by Anne Nesbet
Finally somebody took his arms and lifted him out of the chair so that he was standing — wobbling on his own two feet.
“Come!” said the woman who had led Cloud-Claudia down the hall so long before — how long had it been? Long!
Noah followed her out the door. At the last minute, he remembered the map and turned around for it, but the woman gave him a pull forward.
“Quick, now,” she said. “Faster!”
They went down various halls and through various doors. Noah could not have said whether these were halls he had been in before or not. They came into a sort of waiting room, and there at the end of it was Cloud-Claudia, asleep on a bench. There were great smeary tracks down her face. She had been crying before she fell asleep.
“Oh, Cloud,” said Noah, more for himself than for her, because she was so solidly asleep.
“Quiet, you,” said someone he hadn’t noticed before, filling out papers on a table.
It was Cloud-Claudia’s horrible grandmother.
She looked like she had been crying, too. Her hand was shaking as she wrote on those sheets of paper.
The guard who was leading Noah grabbed his shoulder and turned him forcibly away, so that he was facing the other side of the room.
“Sit still and mind your own business,” said the guard.
He fully meant to do that — sit still and mind his own business — because he was practically asleep himself, and he didn’t want to cause any more trouble. But there was a noise from behind him, where Cloud-Claudia’s grandmother was struggling with those papers.
“You!” she hissed. “Why were you dragging an innocent child out through the streets at night? Telling her such lies? Now you’ve ruined her life. A child, and you’ve ruined her life.”
That made him angry enough that he turned to glare at her, despite all the guards around.
“It wasn’t — wasn’t — wasn’t — me telling the worst lies,” said Noah, feeling the warm tide of anger spreading over his face.
“Silence!” barked a guard.
Noah and Frau März glared at each other for what felt like a very long time. But she looked away first, wiping tears from her eyes with a handkerchief. All of Noah’s anger turned immediately into an ickier feeling, something like shame and miserableness. And he was shivering, maybe because they had taken his jacket away and maybe because he was so tired. Being very tired can feel like standing outside on a day when the temperature is sinking and sinking.
Noah studied his scuffed-up shoes for a while and tried to think about nothing, while his shivers continued.
That was when an indignant bustling whirlwind came breaking through the far doors.
“There you are! There you are! Oh, my God, there you are!” said the whirlwind, gathering Noah up in all of its four arms.
Because the whirlwind, of course, was Noah’s parents.
Secret File #29
WHAT THE NEWSPAPERS WERE SAYING
This sort of thing was also happening in other East German cities: Leipzig, Jena, Potsdam, and Dresden.
Marchers chanted, “Freedom!” and “Gorbi, Gorbi!” — hoping for help from the reform-minded Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He was in town, remember, for the fortieth-anniversary celebrations, as one of the “eminent guests.” He looked rather disgusted by Honecker’s crowd. He made ambiguously ominous comments about life passing by those who come too late.
Western news teams were blocked that day when they tried to make their way to the eastern side of the Brandenburg Gate, the most famous monument on the border between the two Berlins. They had to make do with footage of milling crowds of plainclothes security people wandering down the sidewalks with their hands tucked into their standard-issue “ordinary person” jackets. There were so many of them on the streets, it looked like one of those alien invasions where the aliens dress up in human disguise but haven’t quite figured out how to blend in with actual people yet.
While Noah was sitting on that bench, so very early on Sunday morning, the East Berlin newspapers were printing up the official description of what had happened the night before:
In the evening hours of the 7th of October, hooligans attempted to disturb the festival celebrating the 40th anniversary of the GDR. In cooperation with Western media, they roamed in packs through the area around the Alexanderplatz and shouted out slogans hostile to the Republic. Thanks to the levelheadedness of the defense and security forces, as well as of the festival participants, the intended provocations could not unfold as planned. The ringleaders were taken into custody.
Most of the people the government called “hooligans” and “ringleaders” were not as young as Cloud-Claudia and Noah — but then again, some of them were.
“Stand up,” said the guard when Noah’s parents came into the waiting room, but he was already in their arms by then.
“Grab your things, kiddo,” said his father. “We’re getting you out of here.”
He didn’t have any things, so he just stood there, feeling wobbly.
His mother looked at him and then said angrily, “They’ve kept him up all this time. Look at him! Were they questioning you? How dare they!”
And then she turned to the guards and started raking them over the coals in very good German. She kept gesturing at a third man who had come with them. Noah hadn’t noticed him at first, but apparently he was from the American embassy. She pointed at him and pointed at Noah and said angry, angry things about human rights and worldwide conventions on the treatment of children.
Noah stared at her. Of course they had been asking questions. Isn’t that what police did when they took you into their garages and their cellars and their tiny little offices? The questions hadn’t been the worst part. The worst part had been the standing.
No, he took that back.
The worst part had been when they took Cloud-Claudia in one direction and Noah in another.
