Life Behind the Wall

by Robert Elmer

  No answer. Not even a grunt. But when they reached a door at the end of the hall, the woman fished out a set of keys, selected one, and looked over her shoulder before jamming it into the lock and turning the deadbolt. The door swung out to reveal a side alley. What in the world?

  “I’m doing you a favor,” the guard finally said as she shoved Liesl outside. “So go home immediately. Get out of here. Ask no questions. Just run.”

  Which Liesl would have gladly done, but —

  “What about my papers?” She stopped. “My purse?”

  The guard deepened her permanent frown, dug into a pocket, and tossed Liesl’s West German I.D. papers to the pavement. That was it?

  Without another word the woman drew back inside and slammed the door.

  “Oh.” Liesl said as she heard the deadbolt slide home. She stood shivering in the alley, facing the back of the ugly concrete security building that had held her captive for eight hours. She felt certain she’d never see her purse again, or the letters from her American grandfather. At least she had her I.D. papers. The guard had to know Liesl would need them to get home.

  “Well, then, thank you,” she whispered, scooping up the papers. “I guess.”

  If that’s all she had, that’s all she had. She knew God had answered her. She also knew she should run like the wind back across the border — she should get home any way she could, as quickly as she could. Now. Something big must have happened for the guard to dump her into the street like that. For the others to have on full riot gear.

  But — she hadn’t waited all this time for nothing. She needed to see Onkel Erich.

  After only a moment’s hesitation, she hurried down Invalidenstrasse toward her uncle’s home, not many blocks away. But the farther she went, the more she heard the growing noise of a gathering crowd, like a flood, rolling in her direction.

  “Wir wollen raus!” she heard chanted over and over, louder and louder. The words echoed down the street. “We want out!”

  Out? That could only mean one thing.

  She rounded a corner and stopped in her tracks. What she saw made her blood run cold.

  A flood of angry people, moving toward her. The last time she’d seen this many people crowded into a city street, they’d come out to hear the American president.

  But this crowd seemed very different. Even from a distance she could feel the wild edge, the electricity in the air. No, this looked like a very different kind of protest, nothing like the ones Jürgen and his friends had organized on her side of the wall. Clearly these people didn’t just want to get on the evening news. She didn’t see any neatly worded signs, any well-dressed teenagers who should have been home doing homework.

  These people clenched their fists and marched as if their lives depended on it. The army of workers advanced toward a row of uniformed guards at the Invalidenstrasse border crossing — guards who had planted themselves behind gleaming Plexiglas shields wearing protective black helmets. Just like the guards who had sprinted past her in the hallway, moments earlier.

  And Liesl realized she’d put herself right between the two groups.

  People in apartments above hung out of windows, watching. Liesl briefly had a vision of ancient times, when Roman crowds watched the gladiators battle the lions. Someone was about to get bloody, or worse, and everyone knew it. Liesl could feel the near panic running through the crowd, the energy of a frightened, cornered animal ready to lash out at anything that got in its way. A young woman pushing a baby carriage down the sidewalk nearly ran Liesl over as she tried to get away from the crowds. The woman’s look of white-faced panic confirmed Liesl’s thoughts: Run. We do not belong here.

  Liesl should have listened to the prune-faced guard and headed for the border when she had the chance. Up ahead, traffic stopped for another flood of people. And the street behind her filled with people too, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow. Where had they all come from? They surged with one mind toward the wall. As if taking part in the yearly running of the bulls in Spain, Liesl realized she could hurry on before them, find a doorway, or be trampled. She didn’t like her options.

  What about this bakery? Surely she could slip in out of the way. She saw the baker, pacing just inside the door with his flour-smudged apron. But when she tried the door —

  “Bitte?” she cried as she knocked on the glass panel almost as urgently as she’d knocked on the detention center door. She didn’t even notice her raw knuckles. “Please let me in!”

  The crowd had nearly reached them, and the baker had a clear view of the approaching riot. He crossed his arms, backed up, and fearfully shook his head.

