Dieter
There’s no progress for a day whilst we clear the collapsed earth out of the tunnel and make doubly certain the walls and roof are properly shored up. Claudia insists on coming back down the tunnel to help out. Even Harry has rolled up his sleeves and is operating the pulley mechanism, lifting the buckets of rubble up to the surface. We haven’t spoken since our row.
Claudia and I are taking our empty buckets back down the tunnel when she stops and puts a hand on my arm.
“Dieter, I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly for saving my life the other day.”
Her words make me feel terrible and I stare at my feet. “But it’s my fault you were nearly killed,” I say. “I shouldn’t have let you dig there. I should have waited for Andreas to bring more wood. I’m really sorry.”
“Nonsense,” says Claudia. “Don’t listen to Harry. No one else is blaming you. It wasn’t your fault, it really wasn’t. It was my decision to dig.” Then she continues in a quieter voice. “You know I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stand it down here anymore. I was worried I might freak out, coming back into this cramped space. But it’s like what they say when you fall off a horse - you have to get straight back on otherwise you lose your nerve.”
“I hope you haven’t lost your nerve,” I say, looking into her big, hazel eyes.
“No,” she laughs. “I can keep going for a while longer.” Then she leans forward and gives me a peck on the cheek. I remain where I am, in stunned silence, as she disappears back down the tunnel.
Sabine
Brigitta and Mother don’t return until Sunday evening. At the sound of Mother’s key in the lock I leap up from where I’ve been sitting all day and rush to meet them. Brigitta runs into the apartment and hugs me tight. Mother walks in more slowly and lays a hand on my shoulder.
“Come into the kitchen and sit down,” I tell them. I realise that I haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m hungry. I’m sure they must be too.
Whilst I cut slices of Schwarzbrot and boil the kettle, they tell me that the Stasi came for them at ten o’clock on Saturday morning, so they’ve been gone for over thirty hours. Brigitta looks a bit tired but otherwise fine. Mother looks tense and drawn. There are dark rings under her eyes.
I set the bread and tea on the table and sit down myself.
“Tell me what happened,” I say.
Mother stares at her plate, so I turn to Brigitta.
“Did they come for you in a brown Skoda?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. Two men.” She takes a large bite out of her bread, chews it, swallows then carries on with her story. “I saw the car pull up outside the building and two men got out. I thought they looked suspicious. When I saw them heading this way I went into the bedroom and took Harry’s letter from your notebook. I burned it in the Kachelofen like the last one. I hope that was the right thing to do?”
A mountain of worry falls from my shoulders and crumbles to dust.
“Yes,” I say, squeezing her hand. “It was exactly the right thing to do. Thank you. Where did you put the notebook?”
Brigitta looks confused. “I left it in the drawer of course.”
“Ah, OK.” This is not good news. If Brigitta left it in the drawer then the Stasi must have taken it. Maybe someone searched the apartment after Mother and Brigitta were driven away. I don’t want to worry them any more at this point, so I ask, “Where did they take you?”
“To their headquarters I think.”
“And did they keep you together or were you separated?”
“They separated us,” says Brigitta. “We were each interviewed by Frau Biedermeier.” She does such a good impersonation of Frau Biedermeier with her arched eyebrows and stern mouth that, despite everything, I smile.
“So what did Frau Biedermeier want to know?”
At last Mother looks up. “She wanted us to tell her why you have been meeting people that you don’t normally see.”
“And what did you tell her?” I try to keep my voice steady, but my hands are trembling and I drop them onto my lap so that Brigitta and Mother can’t see.
“I didn’t tell them anything,” announces Brigitta confidently. “I just said you had a few friends that you didn’t see very often. I didn’t tell them why you’d been to visit these people.”
“Good,” I say. I turn to Mother. “And what did you tell Frau Biedermeier?”
For a moment she doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches between us until I think I can’t stand it anymore. Then she shakes her head at me. “No, Sabine. I didn’t tell them anything. But they know something is going on. I’m sure of it. If this tunnel isn’t ready soon, then it might be too late for all of us.”
Dieter
“Any chance of a coffee?” I ask, staggering into the kitchen. I’ve just been digging for four hours non-stop and am in desperate need of caffeine and sugar.
“Sure,” says Claudia, reaching for the kettle. Werner is sitting at the table studying the work rota. Harry is staring out of the window, smoking a cigarette. I ignore him and sit down opposite Werner. Despite Harry’s efforts on the pulley system the other day, things are still tense between us.
“How are we doing against the plan?” I ask Werner. It seems to me we’ve been making excellent progress for about a week now. The only good thing to come out of the tunnel collapse (except Claudia giving me a peck on the cheek) is that the team is really pulling together. Harry still hasn’t lifted a finger as far as the digging is concerned, but the rest of us are working harder than ever.
Werner puts the rota to one side and picks up his map of the tunnel. “We’re not doing too badly,” he says. “By my calculation, we’re about here.” He draws a cross on the map. “That’s about five metres short of the border.”