That made him look over at Cloud-Claudia, who was no longer asleep. She was sitting up on her bench now, woken up by all the commotion, looking over at Noah.
“Hey,” he called out to her while the grown-ups argued all around.
She looked distressed by everything she was hearing.
“They’re taking you away?” she said.
“Just going home,” he said. “Just going home to sleep.”
His father gave his shoulders a big squeeze.
“Afraid not, kiddo,” he said. “We’re leaving the country. They’re sending us out, to West Berlin.”
“Quiet!” said the various guards. They were already moving to hustle Cloud-Claudia and her grandmother through a door into some different space. “The agents hostile to the German Democratic Republic will not continue to disrupt this essential post as it upholds our collective security.”
“Wait! What? You’re going away?” said Cloud-Claudia while her grandmother tried desperately to hush her. She actually managed to break loose from her grandmother’s hands and come running over to Noah, miserable wildness all over her face. “You’re leaving? Why are you leaving? They all always leave. My mom and dad — they didn’t die — they left me behind on purpose. They told me, the ones here. They chose to leave me behind! And now you, Wallfish! And the ones here took the names away from me. They took them. Now you’ll forget, and they’ll forget. Nobody will remember anything.”
She was hugging him now, and all the grown-ups were already pulling at her, peeling her away. Noah tried to hold on, but the guards and the grandmother were stronger than he was.
Everything had been awful, that whole night long, but this was by far the worst.
They were carrying Cloud-Claudia right out of the room.
“I’ll remember everything!” shouted Noah after her. “Everything! Everything! Cloud! Every single thing! And they haven’t forgotten you. I’m sure they haven’t. I won’t, either!”
Then she was gone, and his parents were holding him up or holding him back or some combination of the two.
“Shocking,” said the man from the embassy. “Really shocking. Well, we should be on our way now.”
“Jonah, where’s your jacket?” asked his mother. “It’s chilly outside.”
“They took it away,” said Noah.
“Please bring him his jacket and scarf,” said his mother to the guards. She was still hanging on to him tightly. “Then we’ll go.”
They brought Noah his jacket and scarf.
He checked, but of course the map of the Changelings’ Land wasn’t in his pocket anymore. Or the five marks or the key. He was only sad about the map, though. All of Cloud’s wonderful little pictures, locked up in some evidence file in this awful building forever.
He was hustled out into the dark, chilly night and put into the backseat of a car with his mother and father.
The man from the embassy sat in the front with another man, the driver.
“Out we go!” said the man from the embassy. And to Noah, he said, “You’ve caused a lot of trouble here, young man.”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Noah. “I didn’t mean to at all. She was running away — all alone at night — I —”
“Shhh,” said his mother. “No discussion here — they’ll be listening, sweetheart. We’ll talk about it all once we’re well away from here.”
There were headlights shining through the back window the whole way. The East Germans had sent police cars to shepherd them, one ahead and one behind, to make sure their car went right to the border and through. It was like being a criminal, for sure.
The streets were empty now. It was still night, though the date must now be the eighth of October instead of the seventh. Noah caught glimpses of buildings and streets and more buildings and lampposts. When he lowered his head, he could see the television tower, high, hovering above everything else, looking down at them, looking and watching as the three cars drove toward the checkpoint: the police car, the embassy’s car, and the other police car.
They were the only people going in that direction through the checkpoint. Actually, there was nobody going in the other direction, either.
“They’ve shut the border, you know,” said the embassy man. “That’s why it’s so quiet here. All the troubles this weekend; they don’t want newspeople or tourists with cameras or what-have-you. They can’t keep us diplomats out, of course, but everyone else — verboten.”
At the checkpoint, a policeman jumped out of the car in front and talked to the soldiers there, pointing at the car Noah’s family was in and saluting.
They looked at the passports of everyone in Noah’s car, but that was it.
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!
That was the border guard stamping their passports with some vicious-looking red stamp.
“Well, that’s it. You’ve been kicked out of a country now,” said Noah’s father. “And before the age of eleven! Kicked out and told never to come back.”
Noah was still so tired, he almost didn’t care. “What about our stuff?”
“Most of it’s in suitcases in the back,” said his mother, giving him a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. It’s only stuff.”
And then he was asleep, dreaming that he was awake and standing and being shouted at, dreaming that he had gotten lost on the way into the Changelings’ Land and had ended up in that terrible, horrible police building instead, dreaming above all that he wasn’t asleep and would never be allowed to sleep again.
And then they were leading him from the car into a building, through the bite of cold air.
No brushing teeth. No changing clothes. No nothing. He just flung himself down onto the cot they led him to and slept.
Oh, there was one strange moment, before he fell completely asleep. Somebody was taking his shoes off, and then his jacket. His mother, he thought. Then he opened his eyes, although he was really still mostly asleep, and saw his mother ripping open the seam of his jacket.
“Oh, no,” she was saying under her breath. “Oh, no. Oh, no!”
Her hands were tense fists, hiding her eyes.
