Berlin Letters, page 6
“They must be terribly weak to be so easily threatened.”
“Enough.” I slam my hand on the table. The sting feels good, but it startles me as well as her. “Enough.” The word falls again, soft and sad between us. “Where is Luisa?”
“Gone.”
Tracing a crack in our kitchen table with my finger, I cling to my fantasy a moment longer. “Get her back. Call up Joyce or Rebecca or whoever’s apartment she’s playing at and get her back. We should eat dinner as a family tonight.”
“She’s over your anti-Fascist barricade, Haris. So if you are wrong and it doesn’t come down soon, she’ll be gone for a very long time.”
With that, Monica pushes up from the table, walks into our bedroom, and shuts the door. I stare at the door, one thought filling my mind. I can get her back.
I live with that illusion for two weeks. I write letters to my in-laws, Walther and Gertrude, but get no replies. I set pen and paper before Monica and demand she write to them. She refuses. Writing is our only option, and such a weak one at that. Telephone lines have been cut.
I then throw myself into my next plan. The barrier can be good for our people. Once we get the planned economy settled and we mold people’s expectations and work ethic, we will prove to the world that our way is better. So every day I pour my heart and soul into sharing that plan, promoting it, and outlining its benefits across the front page of the paper. I work without food, without sleep, to share the good news of our wall, our protection, and the clean purity it provides for our city. Because if we all believe, really believe and get on board, then we won’t need the barrier at all—and Luisa can come home.
But every day it gets harder to believe the barricade is temporary. On August 27, hundreds of trucks and bulldozers haul in prefabricated concrete sections. The looped wire becomes a wall. They also start clearing a “Buffer Zone” so citizens can’t approach the final barricade. Within a couple weeks some areas along the wall are stripped within three meters. Trees, houses, parks, even cemeteries get bulldozed over and plowed under. In other areas it is more than three meters. Hundreds of meters. Rumor is that the Brandenburg Gate and our church, the Church of Reconciliation, are going to be “trapped” within this new Buffer Zone.
“You can’t do this!” By mid-September I reach the end of me. I rage at Monica. “Get her back! She’s my daughter too.”
My wife says nothing. In that single day, my open and affectionate wife, my best friend, confidante, and lover, became a stranger. Her silence and obstinacy surprise me, anger me, flummox me. All I can surmise is that on August 13, she left me as decisively as Luisa did. And it’s only now I recognize that she didn’t leave me so much as she left herself. Monica is absolutely paralyzed with fear.
“I can’t do this, Monica, without you. I need your help.” Tears well in my eyes. I refuse to let them fall.
“There is nothing you can do. Nothing I can do. They’re in charge. They’ve always been in charge.” She shakes her head at me like I am a child and slow to understand. “You can’t see that. Everything you have the State gave you. You think it is your ingenuity, your smarts, but they created you, will use you, and nothing is your own. Your demotion, merely because your in-laws moved a few blocks away, should have proven that to you.”
“Is this what you think of me? What you’ve always thought?”
“No. But only because I didn’t mind the future they handed us after I met you. The past didn’t hurt so much then. You were brighter than their darkness, but I was a fool. I forgot who they are.”
I sit stunned with no reply. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard such words about my future, but it is the first time in many years Monica has even obliquely referenced her past.
As for my future, I heard as much a few days after the wall went up. I was at a friend’s apartment for beers after work. He took a long pull on his bottle, then leveled his eyes to mine. Felix looked hawkish. He always did when he got serious.
“Don’t be so arrogant you can’t see it. You’re smart and you liked the future they handed you, but they handed it to you, Haris, just like they’ve handed one to me and they will to our children. What if Luisa doesn’t end up as bright as you and gets sent to Producktionsarbeit after tenth grade and placed on a factory line in Leipzig?”
“That won’t happen,” I scoffed. “She’s smart. She’ll make it to University.”
