Berlin Letters, page 30
I shake my head and try to convince myself to say the words I do not want to say, because I don’t want to let her go. I am selfish and she is life to me. She pushes me against a building and we stand side by side, momentarily safe from the crowd’s crush.
“Don’t look so glum. Come on. It’s open.” A man’s heavy hand slams upon my shoulder. I feel my whole body crumple with the weight of it.
“Open?” I ask, but he is gone.
I watch the crowd, trying to make sense of what I am seeing. No one is rushing, calling out in fear, or hurrying to safety. They are moving quickly, yes, but not in frantic haste. It’s almost as if something happy is driving them west. Some are crying, yes, but almost in disbelief or pleasure. Excited voices reach me. I see eyes wide with anticipation and disbelief. Has Bruce Springsteen come back to town? I have only seen such crowds at his concert, such jubilance too.
Luisa shifts against the Wall to face me. “They say the wall is open. That’s what they’re saying.”
“Don’t believe them, Luisa.” I shake my head. I don’t want her led astray. To think such things is wishful and dangerous. “Honecker would never allow it. It’s impossible. We must go. We’ll need papers to get out. We need a plan. Do you have a plan?”
“Honecker was ousted. Last month. Egon Krenz is general secretary now.”
I part my lips. They are cracked and dry. I can’t process this change. I can’t think what good it might bring. “We need a plan. We still need a plan.” I feel frantic. I don’t understand the world around me. I don’t know what to do.
“I have a phone number that will become a plan, I promise. We just need a secure telephone.” Luisa’s eyes narrow and her voice calms me. There is such confidence within her I almost believe we’ll make it.
We push against the crowd and I notice that even within these few minutes, the tenor around us has changed again. What was questioning and quiet is growing louder and more jubilant, more courageous. They are growing strong as Luisa and I grow weary. We have made it only a few blocks toward our destination. There are at least a couple of kilometers to go. She said we had an hour. I know that is long gone. Her life is now at risk.
“You’re going the wrong way.” A young woman smiles at my daughter. “Turn. Come on.”
“Why?” I reach out to her. I am angry she would lie to my daughter and harm her this way.
“They’re opening the wall. It’s over.” I glare at her and she smiles again, like I’m a small child and not a grown man. “It’s true. They announced it on television at a press conference tonight. The border is fully open.”
I look to Luisa. I don’t know if it’s true, but I need to get her to a checkpoint regardless. I don’t care about me, but if there is conflict at the border, I believe they will let her through. The Party won’t want the press that would come with publicly harming an American in our internal turmoil. And Walther wrote me that Luisa is now, and has been since her eighteenth birthday, a naturalized United States citizen. I am certain her government won’t stand by and watch one of their own, if so close and at a checkpoint, be seized.
They won’t. They mustn’t. While the Americans did nothing to help us in 1961 when Ulbricht, with Brezhnev’s backing, built the wall, it’s different now. Their President Reagan is more vocal and more active. His work alongside the Catholic Pope John Paul II has been reported over the airwaves for years. And Gorbachev too. He wants increased freedoms. He has been promoting reform. I look to the west. Perhaps it is our only option now—her only option.
We stare at each other and I marvel at how well I know her in so short a time. I concede. She agrees. We let the swell push us along. As we retrace our steps, I convince myself that this is right and trust she will be safe.
The crowd grows to a massive size as we near Bornholmer Strasse, the city’s northernmost checkpoint. It fills the entire space, across the sidewalks and the street. A thin line of Trabbis try to move toward the checkpoint, but they can’t inch forward at more than a walking pace. The crowds push tight around them. But the drivers do not rush, they do not honk, they do not rail against the rude inconvenience. Their windows are rolled down. They smile and chat with the crowd as everyone moves forward in unison.
I hear one driver yell about Politburo member Günter Schabowski’s statement. “He did not look like he knew what he was saying.”
A man walking alongside her car laughs. “But he said it.”