“Great.” I, for one, can’t wait to start digging under the feet of the enemy.
“But,” says Werner, “there’s still a long way to go before we reach the houses on Schönholzer Strasse, and we’ve got a problem.”
“Oh, what’s that?” I ask. Claudia places a mug of steaming black coffee in front of me and I start spooning in the sugars.
“Andreas needs to take some time off to look after his younger brother and sister,” explains Werner. “His mother’s sick. That leaves us a man short.”
This is bad news. “We’ll be more than one man short,” I say, sipping at the hot coffee. “Andreas does the work of at least two people.” I’ve given up trying to compete with Andreas – he’s built like a tank whereas I’m more of a clapped out Trabi.
“Is there any chance of recruiting someone else?” asks Claudia. “What do you think Harry?”
Harry turns round from the window. “What I think,” he says, “is that if you hadn’t spent two days dealing with the tunnel collapse we’d be under the feet of those East German bastards by now.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I say standing up to face him. “Can’t you let it go? We, all right I, made a mistake. But we’ve been making really good progress since then, no thanks to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you never lift a bloody finger to help us.” Harry looks as if he’s about to protest but I cut him off. “Since we’re going to be missing Andreas for a while, how about you get yourself down that tunnel and do some real work for a change?”
“But…”
“What?”
“I…”
“Too afraid of the mud?”
“No.”
“Well then, I’ll see you in the cellar tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.” I walk out, slamming the door behind me.
Sabine
Today Herr Schmidt has organised a visit to the cinema to watch a government film about East German agricultural and industrial productivity. I expect it will be nothing but lies and propaganda, but at least we won’t have to sit and listen to Herr Schmidt expounding Marx’s theories on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Our class gathers in the
entrance hall, those of us still at school that is. There are rumours that Matthias and Joachim have been sent to prison for instigating crimes against the state. Those who were expelled for wearing black have not been allowed to return. I suspect Hans wouldn’t want to come back to this place even if he was given the opportunity.
I haven’t seen Hans for weeks. Not since I told him about the tunnel and we argued. I’ve been too busy contacting the people on Harry’s list and then keeping a low profile after what happened to Mother and Brigitta.
“Cheer up,” says Astrid. “We’re off to see a movie.”
“Oh yeah? Is John Wayne in it?”
Astrid gives me a puzzled look then shrugs her shoulders. “Anyway, it’s better than being in school.”
Herr Schmidt arrives wearing a brown overcoat, looking like a comedy Stasi spy. He marches to the head of the group and commands us to follow him. We walk the short distance to the state-owned cinema and take our places in the drab auditorium with its worn velvet seats.
The film shows scene after scene of industrious farm and factory workers who, judging from the smiles on their faces, find their backbreaking and monotonous labour nothing but a source of joy and personal satisfaction.
It occurs to me that with no prospect of finishing his education in this country, this is exactly the sort of work Hans will end up doing if he doesn’t make it to West Berlin.
At the end of the film I can’t get out of the cinema quickly enough. Having sat through an hour and a half of watching happy workers and being told that production in East German factories has increased by an astounding forty percent this year alone, I need the company of someone who always says exactly what’s on his mind. I set off to see Hans.
I meet Frau Fischer on the landing. She is on her way out.
“Go straight in, Sabine,” she says. “You know where to find him.” She looks towards his bedroom door and the look on her face clearly says, Teenage boys!
I tap on Hans’ door.
“Komm ‘rein,” he calls. Come in.
I go in and find him sprawled on his bed with a map of Berlin spread out in front of him.
“Oh, Sabine, it’s you.” He starts up, surprised, and tries to fold the map away, but not before I’ve seen that he’s drawn the route of the Wall on it in red ink. He stashes the crumpled map under his bed.
“What was that?” I ask, trying to keep my voice casual sounding.
“Nothing,” he says, flustered. “I was just…it’s nothing.”
I know he’s trying to hide something from me, but I pretend not to notice.
“So, how are things?” I ask. I’d rather not refer to our previous encounter, hoping that we can just forget about it and move on.
“Actually, I have some good news,” he says.
“Oh?”
He reaches under his bed and pulls out a shoebox. “You remember I said I was looking into false identity papers?”
“Yes. And?”
He doesn’t reply but takes the lid off the box and pulls out a wig with dark, shoulder length curls.
I laugh. “You’re not going to wear that are you?”
“No! Of course not. It’s not for me.” He looks towards the door and drops his voice. “It’s for her.” He takes a piece of paper out of the box and passes it to me. It’s an identity paper.
I unfold it and see a picture of a middle-aged woman with dark, curly hair and a round, smiling face. Her name is Frau Roth and she comes from Hamburg in West Germany. I look at the wig which Hans is holding up and look back at the picture of Frau Roth. She’s not dissimilar, facially, to Frau Fischer.
“Where did you get this?” I ask.
“Some students from West Germany are providing them. Frau Roth kindly loaned them her papers so that someone similar in appearance could escape to the West. With the wig on, Mother will look just like Frau Roth and as a West German citizen she’ll be able to walk through Checkpoint Charlie without any problems.”