“I’m not willing to take that risk.” Felix said nothing more. We simply drank our beers in silence until his wife said their dinner was on the table.
The next day, August 16, I heard that Felix and his entire family had stepped out their front door and into West Berlin.
They could do that. The Matherns lived on Bernauer Strasse. It’s a unique section of the wall because the buildings on that street sit directly on the border line between the West and the East. If you lived in one of those buildings and stood inside your doorway, you were in East Berlin. If you took one tiny step onto the sidewalk, you were in West Berlin.
The wall doesn’t go around those buildings. It can’t. It goes right up next to them and between them, but not in front of them. So on that first day, and for a couple after, families simply opened their front doors and walked away.
On August 17 the Volkspolizei started nailing those doors shut.
It must have been around then I asked Monica the question that had plagued me for days. “Why didn’t you go? Eight hundred people got across the barrier that first day. Guards have even been arrested for helping some.”
“I heard his voice. He spoke . . .” Monica put a trembling hand to her mouth.
I stepped forward to comfort her, but she drew back. She didn’t need to say anything more. I knew. Whoever it was, he spoke Russian.
Something cracked inside me. And although I was angry, I also loved her very much and I hated seeing her in pain. It led me to tell her something on the 19th I wasn’t supposed to share . . .
We heard stories of successful escapes at the newspaper, but we were never to report on them. We weren’t to talk about them at all. Only the stories of captures were to be reported or relayed. But I knew of one.
“The Knittles jumped from a second-story window on Bernauer Strasse today.”
Monica gasped and tears sprang to her eyes. “Rebecca is nine months pregnant.”
I held out a hand. “It’s all right. I heard they sent a note to the fire department and there were nets to catch them.”
I stood at our kitchen counter watching her wring her hands in a dish towel. “And the Radishewskis were moved from No. 2 to No. 10 today as well. The VoPo are moving people and bricking up the windows. They’ll move the Radishewskis again soon. But . . .” I stared at her. “Their windows aren’t bricked yet. Get a letter to your parents and go.”
“And you?” The flash of hope in her voice tore through me.
“I can’t, Monica. I want to for Luisa, but then I would be giving up on all I’ve worked for and believe we can accomplish here. This, all this, is for her.” I pressed my fist into my chest as if that force, that pain, could quell my doubts. “But you can’t live here anymore. You must know that.”
We didn’t talk about it again, but each night that week, as I unlocked our apartment door after work, I expected to be met with empty darkness. I craved it. Yet Monica was there every night, and I knew fear was still stopping her.
Finally, as she sat across from me at the kitchen table and met my eyes three nights ago, I killed any hope left within her.
“You have to stop thinking about crossing the wall now.”
“I’ve tried. I keep getting closer. It’s just there are so many guards. I—”
I cut her off. “I’m sorry, but don’t—” I reached out for her but dropped my hand before I touched her. She had not welcomed my touch in two weeks.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t go anywhere near the wall anymore. Don’t go that direction at all.” I took a breath, then delivered the final blow. “A shoot-to-kill policy went into effect today.”
“And this is temporary? For our benefit?” Her skin turned grey and her spatula clattered to the floor.
I couldn’t reply. Because I couldn’t bring myself to question the Party and the plan.
But now . . .
* * *
Secretary Walter Ulbricht was smart when he built the wall. Of course, he had everything meticulously planned. Within days it became clear that even before permission from Moscow was granted, he’d secretly stockpiled barbed wire and created the concrete slabs outside the city to avoid notice. He had also mapped the wall to sit two meters within the Soviet Sector. As not a millimeter sat on US, British, or French soil, he determined they would have little to say about it. And he was right.
US President Kennedy took four days to make a statement.
British Prime Minister Macmillan said nothing of note.
No one would go to war over Berlin.
Then today, in defiance of the treaty that divided Berlin in the first place, VoPo guards demanded US diplomats show their identification papers to cross into East Berlin. The US finally balked.
