The Wall Between

by Jesper Bugge Kold

  Though her face was unperturbed, he sensed some uncertainty beneath the surface. For a moment she hesitated, as if trying to make a decision. Then she picked up a heavy box, its weight causing the veins in her forearms to bulge.

  “I’m leaving you.”

  She walked past him. Not long after that, he heard a door slam one floor below.

  Martina moved in with Jens Rembrandt. Her conscience demanded that—or so she said—she offer the apartment to Peter. He knew they’d expected him to refuse. How could he live in the same building as the woman who’d just left him?

  But Peter stayed. He’d begun to like this part of the city, which was more lively and less blocky than Lichtenberg. Besides, Stefan and Nina Lachner lived on Gleimstrasse. If he moved away, he would have to take himself off the case.

  In the beginning he was sad. He couldn’t understand why she had left him. She hadn’t ever expressed any unhappiness with him, and then suddenly this. He’d hoped that they would learn to love each other. Though he missed her, he eventually began to wonder if she’d just been a shield against loneliness. His sadness was soon replaced by relief. The marriage would have been a mistake.

  Chance meetings in the building were few, but when they did run into each other, they were silent. They hurried past each other without a word, like strangers, then immediately closed their apartment doors and exhaled a sigh of relief. Peter hated being the rejected lover, the abandoned, the unwanted.

  18

  STEFAN

  East Berlin, April 1978

  “We’re not getting anywhere.” Alexander’s face was drained of energy, and his voice had sounded unusually somber.

  Stefan cracked open a beer and handed it to his brother. Alexander had grown increasingly sulky recently. The enthusiasm that had once enlivened him was fading. Stefan was now the one who had to carry the burden of planning their escape if they were ever to get out of the GDR. Alexander mustn’t lose the courage, not now. Stefan needed his help, too.

  Their frequent deliberations over the course of a year hadn’t brought them any closer to a solution. It seemed impossible; they couldn’t simply scale the Wall. Many had already made reckless attempts without proper preparation—based on nothing more than complete faith that will alone was enough to get them over—and such attempts would only get them killed or imprisoned.

  Alexander took a sip of his beer and sighed.

  “I’ve thought of something.” Stefan waited until his brother looked at him before going on. “Maybe we need help.”

  “We’ve discussed that. It’s too dangerous to involve others.”

  “But I have an idea.”

  “You don’t mean Ulf?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Good. The only way he can keep a secret is by not knowing it.”

  Stefan began to explain his idea. If only they knew how others had escaped, maybe they would find a solution. Unfortunately, that information wasn’t easy to find. Once an escape route was discovered, Stasi closed the hole and did their utmost to keep the news of it quiet to avoid encouraging others to make their own attempts, but he and Alexander still might learn from others’ efforts.

  “We’ll also learn something by seeing what mistakes people made,” Stefan said. “So we can see what we should and shouldn’t do.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do we know anyone in West Berlin?”

  Alexander shook his head dejectedly.

  “Ulf has an uncle in West Berlin. Arno.” Stefan knew that his brother wouldn’t like the suggestion, but he went on. “Ulf doesn’t need to know.”

  “But only if we can keep Ulf out of it. I don’t trust him.”

  Stefan nodded.

  “How do we get in touch with him?”

  By the time the silver-gray Mercedes slowly rolled around the corner, Stefan had been waiting for two hours. The driver took his time parking the car in front of the building where Ulf lived with his family. Ulf had told him that his uncle was planning to visit. The car gleamed among the oppressive gray of the tall buildings all around. There was no doubt that it had come from West Berlin.

  A man in a light cotton coat with a loose belt climbed out. His hair was combed back, and he was deeply suntanned. He hoisted a couple of shopping bags from the trunk.

  Stefan gathered his wits for a few moments. Then he exhaled heavily and walked toward the man. “Arno Kramer?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Speaking quickly and precisely, Stefan explained the connection to him. If Arno refused to help them, Stefan and Alexander didn’t know what else they could do. They’d tried everything. As he spoke, Arno cocked his head to one side and studied him. After a short period of consideration, he agreed to meet Stefan in nearby Volkspark Anton Saefkow in three hours.

