by Ann Alma
SKATEWAY TO FREEDOM
Skateway to Freedom
a novel by
Ann Alma
Copyright © 1993 Ann Alma
Third Edition 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Joy Gugeler
Design: Joy Gugeler and Jen Hamilton
Printer: Marquis
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Alma, Ann, 1946-
Skateway to freedom : a novel / by Ann Alma.
ISBN 978-1-55002-719-8
I. Title.
PS8551.L565S55 2007 jC813’.54 C2007-901100-4
1 2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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ONE
“Josephine, this is a family secret. If you tell anyone, I will go to jail.”
Father’s usually friendly blue eyes glared like ice. Josie shivered. She set the plates on the table, while Mother put a basket with six slices of bread in the middle next to the sausage, cheese and homemade jam.
“Eva, I haven’t told you what happened today because this plan is between Hans and ourselves.”
Pouring two cups of tea, Mother put one by Father’s plate then sat down. Josie reached for her milk.
“This evening at 9:30...” Father leaned closer and ran his hand through his short, brown hair, then he lowered his voice as if the mice behind the grey walls might betray him.
“We leave this house; we take nothing.” Father’s eyes bored into Mother’s. He glanced at Josie, then back at her mother before continuing.
“Hans will drive us to a lonely stretch of the border with Czechoslovakia. We’ll cross from there to the Hungarian border and swim across the river to freedom.”
Her mother gasped, then spilled her tea all over the bread.
“Nicht heute nacht, Karl. Not tonight,” she whispered.
“We have to, Eva.”
“Not so suddenly. We need to plan. What about your mother?”
“She has to stay. We leave tonight.”
“Josephine, go to your room. I need to talk to your father.” Her mother’s voice trembled, and when she took her heavy glasses off, her eyes filled with tears.
Josie started to say “Mutti,” but when her father waved his hand, she fled from the room. She ran down the stairs, unlocked the bicycle, wheeled it out and pedalled up the hill. By the time she reached the top, her heart beat so fast her whole body shook. Her breath screamed through her throat like the factory’s staccato whistle.
She raced on to the meadow where she dropped the bike and slumped in the grass. At first only black circles swirled in front of her eyes and Josie thought she might pass out. But after a moment she was able to focus again. Below her lay the river; beyond that rows of high-rise apartments emerged like large square ghosts from the smoke of the factories’ stacks. On the near side of the river a few dying trees poked up out of a swamp. This gave way to a meadow of uncut brown grass that climbed the hill.
Leave Gemeinstadt? She was born here—she had known nothing else but this area of East Germany. Her father’s mother, Oma Grün, had always lived here. A few years ago the government had demolished her home to make room for more housing blocks. Oma now lived in one of the apartments built on the land where her own chicken coop once stood. This was still their place.
Picking a long-stemmed weed, Josie stroked her cheek with its softness, then chewed on the other end. Father and Mother sometimes talked about the rules and restrictions they had to live with. Father said they were like prisoners in their own country. They could not speak their minds. The Berlin Wall and the borders were closed and heavily guarded, not just to keep others out, but to keep East Germans in.
Josie was not allowed to discuss her father’s views with anyone because, if the Communist party heard about his opinions, they’d take him away. Josie knew what that meant. Her parents had told her how, in 1953, the Stasi, the Secret Police, had taken Mother’s parents away when they demonstrated against the government in a workers’ revolt. Mother, who was only two years old at the time, was put in an orphanage. When she was older, she tried again and again to find out what had happened to her parents, but she was never able to uncover any information about them.
Father had talked about leaving East Germany before. Sometimes when Father’s friend Hans came to the apartment, the two men whispered about borders and foreign money. They spent a lot of time hunched over a map. But why go now? Why today, September 28, 1989?
Josie ripped the weed into pieces and threw them away. She remembered how Anna, a girl in her class, was suddenly absent from school one day. Students whispered about her family’s escape to the West. When she and her best friend Greta walked by Anna’s home after school, the little house stood empty, the cat mewing at the door. One day the cat disappeared too. No one ever heard from them again. It was as if a hole in the earth had swallowed them up.
Crushing the last of the seed pods between her palms, she blew them from her hands and jumped to her feet. Maybe Mother had changed her father’s mind. Josie pulled her bike up out of the weeds.
“Ach nein! Not again.” The bicycle’s chain dangled loosely on the front sprocket. It happened all the time; the bike was so old. Nothing ever worked. She crouched down to fix it, and by the time she finished, her hands were black with grease.
Josie wiped her fingers on the grass and headed back into town.
At home she pushed her bike inside and chained it securely. Then she locked the door, washed her hands at the back sink of the apartment block and wiped them dry on her pants. She walked down the bare hall to her apartment.