“It’s all around the world. They can’t take that back,” another calls out.
The calls and camaraderie bounce around us like titling ideas in the newsroom. Everyone is on the same team and saying the same thing over and over, as if needing to convince each other it is true.
I can’t speak. And I don’t know I’m crying until Luisa looks over and I feel the wetness on my cheeks and chin and, looking down, see the splashes darkening the grey of my jumpsuit.
God help me, I’m beginning to believe.
Chapter 30
Luisa Voekler
Thursday, November 9, 1989, 11:00 p.m.
In the distance the guard tower ahead of us stands empty.
The crowd tucks tighter and the momentum changes again. It feels tinged with dark, and the first tendrils of fear creep in. My feet lift off the ground in the crush. I reach for my father, but my hand swipes at another man’s shirt. Bodies wedge me in. I can’t see. I can barely breathe.
It’s almost a living thing, this sense of anger and frustration washing over the jubilance and disbelief of moments before, and I struggle to create space in the press.
“Open the gate. Open the gate.”
I hear shouts from ahead, and as they ripple back through the crowd, they get picked up by those around me. The chants go on and I am suspended in space and time. There is nothing more than the next breath. I wiggle to slide my arms up my body and cross them in front of my chest as an elbow drives hard into my sternum. Stars burst across my vision. I feel the need to protect my heart and lungs.
I catch a glimpse of my father, only two people away. I call for him and push myself in his direction. My foot falls on the top of someone else’s, and I use the firm footing to launch. My father catches me with bound hands and pulls me close.
“We were fools. We never should have—”
He stops talking as a new sound emerges. Cheering rises somewhere ahead and, like the stadium wave that started a few years ago at football games, rolls back along the filled streets. Car drivers start to honk their horns and hands go up all around me.
The raised hands free room around me and my feet land on firm ground again. The crowd begins a steady thrust forward. I am one hundred feet from the guard tower. Sixty. Something firm and startling grips me from behind, and despite the crowd pushing me forward, I topple backward. The neck of my blouse and sweater cut off the air in my throat as they are yanked to such a degree I feel the blouse’s stitching break against my neck.
My hand still grips my father and he topples backward into the man behind him.
I turn in the crowd to see what’s happened and find my father’s face first. Shock and surprise dance across his face, then recognition and almost joy, before his eyes cloud in confusion. All this passes within an instant and I stand facing Splinter.
“You’re not going anywhere.” He lets go of the back of my sweater, which has twisted with me, and secures a better hold on my arm. I grasp his arms with both hands, trying to secure my freedom, but he’s strong. Stronger than I anticipated. I see my father out of the corner of my eye pushing people away as he tries to stay close.
Splinter, with a grip sure to leave a bruise on my arm, marches me feet away until I am pressed against a brick building.
My father is dragged with us, pulling at Splinter’s arm. “Let her go. You will let her go, Splinter. What are you thinking? What have you done?”
“Nein. We wait. We wait until I figure this out. Panzer was helping her help you escape. I had to stop that.” He’s shaking his head in a short, twitchy motion. I am not sure if he’s on something, coming off something, or just in a state of high anxiety. Perhaps all three.
“You helped us. You can’t be working for them. We’ve been together two years.” My father is clutching at him.
“They ruined my father. I had to get his job back. And now—it’s all gone wrong. You weren’t supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to come back to the apartment.”
“Why not?” I push into him. “Where was I supposed to be?”
Splinter looks as if he’s about to answer when my father presses between us. Splinter still grips my arm but now around him. I can no longer see Splinter’s face as I’m pressed against my father’s back, but I can hear his words. His voice is young and frightened. “I don’t have a choice. You don’t understand.”
“I do.” My father’s voice is calm and paternal. “I understand more than you think, and you’ve got sisters and a brother. I know that about you, Splinter. You’re a good son. I’m sorry they’ve done this to you, but hurting my daughter won’t help your family. If you want to take me, fine. I’ll come. I’d do that for your family. But let her go. She’s American, Splinter, and I sense your officer will not be pleased if you embarrass him.”
