The Girl Behind the Wall

by Mandy Robotham

  They stop first for coffee, drinking it quickly on the side of the street. With each mouthful, Jutta fights her rising nausea, thankful there’s something propping up the insides of her stomach before she has to face Mama and Aunt Gerda. That will be bad enough, stemming their joint distress, but then what?

  How and when will she reach Karin, with what’s rapidly becoming a massive fault line between them?

  2

  Captured

  13th August 1961, East Berlin

  Her eyes are heavy as she attempts to open them, faintly aware of a sickly disinfectant smell in her nostrils and the echoey clip-clopping of shoes in one ear, her remaining senses clouded.

  ‘Karin … Karin …?’ A flat voice and the sour taint of coffee floats into the black space above her, then into the air beyond: ‘Get Dr Simms, will you?’

  She prises open her sticky lids and is blinking against the light when a blur of white floats into view.

  ‘Karin?’ A different voice. Deep and masculine, though gentle. ‘Karin, I’m Dr Simms. Can you hear me?’

  She nods, feels her hair scratching against a pillow, and it hits her then where she isn’t – she’s lying down, but it’s not home. And although the voice is male, it’s not Hugo’s or Uncle Oskar’s. The realisation ambles slowly towards her brain: she’s somewhere without the slightly musty, comforting smell of her ancient eiderdown, somewhere Mama and Jutta and Aunt Gerda are not.

  ‘What happened?’ she manages. Her tongue is bone-dry, the inside of her mouth chalky and rank.

  ‘You collapsed,’ the man’s voice says – his name has floated away already. ‘You’re at the Charité hospital. You had an emergency operation on your appendix. We had to remove it.’

  She holds onto ‘hospital’ but the complicated words don’t penetrate, and it’s only when she moves her leg and a searing pain takes hold somewhere in her belly, ripping through the whole of her middle, that things start to fall into place. The sensation marries sharply with what he’s said: operation goes with pain, doesn’t it? Thoughts reach out to each other behind her eyes, grasping for links, sidling against each other for a split second of clarity before they slip away again.

  ‘Where’s Mama? Does Jutta know?’ she croaks from arid lips. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘We’ve called your family,’ he says. ‘They know you’re all right, and where you are.’ Then he’s walking away, voice floating in a little bubble inked at the corner of her vision – since childhood, she often thinks and dreams in black and white doodles. What he says is enough for now, enough to dampen the brief sense of alarm. Jutta knows where she is. She’ll find me, Karin is reassured, before the blanket of anaesthesia draws over her again, lids drooping into sleep.

  3

  Clipping the Wings

  13th August 1961, West Berlin

  The house is awake, of course it is, and Jutta senses the angst the moment she opens the door. Mama’s frisson of worry reaches her first, followed quickly from the kitchen by Gerda’s concerned expression.

  ‘What’s happening? Where have you been?’ they cry in unison, both still in their dressing gowns, hair pressed to their heads with pins.

  ‘With Hugo, out there.’ She extends an arm towards the window in taking off her jacket. Despite the coffee, she’s exhausted, her energy and patience flagging.

  ‘On the radio, it says there’s a barrier – they’re calling it a Wall.’ Mama’s whole body is trembling. ‘They say the borders are closed to the East. Is it true, Jutta?’

  What can she say but yes? There’s an ugly canker growing in our city which, for the time being at least, will prevent you seeing your sick daughter, and me my beloved sister?

  ‘It seems so,’ is all she can say, allowing herself to be pumped for answers to their questions while they ply her with dense bread and jam, food that unusually tastes of nothing today. Uncle Oskar is in the corner armchair, half dressed in his trousers and his grey, sleeveless vest, a cigarette hanging from his lips, twiddling the dial of the radio to switch between RIAS, the American Allied station, and Hugo’s own Radio Free Berlin.

  ‘Hey, listen up,’ he says suddenly, and the women stop mid-sentence, to hear Hugo’s familiar voice push out of the little red box, a taped recording from his and Jutta’s stop at Bernauer Strasse. Beyond Hugo’s slightly tremulous tone, she recognises the background babble of despair. Gerda’s face is torn in two: one half the pride at her boy on the radio broadcasting to all of Berlin, the other drawn at the news coming from him.