I reported on their bad behavior in the news because it’s the right of any sovereign nation to secure its borders. Foreign citizens, diplomatic envoys or not, should always have to show identification papers and deference to another nation. But I did not report that after questioning a soldier, I learned the diplomats refused to comply because the US views East Berlin not as a capital of a sovereign country but still as a Soviet-occupied territory. Officially the Americans have never recognized the DDR and have been operating since 1949 accordingly under the treaty that guarantees free and unfettered movement. The paper’s publisher, Dietrich Koch, made it clear we were not to report this insult to our autonomy and national identity in the paper.
The Americans took their umbrage further. When the VoPo guards refused to stand down and demanded, once more, to be shown diplomatic papers, the Americans rolled ten M-48 Patton tanks with guns uncovered to the border crossing. With tanks aimed at both East German and Soviet soldiers, the Americans again asserted their right to unrestricted access into East Berlin.
As Neues Deutschland’s new top reporter is laid out with a cold, Koch calls on me. Racing to the border crossing the Americans call “Checkpoint Charlie,” I can hear the tanks rumble from a block away. Black smoke billows and fear bombards me, a dark, pervasive shadow I have not felt since childhood when Allied bombs rained down on Berlin. I dread what might come next.
Ten Soviet T-55 tanks come next.
The border crossing looks surreal and feels harrowing. Reporters and soldiers, on both sides of the wall, stand for sixteen hours as the twenty tanks face off not one hundred meters apart all through the day and night. Every one of us fears the instant our city will be destroyed once again. Only this time, with nuclear weapons available to both the Americans and the Soviets, we will not survive. Berlin—always in the midst of one war or another—will be Ground Zero for nuclear destruction.
I pace all night, unable to stand still or sit. I am shredded and shaking as I hear a US tank engine roar to a higher pitch. It pulls back this morning. In reply, one Soviet tank does the same. Then slowly, one by one, the other eighteen tanks follow suit.
“Kennedy backed down.” Dietrich Koch stands grinning when I finally stumble back to the newsroom this evening. “Write it up for tomorrow’s paper. The October 28 headline will be a victory call for us.”
“What did we concede?”
Koch chuffs. “Soviet General Secretary Khrushchev simply agreed to unhindered access for US diplomats. They don’t have to show their papers like before. It’s hardly anything. But it proved Kennedy isn’t interested in a war here. He even stated Berlin wasn’t ‘vital’ to US interests. Don’t write that up, though. Just publish our win. Our win, Voekler, not any concessions.”
“Of course.”
Koch returns to his office and opens a bottle of vodka. Several other men are already there. I can tell a couple are members of the Soviet State Security, the KGB. They have a look about them. Watchful. Secretive. In command. They are toasting and congratulating themselves on this supposed victory. The Party, the Stasi, the KGB, Moscow, the decision-makers—they are the victors. Not us. Not Berlin. In this one moment I realize all Monica says about me is true. All Felix said was true too. I live a life they control. I have only the future they grant to me. Nothing is mine. And nothing ever will or can be.
I accepted that I wouldn’t get access to the best stories for a time after my in-laws defected because I thought I could win Koch over or back, or whichever direction it was that meant I moved forward. But I can’t. I can’t because I am a pawn. We are all pawns. Pawns of those men in Koch’s office toasting their victory.
But they weren’t there. They didn’t stand all day and night with legs cramped and stomach clenched, watching soldiers on either side of that barricade stare each other down with fingers hovering over their triggers and hatred burning in their eyes. One move. That’s all it would take. One finger and one trigger. One reflexive twitch and a gun would fire. And this time, what began with gunfire would have ended with nuclear bombs. Berlin, which has survived for centuries, would be wiped from the global maps forever.
And what’s worse—the Americans are right. I see that too. We truly remain a Soviet-occupied territory. Nothing gets done without instructions from Moscow. Yet even they won’t be bothered if we are destroyed. We came close today. What about tomorrow?
