovely lady.”

  “And she said yes!’ ” Joyce stood as well, blessing the officers with a dazzling smile.

  The two German policemen were young and grinned back, totally enchanted by the American girls.

  Shirley continued in a bubbly voice, “They want to celebrate their engagement with the most romantic thing Berlin has to offer—a ride through the Tiergarten in a horse-drawn carriage!”

  “Wunderbar!” One of the Landespolozisten clapped in congratulations.

  “There is a problem with this?” the other policeman asked the carriage driver.

  The drunk American responded first. “We were here first.”

  “That’s right,” echoed his friend, who still clutched the horse’s bridle. “What kind of hospitality is this for American businessmen, who patronize your Kurfürstendamm shops?” He gestured to his date, who stroked the arm of her mink coat on cue.

  “Bitte,” the coachman repeated, “I want no trouble.”

  The German policemen hesitated, frowning as they considered the middle-aged Americans. They looked back to the GI, then to his fiancée, their gazes almost imploring, perhaps worrying they might be dressed down by superior officers for alienating Americans with fat wallets.

  The GI saved them. He called to Shirley, “You know, now that I think about it, it’d be nice to celebrate our engagement with other Americans. I’m such a long way from home. Do you have room in your carriage for us to join you?”

  “Yes, please! Come with us!” Shirley answered.

  Their driver protested quietly. “Too much weight, Fräulein.”

  Shirley turned to him. “We will only ride with them around the corner. Please?”

  The coachman stuck out his lower lip, considering, then shrugged and nodded.

  The couple clambered in with Shirley and Joyce.

  Clucking and snapping his whip in the air, their coachman urged his horses forward at a trot as Drew and Matthias hurried to swing themselves up and squeeze in beside the GI and his German sweetheart. When they rounded the corner, their driver pulled over. Drew scrambled out and helped Joyce and Shirley step down to the pavement before the second carriage, now stuffed with the middle-aged troublemakers and their dates, could catch up to them.

  “Dankeschön.” Matthias nodded at the carriage driver, who answered, “Gebt Acht.” Be careful.

  “Congratulations again!” they all called and waved as the carriage and the GI and his fiancée disappeared into the night.

  “That was quick thinking, girl, announcing their engagement like that.” Joyce put her arm around Shirley.

  “Oh, I didn’t do anything. It was the GI who figured out how to de-escalate the situation using nonviolent resistence.” Shirley smiled, thoughtful, then added, “My nana was one of the original members of CORE—the Congress of Racial Equality. She’s been in sit-ins in Chicago at lunch counters as far back as the forties. CORE would send in its members—Black and white, like my nana—together. They’d all order, and if the restaurant refused to serve the Black members, the whites handed them their plates. CORE helped integrate Jack Sprat diners that way, like Reverend Martin Luther King is leading people to do right now across the South.”

  Shirley pushed her coat lapels up around her face against the cold. “Nana has told me never to just stand by if I see people fighting for their rights. To get involved. She quotes the playwright George Bernard Shaw at me all the time. Somebody in one of his plays says that the worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them.”

  Shirley turned toward the Kurfürstendamm. “Maybe we can get a strudel?”

  “My treat,” said Joyce.

  As they walked back to the brightly lit avenue, Matthias murmured, “A very illuminating night here in the West.”

  Drew didn’t know exactly what Matthias meant by that comment. But he suddenly remembered what die Heuchelei meant—hypocrisy. He felt his face flame red with mortification at what he’d just witnessed fellow Americans do. Then other German words filled his head as he gazed at Shirley—der Schneid for guts, die Bewunderung for admiration, and sich verlieben for falling in love.

  For once, Matthias was right—it had been a very illuminating night.

  Back home, Drew changed into his pajamas and went to the bathroom for some aspirin. He’d danced so much his legs were actually sore. He opened the medicine cabinet and reached for the Alka-Seltzer. But it wasn’t there. His toothpaste and zit medicine were missing, too. Weird.

  Maybe he’d left them on his night table. As he padded barefoot around his bed, he stepped on a folded paper. His father—mostly jokingly—d
id a neat-and-tidy inspection of their rooms each night. Drew didn’t leave scraps of paper on the floor.

  Puzzled, he scooped it up. It was in German, official looking, and Matthias’s signature was at the bottom.

  “Wegen der Kriegsgefahr durch die NATO . . .”