  Jutta looks at Oskar, trying to read the twitching behind his moustache – her uncle, more than once described as a ‘dark horse’ and oft berated by Gerda for his unreliable qualities, but good fun to the children. Now, he looks only troubled. Deeply so.

  The talk is largely of Karin and how they will reach her. They’ve already tried ringing the Charité but the lines are blocked, and Jutta listens as the two older women speculate among each other for comfort:

  ‘Surely, once the panic is over, West Berliners will be allowed to come home?’ Ruth says. ‘It’s their right, isn’t it? They aren’t East Germans, and Karin can’t be the only one trapped across the border? There must be some concessions.’

  They are somewhat appeased by the written note that will hopefully reach Karin, then bubble with fresh anxiety over her condition; as a midwife and former nurse, Gerda can give some reassurance, but she’ll be all too aware of what a perforated appendix could lead to – infection and sepsis. Jutta is relieved that her aunt doesn’t openly voice such concerns, though she does catch her aunt’s eye and her intense unease alongside. Since childhood, it’s plain Gerda has always regarded Jutta as the one with unusual insight, with a tendency to think long and deep. Though she treats both her nieces with adoration and clearly views them as daughters, there’s no denying Karin – as the quieter one – has always been a slight favourite. Jutta has never minded, and she’s aware that Karin is the more tactile of the twins, ready to throw her arms around her aunt, drawing her beautiful cards and sewing small gifts simply for the pleasure they bring. While Karin is tenacious in her creativity, she would be satisfied to stay all her life in Berlin, with a little studio to design and stitch her clothes in. Jutta, by contrast, wants to spread her wings beyond the city eventually, and it’s obvious that Gerda sees it. Worse, Jutta senses her mother knows it too and dreads her daughter’s flight. But not today – today, wings are being clipped.

  4

  Waking up to Reality

  13th August 1961, East Berlin

  Karin wakes more easily, no longer having to fight off a morphine-wielding mermaid intent on dragging her back to the depths. Propped up on pillows, she sips at water, balancing a swill of nausea with a desperate thirst. More than ever, she’s desperate to brush her teeth, though the prospect of sitting up and the pain involved means she will put up with the sour taste for now.

  The ward is wide and white; pale blue curtains are drawn around her, save for the space in front, so she can see doctors and nurses pass by – nurses clip at a pace, she notices, and doctors glide on silent footwear.

  A nurse marches smartly up to her and plumps the pillows, as if by rote, and Karin is disappointed neither Jutta or Mama are behind, being led to the bed. Instead, from under her apron, the nurse pulls out a folded note. ‘This was left at reception,’ she says, and smiles. It’s disconcerting to Karin in that it’s so obviously a forced expression, and she senses a trace of pity behind it. There’s something the nurse is not saying.

  With one glance, Karin sees it’s Jutta’s handwriting. But why isn’t her sister here? Her confusion has cleared enough to know it’s Sunday, when most of the household won’t be at work, Jutta certainly. So why isn’t she sweeping through the door with a smile and a bunch of grapes, chiding her sister for going into the East when she was clearly so ill? Being on the ward means she’s not in isolation, and Karin has watched a handful of other visitors go in and out. So why is there only a slip of paper in her han
d?

  She unfolds it eagerly and sees immediately it’s been hastily written – Karin’s keen eye for detail tells her that much. And it’s brief, wishing her well, and saying they’ll visit her as soon as they can. So what’s stopping them? She’s faintly annoyed, feeling a little sorry for herself, and wondering if Jutta and her mother are cross at her recklessness, going into the East while she felt unwell. In hindsight, even she can see it wasn’t a good decision. Still, the Charité isn’t that far over the border, and easy to travel to.

  In the midst of her disappointment, a doctor arrives at the bedside.

  ‘Dr Simms,’ he reminds her, and she recognises his voice as the one previously floating above her bed. He tells her the operation was a success, but any longer and it might have been more serious.

  ‘Is there a reason why my mother and sister can’t visit?’ she asks.

  His face washes with that look, the one the nurse tried to hide.