“Cool,” I say, handing back the identity papers. It’s a huge risk, crossing the border in disguise, but I don’t want to put a damper on things. “What about you? Do you have a false identity too?”
Hans puts the papers and wig back in the box and hides them under his bed. “No, not yet.”
“And what does your mother think of this plan?”
Hans grimaces. “I haven’t told her about it yet. But she’ll be fine with it, I’m sure. Anyway, how’s the great tunnel project coming along?”
“To be honest,” I say, “I haven’t heard anything about the tunnel for ages. I’ve no idea how far they’ve got.”
Hans doesn’t say anything but there’s a flicker of I told you so on his face. When he speaks he’s sympathetic sounding though.
“It will take them months,” he says. “Even assuming they don’t get found out.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to try and get false identity papers for you?”
It’s tempting, but I shake my head. “Thanks for the offer, but Mother would never have the nerve to present false documents to a border guard. And we’d need papers for me and Brigitta too. No, the only way my family will get out of East Berlin is in secret, underground.”
Dieter
“Right, let’s get started,” I say.
I’m in the cellar with Harry who has turned up wearing an old pair of khaki trousers and a scruffy shirt. He looks quite different out of his usual stylish clothes. Claudia is doing lookout duty and Werner and Thomas will be along in a minute to work on shoring up the walls and roof. I want to get Harry started on the digging, show him the best way to work in the tight space. I lower myself into the vertical shaft, searching for the familiar footholds with my feet. I’ve been up and down so often now that I’ve developed some speed and agility.
I reach the bottom of the shaft whilst Harry is still lowering himself over the edge.
“Don’t worry,” I call up to him. “You get used to it.” I want to try and make things up between us but I start to get impatient as he makes his slow and faltering way down the shaft.
Eventually he joins me at the bottom. He’s out of breath already so I don’t rate his chances after an hour of digging. Still, it’s only fair he should do his bit.
“This way,” I say. I bend over and start to make my way towards the tunnel face. Harry follows close behind. His breathing is noisy, like an old air-conditioning system.
The lighting system that Werner installed is rigged up on an extension cable and hung from the roof rafters, but it stops five metres or so short of the tunnel face. One of Werner’s jobs this week is to find another extension cable to attach to the first.
“Bit dark down here, isn’t it?” says Harry.
“Don’t worry, your eyes will adjust after a while.”
We reach the tunnel face and I show Harry the best way of hacking at the earth with a pick-axe. Whilst I’m talking, he stays focused on the wall of earth in front of us, not looking at me once.
“Here, you have a go,” I say, passing him the pick-axe.
He makes a couple of feeble stabs at the earth, flinching as the soil starts to crumble.
“You’re doing great,” I lie. I shovel the loosened earth into buckets. “I’ll go and empty these.” Harry keeps hacking at the earth and doesn’t answer. I hope he improves with a bit of practice.
Werner and Thomas have still not arrived, so I hook the first bucket onto the pulley system, climb up the shaft and hoist it to the surface. Then I repeat the whole exercise with the second bucket. There’s no more space in the backyard for all the earth we’ve dug out, so we’ve started dumping it in the corner of the cellar where the broken furniture used to be.
I’m on my way back down the tunnel with the empty buckets when I sense something is wrong.
From the direction of the tunnel face, I can hear the sound of panting. I start to run, which is not easy seeing as I can’t stand upright. I find Harry sitting on the tunnel floor, clutching his
throat with his hands. The pick-axe is lying abandoned on the ground. With every breath he takes, his chest rises and falls like a piston. His eyes are tight shut and sweat is pouring off his face.
I grab him by the arms and shout, “Harry! Harry! What’s the matter?”
He’s trembling and he doesn’t seem to hear me. I have to try and bring him to his senses.
“Harry!”
He starts to babble nonsensical words. I don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to make him hear me. In exasperation I slap him on the face. The babbling stops and he opens his eyes, staring at me in terror.
“Harry, for God’s sake, what’s the matter with you?”
“I can’t…I can’t….” His breath catches in his throat.
“Can’t what?” I find I’m having trouble breathing too. I think Harry’s behaviour is having an effect on me.
“I…have…to…get…out.”
And then I understand. He’s claustrophobic. That’s why he’s never helped with the digging.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s get you out of here. Can you move?”
He shakes his head.
“Well, there’s only one way out, and that’s the way we came in. You have to follow me.” I speak with as much command as I can muster and he nods his head slowly.
I start making my way back down the tunnel. Harry crawls on all fours behind me. It takes an age for him to reach the vertical shaft. I let him go ahead of me and he climbs up to the top in a fraction of the time it took him to come down. I follow him up to make sure he’s all right. He’s lying on his back on the cellar floor, gulping in lungfuls of air. I sit down next to him and wait for him to calm down.
After a few minutes he sits up. “Sorry about that,” he says, running his fingers through his hair.
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