  What the heck? Drew’s German was improving fast, especially since all American students in Berlin were required to take the language. He could translate, “Because of the threat of war by NATO . . .” But the rest of the document was so formal, it would take him a while to work through it with a German dictionary. Joyce, too. He needed his mom. Drew glanced at his clock. She’d be fast asleep at twelve fifteen. But this was an emergency!

  Slowly opening the door to his parents’ room, Drew tiptoed to his mom’s side of the bed and gently touched her arm.

  Instantly on mom alert, she reached for her robe and slid her feet into slippers. “Are you sick, honey?” she whispered, putting her hand on his forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”

  “Mom, I need to show you something. Right now.”

  They went into the kitchen. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Drew’s mom quickly skimmed the paper, her face growing serious. “Oh no,” she murmured.

  “What is it?”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It was in my bedroom!” Drew was beginning to put two and two together. Matthias had been snooping in his stuff! Just when Drew had kinda started to like the guy.

  “This is pure Soviet propaganda, honey. Bald-faced lies about why NATO was formed in the first place—which was to protect Western Europe from Russian expansionism,” she explained. “The Russians need East Germans to believe we are the problem, so they flip reality on its head to make America look like the aggressor. These types of trumped-up falsehoods are how they do it.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Yes,” she murmured.

  “What does this say?” He pointed to the paper.

  “It’s a pledge Matthias has signed.” Drew’s mom read to herself and then translated aloud, “ ‘Because of the threat of war by NATO, it is a moral consequence of my political convictions that I, as a young socialist, help to defend the achievements gained by the sacrificial struggle of the working class even to the extent of pledging my life.’ ”

  “Good grief,” Drew muttered.

  His mom continued translating. “ ‘I give my wholehearted support to the struggle against imperialism and the politics of NATO.’ ” She paused, shaking her head. “ ‘Therefore, at any time deemed necessary by the Party, I will bear arms to defend peace, my fatherland, and the workers’ and peasants’ government. To this end, I will familiarize myself with the use of arms . . . with revolutionary discipline and unconditional obedience.’ ”

  With a long, sad sigh, she took Drew’s hand and said, “This is exactly why I so want you to befriend Matthias.”

  Drew snatched his hand away. “You want me to be friends with a kid who signed this? Someone who might take a gun and shoot at me or at Dad if things get bad?”

  “Of course not, honey.” His mom’s voice quavered at the mere thought. “Let’s try to get Matthias on our side before that happens.”

  “What makes you think he’s interested in that?” Drew was too mad to recall Matthias’s misgivings—about music censorship, at least—that he’d witnessed that evening.

  “Well . . . I can tell Marta wants him to be more open to American ideas, to see us as friends instead of enemies.”

  “You might think you know everything, Mom, but you don’t always.”

  Drew’s mother studied him for a long, long moment. She let his impertinence slide. “I think so because—even though Marta hasn’t said anything directly, since the Soviets enforce such harsh de-Nazification policies in East Germany—she—”

  Drew interrupted. “That’s a good thing, don’t you think, Mom? Purging Nazis and anyone who agreed with them?”

  Again, his mom contemplated him. “The sins of one person don’t automatically define his family members, do they?” she asked quietly.

  Drew chewed on that for a moment.

  “What I was about to say, honey, is that although I don’t know for sure, I get the sense that Marta’s older sons—those twins—might have been browbeaten into joining the Hitler Youth, and . . .” She trailed off. “Sometimes, honey, you have to look beyond a person’s rhetoric when it has clearly been stuffed into his head by his government. Or by political figures. Or by the people who hold the power in a society. It’s brainwashing. Some people have trouble seeing past the hyperbole or conspiracy theories or hate-filled labels and stereotypes they’ve been fed. But that doesn’t mean they can’t change if they are given truth and factual information as counterbalance. That’s where we come in. As living proof that the lies his country’s leaders are spreading are not true. Matthias . . . beyond that wall of what he’s been inculcated to believe, I think he’s a boy much like you.”

  She folded the paper and tucked it into her robe pocket. “I better show this to CIC at Marienfelde.” She kissed Drew’s forehead and went back to bed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DECEMBER 1960

  Standing on the sports field, waiting for the military helicopter that would bring Santa Claus to the school’s annual orphans party, Drew was holding a shivering boy’s hand. He could feel the child’s fingers tremble through his mitten.

  “Ist dir kalt?” Are you cold?

  The five-year-old nodded, not taking his eyes off the ice-blue sky. “Wird der Weihnachtsmann bald hier sein?”