“Pointless!” she said to herself. “All pointless, after all!”
It was frightening to see her that upset. Noah’s mother was so good at not letting anything show.
“Mom?” said Noah.
She took the fists from her eyes immediately. Tried to put one of her normal expressions on.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Completely fine. Lost something — that’s all.”
“Not lost,” he said, the Astonishing Stutter becoming an extraordinary mumble, he was so tired. “I’ve got it.”
She smiled then, though her hands stayed tense.
“Sweet boy. Jonah. You should be asleep.”
Jonah? Was he still Jonah, even here on the western side of the Wall?
Apparently so.
Apparently the listening just went on and on, no matter which side of the Wall you happened to be on.
The Wall! When would they ever be far enough away from it?
“I am asleep,” said Noah.
And a moment later, he was.
Secret File #30
THE DEVIL’S MOUNTAIN
Not so terribly far from where Noah was sleeping was a mountain with a sinister name: the Teufelsberg — the Devil’s Mountain. It was a mountain made of rubble, from all the buildings in Berlin that had been destroyed during the Second World War. Grass grew over this mountain of crumbled ruins, and on the top were funny buildings that looked a bit like planetariums.
They were actually secret American ears, those buildings. Inside them, soldiers listened and listened to the secret conversations buzzing about Berlin.
It helped to have your mechanical “ears” perched on top of a hill.
Everyone was listening to everyone, always, in both sides of Berlin, West and East. Remember that West Berlin was still technically an occupied city. That was one reason why Noah remained “Jonah” even after crossing back through the Wall.
Over the next few days, official people asked him questions in a nicer, warmer, comfier room. They let him sleep a lot, but Noah was tired of questions. And he had questions of his own, which he knew he couldn’t ask.
Questions like these:
When could his name go back to being Noah?
How much of what that English-speaking man at the police station had said about Noah’s parents was true? Were his parents really spies? Had they really been using Noah like a disguise? Like a pawn?
And was he ever going to see Cloud-Claudia again?
Part of getting older is realizing that sometimes you have to be the person who answers your own questions. Noah watched and listened carefully, and he got as far as this:
1. Since they all called him Jonah in that place, he figured he was stuck being Jonah for the time being, maybe until they got back to safe and quiet Oasis, Virginia. On the other hand, he discovered he didn’t mind being Jonah so much anymore. If he hadn’t been Jonah, he wouldn’t have ever known he was a wallfish!
That was the first question, more or less answered.
2. The second question had only dark tunnels for answers. He didn’t think much of the East Germans’ evidence for his parents’ being spies — the page from Alice, the blank scraps of paper — but neither could he forget those file folders in his brain, the ones labeled “Mom” and “Dad” and growing thicker by the day. And what about the other part of this question: Had his parents been using him that way? As their cover story?
And then everything got very dark-tunnelly again in his brain, and he tried to turn his mind around and walk away from this whole question, which was so dangerous and seemed possibly about to hurt way too much.
3. The THIRD question, though! To that one, Noah got an official answer from his mother: “See Cloud-Claudia again? Oh, sweetie, probably not — I’m so sorry about that.”
But the more he thought about it, the less acceptable that answer was.
There were still things people wanted to ask
Noah and his parents, and forms for them to fill out because they really were filing protests about the way Noah had been treated in that police station, and also there were some arrangements that had to be made concerning what they did next, so they were staying in a little apartment that belonged to the U.S. Army in West Berlin.
The television in it was, ironically, much smaller and plainer than the one they had had in Communist East Berlin. They were not much of a television-watching family ordinarily, but these days the television seemed always to be tuned to the news: seventy thousand people marching in Leipzig! Thousands of people protesting in East Berlin, just on the other side of the Wall! Noah kept his eyes peeled for Cloud-Claudia, but she never showed up.
Finally, he lost patience with merely watching and hoping. He took a very large cardboard box and cut it into the right shape; then he borrowed white paint from a very nice soldier who was touching up a wall downstairs.
“Take me to that place we were waving to from the other side,” he said to his parents. “Back when Cloud-Claudia and I went close to the Wall — so close we could see the people looking in from the West. Take me there.”
His mother gave him a look, but his father said, “All right, then. Tomorrow.”
They went on the S-Bahn with Noah’s huge slab of white cardboard balanced between his knees. He got a lot of funny looks from the West Berliners! But he absolutely didn’t care.
Right next to the Wall, which on this side was covered with graffiti and paintings and slogans and all sorts of things that were forbidden on the other side, there stood a kind of platform with steps up, and from the top of it, Noah could see that very street he and Cloud-Claudia had been on all those many weeks ago. He was looking into the other world.
“How long are you going to be?” asked his dad.
“A while,” said Noah.
“Okay,” said his dad. “I’m down there waiting when your arms get tired.”
And Noah turned toward the other world and hoisted his cardboard sign, his bright-white-painted cloud, right over his head.
I remember everything! said that cloud. I’m not forgetting you. Never.