Walls

by L. M. Elliott

  “Mom! There’s another guy, a man with a clipboard! He was talking to Linda at the lake. He—”

  “All right, all right.” Mr. Klein quieted Drew before telling the MPs to bring the boys to his office. He slammed the door shut behind them as the MPs shoved them into seats.

  “You watch the way you manhandle my son,” Drew’s mother reprimanded the police with startling authority.

  They sheepishly Yes, ma’am’ed her.

  “What’s the story, Drew?” Mr. Klein asked.

  “Go ahead, honey,” his mom reassured him.

  The story cascaded out of him—of the teen living in Matthias’s house; of him wearing one of the Olympic tracksuits the GDR gave loyal youth fanatics for breaking TV antennas; of Matthias being pulled in front of an FDJ tribunal. “Probably because of this jerk,” Drew concluded, pointing at the teenager beside him. Then he told his mom and Mr. Klein about Linda’s weird encounter with the man at Wannsee. “When I saw the man from the lake talking with this guy here at Marienfelde”—he gestured around him—“I knew something wasn’t right.”

  His mom’s face was ashen.

  “Describe the man,” Mr. Klein said.

  “Bald, limps, glasses, big buggy eyes, seersucker suit.” Drew looked imploringly at his mother. “Something’s fishy about that guy, Mom.”

  Mr. Klein picked up the phone and called the security detail. Then everyone turned to the German teen.

  “Bitte,” he snuffled, starting to cry. “I will tell all I know. Please—may I stay in the West?”

  After an hour, Drew’s mom had all the information she needed from Matthias’s runaway neighbor. She came back to the office where Drew had been waiting, bursting with questions of his own.

  “I’ll tell you what I can, honey.” She sat down and took Drew’s hands in hers. “The man from Wannsee Lake is likely a Stasi mole,” she explained. “He could move only so fast with his limp, so the MPs apprehended him. They’re interrogating him now.” She squeezed his hand. “Mr. Klein says you will be famous among us for real now.”

  As for the German youth, Drew’s mom shared that he’d quickly confessed that he’d been forced to spy on his neighbors. Caught coming back from the West with a dozen 45s he’d fished out of trash bins, he’d been given the choice to spy or “reeducate” at a work camp for juvenile criminals. He chose espionage. But, sick with guilt, he’d made his escape to Marienfelde, hoping to disappear in the West. He’d sworn to Drew’s mom that he hadn’t met the man with the clipboard before that day.

  “And you believe that, Mom?” Drew was skeptical.

  “I do, honey. I’ve done thousands of these interviews now. The poor boy seemed so relieved to finally be telling someone the truth.”

  “Did you say he’d gotten 45s out of trash cans?”

  “Yes. Evidently, he’d convince record stores along the Kurfürstendamm to throw out demos by claiming they were scratched and skipping. Then he’d retrieve them later. An enterprising fellow,” she said with a small laugh. “Guess rock ’n’ roll is cause for rebellion everywhere.”

  Drew caught his breath—this boy who’d likely turned Matthias in to the FDJ must have been the same one-time close friend his cousin had talked about trading records with! “What will happen to him?” Drew asked.

  “This time, I got my way,” his mom answered proudly. “I was able to reach his aunt, who lives in Cologne. He’s leaving on one of our planes tonight to live with her.”

  Drew frowned. “You think that’s adequate consequence for all the sh— I mean all the stuff he’s done? Matthias was pretty ripped up by that tribunal, Mom.”

  She nodded, thoughtful. “Sometimes, honey, our job here in the West is to show mercy. That’s what allows people to change.”

  “That’s asking a lot, Mom. This guy was a creeper, a regular Benedict Arnold—to Matthias, anyway.”

  “Yes, it is asking a lot, honey.”

  Drew crossed his arms. “Can I talk to the guy before you ship him off?”

  His mom studied Drew for a moment, then lifted her finger in a motherly way. “No fisticuffs.” She hugged him, then took him to the room where the teen sat waiting, red-eyed from crying.

  “So, a-hole,” Drew began.

  “Drew,” his mom gently reprimanded him.

  “Is there anything you want me to tell Matthias?”