  Liesl looked frantically for another escape. But the crowds had just about met in the street right in front of her. If she didn’t want to get trampled, she’d have to keep moving.

  ”WIR WOLLEN RAUS!” The chant seemed to fill her. It grew impossibly loud as the various groups merged and rolled that last block toward the wall and the waiting guards. “WE WANT OUT!”

  Yeah, so do I, thought Liesl. A couple of collegeage guys bumped her from behind. She held her hand out, steadying herself against the person in front of her. The huge number of people forced her to take shuffling baby steps to keep from tripping.

  But she realized this shapeless mass of yelling protesters seemed to have leaders. One man raised his hands and they slowed their pace. Another raised a hand-held megaphone to his lips: “KEINE GEWALT!” he reminded them. “NO VIOLENCE!”

  Liesl hoped the border police advancing on the crowd were listening too. She could only see bits and pieces through the people ahead of her, but she could hear the nervous yells and then screams when the police whistles sounded.

  “I should have stayed in the prison,” Liesl told herself, but no one could hear her above the riot. And like a school of fish being attacked by sharks, the crowd parted and people ran, scattering. Liesl felt herself shoved backward against a building, and she landed with a thud on the cold pavement. She covered her head with her arms, praying she wouldn’t get trampled as the riot passed over her.

  21

  KAPITEL EINUNDZWANZIG

  CELLAR SECRET

  “Ja, ja.” Onkel Erich nodded as he spoke into his phone. “She is — ”

  He held up the receiver to look at it, then tried again.

  “Hello? Sabine?”

  But no. He frowned and listened another moment before replacing the phone in its cradle.

  “Dead,” he told Liesl. “The lines just went dead.”

  And that’s how she felt, too, thinking about what her parents might do to her when she finally made it home.

  “Sorry.” He shook his head, as if it were his fault.

  Liesl knew the lines often failed between East and West, but they’d chosen a particularly bad time as far as she was concerned.

  “Do they know I’m okay?” she squeaked. Erich shrugged and tipped his head to the side.

  “I hope so.” He poured his niece a steaming cup of tea and set it on the kitchen table as she sagged into a chair. “I’m just glad you weren’t killed in that riot. Look at your knees!”

  Oh. Liesl hadn’t even noticed that her jeans had ripped. She examined her bloody knees. And her hands. She shook her head and dabbed at her skinned palms with a paper napkin.

  “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know how to explain herself. She just did her best to keep from crying again. She’d already done more than enough of that for one day, hadn’t she? “But I really didn’t mean to cause Papa and Mutti any worry. I just wanted to make it happen, all by myself.”

  “Wanted to make it happen — you mean, to bring him here?”

  “Well — ”

  She shrank a little more in her chair, hearing the lecture on its way. She knew she deserved one for making such a mess of things. Her uncle started to say something, opened his mouth, and sighed as his shoulders fell.

  “Liesl, Liesl, Liesl. Your parents have been worried sick about you. They called at least a doze
n times before you showed up. Your father went out looking for you, too.”

  She swallowed hard. Home by dinnertime? Not quite. Onkel Erich’s kitchen clock showed half past ten.

  “Maybe we could just tell them I got caught in traffic on the way to visit you?”

  Which was true, in a way — though it might depend on one’s definition of traffic.

  He chuckled. “Nice try.”

  “Or we could explain that you promised to help me write my paper about the wall? You did, didn’t you?”

  “I thought you finished your paper.”

  “I did, sort of. But I never got some of the most important details.”

  He nodded. Of all people, Onkel Erich understood. He lowered his voice, as if sharing a secret.

  “I still can’t believe he’s alive — your father told me about those letters. I hope you brought them along.”

  “The letters. Right.” She took another sip of tea to buy a little time to think. “Actually, that’s a long story.”

  “Try me.”

  “Uh — it’s just that everything sounds so . . . phantastisch. Maybe even a little bizarre. I don’t know if he believed me when I told him — ”

  “Wait a minute! Hold everything.” Her uncle nearly choked on his tea. “Him? You talked to him?”

