by Ann Alma
“Josie.” A soggy, crouching figure beckoned.
“Vati!”
Crawling from the bush, she ran toward her father and the forest. And there, behind a big shrub, mud-covered, stood Mother, smiling and crying all at once, her face no longer a stranger’s.
“Mutti!” They hugged each other before sitting down to catch their breath.
“Where are we, Vati?” Josie’s teeth chattered.
“I’m not sure. Somewhere in Hungary, if Jan and I calculated correctly.”
“Where do we go from here?” Mother was okay again, Josie saw with relief. She polished her glasses and put them back on her nose.
“We find the highway to Austria.”
Josie looked at the water, now barely visible through the trees, and thought of the life that lay beyond it: her home, her relatives, her friends, the freedom she had known when she was skating. It felt as if she had been washed away from all that now, like a ship swept from its moorings.
Turning their backs to the river, they started off on a path through the woods. Her parents still had their shoes, but Josie found it difficult to walk on the forest carpet in socks.
“I should have carried your shoes,” was all Father said, when Josie told him how she’d kicked them off. If this had happened at home, her parents would have punished her for being so wasteful, but now they were just relieved to be together.
Father set off at a brisk pace, while Mother and Josie followed more slowly. She had to watch the ground to avoid hurting her feet. Watching her father disappear down the trail made Josie uneasy, but it wasn’t long before they caught up with him. He stood beside a creek that ran along the edge of a pasture. He had washed his face and hands, rinsed some of the dirt from his clothes and smoothed down his hair.
“You wait here. I’ll check out that farm over there,” he said, walking off in the direction of a small cluster of buildings. Josie heard a dog barking, but saw Father walking on to greet the brown pup.
Shivering from the cold, Josie and her mother kneeled by the stream to wash off the worst of the dirt. If the mud stayed on her face any longer her skin would crack, Josie thought.
Soon Father and another man called and waved from the farm while the dog ran up, tail wagging.
“Hallo, Eva, Josephine, komm hierhin, everything is fine,” Father called.
Going as fast as they could on their shaking legs, Josie and her mother crossed the pasture.
“Hogy van?” the farmer said, shaking hands. Josie didn’t understand him, so she mumbled a greeting and followed everyone into the kitchen. There a tall woman had started a fire in the wood stove while two boys, about Josie’s age, watched the pots on the burner.
“Myrna,” the man said, pointing to the woman, who looked over her shoulder with a bright-eyed, smile. “Laszlo,” he slapped a work-worn hand on his chest. Father introduced his family. Then Laszlo took them to a bedroom where they changed out of their wet clothes and into borrowed pants and sweaters.
“Do you know these people, Karl?” Mother asked.
“No, they’re just being kind to us. I’m sure they have had others fugitives come through here.”
Everyone sat around the stove for breakfast. The porridge trailed warmth all the way to her stomach and she finally stopped shivering while she listened to the adults, who, with the help of hand motions, pictures and a map, tried to have a conversation in German, Hungarian and Russian. It was strange, she thought, to be in this place where she and her parents knew nobody, but where they were welcomed. They were all part of the Eastern Bloc and had had to learn Russian as a second language. But were they free? Father seemed to think so.
“Mutti,” she whispered, “is there a wall around Hungary?”
“No, only around Berlin.”
“Why?”
“Because so many East Berliners fled to West Berlin that the Communists had to do something to stop them. Everywhere else they have guarded border crossings with barbed wire. But here they don’t. We can get out.”
Mother turned back to the adult conversation while Josie wondered what the other side of the border looked like.
At last her parents understood the directions to the major highway that led to Austria.
“I think it’s just twenty minutes up the road,” Father said.
Myrna and Josie washed the clothes in the sink and hung them to dry on the rack above the wood stove. They wrapped Josie’s summer dress in a sheet of newspaper, along with some bread and cheese for lunch. Father, Mother and Laszlo studied the map. The boys stayed in the background and whispered to each other. They found shoes and an old jacket. Josie felt shy when she accepted them. They didn’t talk; just grinned and looked away.
Back into their own dry clothes, they thanked the family and said goodbye. Laszlo shook each hand in turn in his firm grip, while Myrna clasped their hands and smiled warmly. The boys stayed back. She didn’t even know their names, Josie realized. In town Father took strange-looking money from a plastic bag to buy tickets. An hour and a half later they were on the bus to Austria. At the last stop before the border they got off.
“Oh, can’t we go all the way on this bus?” Josie felt tired and disappointed. Were they ever going to get there?
“We have to cross the border on our own,” Father said.
“We don’t have to swim a river again, do we?” Josie clasped her father’s arm. Her breath caught in her throat.
“No, we just walk across on the road. I’ll tell the border guards that we’re refugees. In Hungary they understand these things.”
But if Father thought it was going to be easy, he was soon proven wrong. They approached the border crossing together, Josie between her father and mother. Father instructed them to smile, but Josie knew that her face betrayed her fear. Unfortunately the uniformed guards didn’t speak much German, and they became impatient when Father repeated slowly, “We will just cross; we do not want trouble.”
