So that was it, then. He had gone to beg Claudia to come with us where they would be free to be together.
And she had refused him.
Postponement brings danger. -- German proverb
Those joining the military were supposed to report for service first thing on the morning of their appointed day. However, since some boys throughout East Germany had to travel into Berlin, they would be accepted at the intake station throughout the day. Fritz hoped the extra hours would buy him time for one final walk to the tunnel.
He seemed in better spirits today, or at least, he was covering well enough. During the night I had listened at his door for any sign that he was upset, but if he was, I didn't hear it. That was how we became in the east, never too happy and certainly never too sad. Compared to most others, I wasn't as good at reining in my feelings. Lately, I was a split of two strong emotions, each fighting the other to control my mood. Today might be the day of our escape. Or the day of our arrest. I wasn't sure exactly how to feel: intensely excited, or intensely afraid.
Mama came home shortly after Fritz and I finished breakfast and announced to the microphones that she was ill. Despite the weak tone of her voice, just one look at her assured me she was fine.
She turned up the radio and then whispered in my ear that she would have to stay inside, at least for the morning. Of course, this was only her excuse to delay going in to work. However, it did create one problem. If she was sick, she could not risk being seen on the streets.
"Did you talk to Oma Gertrude?" I hated to ask, but I wanted to know.
Mama whispered, "She only wondered why we waited so long. I will see her again, Gerta. Somehow."
Mama instructed Fritz and me to go to the tunnel to be sure things were okay, and then to do whatever was necessary to connect them. When that was finished, we were to come home and get her. We would have supper tonight in the west.
It was everything I could do not to run to the Welcome Building. Fritz reminded me more than once to walk slower and to wipe such an eager expression from my face.
"You're like a beacon right now," he said. "All someone has to do is look at you to know you're up to something."
"How do you do it?" I asked. "How can you look so casual on a day like this?"
"Because I know what's at stake if I don't. Now relax. Be calm."
I was calm as a blizzard, but tried hard not to show it. That became extra important as we approached the wall. Even from a distance we heard noise on the other side, barking dogs and the angry voices of the Grenzers. The last thing we needed was to get their attention.
"Why are they there?" I hissed. Had the tunnel already collapsed? Were they just waiting for us to show up, walking like fools into the lion's den?
Fritz hushed me and then we pressed against the wall to listen. To be heard above their dogs, the officers were shouting at one another, and every so often we caught their words.
"... water pipes ... leak ..."
"... West German incompetence ..."
"... investigate ..."
They said nothing about a suspected tunnel, or about anyone's arrest or death. From the little we could gather, they knew water pipes ran through this corridor and blamed the sinking soil on a leak somewhere underground. Perhaps any digging noises they'd heard was also credited to the leaking pipe. But we also caught the word "investigate." They were going to dig down, and when they did, they would discover far more than a broken pipe.
Fritz grabbed my arm to reassure me. "We're leaving this afternoon, Gerta. They probably won't go looking before then."
Maybe not. But it wasn't impossible either.
At least the tunnel hadn't collapsed. That was my first thought once we entered. It may have unnerved me the first time I went underground, but now this small dirt corridor was the only place I felt truly secure. The world outside was the dangerous place. That's where the Stasi and Grenzer officers hunted night and day, where gossips and tattlers could destroy lives, and where conversations in the privacy of a home were anything but private. But in this tunnel, nothing bad would happen, not unless the world figured out we were here.
As we got deeper into the tunnel, better news awaited us. Dominic was already over on his side, quietly digging. A small hole had opened up in the clay soil between us, nothing that any creature larger than a rabbit could squeeze through, but it was a start. If I went all the way down on my stomach, I could see his feet.
"Where's Papa?" I asked Dom in a voice no louder than was necessary.
"Still securing the braces. We worked all night."
"There are Grenzers overhead," Fritz said. "They found the sunken area and want to investigate."
"We know," Dom answered. "We can hear their dogs."
"So let's dig," I said, getting to my knees. "Let's dig and be out of here before they find us."
"We can't go much farther," Dom said. "Papa thinks this last connection is holding the tunnel up, like the bearing wall of a home."
"Then we can't open it?" It was impossible, that we should have come so far just to be stopped now. "Let's just try it and see what happens."
Dom was always more of a tease, and he was back in that role now. "Sheesh, Fritz, has she really gotten that pushy in the last four years? How have you managed?"
I sat back and folded my arms. Pushiness was a necessary side effect of being the youngest, and I felt like throwing a full-scale tantrum right then to remind them of it.
Fritz only chuckled and brushed his hand across the top of my head. "She's worse than you can imagine, Dom. But if it wasn't for her, we wouldn't be here." He was quiet, then said, "I missed you."
There was silence on the other end. Then Dom's voice came in little more than a whisper. "And I missed both of you. Mama too. Papa's cooking is terrible."
I knelt forward again. "So what can we do?"
"Papa said we have to be patient for another couple of days, until the dirt settles."