  Stefan waited on a bench, watching the old gasworks on Dimitroffstrasse. The air above the facility was thick and dark where the three large nineteenth-century smokestacks stood in a row. They’d once been positioned outside of the city, so they had all the room their unwieldy shapes demanded, but the city had grown up around them and now they seemed ungainly. The three fat brothers, they were called. They reminded him of the brothers Grosicki from the building where he grew up. He recalled them waddling down the stairwell; they would lean backward, clutching the railing, as though fearful that their own weight would pull them forward and cause them to roll down the steps like beach balls.

  Arno arrived an hour late. Stefan was concerned—it didn’t bode well if Arno was unreliable—but he apologized and explained that he’d been invited to stay for dinner. Stefan was relieved. His voice was soft and kind, without the touch of arrogance people from West Berlin generally used to let East Berliners know how superior they were.

  Arno wanted to help. He knew a journalist at Die Welt who could get what Stefan was asking for. Stefan was well aware of the Axel Springer building, where Die Welt was housed, and GSW Immobilien GmbH’s building right beside it, from which a large news ticker sent daily propaganda over to the eastern side of the Wall, much to the chagrin of the state. In 1968, the state constructed an entire complex of twenty-three- to twenty-five-story buildings on Leipziger Strasse to block the news ticker and put an end to the free press.

  One week later, on the same bench, Arno supplied Stefan with the Western newspapers he’d received from his journalist friend and then smuggled across the border. They included every article covering successful escapes out of the GDR.

  “What would it take for you to help us?”

  “A roll in the hay with your sister.” Arno laughed warmly.

  Stefan hesitated. “But I don’t have a sister.”

  “Well, then, I don’t want anything.” Arno patted his shoulder. “Just let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

  Stefan and Alexander threw themselves into the task of reading all the newspaper clippings. Peter Fechter was the nightmare scenario, someone for whom escape had ended in catastrophe. He and a friend had attempted to scale the Wall near Zimmerstrasse back in 1962, but he was shot. Though his friend made it to the other side, Peter had bled to death not two yards from West Berlin, obstructed by the Wall. While his whimpering was heard by dumbstruck bystanders on the west side of the wall, the East German border guards just watched him die.

  They read about people fleeing through tunnels they’d spent months digging; some had been successful by crawling into the sewage system and crossing over onto the subway track, then stopping a train to West Berlin. Others had built a hot-air balloon, constructing the burner from old gas cylinders and parts of a stove, but every time there was a successful escape, State Security increased surveillance.

  The Wall had gradually been fortified with a security fence, barbed wire, alarms, floodlights, manned control towers, and dog patrols, so no one could get over it that way. This meant they would need to sneak through a border crossing, and in order to do that, they would need valid papers.

  After deliberating int
ensively over all their options, they chose one that seemed to involve the least risk. They would transform themselves into West German citizens who were only visiting East Berlin for a day. Arno had agreed to smuggle passports, false driver’s licenses, and one-day visas to them, and they would produce Western items from their bags: Colgate, Rexona, and Nivea cream would convince the border guards that they’d come from the other side. With the help of Western television, they learned words and phrases that were only used in West Berlin and studied Western behavioral patterns in TV broadcasts.

  Nina overcame her fears once she realized the two brothers did not intend to give up on their plans. Though Stefan still doubted whether she would really go through with it when the time came, he sensed her opposition weakening. He understood that she found it difficult to leave her mother, who had been alone since her father’s death, but he reminded her at every opportunity that their lives would be changed for the better. They would live freely, and they could have children who would grow up free. The state wouldn’t rule their lives, threatening them with prison for speaking out. Although it would be hard, she would have to sacrifice her mother for freedom.