  “Yes, Santa will be here soon.” Drew stamped his feet, feeling his own toes prickling from the chill.

  The boy mimicked him. Stamp-stamp.

  Drew glanced down. The boy’s peacoat was patched but heavy. His bright red-and-green knitted hat and scarf looked new, probably a gift from the army wives club. What the poor kid really needed was some real pants. He was dressed in the standard attire for German boys—shorts and woolly knee socks, which provided little protection for the kid’s spindly legs against the bitter Berlin cold.

  Stamp-stamp.

  Stamp-stamp. The boy’s eyes never left the heavens.

  Drew surveyed the other thirty or so orphans. They were dancing in place, speculating on what Santa might bring them. Elfin girls in pointy, tasseled knit caps, their cheeks rosy from the frigid air, happily swarmed Joyce and Shirley and the other student council members who’d organized the day.

  Drew’s assigned orphan, on the other hand, was so still, so quiet. Drew wondered what the boy’s story was. Drew and his classmates who’d volunteered to be escorts for the party hadn’t been told anything specific. When he was five years old, Drew’s biggest worry had been whether he was getting a tricycle or not. Instinctively, he patted the boy’s hand.

  Turning his enormous, walnut-brown eyes to Drew, the five-year-old asked fretfully, “Wird Knecht Ruprecht mit dem Weihnachtsmann zusammen kommen?”

  Drew didn’t know who Knecht Ruprecht was and answered that he thought Santa was coming alone. The reindeer couldn’t fit in the helicopter, he joked.

  But the boy didn’t laugh, just added in a hushed and solemn voice, “Ich verspreche, dass ich dieses Jahr brav war.”

  “I’m sure you have been very good,” Drew reassured him, proud that his German had improved enough for this simple conversation.

  The child nodded and returned his watchful gaze to the sky.

  Whump-whump-whump-whump. The faint sound of rotating blades sliced the air, and the helicopter appeared in the horizon.

  “He’s coming! Er kommt!” The children clapped. The Berlin high schoolers grinned, caught up in the infectious holiday spirit. A few of the orphans hung back shyly, but only Drew’s charge remained completely contained and apprehensive.

  Whump-whump-whump-whump. The helicopter grew large quickly, and
within a few moments, it landed in a gale of whipped-up rotary wind.

  Out jumped the high school coach, pillowed and padded and dressed as Santa. The orphans broke loose and charged him, jumping up and down.

  “Ho-ho-ho, merry Christmas!” he shouted through his fake, cotton-fluff beard.

  A chorus of children shouted back, “Fröhliche Weihnachten!”

  “C’mon. You too.” Drew walked the boy to the line of eager children.

  When Santa swung his heavy bag off his shoulder to drop it to the ground, the five-year-old gasped and stepped back.

  “Don’t worry,” Drew reassured him, “Santa just wants to give you a gift.”

  Multiflavored Lifesavers, skipping ropes, kaleidoscopes, yo-yos, jacks, marbles. As each child received a present, he or she peeled off, running back to the school building for cake.

  Finally, Drew’s boy reached Coach Santa, who handed him a little wooden push puppet of the Disney cartoon dog Pluto. Push the button, and the mini puppet collapsed; release, and it popped back up. Still silent, the boy pushed and released the toy’s mechanism all the way back to the cafeteria.

  After making sure the boy had a piece of cake, Drew found Shirley. “Who is Knecht Ruprect?” he asked. She seemed to know everything.

  “A terrible ogre with horns and fangs. Also known as Krampus. In some parts of Germany, the tradition is that Father Christmas is accompanied by Knecht Ruprect, who knows for certain whether children have been good or not. If they’ve been naughty, Krampus stuffs them in his large sack and carries them away.”

  “Are you kidding?” No wonder the boy had startled when Coach Santa dropped his bag.

  Shirley laughed. “Nope. Have you read their fairy tales?” She darted off to mop up an overturned glass of milk.

  Drew watched the boy wolf down his cake. Just like Matthias. The orphanage was in West Berlin; the boy shouldn’t be so hungry.

  Joyce came to stand beside him and breathe for a moment.

  “Good job, sis. What comes next?”

  “Singing Christmas carols. Then they go home.” She smiled at Drew. “Thanks for doing this.” Then she dashed away to quell the tears of a little girl whose long braids had fallen into her ice cream. Joyce quieted her by pulling a pretty clip from her own hair and tucking it into the girl’s.