I write up exactly what is expected of me.
But I drift in a whole new and terrifying direction as I trudge home, exhausted yet oddly determined. And as I pour myself another shot of vodka, I decide that tomorrow will be in my hands and I will find a way over the wall.
For my wife and for myself.
Chapter 5
Luisa Voekler
Washington, DC
Friday, November 3, 1989
I pull the envelopes out by the handfuls. A cursory count reveals close to a hundred splayed across my floor, each with the sideways infinity symbol penned where the return address should be printed.
Could they be related to Carrie’s Berlin Letters? She said her batch ended July 1961 and it was 1966 when I saw Opa’s envelope, one of these envelopes. Could the writer be the same person? If so, it can’t be Opa. He was here. Was he the recipient? Was he always the recipient, even in Germany? Was he a courier?
My mind reels and none of these scenarios please me or fit within what I know of Opa, Oma, my life, or who I believed our family to be. And if these are part of Carrie’s Berlin Letters, then they are related to a CIA matter, and as a CIA officer, I have to turn them over to my boss, Andrew Cademan. That concerns me too.
My eyes land upon a Dr. Scholl’s shoebox through my open closet door, and after I grab it, I drop the envelopes inside and toss the box onto my bed. It feels like I’ve trapped something dangerous. My heart is pounding into my throat, and I’m seconds away from hyperventilating.
I have definitely trapped something dangerous.
“Stop.” I say the word aloud, using it as a verbal cue to shut down the cacophony in my head and deal with what’s in front of me. I open my window and lean out into the cool night air. The action reminds me I need to haul the winter storm windows up from the basement. Another Saturday chore that must be done. The mundanity of the thought catches my breath. Life was much simpler five minutes ago.
Perched against the windowsill, I stare back at the box sitting on my bed. Call your boss and explain the possible connection. It’s the right and safe approach. Or I could hide the box under the floorboards once again and forget about it. Never open the hiding spot again.
It takes less than a second to admit the impossibility of that idea. And if anyone ever did find out and somehow the letters made it to the CIA, the matching symbols connecting Carrie’s work to these letters are enough to raise a lot of questions.
Bottom line: I need to do the right thing.
I vacillate and a quarrel erupts inside me just like in the movies as to what that “right thing” actually entails. The angel on my right shoulder admonishes me not to even look at the letters until I turn them in to Andrew on Monday morning. Take the high ground. Be innocent and aboveboard. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that a tiny devil is perched on my left shoulder encouraging me to open them and just find out what I’m dealing with. After all, that’s innocent too. If they aren’t related to Carrie’s work, no problem. And if they are related to Carrie’s work, I do have clearance and I am qualified to examine them. So technically, I could do both and still be right—I could look at them and turn them in to Andrew on Monday.
Right?
I step toward the bed and pull out the topmost letter. I can’t not look. After all, I searched all night to allay my threads of doubt, not to confirm them. One peek and my doubts could still be allayed. These could simply be innocent letters from a long-ago friend and putting an infinity symbol on correspondence was in vogue in the 1960s. It was the thing to do. Like hearts over an i or j when you’re a lovesick teenager. I almost laugh. The mental gyrations I’m conjuring to justify what I’m about to do are extraordinary. Integrity, I shake my head, teeters at the cutting edge of a very slippery slope.
But this is Opa. The man who loved me best. The man I loved most. The man who taught me to see what’s in front of me, without bringing my expectations, perceptions, and subjectivity to the matter. He’s the one who encouraged me to study applied mathematics at William & Mary. He was so proud when I landed my job with the “Labor Department” managing budgets.
So many times I wanted to tell him the truth, even that my skill with numbers extended to puzzles, codes, and ciphers, but I never did. I didn’t because I’d signed numerous confidentiality agreements, and he taught me that too—your word is your bond. You never lie. You never cheat. You never steal.