"No, the settling is the problem!" I protested. "Fritz is supposed to join the military today. If he doesn't --"
"We can't open this until we know it will hold." Fritz sounded certain, but just from looking at him, I knew he was every bit as worried as me. He didn't have two days left -- not even one.
Dom continued, "Papa wants you to brace your side of the tunnel. Do anything you can to secure the dirt overhead. Once we're sure both sides are strong, then we'll finish chipping away at the middle."
"I'll make mortar for the bricks," Fritz said. "Gerta, to make it, I need water from the pond."
I was already on my way with the bucket in hand.
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore.
There is always something to make you wonder ...
-- Albert Schweitzer, German theologian, physician, and philanthropist
This time when I ducked through the boarded-up windows, I needed to be more careful than ever before. If the ground was being studied on the other side of this wall, I couldn't do anything that would make the watchtower guards take notice of me here. If they hadn't done so already, it wouldn't be hard for them to connect my actions with their sinking ground.
So I stuck to my routine when I entered their sights. I loaded the bucket with dirt and then stuffed the sheet over it. My buckets were heavier than they used to be, and I was carrying them better. It was a small thing, but I was proud of it.
I glanced back once at the watchtower, as I always did more often than I should. I couldn't see anyone there this time, so maybe they were inside, or maybe they were part of the ground investigation. If so, I hoped that was a good thing.
When I turned forward again, I jumped with surprise and almost cried out. Anna was standing there, nearly in front of me. I wasn't sure where she had come from -- the only way she could have arrived so suddenly was if she had already been here hiding. And watching. Anna had surely seen me come from inside the building just now.
She looked as nervous as I felt, with a rigid posture an
d licking her lips as if we lived in the driest of deserts, but I couldn't understand why. I had everything to lose in this moment, while she only risked losing her clean dress if I decided to push her into the pond. Which I was seriously considering.
"Can we talk?" she asked.
"You can talk to me, but I'm not sure who I'm talking back to." My words were bitter and angry. "Am I talking to the Stasi right now? Or the Grenzers? The only thing for sure is I'm not talking to a friend. Maybe I never was."
"If you won't talk, then will you listen?" Anna asked. "Because I have things to say. If I don't tell them to you, I will have to tell somebody. Which would you prefer?"
Reluctantly, I nodded for her to follow me and then continued on to the pond. After all, I still had work to do.
Anna sat on a rock near the pond and clasped her hands together. "The Stasi visited us after Peter died," she said. "They searched our house and found things from the west -- innocent things that everyone has. Some black-market perfume for my mother, a television with its station tuned to the west, and some forbidden books -- nothing we'd purchased, just ones my family still had from the old days. I don't think my parents even remembered we had them, to be honest. The Stasi used those things to blame us for Peter's escape attempt, and said my parents would be arrested for encouraging subversive behavior, and I would be taken away."
I dumped the bucket into the pond. It didn't matter that she saw dirt wash into it along with the sheet. As I did, I said, "You told me that in his note, Peter took responsibility for his own actions. Didn't they care about that?" I already knew the answer, and felt naive for even asking. Of course they didn't care. The Stasi always hunted for the biggest game they could catch. The rest of us were simply their bait.
"We begged them for mercy," Anna said. "We promised if they let us go, we'd do anything they wanted."
"How could you make a promise like that?"
"What choice did we have? Gerta, tell me honestly, wouldn't you have done the same thing to save your family?"
Maybe. Probably. Of course I would have. But there was another part to her story. The part I wasn't sure I could stomach.
"The Stasi offered us a trade," she said. "For the right kind of information, they would erase any files on our family, give us a fresh start. We agreed -- we had no choice but to agree. So we started looking and listening and trying to find something suspicious. We told ourselves we were doing the right thing, because whoever was breaking the law deserved to be caught." Then Anna's eyes filled with tears. "I didn't know it would be you, Gerta. Why did it have to be you?"
I tried a bluff. "Whatever you think --"
"I know about the tunnel. I've been there. You saw the dried mud still on my boots when you were in my room."
Something had become lodged in my throat by then and speaking took effort. "Your parents?"
"They only know about the gardening. They think you're terrible at it."
"But you've told the Stasi?"
"Not yet. My parents haven't learned anything useful on their own and so we keep delaying, but the Stasi are getting impatient. They want names; they want arrests. I've already lost my brother. If I don't say something soon, I'll lose my parents too."
"So you'll sacrifice my family to save yours?" My tone was icy, even though it shouldn't have been. I was no saint and couldn't pretend my choices would be any nobler if I were in her situation. And she was right: Her family was innocent of any crimes against the state. Mine was not.
But Anna shook her head. "Gerta, to save my parents, I am going to tell the Stasi ... tomorrow. I need you to be gone tonight."
My heart pounded with the impossibility of that. "The tunnel isn't finished yet!"
But Anna replied, "I gave you as much time as I could. Don't you see that all this time I've been trying to protect you? I could've run to them a month ago with my suspicions, but I didn't. I wanted you to give up this crazy plan or turn yourself in and beg for mercy. What do you suppose the Stasi will say when they realize how long I waited to tell them? I'm already going to be in trouble."
