by Brianna Hale
I take a deep breath. Pleas aren’t working. I’ll try and make him sense instead. “Reinhardt, when I disappear they’re going to discover it was you who helped me escape, and that you harbored a traitor for months in your apartment. Frau Fischer knows we’ve been sharing a bed and Lenore’s not oblivious to what’s been going on. What happens when they’re questioned? What happens when the border guards tell your Oberst that you go across the border at night and match the dates to unexplained disappearances? They will find out that you’ve been unfaithful to the Party and you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life.”
Reinhardt watches me unemotionally, as if none of this is news to him and I realize that it isn’t. He came to the same conclusion in his office before he told me to get my coat. “I’m always aware of the risks, Liebling. There are things in this life for which it is worth suffering the worst of fates. You happen to be one of them.”
“Don’t be sentimental. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Do you think I was a happy man when I met you? Do you think happy men steal women off the street because they’re haunted by their pasts? I have held the sweetest flower in my hands when I have held you, and for that I would suffer worse fates than anything these people could ever do to me.”
“It is a needless fate when the West is a matter of miles away.”
He shakes his head. I don’t understand, and I’m not ready to give up. My mind races over the possibilities. Would life in prison be a severe enough punishment for a high-ranking Stasi officer turned traitor? The State sometimes liked to make examples of powerful people they thought they could trust. The dreadful realization slams into me. I take hold of his jacket in a white-knuckled grip.
“Reinhardt, they won’t put you in prison will they? You will be executed.”
He shrugs and digs his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Perhaps.”
I gape at him. “Don’t you dare be offhand about this. They’ll drag you before a firing squad and shoot you. They won’t even give you a proper trial. You know how it works.”
He turns the unlit cigarette in his fingers slowly, as if he’s choosing his words. I wait, still holding fistfuls of his jacket.
“Then I will die knowing that you’re safe. They will not have you.”
“No, Reinhardt—”
But he cuts me off. “Evony, I’ve told you this before. Being a soldier means I’m not afraid to die. On a battlefield, on the street, in the shadow of the Wall. I have accepted it, but more than that I have expected it.” He reaches out and smooths my curls back from my face. “Though I didn’t expect to find such sweetness at the end. I have no regrets, Liebling. They can’t take my love for you, even if they take my life.”
I’m shaking all over. This can’t be the hard, ruthless man I know who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. How can he give up now when I need him the most?
He smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t take heart, meine Liebe. It may not come to the firing squad. They’ll have to catch me first.”
They will catch him. The Stasi have soldiers and informants all over East Germany, not just in East Berlin, and Reinhardt is a conspicuous man.
“But I love you,” I say in a choked voice. “Why do I have to lose you now when you’ve finally found a place in my heart? Why did you make me fall in love with you if I was only going to lose you?”
He casts the cigarette aside and wraps his arms around me. “So you do love me, Evony.” He kisses me, and I taste my own salt tears on our lips. When I close my eyes I see him stripped of his uniform and hands bound behind him as he’s dragged before a firing squad, and my eyes fly open.
“No. I’m not going without you. I’m not leaving you here to die alone. I’m staying.”
He takes me by the upper arms, holding tightly, his eyes boring into mine. “Evony, listen to me. Your father is in West Berlin. There is nothing for you here but me and I will not be here for long. I can’t protect you from them and I will not see them take you away. If I go with you the West German authorities could think you’re a spy as well. I can’t control what might happen to you if I go with you, and if we both end up back in East Berlin as prisoners it will be worse than dying for me. Don’t you understand? Some things are worse than dying.”
He’s thinking about Johanna, how she suffered and died in the death camp and he couldn’t save her. The remembered pain is filling his eyes. That’s why he’s always admired my strength, because he’s believed that if the worst happened I’d never give up. I’d find some way to survive and he wouldn’t have to live through my death or capture as well. Maybe he’s felt all along that this could never last between us, that he’s been living on borrowed time ever since he was taken prisoner during the war; borrowed, painful time, because if he’d died in battle he would have been spared the horror of knowing what Johanna went through.
I shrug out of his grasp, angry now. “I’m not her and you’re not in the Wehrmacht. They are not our enemies in West Berlin. What about all those times you said I was yours forever even when I spied on you and lashed out at you? How could you love me through all of that but not now?”
“I do love you now. That is why you have to go without me. I can face whatever happens to me here as long as I know you are safe over there. If I am taken prisoner and die not knowing for certain that you are safe I will die tormented. Do you understand why?”
He’s imagining being trapped in prison and not knowing my fate. Being taunted with it by those holding him. “Of course I understand, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to leave you behind. Am I supposed to just live the rest of my life without you?”
He holds me closer and presses his forehead against mine. “You are young. You will recover. Remember that you are stronger than I am, my Valkyrie. It took me a long time to learn to think for myself but you have never lacked a will of your own. You’ll make your own way in the world. I am a selfish man and I want to think of you out there, free, not in prison. Let me have this one comfort, at the end.”