Splinter’s grip shifts, almost loosens, and I wrench myself free. He grabs for my father.
“No!” I step forward, about to take on this young man, half a foot taller and probably sixty pounds heavier, but my father stops me with a hand to my shoulder.
“Go, Luisa. I’ll be fine.”
I glance between them. I look to the crowd. It’s moving quickly past us now. The cheers only a hundred feet away are growing. Happy sounds. Disbelieving still, but happy.
“Splinter.” I turn back. There is no way I’m leaving. “It’s over. It’s all coming down. They can’t hold you, which means they can’t harm your family. Please.” I reach into my tights. “I’ve got money to help you get them out if you need it.”
I shove my last wad of bills toward him, at the hand gripping my father. I’m not sure if he even wants it, but his reaction is what I banked on. He’s distracted, confused, and lets go to accept what’s getting pressed into his hand.
In that instant before Splinter realizes what’s happened, I yank my father behind me—and straight into Peter Sauer.
“You?” My father pulls back as if punched, yet Peter has made no contact.
He slides a glance to Splinter. “I’ll take him from here. Go. Go find your friends.” The young man vacillates, but Peter repeats himself. “Go.”
Splinter takes off. But not in the direction I expect. He doesn’t follow the crowds toward the gate. He weaves and winds his way with remarkable agility against the crowds and heads east.
“How dare you!” My father pushes against Peter’s chest. It’s weak and Peter barely loses his bearings. A tiny step backward with one foot balances him.
My father continues yelling. “I trusted you. I don’t care that I went to jail, but you sent me there. All that time. You did that to me. You were my friend. And you took my daughter? What have you become? What are you?”
“I couldn’t get out of it, Haris. I’m sorry, but you had no one. They couldn’t get to you because you had no one. But I have Helene, Traeger, and Dirk. I could help them, and—” Peter’s eyes fill with tears as he glances at me for an instant. “I’m sorry.”
He faces my father again. They are the same height. The same build. They almost look as though they could be brothers. “I’m sorry for what they’ve done to you.”
“Are you taking me back? Is that what this is?”
Peter shakes his head. “It went wrong. Helene called Splinter to follow Luisa after she woke—”
“That’s it.” I step toward him. “You drugged me. That’s why I slept.”
“It couldn’t hurt you. We needed to keep you there until Haris was transferred. Then . . .”
“They’d come for me too.” The words fall from me as his betrayal, both of my father and of me, plays out like a spy show in my mind.
Peter shrugs. “Helene let you go. She didn’t want to be the one, so she called the guard and Splinter. She thought you might come back to us, but just in case—” He stops again as the crowd jostles us. “Go. It’s over.”
I shift to move away, but my father stands firm. “How can I trust this? What about Dirk and Traeger now?”
Peter smiles and it’s different. I’m not sure how I know that; I just sense it is. There’s something unburdened and free within it. “Didn’t you hear? It’s over. They are in the crowd with their wives. They are free.” He gestures to the crowd again. “Tomorrow, who knows? But you should go too. Now.”
I don’t wait for another word to be spoken. I seize my father’s arm and shove him forward. I want to get him away before Peter changes his mind or fear seizes Splinter and he returns, or who knows what else might happen.
As I push my father ahead of me, the crowd catches us up into its surge. Within seconds we’re twenty, thirty, forty feet away from Peter. A few more minutes and we’re past the first wall and into the Death Zone. I can barely see over the heads all around me, but I can tell there are no buildings here. There is no light. The crowd feels quieter in this space between the inner and outer walls.
Twenty feet. Ten. And I’m standing beside the guardhouse. That’s when I notice the gate, very similar to the red-and-white train guards at home, is raised. There is no barrier whatsoever between the East and West, merely a change in the color of the street’s pavement.