  ‘What is it?’ she says. Her abdomen pricks with pain, her head beginning to throb.

  ‘Things have … happened overnight,’ he tells her.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘The border is closed to the West.’ He says it quickly, as if delivering a death sentence, in a practised way he must have had to use many times.

  ‘For how long? All day?’ she quizzes. Like every Berliner, Karin is used to impromptu border closures on the whim of the guards or the GDR command – sometimes for no reason at all except to cause disruption. They’ve all learnt to be scathingly tolerant of the childish scraps between the Soviet and Allied commands. But the closures have almost always been short-lived, and only one or two checkpoints at a time.

  ‘In how many places?’ Karin asks.

  Dr Simms looks increasingly grave. ‘All of them.’

  Karin’s own face drains of what little colour it has. ‘Why?’

  ‘No one’s quite sure, but it looks as if it’s not temporary, not this time,’ he adds. ‘It’s surrounding half the city – wire and concrete.’ Then quickly, no doubt fearing for his patient sinking further into the pillows, he’s more upbeat: ‘But once you’re recovered, I don’t see why they wouldn’t let you back across the border. You’re a West Berliner by birth.’

  The pain and the panic bubbling inside Karin subsides a little. ‘But my family can’t come to visit?’

  ‘No, not today, though perhaps soon. I’m sorry. But we’ll look after you, I promise. It’ll be a few days, probably. Then you can go home.’

  She nods, trying to absorb the new scenario, picturing the potential panic on both sides. ‘And you?’ she asks with interest. ‘Aren’t you worried about access to West Berlin, its freedom?’

  Dr Simms startles a little, as if people rarely see beyond his white coat. His reply is automatic, honed by years on this side of the border. ‘I’m an East German,’ he says, as if it’s the only explanation needed. With a faint, apologetic smile, he turns and moves away.

  As she lies there, Karin can’t help but feel imprisoned – first by her body, and now by this barricade that’s described as being solid. Immovable. But the doctor is right; she is a West Berliner, and should still be able to show her identity card to pass through the checkpoint, hobble back to her bed and under her eiderdown to recover. They can’t simply hold her captive, can they?

  Exhausted, she lies back on her pillow and hears murmurings through the thin bedside curtains, imagines a man whispering to his sickly wife. She catches some of his words: ‘Brandt … furious … tear it down … violation …’ Karin can guess who he’s talking of – West Berlin’s colourful, larger-than-life mayor Willy Brandt. Judging by his forthright politics, it’s not a leap for anyone to picture Brandt apoplectic with rage at being caught out by the East, calling on the Allies to do something immediate and concrete. But will they? All Berliners know the military might of the young GDR is not a danger to the West, only what’s behind it: the insidious Soviet threat, their swathes of tanks, and now the nuclear shadow. Her fellow West Berliners are acutely aware too that their citadel is an expensive enclave propped up by the West, as a necessary symbol; ‘an irritant inside the belly of the Red Beast,’ Karin once heard it called. But will it become too costly now, and impossible to maintain? And where will that leave her?

  But that’s too big to think of now. All she can do is close her eyes and draw the simple lines of her sister in her mind, a picture of her closest soul in this world.

  ‘Jutta,’ she murmurs. ‘I know you’ll come and get me. Just don’t leave it too long. Please Ja-Ja.’

  5

  Loss

  13th August 1961, West Berlin

  Jutta wakes in her bed for the second time on August 13th, though fully clothed and caught in a shaft of sunlight streaming through her bedroom window. She’s hot and disorientated, and it takes her a moment to remember what day it is, what she’s already seen and heard with her own eyes. She turns from the sun and finds herself faced with Karin’s side of the room they’ve shared for years: empty. The shadow of loss sits heavy already, anchoring her to the bed for a while.

  When she gets up, the apartment is unusually silent, and Jutta bathes in the luxury for a few minutes, torn between her hunger for news and her reluctance to pad out the air by turning on the radio. Hugo is clearly still at work, Uncle Oskar ‘out and about’ as he so often is these days, and she guesses her mother and Gerda have ventured into the streets, unable to simply sit and wait for news of Karin. The neighbourhood gossip may well heighten their anxiety, but how much worse can it get? Whatever they learn, it won’t change the fact that Karin isn’t here, to wander out for pastries with her, as they do early every Sunday.