I didn't want Anna in any trouble, and the thought of her facing consequences for my crime made me cringe.
"I never thought about that," I said. "Anna, if you're in danger ..."
"Just go, but do it today. Be free, Gerta, the way you want to be free."
"Come with us," I said. "Be free with us."
"My family would never leave," she said. "They wouldn't dare ... not after the way Peter died."
"Tell them it's what Peter would've wanted." I took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "In his honor, you should live the life he wanted to have."
But Anna pulled her hand free. "Even behind a wall, this is our home. And the wall can't last forever. It will come down one day and then I want you to be the first to greet me."
"I'll be there," I promised her. "And every day until then, I will miss you." Hot tears filled my eyes. "You are my friend, Anna."
"I always was," she said. "And always will be."
I wanted to hug her good-bye, but she refused it. At first I thought that was because of how dirty I was, but then she cast an eye toward the watchtowers and said, "We don't say good-bye when they're watching. We only say 'see you soon.' "
So I waved at her as she walked away, but instead of a farewell, I said, "Ask yourself why Peter left. Please, Anna, promise me that you will find that answer."
She didn't respond or turn around. As she faded into the alley, I wasn't even sure that she had heard me at all.
Back in the tunnel, I told Fritz and Dominic about my encounter with Anna. Dominic had plenty to say about her decision to talk to the Stasi tomorrow, but he didn't understand the intimidation of the secret police, not like Fritz, who merely nodded and said we would find a way out in time.
After Fritz mortared the brick we had already brought down, there wasn't much more we could do from our end. It would be several hours before the mortar was dry enough to lift overhead. I offered to dig, just a little, but Dominic said Papa had insisted we not weaken the wall.
Neither of us wanted to go home either. Mama must've been pacing the floor to wonder how things were going here, but I hoped she'd know bad news would carry to her. If there was no news, it meant things were still okay.
Dominic spent some of our wait telling us about his life in the west. "Things between our two countries are much more tense than you probably hear about," he said. "They call it a Cold War between East and West. Nobody is firing shots, but each side wants to make the other believe they're ready for World War Three if necessary."
"We get some news reports," Fritz said. "We know about the Cold War."
Dominic chuckled. "Yeah, but until you see it from this side of the wall, you can't appreciate how much of the battle is about show. Berlin is like this microscope for the rest of the world, because anyone can look at the two halves of the city and so easily compare our lives. Papa says both sides are like two insecure men on a beach, flexing their muscles to prove who's strongest."
I smiled and asked, "Who is the strongest, then?"
Dominic paused. "It's hard to say at this point. School is harder in the east, and the Communist newspapers always show lots of happy crowds. If you only read their papers, your lives look really good. But I stand on the platforms to see into the east and then turn back to the west and think, where do I want to live? There's nothing, nothing that would take me back there again. We have more things here, and fancier buildings and music that will knock your socks off. But the difference isn't about any of that. It's just --"
"The wall," I whispered. "If our lives are so good, we wouldn't need the wall."
"Yeah."
Fritz tapped my shoulder. "Go get Mama. We're leaving tonight."
I sat up. "Really? We'll be able to open this tunnel?"
"We have to open it. Even if we have to run for our lives as the tunnel collapses behind us, we're going to open it tonight." Fritz turned to where Dominic would be. "Go te
ll Father what we're doing. It must be tonight."
We heard Dominic scramble off, and then I said, "Mama can't leave yet. If she's spotted by someone who knows she called in sick --"
"Then stay with her until this evening. She should be all right to leave then. But be careful. There'll be police hunting for me and if I'm seen on the streets I'll be arrested. So you and Mama will have to get yourselves here. Can you do that?"
I swallowed hard. "Yes."
Fritz handed me the shovel. "Go stick this in the dirt outside. If Muller is watching, we need to give him the signal to come."
I pushed it back to him. "We don't owe Muller anything. Besides, we still need the shovel in here."
He gave the shovel to me again. "We made him a promise, Gerta. And as far as we can tell, he's kept his end of our bargain. Besides, I have the hand shovel."
I nodded and took it out with me. I stuck it square in the center of our garden patch, where for the first time I noticed sprouts from young squash plants. Maybe they would grow and provide food for some families here. I hoped so.
Even at those times when you want to say good-bye, it's still sad when the moment comes. I thought about that as I walked home, how odd it was to realize I might never see this side of the wall again. Wherever I looked before, I had only seen the bland, Communist gray, but this time I noticed spurts of color on our trees and in decorations that occasionally hung from windows. The approved Communist art on the sides of buildings inevitably depicted strength and power. I didn't much care for it, but I realized that it had encouraged me to be a stronger person, a lesson that ironically had carried me through the hardest moments of digging out the tunnel. I was proud of the person I had become over the last month, and all that I had withstood. And no matter where I went in the future, a part of me would always belong to the east.
Mama clutched at me when I came home, but said nothing. I had already planned out the words I would say to her, something to make our situation clear without betraying us. "Are you feeling better?" I asked. "Because Fritz is definitely joining the military tonight and he wants us there to see him off."