As soon as she stepped through the doorway, Josie knew: they were leaving. Her father, his broad shoulders and chest outlined in the early evening light from the room’s only window, glared at the opposite wall. Mother blew her nose, put her glasses on the table and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Josie looked from one to the other, feeling her lips tremble. She swallowed hard to push down the lump growing in her throat. She didn’t want to cry. Father would tell her she had to be strong. Seeing Mother’s face made her eyes water anyway.
Her mind was a sponge, slowly absorbing the consequences of her father’s decision. Everything she had known during
her eleven years would be gone. Never again would she race the old bike down the hill with Greta and Walt, nor swim in the river. Even worse, in the winters she would no longer skate and twirl around the frozen pond. Frau Müller, the coach of the Youth Organization for Skating, said Josie showed real talent. Then she recalled her father’s words, “We take nothing.” Did this mean her skates would stay on the nail on the bedroom wall?
“No!” Bursting into tears, Josie ran into the apartment’s only other room and flung aside the curtain that hid her clothes from view. She took down her skates. The worn leather flopped back and forth in her hands and the twine that served as laces was frayed. Still she hugged this dearest treasure to her chest. It was Oma who had helped her get the skates. She had arranged to trade them for some sauerkraut made from the cabbages they grew together on the balcony.
“Work hard at your skating,” Oma reminded her constantly. Often she would meet her at the pond to yell encouraging words or applaud Josie’s attempt at the jumps. At times her grandmother even borrowed a friend’s skates and joined in the lessons, giggling at her own fear of falling.
“You’ll go far. You’re good,” she told Josie. “Some day you’ll skate in the State competitions. You might even win and then the State will recruit you. You will go on trips...but you must work very hard.”
Frau Müller agreed. They walked arm in arm, Josie, Oma and Greta, along the snowy road back to the housing blocks. Sometimes Josie would daydream of a time when she would skate in front of great cheering crowds.
And what about Oma now? Father said she wasn’t coming.
“I won’t go either. I’ll stay with Oma,” Josie cried. The curtain separating her sleeping section from her parents’ area moved. Mother came in, sat down on the bed and blew her nose.
“This is hard, liebchen, but your father, Hans, and a Czech business partner worked out all the details. They’ve planned it for months. Vati even has some foreign money. It’s best...” Mother cleared her throat, “for your future—for all of us.” She sighed.
Josie stroked her skates. “But, Mutti.” Tears drowned her voice. She swallowed hard. “At school they say things will get better, after all the demonstrations are over.”
“For some people, maybe.” Mother sighed again. “But Vati doesn’t think it will do us any good. There may be new openness in the Soviet Union, but here people can’t even speak their own minds. You know your father lost his job with the paper because he wrote anti-Communist articles.” Mother’s voice trembled again.
Josie felt tears dripping off the end of her chin, but she made no effort to wipe them. She had never seen Mutti crying like this. It frightened her.
Josie hugged her skates tightly to her chest, the blade hurting where it pressed against her ribcage. But no matter how hard she squeezed, she could not hold back her pain.
“But at school....” She cleared her throat. “At school when Friedrich wrote a bad word on his school book he was punished with the rod and he had to write ’I’m sorry’ a thousand times. So why doesn’t Vati just take his punishment?”
“It’s not that simple,” Mother said, a faint smile slipping across her face. “I’m sorry, liebchen. We have to leave; it’s all planned.”
“No, Mutti!” Josie jumped up, stamped her feet on the floor, then kicked her bed. “No. I’m not leaving my friends,” she yelled, throwing her skates against the wall. The loud scrape of metal blades on cement shocked her. Mutti would be angry.
But her mother pulled Josie down beside her, put her arms around her shoulders and said, “You’ll make new friends, liebchen. We have to go tonight. Your father is right. This is no longer our home. We’re just being used by the rich Communist bosses who have power. Everything belongs to the party: the factories, the apartment blocks, the stores....”
Josie nodded. “Yes, but...”
“Well,” her mother interrupted, shaking her dark hair off her forehead and pushing her glasses back up on her nose, “the factory supervisor told us the police want to put Vati in jail because he is writing anti-government articles and poems. His friend Johann was imprisoned today. Vati thinks he will be next. They might come for him tonight.” Mother’s arms locked tighter.
“Vati...put in jail?” Josie felt her heart banging against her chest. She wanted to get out, flee, get away from all the dangers in this country. She pressed tightly against her mother.
“But Greta, and my skates, and Oma. We have to take Oma!”
“Maybe she’ll join us later, after we get to Canada. When we have our own home. Sleep now, liebchen.”
“It’s too early,” Josie protested.
“No, it’s not. Remember, we’ll be on the road all night. Sleep now, you’ll not regret it.”