People around me are jubilant. I can feel their joy and their wonder. They are quieter here than they were farther away. It’s almost as if they, too, wanted to believe it is true and now have to slow down and absorb that it actually is.
As I clutch my father’s bound hands in both of my own, we step across the pavement’s transition. Cheers erupt around us as West Berlin welcomes us. I hear it, but as if it’s in the distance, far away rather than mere feet. The world tilts, almost like a kaleidoscope, one click from clear.
I turn back and nudge my father to do the same. Behind us, people are standing atop the Wall. They are swaying, calling out, waving flags, crying, and laughing. As we watch, more join them. Friends pull friends—everyone’s a friend—up the Wall’s slick surface and onto the large pipe fitted across the top.
My eyes travel from the Wall to the guards, now lined up next to the barrier. People rush at them, and rather than push them away, they submit to kisses and hugs. They look as bewildered as my father looks and as I feel.
He pulls his eyes from all that’s happening in the East and the crowds lining the road on both sides of us in the West and faces me.
Without a word he lifts his bound hands high above his head. Understanding, I step close to him and wrap my arms around his middle. His bound hands drop in an arc behind me, creating a circle to hold me close.
He hugs me tight and cries. I do the same, soaking the front of his grey jumpsuit with twenty-six years’ worth of tears.
We are free.
Chapter 31
West Berlin
Friday, November 10, 1989
We stand hugging until the crowd around us presses so close, I fear we’ll topple over. My father stumbles and I duck out of his embrace to hold him steady and lead him out of the center of the street. West Berliners jostle ten deep on the sidewalks as if cheering along the most wonderful parade. And I suppose they are.
The restaurants all around us have reopened. The bars never closed, but now—although it’s a cold night—their doors are wide open, spilling a cacophony of music into the streets, mixing with the calls, cheers, and jubilation. Bottles of champagne pop open all around us. The noise startles me at first, then once I confirm to my own mind it’s not a gunshot, it blends into the happy mayhem. Bottles of who knows what else keep getting pressed into my hands as well. I pass them along without sipping. There are plenty of takers all around me to drain the endless bottles dry.
“What do we do now? Where do we go?” My father looks thin, lost, and bewildered. How long has it been since he last slept or ate? Is anything more serious wrong with him? It strikes me how little I know about him or his current health.
“Are you okay? Do you feel faint? Can you breathe?” I don’t know what questions to ask, so I keep firing new ones. His hand shakes, and I wonder if it’s the cold, low blood sugar, or something worse.
He grips my forearm as he tries to take a deep breath. It wheezes and rattles and sends him into a coughing fit that doubles him over.
I look around. While there are people all around, there is no true help nearby. I make a decision—we cannot stay and watch; we cannot celebrate. While this is a historical moment never to be repeated, the mission isn’t finished until my father is safe. Healthy and safe. That’s my job and it’s time to move on.
I wrap an arm around him and start us walking farther west. “I have a hotel room nearby. We’re going to head there and get you some food, then sleep. While you rest, I’ll find a doctor. Then we’ll figure out our next steps.”
He closes his eyes in both exhaustion and acquiescence and lets me direct him.
As we slowly weave through the crowds—there is no reason to rush anymore and my father clearly needs the slower pace—I stop passersby and ask directions. Everyone is eager to engage, and no one drops their attention to his wrists. Everyone is enamored with the world around us. It’s friendly, cheerful, and merry; it’s neon lights, liquor, and singing. Soon, with only a couple wrong turns slowing us down, I recognize a street corner, a building, a park, and finally my hotel.
I shift us sideways through the throng and feel my father stop next to me. He turns and pulls at my hands. His face is paler and tenser than when we stood hugging only a short time ago. I open my mouth to begin my litany of worried questions when he lifts both hands between us and rests them against me, right below my throat. His fingers reach up to my cheeks as if he’s studying my face both by sight and by touch.