  The teen blanched at Matthias’s name. After a moment, he looked eagerly at Drew and said, “Yes. Tell him to look under the floorboards beneath my cot. My records are there—I would like him to have them. But tell him he must be careful not to let my father see him. My father would turn him in if he knew about the 45s. Matthias should go in through the fire escape. Like we used to do when . . .” He cleared his throat and whispered, “When we were friends.”

  The boy sat in silence for another long moment until a wry smile grew on his face. “Please tell Matthias this joke: At dawn Khrushchev wakes up. ‘Good morning, sun!’ he shouts. The sun snaps to attention and replies, ‘Good morning, Herr Chairman.’ Then, at noon, Khrushchev shouts again, ‘Good day, sun!’ and the sun answers dutifully. But that evening, when the sun begins to set, it does not answer when he shouts ‘Good night.’ Khrushchev takes off his shoe and pounds the table. ‘How dare you not answer! I will arrest you!’ Finally, the sun answers, ‘Tough luck, Herr Chairman. I’m in the West now!’ ”

  The teen laughed. “Tell Matthias—tell him to follow the sun.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  August

  1961

  Three weeks after his day at Marienfelde, on a radiant, seventy-five-degree August afternoon, Drew stood once again with Matthias on Zimmerstraße, where months ago he’d witnessed Vopos playfully throwing snowballs at their Western counterparts across the demarcation line between the American and Russian sectors. Now he was watching little children, who were technically supposed to be enemies, scampering about together. They shrieked with glee, darting between carnival games and food tents on both sides of the street under a swag of colorful streamers stretching like a bridge across the boulevard.

  It was the annual neighborhood Kinderfest—the borough’s celebration of all the city’s children, democratic and communist. And after a week of solid rain, Berliners, East and West, were out in force to enjoy the sunshine and camaraderie.

  “Whoa! Who is that?” Drew asked as he noticed a robust man with moustache-sized eyebrows, wearing an enormous white Stetson hat as he glad-handed the crowd. Each person the boisterous middle-aged man greeted—especially young children and older women—seemed to bloom like a flower kissed by the sunshine.

  “Willy Kressmann,” Matthias answered with obvious admiration. “He’s the mastermind behind this Kinderfest. The mayor of Kreuzberg borough. We call him Texas Willy. He got that hat when he visited the States two years ago. He was made an honorary citizen of your San Antonio.”

  “Texas? Isn’t that about as American fascist bourgeoisie capitalist pig as you can get, mein Freund?” Drew teased. “What’s he doing in East Berlin?”

  Matthias laughed at the ribbing. “Remember, we do not stand in East Berlin now. This side of the street is in the American sector, the Kreuzberg borough. Over there”—Matthias pointed across Zimmerstraße—“begins the Russian sector. It is the Mitte borough.

  “All Berliners, East and West, love Texas Willy,” Matthias continued. “He is the only mayor in the Western sectors who meets with East Berlin mayors. Before World War II, he was a socialist himself. He had to escape Hitler and went through Scandinavia to England. After the war, he returned, committed to your Western ways. But he has sympathy for socialists. He lets artists from the East show their work in his town hall. And he hosts this children’s festival every year to remind us we are all Germans, no matter what sector we live in. He gives the fest the motto: ‘We are all one.’ ”

  Matthias nodded i
n approval as Kressmann scooped up a little girl, who was hiccup-sobbing because she didn’t have money to purchase a ticket for the carousel. Wading through the throng, he made his way to a merry-go-round, a splash of color and joy put up for the fair amid Potsdamer Platz’s weeds and gray rubble. The mayor plopped the child down on a brightly painted horse and whispered into the ear of the operator, who started up the carousel without protesting the free rider.

  Satisfied, Kressmann crossed his arms and watched the horses going up and down and the children clapping their hands in time to the oompah-pah music. He lingered in the shade of a large wooden sign erected right beside the official sector marker, facing its hand-painted message toward the Russian East: do away with the border! get rid of the controls!

  Surveying the crowd, Kressmann spotted the boys. “Matthias!” the big man boomed as he strode over and gathered Drew’s cousin into a crushing embrace. “How is your grandmother? Next week is her birthday, yes? I will bring my trio to serenade her. Perhaps this year she will dance with me.”