At the end. He can’t die. He can’t. I thought I would be able to leave him when the time came but I see now that I was fooling myself. “And if I won’t? What if I refuse to go?”
I see the muscle in his cheek flex as his jaw tightens. I know that expression. It means I’ll do whatever it takes. I thump my fist against his chest and curse, tears running down my cheeks. I cry onto his uniform jacket, the one I’ve always hated. I’ve fallen in love with him and I can’t help but wonder what we might have been without the regimes, without the Wall, without firing squads and watchtowers. We might have been nothing, because the Fates may not ever have put us in each other’s path as they did on that freezing January night. But in another place, another time, we might have had everything.
“I don’t want to be anywhere if it means being without you,” I whisper thickly through my tears. “I don’t understand why you would choose the certainty of death in this country over the possibility of a life with me over there.”
He strokes my face, his expression pained. “The West is a foreign land to me, in every sense.”
“It’s still Germany. You always said you loved Germany, divided or united. That means loving West Germany, too.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I think hard, trying to come up with a way to convince him. For weeks all I wanted was to get away from him, and then for weeks I just wanted to find my father and make it to West Berlin. Now he’s offering me everything and my heart is breaking.
“Please, Reinhardt. Please, can’t we just try?”
He sighs, but he doesn’t say anything. Sensing that I’m beginning to wear him down, I say, “There must be some way of ensuring you’ll be safe. Even if we have to lie. Can’t we change your identity? Can’t we hide somewhere until we get Frau Schäfer to vouch for you?”
“You’ll never give up, will you?”
I’m a fighter. He knows that. “Never. I won’t give up until I’ve convinced you to c
ome with me.”
Sounding resigned, he says, “All right, Liebling.”
I look up at him, hope flaring in my chest. He looks unenthusiastic about it but I don’t care. Reluctant is better than dead. “Really? You’ll come with me?”
He wipes the tears from my cheeks as if he can’t bear to see them. “Do you really want me to?”
I throw my arms around his neck, happiness singing through me. “Yes, yes of course I do.” He’s wrong about the authorities in the West. They’ll welcome him and all the intelligence he can bring them about East Germany and he’ll tell them even if he finds it distasteful because it will mean we can be together. “We’ll convince them you’re not a spy. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
He looks down at me for a long time, his fingers stroking through my hair. Then he kisses me softly. “Go and get ready. Put on warm clothes. Pack a small bag of things you need to take with you and I’ll go and change out of this uniform. We’ll have to hide somewhere until it gets dark.”
I run to my room and open my handbag, eager now that we have a plan to stay together. I look around and there’s not really anything that I need to take with me. It would be foolish to take a lot of luggage in case we’re stopped so I’ll have to leave my clothes behind. I change into a sturdy pair of boots and put a warm sweater on over my blouse, and as I’m sorting through the contents of my handbag the door opens and Reinhardt comes in behind me. My eyes meet his in the vanity mirror and I see he’s still wearing his Stasi uniform. There’s something funny about the expression on his face.
“Reinhardt, I thought you said you were going to—”
He reaches around and clamps a pad of cotton wool over my mouth and nose. When I rear back against him he presses more tightly and I struggle to push him away but his arms are holding me like a vice. I stare into the mirror at him, not understanding what is happening. Something sharp and astringent fills my nose and I feel light-headed.
Oh no. No no no. He’s tricked me. He never had any intention of going to the West with me, he just wanted me out of the room long enough to get chloroform and cotton wool. I hold my breath, squirming in his arms. I have to stay conscious. If I pass out I’ll never see him again. I make angry noises in my throat, like a bee buzzing against glass. My lungs start to burn and I can’t help it—I breathe in, and the sharp, cold anesthetic floods my lungs and a wave of dizziness rolls through me. Through blurred eyes I watch Reinhardt’s face in the mirror. He angles his face away from mine so he isn’t overcome himself by the fumes. But I can still see his eyes. They’re bleak with pain, as if he hates having to do this but is determined to see it through, my ruthless man who told me again and again that he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. Why didn’t I listen to him? As we stood in the living room just now and he stroked my hair he wasn’t showing me that he loved me. He was saying goodbye.
My body grows heavy in his arms. I still struggle, but my movements are becoming weaker and weaker. As unconsciousness begins to overtake me he sinks down onto the bed with me cradled in his arms. His voice seems to come from a long way off. “I had to lie. You nearly convinced, me but it wouldn’t have been right. I have to know that you’re safe and if I go with you, you won’t be.”
I feel his lips on my forehead, his soft kiss, the murmur of his last words. “Es tut mir lied, meine Liebe.”
I’m sorry, my love.
This is our farewell, me struggling to remain conscious as the chloroform overcomes me while he holds me in his arms. I’m drifting on vaporous waves, bobbing in currents that I can’t control. The drug works its way into my brain, whispering that everything will be all right, that I should just give in, stop resisting.