Mother left to rest in her own bed. Josie lay down, but sleep did not come easily. Muffled sobs drifted in through the cloth divider. Josie hid her head under the pillow, but it was too hard to breathe. Besides, she needed to hear Mutti, even if she was crying. At least she was there—close.
After a time Josie got up. “Oma, you must come,” she whispered to grandmother’s photograph which sat on the small shelf beside her bed. She smiled at the freckled face with the soft eyes and wrinkles, the wide mouth and auburn-grey hair.
Walking to the curtain, she ran her hand down two dresses, one for summer, one for winter. This old, cold-weather thing, all patched up and too small, she wouldn’t miss. Her summer dress, worn only for one season, she took off the hook. Of course it was a makeover, sewn by Mutti from an old dress a friend had outgrown. But the colours suited her. Slipping her clothes off, Josie put the dress on. The auburn lines were the same shade as her hair, while the green almost matched her eyes.
“We take nothing.” Vati’s words echoed in her mind. But she had to be warm, didn’t she? Leaving her dress on, Josie pulled her only pair of pants and her sweater over it.
Except for Oma, Greta and her skates, she wouldn’t miss anything else she was leaving behind. She didn’t have much: two pictures of flowers on the wall, an old rag doll she never played with anymore, her yoyo, two puzzles and some old books. She picked up the skates, hugged them, then put the winter dress on the floor and arranged her skates carefully on top of them. She leaned Oma’s picture against one blade.
“Good-bye,” she mumbled. She picked the picture up again, kissed it and put it back down.
Stretching out on the bed, Josie looked at the arrangement for a while, then closed her eyes. In Canada perhaps they would live like the people she saw on the television when Kurt invited her to watch at his house. And maybe, just maybe, they’d even get their own TV.
Josie had heard about how the others, the people in the West, lived. Every family owned two or even three new, big, shiny cars. There were no hour-long line-ups at stores. And they had clothes—new clothes, nice clothes, so many clothes they had to build separate rooms to put them all in. Children flew to school in airplanes. They had homework machines called computers, and black boxes they carried with them on the street that played music. Instead of old bicycles they rode on boards with wheels under them.
As in a dream, Josie saw herself on a pair of brand-new, white-laced skates. She twirled around and around like a ballerina. Not on the pond. In a building where people made ice. Her feet no longer hurt where the creases bit into her skin, or where the ropes cut too tightly to hold the old leather in its place. Moving—no—flying, gliding, whirling on the glassy surface, she was like Katarina Witt, the East German who had twice won the gold medal for women’s figure skating at the Olympic Games; her picture had been in every paper. Even her teacher had talked about it. Josie had paid close attention, dreaming that someday she would be like Katarina.
TWO
“It’s time. Hans is waiting.”
“I’m sleepy.” Josie turned over in her warm nest, but her mother took her arms and slowly lifted her.
“Come on, liebchen, time to go.”
Josie sat up on the edge of the bed, slipped
her feet into her shoes, snuggled into her coat for warmth and followed her mother out through the apartment. Father met them at the front door. As he led them down the street Josie took one last look, in spite of the dim light cast by the single streetlight—the tall buildings outlined squarely against the night sky, the concrete playground where they played tag and hopscotch, the lone tree in the middle and the smokestack behind it, still filling the sky. As they walked past, she touched the trunk of the tree. “You’re it,” she whispered.
They ducked into a dark alleyway where Hans waited in his car, his tall frame filling the driver’s seat. Though his young face smiled a welcome, the tension he felt was evident in the worry lines that creased his forehead. No one spoke.
Josie fell asleep as soon as they drove off, her head on her mother’s lap.
She woke again when Mother pushed her upright and whispered, “Wake up Josephine. Wake up.” Josie rubbed her eyes, stretched and yawned. She slid out of the car and looked around. The crisp cold air jolted her awake. They were in a small clearing in the woods; the trees were dark pillars surrounding them like prison bars. Josie shivered. Hugging her arms around her waist, she edged closer to Father.
Hans kissed first her father, then her mother, on both cheeks. After he shook Josie’s hand, he turned to leave, but not before she had seen tears glistening on his cheeks. He got back into his car, started the engine and drove off. Silence pressed like damp earth.
Josie moved even closer to her father’s side. It was hard to breathe; her throat was blocked.
“Komm,” Father whispered. “Follow me.”
They walked one behind the other, Father in front and Mother in the back. Away from the clearing, darkness swallowed the trees. They struggled like ants over the uneven carpet of leaves and needles. Roots tripped them. Branches poked them. One whipped Josie hard in the face. She drew her breath in sharply while her hand clutched her cheek. Blood trickled down between her fingers. Without breaking the stillness, she moved on, her hand pressed against the scratch to stop the bleeding. Then, suddenly, Father stumbled into a rivulet, landing in a bush on the other bank. He muttered under his breath, and his shoes squished as he stepped onto dry ground.