  Matthias shrugged. “I hope she will. But . . . but you know how she is.”

  “But who can resist this?” Kressmann spread his arms wide, grinning. Then he abruptly turned his attention to Drew. “Who is this?” he asked.

  “My American cousin.”

  “Ah!” Kressmann’s cigar-thick eyebrows shot up. “Military? State Department? Or Pan Am?”

  “My dad is in the army,” Drew answered.

  Kressmann took Drew’s collar in both of his meaty hands—not threateningly, but in a nose-to-nose manner befitting a political boss. “You Americans must send aid to the East Berliners. They starve. Send economic aid, and they will rise up.”

  “I am not sure the Russians would let us do that,” Drew answered, a bit flummoxed.

  “Ha! They do not like our Kinderfest, either!” Kressmann gestured to the frolicking children. “But we do it anyway. Tell your people.” He patted Drew’s chest, letting go of his shirt. “And you,” he said, turning back to Matthias, “do you have more trouble?”

  Matthias turned as red as Drew, minus the freckles. “No, Herr Burgermeister.”

  “Gut.” He ruffled Matthias’s blond mop and then strutted away, bellowing, “Come, children, time for Mr. Punch to heal the princess with his magic flower! Come!” Knee-deep in giggling followers, Kressmann led the children toward a makeshift puppet theater.

  Beaming with hero worship, Matthias watched Kressmann herd the children.

  “Trouble?” Drew asked with concern.

  “Mayor Kressmann knew of my . . . the tribunal,” Matthias answered quietly, carefully.

  “Can Kressmann help with that kind of thing?”

  “Not the way you hope,” Matthias said. “He has no official power in the East. He has no influence with the FDJ or the Stasi. They would love to hurt him. But people who live in this neighborhood listen to him. He is so popular with them, many call the borough Kressmannsdorf instead of Kreuzberg.” He looked around and pulled Drew over to sit on a bench under a young linden tree. “He knows my accuser. The . . . the boy . . . who lives upstairs.”

  Drew squirmed inside, itching to tell his cousin that teenager would never rat on him again, that Matthias was safe from him, at least. But he stifled himself, warned by his mom not to discuss Matthias’s neighbor with him, not to reveal the boy’s decision to defect at Marienfelde. “Safer for Matthias,” she had told Drew, “if he is questioned by the Stasi once they figure out the boy is gone. And certainly safer for the boy, so that he can start his life in Cologne anonymously.”

  “The father of my”—Drew could see that Matthias was about to say friend—“neighbor plays cards, drinks too much. He would send my . . . neighbor to the pub to get siphons of beer. Late at night, sometimes in his pajamas. When Mayor Kressmann saw that one evening, he marched home with my neighbor and says to his father”—Matthias puffed himself large and waggled his finger in imitation—“ ‘If you send your son to the beer hall again at night, you will get serious trouble from me!’ ” Matthias smiled and shook his head with amazement. “So when Kressmann heard of my . . . my trouble, he went to my neighbor. To . . . mmm . . . züchtigen.”

  “Chastise?” Drew offered.

  “Yes.” Matthias nodded. “Chastise. So he would not denounce me to the FDJ again. I have not been called for another Selbstkritik.” He paused for a moment. “And I have not seen my neighbor.”

  Drew stewed. Someday, he had to tell Matthias—if for no other reason, so his cousin would know that his one-time friend seemed genuinely sorry. And that there was a cache of 45s awaiting him, if he wanted them. He wondered fleetingly if Kressmann had helped the teenager across the line to Marienfelde.

  They sat silently, watching the puppet show from a distance. When it was over, Matthias pointed to the windows along the American side of Zimmerstraße. “Look! Watch this.” Residents were leaning over the sills, baskets in hand, waiting.

  When Kressmann raised his arms and shouted, “Now!” the West Berliners threw handfuls of candy to the children, who squealed with laughter as they scurried to retrieve the wrapped milk chocolates. The jovial mayor marched up and down the street, making sure each child—particularly those from the Russian sector—had at least one treat. He even walked over to the GDR Vopo border guards and handed them some of the chocolate to enjoy.