One of the guards seemed friendly, but another looked at them as if they were criminals. He sneered and his voice kept getting louder.
Father stayed calm. But when he took Josie’s hand and tried to walk down the road, the mean guard shoved them back. Immediately two others with guns barred their way. Josie pressed close against Father, who let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Komm,” one of the men said. He led everyone to an office in a small building beside the road, then pushed Josie and Mother toward a wooden bench and made them sit down. Two men took Father into another room. The door closed behind them.
“Will Vati be okay?” Josie whispered. If only they had left the door open and one of the men with the guns hadn’t gone in too.
“He has a good plan. It’ll work,” Mother said. She took her glasses off, then clasped her hands tightly together, the knuckles turning white from pressure. Loud voices came through the door. Mother’s face went white too.
Josie felt a queasiness in her stomach that got worse and worse until she thought she might throw up. Would they hurt Father? Or shoot him? Or take him away the way they had taken Mother’s parents? Trying to block the sound of the shot she expected, Josie pushed her hands over her ears. She couldn’t hold back the tears. Bending her head down to her knees, she closed her eyes. Feeling Mother’s arm slide around her, she pressed closer.
Suddenly Mother pushed her upright. Josie looked and there was Father, walking out of the office, a slight smile on his face.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Vati.” Josie ran to him and held his sleeve as they walked out. She couldn’t stop shaking or crying even though they were motioned through and walked down the road. There was still another barrier a little further along the road.
“How did you convince them?” Mother asked.
“I gave them money.”
At the Austrian checkpoint the border guards spoke German. Josie looked up in surprise. Father again explained their situation, holding out money. But the guard smiled broa
dly, refusing the bribe and welcoming them to the West.
“Don’t worry, you are safe here,” he said to Josie.
Her legs felt less wobbly as she waited while her parents filled out several forms. They got instructions on how to get to the refugee center in Vienna.
“Josie, we did it. We’re free.” Father gathered them into his arms. “Everything’s fine now, liebchen. We did it.”
They sat on a bench beside the highway to wait for the bus. No one said anything. Josie watched her parents; they were smiling and holding hands. She slid closer. Father put his arm around her shoulder and suddenly burst into, “Freunde, das Leben ist lebenswert.”
Mother laughed loudly. “You and your opera.”
They started humming a tune Josie had often heard them play on the old record player; Beethoven. This side of the border looked the same as the eastern side, just a road and a few buildings, but it felt very different, lighter, happier. Josie joined in the humming, holding hands, all three swaying slightly from side to side.
The bus came. Father bought tickets. They found three seats together and watched the border to the East disappear.
FOUR
The next few days were a blur. Josie felt sick on the bus to Vienna and when they had their medical examinations at the refugee center a doctor found spots on her body and told her parents she had the measles. He ordered her family to stay in a separate hotel room instead of in the large hall with all the other refugees. Father said that this gave them privacy, and time to contact his cousin Fritz and get all the travel papers in order.
Three times a day Mother or Father went to the refugee center to collect a meal. They brought it to the room in small containers. The Red Cross even gave them each tooth brushes, soap, a towel, one set of extra underwear and medicine.
Josie glanced around the room from the cot she had now been on for...how many days? Four, maybe five? She wasn’t sure. The ceiling light, a bare bulb, was off. The thin, blue-and-white-flowered curtains were drawn, but even so, her eyes hurt as if the sun shone right into them. Her skin prickled all over.
From her cot she could see her parents’ double bed, a rickety table with a chair and in the far corner of the room her mother reading a newspaper by the light of a lamp partially covered with a towel.
Mother held the paper very close to her face, as she always did, because of her poor sight. When she was a child, on the day the Stasi took her parents away, one of the policemen had spilled something, the doctors weren’t sure what, on Mother’s face. Her eyes had been affected ever since: she was blind for the first few years. After that, at the orphanage, she got some of her sight back and finally started school at the age of nine.
Josie squinted her eyes. What if she couldn’t see properly after the measels?
“Mutti, will my eyes be bad forever?”
“No, liebchen.” Mother put the paper down and walked over. “You’ll be fine in a few days.”
“Where’s Vati?”
“He went for a walk. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. A bit hungry.” It hurt to talk.
“Sehr gut. It looks like you’re getting better. Let me take the cloths off your hands.”
Mother unwound the cotton strips, and Josie stretched and bent her fingers. Then she started scratching a spot on her cheek.
“No, no, don’t scratch. That only makes it worse. Here, drink some of this broth.”
Josie took a few sips, then put the cup down and automatically scratched her cheek again.
“Don’t use your nails.” Mother wrapped clean cotton strips around Josie’s hands. Then she bathed Josie’s face and upper body.
“Our travel papers are ready. We can leave when the doctor says you’re better.”
“Did Father find his cousin Fritz?”
“Yes. Fritz was separated from the rest of your father’s family when the Berlin Wall was built. The Red Cross found Fritz’s adopted parents’ phone number. They’re still in West Berlin, although Fritz lives in Calgary, in Canada.”