  Over the course of the next few months, Arno procured clothes for them, bags from West German stores, West German cigarettes, and even a pack of West German condoms. The paperwork would be more difficult, but Arno assured them that it would work out. Stefan was impatient, but if everything went according to plan, they’d celebrate Christmas on the other side of the Wall. He was invaluable to them, and Stefan occasionally wondered what Arno got out of helping them. One day he put this very question to him. Arno explained his altruistic worldview. Stefan didn’t know what he meant, but he greatly appreciated Arno’s strange words. “We’re not all selfish crooks here in the West, even though that’s what your government wants you to think.”

  “Soon it won’t be my government anymore.”

  Arno laid a hand on Stefan’s shoulder and smiled.

  One day when Stefan came home, Nina was waiting for him in the kitchen. She was quiet, but he could tell that she wanted to talk. There was coffee on the kitchen table, and Nina sat in her chair, as if she’d been practicing what she wanted to say. He sat down opposite her. He noticed a trail of tears in her mascara. He extended his hand toward her cheek, but she pulled her head away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head like a child.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  19

  PETER

  East Berlin, March 1980

  Nina gave birth in March 1980. There were new sounds in the apartment, and the tone of the surveillance reports changed. Before the birth there had been terrible arguments about how she could get pregnant after they’d agreed to wait on children until they were in West Berlin, but life in the two-bedroom apartment in Gleimstrasse was calmer these days. Peter himself listened in frequently. Stefan and Nina spoke lovingly to the child and to each other, and their voices fell to a whisper whenever Petra slept. Despite Stefan’s opposition to the unexpected pregnancy, he seemed to have welcomed his daughter with genuine love. When Peter was listening in, the child’s crying made him think of Andreas. His son was four years old now. Though he’d never seen him, he missed him, an incomprehensible emotion given that he’d never met him, but the Wall would always be there—as well it should—and if that meant he would never see his son, then that would be his sacrifice.

  Stefan and Nina’s escape had been planned to the minutest detail, and State Security knew everything. Surveillance of the couple’s apartment had revealed that Stefan, Nina, and Alexander would attempt to escape to West Berlin by pretending to be West German tourists, and to that end they had procured Western passports and papers, items, and clothes. They had been admirably thorough, and had it not been for State Security listening in, Peter was certain that they would have succeeded.

  Peter heard Stefan and Alexander trying to persuade a reluctant Nina to make a go of it with the baby. When she finally acquiesced, they set a date for May. In April the couple was arrested, and Peter organized the arrest himself so that he could be sure all went as planned. State Security would take care of the child. That’s what he’d told Nina Lachner anyway, though he knew it was a lie. The girl would be raised in an orphanage or, in the best-case scenario, with some family—if anyone wanted her. They’d used a delivery van with the words “Centrum Warenhaus” on the side to pick them up. The driver zigzagged through the city so the couple couldn’t determine where they were being taken in the windowless vehicle. After an hour’s ride, they arrived at Hohenschönhausen prison. The team that was supposed to retrieve Alexander Lachner at his residence returned empty-handed. Stefan’s brother had gotten away, and Peter was furious.

  They interrogated Stefan Lachner at length, trying to get him to reveal Alexander’s hiding place. They grilled him at all hours of the day and night, but Stefan wouldn’t talk. Peter frequently participated in the interrogations, but even he couldn’t get him to betray his brother.

  One evening on the way home following yet another unsuccessful interrogation, Peter spotted Wolfgang outside a bar in the company of a woman. They didn’t notice him, and on a sudden impulse, Peter followed them. They stopped in an archway, and Peter watched them kissing hungrily, then saw her bury her hand deep in Wolfgang’s pants. Shaken at what he’d just witnessed, he hurried home.

  The next day he sought out Sergeant Gülzow, who he knew oversaw the surveillance of Veronika and Wolfgang. Gülzow let him read the reports. Over a period of four months, Wolfgang had called three different women. The notes describe Wolfgang whispering into the receiver each time, the women speaking to him in amorous, infatuated voices. Assignations were arranged, promises made.