  Phantastisch. Right. She nodded and explained about the phone call, what he said, what she said. Onkel Erich began to smile, then to laugh. Pretty soon he bent forward, holding his sides, breaking up.

  ”I don’t get it.” She couldn’t figure out what he found so funny. “Don’t you believe me, either?”

  “Oh, I believe you.” He caught his breath. “It’s just that only you would have the courage to call this stranger on the telephone, all the way to America, as if you were calling a school buddy.”

  “It wasn’t quite like that. I just thought that if he came back, and he and Oma Brigitte could get back together, well — ”

  “Say no more.” Onkel Erich smiled again and winked. “After all this, I don’t have a choice. I’ll have to — ”

  BAM-bam-bam!

  Liesl jumped.

  “You’ve got to see this, Erich!” shouted a voice from the hall.

  Erich, recognizing the voice, jumped up from the table and threw open the door.

  “They announced it late this evening!” the neighbor yelled over his shoulder as he flew down the hallway. “They’re opening the border. Really opening it!”

  “You’re not joking?”

  “Come look out the window!” He pushed up the pane at the end of the hallway and pointed to the ground below them.

  It looked like half the city — or maybe more — was streaming down the street toward the border. The skyline blazed with fireworks and some people honked their tinny car horns.

  “The wall is gone!” A man leaned out of his window and yelled to anyone who would listen. “The wall is gone!”

  Gone? For real?

  “Bombig!” Her uncle pumped his fists, the way he did when his Dynamo Berlin soccer team scored a goal. “I thought we might see this in twenty years, fifteen maybe. But never so soon.”

  Liesl watched the mass of people and a few cars weaving down Invalidenstrasse toward the fireworks. Red lights reflected on the dirty window like a sunset — or in this case, a sunrise.

  Onkel Erich snapped his fingers as if he had just decided something important. “Come with me,” he said, motioning Liesl to follow. “I have something to show you.”

  They ran down the staircase as Liesl pulled on her sweater, past the main floor landing, around a corner, and down several steps. She stopped to let her eyes get used to the dark. It looked like a furnace room. And she had to sneeze.

  “Sorry about the dust,” her uncle said, yanking on a cord. A single light bulb cast a weak yellow light across the middle of the room.

  “Are you sure — ” she stopped and looked at him curiously.

  “I’m sure, all right.” He pointed at a double set of barn doors, nailed shut. “Help me get those doors open.”

  When she hesitated, he handed her a crowbar.

  “I’m not kidding,” he told her. “We’re opening these doors.”

  Which was easier to say than do. But between the crowbar and a hammer they managed to pry off the boards that held the doors shut.

  “These boards have been up for as long as I’ve lived in this building,” Onkel Erich told her. “And that’s been quite a few years.”

  “What in the world is going on down here?” An older woman, her gray hair pulled into a severe bun, poked her head down the last few feet of stairs. “Erich Becker, I’m going to call the police!”

  “You can do that, Frau Müller. But I think the police are all down at the wall, celebrating with the rest of the city.”

  “Hmmphh!” She sounded cranky. “Just because we’ve had a little disturbance, doesn’t mean everyone has to go crazy! I’m still calling the authorities.”

  “You do that, Frau Müller.” Nothing would stop Erich Becker today. “Let me know what they say.”

  The last board fell away and Erich and Liesl both put a shoulder against the doors, pushing with all their might. The poor old doors finally gave way with a loud creak, and Liesl and her uncle looked out on Rheinsbergerstrasse. The frosty night air made Liesl gasp, but no one on the street seemed to notice them.

  “You still haven’t told me what’s going on.” Liesl clapped the dust off her hands and followed her uncle back to a tarp-covered, lumpy shape in the corner. He pointed to the corner of the tarp nearest her.

  “Give me a hand,” he said, and they gingerly pulled the tarp off, as if unveiling a piece of art. And, well —

  Not exactly art. But close. Liesl stared at the machine and Erich beamed like a proud father.