  “If only Kressmann could talk with Khrushchev,” Matthias mused.

  That night, leaning up against the wide brick chimney of Matthias’s once-grand old building, Drew marveled at what he could see from their rooftop perch. The temple-like Brandenburg Gate flooded with spotlights so its winged Victoria and her horse-drawn chariot seemed to command the entire city; the shadowy skeleton of the bomb-gutted Reichstag next to it; a long carpet of cool green darkness over the 630 acres of the Tiergarten; a river of light that had to be the Kurfürstendamm in the distance.

  Drew was spending the night with Matthias so he could watch fireworks that would be the colorful finale to Kressmann’s festival. They’d be launched from the nearby Kreuzberg Park, jammed with people who’d picnicked there all day to save their spots for the pyrotechnics. Way across the city’s vast expanse, Drew’s parents would be watching, too, out with other military couples, enjoying live music on the Berlin Hilton’s top-floor terrace. All the husbands had taken the weekend off duty so they could dance with their wives and enjoy the Kreuzberg fireworks from that great vantage point.

  For one evening, anyway, Berlin was “all one,” united by Kressmann’s Kinderfest.

  As he gazed out, Drew was certain he could hear waltz music dancing through the air. He cocked his head.

  “It comes from the Esplanade,” Matthias explained. “A few blocks away. A hotel beloved by Hitler’s fascists, destroyed by bombs. They have turned what is left into a dance hall. You capitalists come in beaded ball gowns and black tie to fox-trot, just like Goebbels and Himmler once did.”

  Drew gave Matthias a hard look. Really?

  Seeing it, Matthias suddenly laughed at himself. “Sorry. I often open my window to hear,” he admitted. “Some nights they play jazz.” He punched Drew playfully on the shoulder. “You see? You corrupt me—Kulturbarbarei.” He held his finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.”

  Drew chuckled, drawing his legs up and resting his chin on his knees. He took in all the sounds that mingled with the music wafting up from the Esplanade: an old cart horse whinnying for its dinner; someone playing an accordion; stray cats yowling; the thump-thump-thump of the lightweight, plastic East German Trabant cars passing over cobblestones.

  “I am sorry that Linda was not with us today,” said Matthias, drawing his own knees up and wrapping his arms around them. “She would have liked the exhibition of German Shepherds at the park.”

  “Joyce wanted to have a sisters-only day with her before she leaves for London. She took Linda
to West Side Story.”

  “You will miss Joyce?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “I will, too.” Mathias said quietly. After a moment, he added, “I would have liked siblings.”

  Drew hesitated to say anything, knowing how Matthias’s brothers had died during the final battle of the war. He wondered if Cousin Marta had ever told her son the truth about that.

  Pop-pop-pop . . . ssssssssss—BANG!

  The first flares of silvery sparks spun up into the night sky to explode into an enormous fan of sizzling red starbursts, showering tiny cinders down on them—they were that close to the pyrotechnics’ launch site.

  “But cousins are almost as good,” Matthias whispered.

  Even over the thundering sound of the fireworks all around them, Drew heard him.

  In the middle of the night, a tremor—like what he’d always imagined a small earthquake might feel like—shook Drew awake. He rolled over and sat up on the pallet laid out on the floor of Matthias’s narrow bedroom. The moonlight sifting through the window was enough for him to read his wristwatch—two thirty a.m.

  Squeeek-squeeek. A high-pitched squealing echoed off the walls of the buildings lining the street. Drew rubbed his eyes, stretched, and then crawled toward Matthias’s desk to peer out the window above it.

  A seemingly endless line of tarp-covered trucks rumbled along the road below.

  Roadwork in the middle of the night on a Sunday? Weird. Drew lay back down, pulling his pillow over his head to muffle the sound.

  Buzzzzzzzzzzzz-buzz-buzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The doorbell rang insistently. Buzz-buzz-buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  This time, Matthias bolted upright along with Drew. They could hear Cousin Marta running to answer the door, bare feet against wooden floorboards. Urgent voices.

  “That sounds like my dad.” Frowning, Drew looked up at Matthias.

  The boys scrambled to their feet just as Matthias’s bedroom door flew open.