  Jutta’s brain is fuzzy and the pot of coffee she brews doesn’t have the desired effect. She wants to lie back down but the sofa – one of Oskar’s ‘acquisitions’ – is notoriously lumpy and she can’t face the bedroom again or stomach staring at the empty bed and that old, musty eiderdown her sister refuses to give up. Jutta cannot understand why this feels so much like a bereavement, when common sense tells her it should soon be sorted: Karin is only twenty-four, young and healthy. She will get better. Jutta will make her sister’s case to some officious person in a faceless GDR building, and Karin will return home to their portion of the divided city. And if everything happening out there today is to be permanent, they will adjust to a new normality, because that’s what Berliners have done for centuries. So why doesn’t it feel straightforward?

  Ruth and Gerda bustle through the door at just gone three, laden with gossip from street corners and the few local shops that open on Sundays, women milling about their own news points for tittle-tattle, and whose sensors are on high alert today.

  ‘One man from behind the bakery says he saw a whole stream of lorries driving into the city in the last week – he works on the East side,’ Ruth reports, busying herself with the kettle. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if he can’t cross over to work. How will he manage?’

  ‘Apparently, the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn are running, but they stop at Friedrichstrasse station and won’t go any further,’ Gerda tells Jutta. ‘Hugo was on the phone earlier. He’s circled almost the entire border and it’s the same everywhere. No one’s allowed across, except foreign press and the military, and a lucky few with passes.’

  ‘And did our police and the army really not know?’ Jutta questions. Much like the rest of the Western world, she sees what is happening but cannot believe it went undetected, that an entire city has been corralled so suddenly. So secretly, and with so much bulky, heavy hardware.

  ‘Seems not,’ Gerda says. ‘What police there are don’t seem to know what to do. And as for the Allied armies … pah!’ – she throws up her arms in disgust – ‘Nowhere to be seen. There are Soviet tanks hovering at the city limits and the Americans do nothing. No British or French either. Neither sight nor sound.’

  It’s then they both hear Ruth’s distress above the hiss of the kettle. Jutta knows, because she feels
it too, that when her mother is busy and animated, she can almost forget for a few moments that her daughter isn’t here to share everyone’s disbelief at the news. But when Ruth stops, even for a second, the tears start. Jutta watches as Gerda pilots her sister into the living room and lowers her onto the armchair, couching her sibling’s distress with her big, muscular arms, those that have skilfully caught a thousand and one babies over the years. She looks up at her niece and, though she is silent, Jutta hears Gerda’s stout voice loud and clear: Your mother shouldn’t have to go through this. Not again.

  It’s true that Ruth has lost more than most. And in the post-war rubble-scape of Berlin that Jutta remembers all too well, it amounts to a lot. Living under the thumb of Hitler’s increasingly draconian Germany was tempered for a young Ruth only by meeting the dark and handsome Rolf Voigt at a dance in early 1935. It was an instant attraction, with true love hot on its heels. After a whirlwind romance: they were married later that year, and by early 1936 Ruth was happily pregnant. With Rolf a skilled carpenter, he had enough work to provide for his family, and Gerda – then a nurse and midwife – was able to support her sister through a heavy, tiring pregnancy, their bond as children even tighter in the face of a rapidly changing nation. In the event, Gerda needed to physically hold her sister through the labour itself.

  If Gerda had ever suspected there was not one but two heads fighting for space and sustenance, eight limbs instead of four, she never said. As per the story she’s told countless times since, she was not in the least surprised when Ruth pushed out one beautiful baby girl with a cap of dark hair on her living room floor, after an intense, rapid labour at thirty-seven weeks, the thick December snow on the streets preventing a dash to the hospital. The baby was a little smaller than average and Gerda’s radar as a midwife began to twitch then, since the baby’s neat proportions did not account for the sizeable girth of her sister over the previous six months, especially as Ruth had always been the slighter of the two sisters. And nothing, bar one conclusion, could explain away the continued rippling of her sister’s only half-flaccid belly. In all her years caring for mothers, Gerda had never seen a placenta fidget.