  Peter understood what he ought to do: report Wolfgang to Sonnenberger. Of course he couldn’t demand that he be arrested on account of infidelity, so he was forced to resort to a white lie. He didn’t consider it a transgression of his authority; it was a necessity. Wolfgang was cheating on his sister. He had to be stopped, and Peter was the only one who could do so. If he told Veronika directly, she would be crushed. It would be yet another blow in a long series of defeats. So he resorted to using official channels.

  The next day Peter visited Sonnenberger in his office.

  “Wolfgang told me, confidentially, of course, that he’s going to attempt an escape. He didn’t tell me how, but he’s going to do it three days from now, on Tuesday.”

  Sonnenberger looked confused. “He said that?”

  “Yes,” Peter lied. “He views me as his confidant.”

  The expression on Sonnenberger’s face changed, and Peter could tell what he was thinking. His yearlong surveillance of Wolfgang hadn’t been wasted after all. “Well, then, I guess we’ll have to get on it.”

  20

  ANDREAS

  Berlin, November 2006

  Like a door-to-door salesman, Andreas begins to knock on the neighbors’ doors. The neighbor across the hall, Greta Riemann-Müller, has only good things to say about Peter. He was always a friendly and helpful man, she says, always very kind.

  “He was so good with Paul before he moved to the nursing home.” She chokes up when she talks about her husband. She brings out a few books, which she shows him proudly, along with a photograph of Paul shaking Erich Honecker’s hand.

  None of the other neighbors seem to know Peter at all. They greeted him in the hall, but they never stopped to speak with him. He always reeked of alcohol, says a young woman with a child in her arms. Andreas notices that several become uncomfortable in his presence. Andreas figures that this is because they never took the trouble to get to know Peter, and Andreas is their bad conscience rapping on their door. Before he died, Peter meant nothing to them, but now they’re irritated that the man’s son is making them feel like they failed him in some way.

  He knocks on Sven and Irene Krause’s door, the elderly couple who was at the funeral, but she has nothing to
say now.

  “Did you know Peter at all?” Andreas asks.

  But she shakes her head, backs into her apartment, and slams the door.

  Andreas has spent entire evenings rummaging through every cabinet and every drawer in search of clues, anything that could tell him more, but he has found nothing of interest. He’s alone in the apartment quite a lot. Then he thinks about Lisa. He tries to keep thoughts of her at bay, but they’re too insistent. They’re lying in bed. He pictures his hand sliding up her back. It rests on her naked shoulder, and he feels the warmth of her skin against his fingers, and he’s never going to remove his hand. It should always be right there. He tells her what he’s thinking, and she turns and smiles. He misses being looked at like that, misses her smiling at him.

  To be alone is not unusual for him. As an only child, one learns such things, and now the city is his companion. He begins to take strolls around Berlin, exploring new parts of the city each day. It’s like being intoxicated or dizzily infatuated, like champagne bubbling up to the rim of the glass.

  Time has been hard on the city, but it has nonetheless aged gracefully. From the dilapidated to the bourgeois, the endless concrete blocks to the beautiful Altbau buildings, Berlin is a study in contrasts. In some places, Berlin’s a shabby hag with missing teeth. Elsewhere it’s a boastful playboy, a middle-aged man with leather tassels on his shoes, a well-dressed matron in high heels with an expensive handbag, or a ripped bodybuilder. She’s a punk, she’s a yuppie, she’s a hippie. She’s cool and uncool at the same time. She’s pure and aromatic, but the side streets need a shower, washed hair, and a clean set of clothes. He walks everywhere but is particularly drawn to the city’s underbelly.

  He doesn’t want to return to Denmark. Lisa has ruined Copenhagen for him. Everything about it reminds him of her—why can’t he just forget her?

  He calls Thorkild. “Can you pay the rent again? I’ll pay you back.”

  “Of course. Are you okay, Andreas?”

  “I’m okay.”