  “What do you think?” he asked, polishing the fender with his sleeve. It looked like an old German army staff car, a convertible, older than anything she’d ever seen.

  “A Volkswagen?” she wondered, and he nodded. “Where did you get this?”

  Liesl knew that even doctors didn’t own Volkswagens in East Berlin. The few people who owned cars drove the small East German Trabant, a horrible little smoke-belching machine. But of course even those were rare.

  “It’s a long story. But just before the wall went up, your mother discovered this thing in a cellar-turned-bomb shelter of a nearly destroyed building. We figured it was left down there during World War 2.”

  “Cute. But — ” Something didn’t make sense. “Did you say a cellar?”

  “A cellar.” He smiled. “When your parents escaped to the West — through a tunnel we dug from that cellar — I stayed here. Later I brought the VW to this garage piece by piece. I’ve been working on it for twenty-eight years. And now we’re going to drive it through the Brandenburg Gate.”

  No kidding? The car looked like it was held together by chewing gum and a little glue, with springs sprouting from every seat and nice airy openings where most cars had doors. “Will it start?”

  He held up a finger at her question.

  “Oh, ye of little faith. I told you how long I’ve been working on this thing, nights and weekends, practically all my life.”

  “And you’ve never had it out on the street before?”

  After working so hard to open the barred wooden doors, she knew the answer.

  “This car and I have been waiting for this day, Liesl. Just sit in the driver’s seat and do what I tell you.”

  And she did, while he held down a throttle or something in the rear engine compartment. She smiled and pressed down on the gas when he told her to, and —

  22

  KAPITEL ZWEIUNDZWANZIG

  BOMBIG!

  “Turn the key! Now!”

  Liesl obeyed her uncle’s shouted instructions, but the car just groaned and whined and rattled. Uh-oh. She let go of the key.

  “No, no!” he hollered. “Keep cranking.”

  So she did, sending the ancient Vol
kswagen into a fit of coughing and sputtering that should have sent Frau Müller scurrying to the police once again. Come on! One more time, and —

  rrrrrrrrrommmm!

  The old Volkswagen rocked to life with a throaty gusto, making her uncle disappear in a thick black cloud of smoke. But he emerged with a laugh and a shout and a jubilant hug for Liesl.

  “It’s alive!” she yelled, caught up in the moment. She had never really paid much attention to cars before and didn’t quite see the appeal of a hunk of metal on wheels. But she could see the glow on Onkel Erich’s face. Or maybe that was soot from the exhaust.

  “Drive you home?” he offered with a grand sweep of his arm.

  He pointed to the passenger seat and she slid over — avoiding a healthy spring. He climbed in, put the car in gear, and they lurched down Rheinsbergerstrasse toward the wall.

  “I never dreamed I’d get to do this so soon,” he told her over the uneven roar of the VW. Clearly the thing didn’t have a proper exhaust pipe. It sure could roar!

  The horn worked too — sort of — and they honked their way west along with the tide of thousands. To Liesl, it looked like everyone in East Berlin was headed for the wall, through the open checkpoint, past guards with their hats pushed back, scratching their heads in wonder. Some of them covered grins with their hands, and none of them attempted to check I.D. papers or stop anyone from traveling in either direction through the border crossing.

  I could have saved myself a major headache, Liesl told herself, if I’d just waited one more day.

  True, but it didn’t seem to matter now. Just beside them, a boy with straight-up Mohawk hair (obviously from her West side of the wall) laughed and shook hands with a gray-shirted old man (obviously from Onkel Erich’s East side of the wall). A man in a leather jacket shook up a bottle of champagne and let it spray — all over the front of the car.

  “Windshield wipers even work,” Onkel Erich bragged, flipping the wiper switch. The crowd cheered all around them, and some slapped the side of the car in congratulations as they inched along. Surrounded by thousands of walkers, they passed under the towering old stone arch of the Brandenburg Gate. Once it had stood as the symbol of a city split in two. But tonight?