Calgary. She’d heard that name before. But where? Josie tried to concentrate, although all she wanted to do was scratch. Calgary...something about skating...Katarina Witt won her gold medal at the Olympic Games in Calgary.
“Mutti, when we go there, can I buy skates?”
Mother smiled and stroked Josie’s hair. “You and your skating. Just get yourself better, don’t scratch, sleep a lot, and I’ll do what I can to find you skates.” Mother picked the paper up again and sat down.
Josie closed her eyes. Tired and dreamy, her mind floated to Canada.
When she woke again, Father sat by the lamp, reading the paper. He looked up and smiled. “You’re looking a bit better.”
“I feel better. Where’s Mother?”
“Helping at the refugee center again. Do you feel well enough to start English lessons?”
“English lessons?” Josie looked at her father in surprise. She had expected her parents to ask her to read and do math. After all, she’d missed more than a week of school already. But why English lessons?
“In Canada they speak English. I thought you knew that,” Father said.
How could she know? They studied Canada and the United States in school. But she wasn’t good at memorizing things and she remembered very little. It was big and had long, cold winters, like in the USSR.
“You mean....” Josie looked at her father with the sudden shock of realization. “You mean they don’t speak German?”
“No, they speak English. French too, I think. But we’ll learn English.”
“Vati, how will I make friends? How can I go to school if they don’t speak German?”
“That’s why we’re studying English.” Father tapped a tape recorder and books. “A man from the Red Cross lent these to me. We’ll start when Mother gets back from the refugee center.”
*
The next week, while Josie struggled to keep her hands from scratching the last of her red spots, they spent most of their time at the table, repeating strange sounds from a tape and reading words from a book. Father had learned English before, at the newspaper. Besides, he was good at languages. But Josie and Mother found the lessons difficult.
“There just isn’t room for new words in my mind,” Mother said one day. “My head is so full, it might burst.” A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Just try a little more, Eva. These sounds will start to make sense soon.”
Josie had a hard time too. She learned how to greet people, and she knew the English names for some of the objects in the room. But often Father sounded impatient when he asked her something and Josie didn’t understand him. Besides, he enjoyed words, so this was exciting for him. Mother preferred to help out at the refugee center, she liked listening to others, while Josie just wanted to go home.
Instead, they worked at English all day long. Before she was allowed to use the sink Josie practiced: “I brush my teeth, you brush your teeth, he brush his teeth....”
“No, Josie, he brushes his teeth.”
“Ach ja, he brushes his teeth, she brushes her teeth, we brushes our teeth, no, we brush our teeth, you brush your teeth, they brush their teeth.”
Then came Mother’s turn. “I wash my face, you wash your face....”
Most days her parents also went to the center for the latest news on East Germany. Since their arrival in Vienna, first rumours, then actual articles in the newspapers, told of changes in their old country. So many left on trains to West Germany that the police could no longer stop them. Josie saw a photograph of what they had started calling “freedom trains” loaded with cheering, waving people. In all the bigger cities, thousands upon thousands of people demonstrated against the country’s leaders while the police, after years of breaking up large gatherings, stood silently and watched the crowds flood every street and city square. Sometimes they even joined the masses.
Then one day Father raced into the room, jumping, shouting and waving a newspaper.
Mother and Father danced around the room, laughing. Josie didn’t really feel excited. Honecker was just the party leader. Giving her itchy shoulder a secret rub against the doorpost, she stared at one parent, then the other.
“Josie, things are finally happening,” Father said, scooping her up and almost tossing her into the air. “People demanded freedom. Now they might get it.”
“Karl,” Mother grabbed Father’s shoulders, “let’s go to West Germany. We can wait there until things have settled. Then we can go back home where we can speak German. Maybe I can find my parents.”
“No, Eva, we can’t take that chance.” Father hugged Mother. “Your parents are gone. After thirty-six years it’s too late to look for them. We’ve tried before. I’m sorry, liebling.” Father kissed Mother. “We have to forget the past. We’ll be happy in Canada”
Over the next few days, as reports about people’s protests continued on the news, Mother tried to persuade Father that they should stay closer to home, instead of going to the other side of the world. But Father insisted it was too risky. Now that they had come this far, they would continue.
Josie wished Mother could persuade him. She didn’t want to go to a country where no one spoke German.
Mother stopped trying to speak English. She ate little. Then one morning she stayed in bed, saying she was sick. Sneezing and coughing, she began to complain about a pain in her ears.
The next day Mother’s eyes and nose ran and, although she got up, she coughed constantly. With medication from the Red Cross, her head cleared a bit, but she continued to have little appetite.
Father came back with other news. “Josie, your checkup is tomorrow. If the doctor clears you, we fly to Canada on Tuesday, October 24.”
Tuesday. Only a few days from now.
“Karl, I want to live in Germany,” Mother mumbled, her nose and mouth covered with a handkerchief, her eyes overflowing. “It’s not too late. Canada is too far away.”