But as I slip into darkness I know that’s a lie, too. Nothing will be all right ever again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Evony
The sound of an engine. The heat from the sun, bathing me in its warm glow. I rise upwards into consciousness through deep, cold waters and I’m chasing toward awareness—and then I remember. A whimper, a pained, despairing sound escapes me. I don’t want to open my eyes because I know what I’ll see. West Berlin. I’ll finally be on the other side of the Wall and I’ll hate it even more for who it separates me from.
Someone touches my hand and I jerk away. It will be a stranger ready to welcome me to the West with a smile. They’ll tell me I’m one of the lucky ones who managed to get out.
“Evony.”
It’s a man, maybe a doctor, and they’ll be kind and professional and ask if they can call anyone on my behalf. Maybe Dad’s already here, waiting behind a door or a curtain to call me Schätzen and pretend everything’s all right. I don’t want a doctor, or Dad, or anyone else in the world. I only want Reinhardt, the man I love.
I feel the chair I’m sitting in rock from side to side. I’m moving, sitting in a leather seat. I finally drag my eyes open and see the world is rushing past the window. The road ahead is an empty, lined sparsely with trees. There are fields beyond, some empty, some dotted with cows. I frown, because this isn’t West Berlin. This isn’t even East Berlin.
The dashboard, the black hood of the car is familiar. It’s Reinhardt’s Mercedes. With a cry I turn to my left. And he’s there, impossibly, beautifully there, in a crisp white shirt rolled back to his elbows and his large, strong hands on the wheel. He’s smiling, the sun falling over the lower half of his face, making his eyes very bright and blue.
“If you didn’t open your eyes in another ten minutes, Dornröschen, I would have tried kissing you awake.”
Dornröschen. Sleeping Beauty. I reach out and touch him and he’s solid and warm. I stare out the windscreen at the unfamiliar landscape and then back at him. The chloroform must have muddled my brain as it’s taking longer than usual to kick into gear.
Then all my questions gather and come out in a bewildered rush. “What’s happening? Where are we? What time is it? Is this West Germany? Why aren’t we being processed as immigrants?
He reaches out and takes my hand and I wrap both of mine around his, clinging tightly to the man I thought I’d never see again. How is he here? Where even are we?
“We are in Poland. You have been unconscious for about—” he glances at his watch “—fifteen hours. I had to hide us until the early hours of the morning but we are, as you see, driving, and I have no intention of us being processed as anything if I can help it.”
This information only makes my confusion worse. Poland is in the East, even further from West than East Berlin. “Poland? Fifteen hours?”
“Ja. Oh, and we are married.”
He touches a gold band that’s glinting on my ring finger, and I see there’s one on his as well. I stare at our rings for a long time, watching the way the sunlight gleams on their shiny surfaces. My husband. There can’t have been a ceremony but he must have forged or obtained the papers somehow.
This is all too much for me to take in. “Pull the car over.”
“Why?” His tone is light but there’s a hard look in his eyes. He’s already made up his mind about this, whatever this is.
“Reinhardt, pull the car over.”
He frowns, but a moment later he reluctantly turns the car off the road and alongside a farm fence. I sense him readying himself to grab me if I try to hurl myself out the door. As soon as he’s put on the handbrake and cut the engine I throw myself at him, locking my arms around his neck and pressing myself as close to him as I can get. The steering wheel digs into my hip. He gathers me close so that my legs are across his thigh and I’m cradled against him, shuddering with fury and relief.
“You bastard. I thought I’d never see you again.”
His large hand strokes through my hair. “Shh, Liebling, it’s all right now.”
I look up at him, tears running weakly down my face though I’m not actually crying. I still don’t understand what’s happening but all I care about is that we’re together. “I thought you were going to smuggle me across the border to t
he West and leave me there. I thought you were going to let them kill you. Why did you have to do it like that? I was so frightened.”
He wipes the tears from my face, his expression rueful. “I intended to do just that.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Because when I came down to it I couldn’t let you go.”
He kisses me softly, and as if I really am Sleeping Beauty awakening from a long sleep my mind clears. He couldn’t let me go. We’ve left East Berlin behind us. We’re together.
“I had the plan all laid out. I was going to take you someplace safe until it got dark and then drive you across the border. But when I gathered you into my arms to take you to the car I just couldn’t do it. So I injected you with Veronal and I put my escape plan into action.”
There’s a plaster at the bend of my elbow and I run my finger over it. So it wasn’t just the chloroform that knocked me out. I had no idea that he had an escape plan, let alone hypodermics and powerful drugs in the house. “What plan?”
“A way to disappear if there’s an invasion or a revolution and it’s suddenly dangerous for me to be in East Berlin. Weeks ago I saw to it that you were part of that plan, too.”
I look up at him angrily. “Then why didn’t you tell me about this plan last night? Why didn’t we even discuss this as a possibility?”
“Because it’s a last resort, only to be used if there are no other choices. This plan is dangerous. You would be far safer in West Berlin.”
Frustrating man. How like him to consider something and then dismiss it out of turn without even telling me about it. “What is this plan?”
“Look in the glove box.”
I open it and take out two East German passports, both ordinary citizens’ passports, one with his picture and the name Franz Bauer, and one with mine and the name Alisz Bauer.