"This is God's hand at work, helping us," Mama said, clutching my hand to leave. "Say a prayer of thanks as we walk."
I intended to obey her, but only after we were safe, and that wasn't yet. We were barely out of the alley when whistles blew from inside our building. Our absence had been discovered.
This time, I took the lead. Over the past few weeks, to avoid Frau Eberhart and any other curious eyes, I had found every possible back route to the Welcome Building. I knew where to go now. We heard Grenzer sirens on the main road, searching for us, but we didn't need the main roads to get there. At least, not until our last dash into the alley.
The problem was that curfew had already begun. Nobody should've been on the streets, so if the officers saw anyone at all, it would be us.
We went as carefully as spies, through dark back alleys, walkways too narrow to be used as roads, and even through unlocked doors of other people's apartment buildings. The final crossing into the alley was our most difficult, with a long run from one hiding place to another. I wanted to split up, so that if I didn't make it, perhaps my mother would have a chance, but she only grabbed my hand and pushed me into the street as she hurried along at my side. I saw a woman in the window of an apartment overhead reading a book. When we were in the center of the street she looked down right at us. I froze for a fraction of a moment, wondering what she might do, but she only pulled the shade for her window and then switched off the light. I thought of the proverb "to see no evil" and hoped it would follow with the woman also refusing to speak any evil. Before I knew it, we were inside the alley.
From there, we ran until my garden came into view just ahead. How beautiful it seemed to me then, how deadly. The irrigation ditch that bordered the garden patch would get in our way, slowing us, but I hoped it wouldn't have much water this late at night.
"You have to jump the ditch," I explained to Mama. "And we collected a stack of rocks to the right of it. So just follow me, exactly where I go."
Her hand pressed against my back. "Whatever happens, you keep running, Gerta. Keep running and don't look back for me." Then she pushed me forward.
There was nothing more to say. We ran.
By now, I knew the land so well I could've run it with my eyes closed, and on this dark night, I might as well have done just that. The ditch was narrowest to my left, and I took that way. I jumped it easily, but Mama missed the bank and splashed in with one foot that became lodged in the mud. No matter what she had said, nothing would make me leave her behind, so I came back and grabbed her hand to help her back onto hard ground. We continued running, and suddenly lights blazed on in the watchtower ahead of us.
Mama and I dropped to the earth like falling timbers. Even without being aimed our way, the lights still brightened the garden considerably, casting everything in long shadows. They swooped up and down the Death Strip in their usual path and then began to turn our way. I knew this routine. I'd seen it before. Along with other areas east of the wall, the lights would survey this garden patch next. We'd be spotted and our position called out to the Grenzers, still searching for us on the streets. We had less than a minute to get all the way to the building.
We ran, so fast that my lungs ached and my head pounded. Rocks had gathered in my shoes, but I barely felt them. We dove against the bricks while the watchtower light swept down onto our field. It stayed there for a long time, highlighting the shovel I had placed in the dirt earlier that day. That shovel was our monument to freedom, even if nobody else knew it.
We weren't there to see where the light went after that. For we had already climbed inside the Welcome Building and shut the boards tight behind us. Mama leaned against the wall to catch her breath, but I whispered, "No, Mama, please. We're not there yet." She nodded at me and followed.
Fritz was waiting for us down in the shelter, and looked so relieved that I thought he might almost deflate right in front of us.
"What took so long?" he asked.
Mama's response was simple. "We had some trouble."
He looked at us, with red faces and sweat along our foreheads. "Are you both all right?"
I only beamed back at him. "We are if that tunnel is open."
"It isn't yet," he said. "Papa wanted to give the bricks as long as possible to dry and so we haven't removed the final load of dirt yet. He figured once we did, even with our fortifications, it's only a matter of time before it collapses."
"Then let's get in and remove it," Mama said.
"Officer Muller?" I asked.
"He's already in the tunnel with his wife and baby. He said when his wife heard about the plan she insisted they go. They got here an hour ago."
We followed Fritz inside. A woman I assumed must be Frau Muller was seated on the ground with a young baby in her arms who, at least so far, was asleep. She smiled up at me and I thought she was a rather pretty woman. Officer Muller stood over them, in full uniform and armed. He greeted me with a solemn nod that seemed more respectful than in our first meeting. I nodded back, but said nothing. It bothered me that he had his gun, because we certainly weren't safe yet, and I remembered his promise if we were caught.
Still, when he saw that we had come, he walked over to Fritz and whispered, "We waited for them, as you asked."
"The tunnels must be connected immediately," Mama said. "It won't take the Grenzers long to figure out where Gerta and I have gone."
"Katharina?" my father's relieved voice called from the other side. "You've finally come?"
"We're here," she said. "Though I wouldn't have made it without Gerta's help."
"I expected nothing less from my daughter," Papa said. "Let's open the tunnel, but dig carefully. I don't like the cracks I'm seeing on this side."
"I bought you some time," Officer Muller said. "My last call in to the central command tonight was to tell them that I checked this area out and nobody was here. But it won't work for long. When they can't find you on the streets, the senior officers will bring out their dogs, who will follow your trail here."
"If only we had some rain," Mama said. "That would erase our trail and mask any noise of us clearing this barrier."
"Or it could make the ground so wet that we flood," Fritz reminded her.
"Enough talk!" I said. "Let's dig!"
Muller and Fritz went to work at our end, and from the other side I heard Papa and Dominic chiseling away at their dirt and rock. We decided to dig low, to maintain as much dirt over our heads as possible. We would have to crouch down to pass through this space, or even crawl, but if necessary I would've squeezed through the eye of a needle. All I wanted was to be on the other side of this wall.
The rabbit-sized hole widened. I could see Papa's boots from here, the same sturdy boots he had worn the night he left, only now with a hole in one side. With another chip, I saw the cuff of his pants and I begged them to go faster. It was torture to have my father revealed to me one centimeter at a time.
The dirt was beginning to pile up around Fritz and Muller, so I offered to go back to the shelter for the bucket and remove what I could. I planned to empty all the spare dirt into a large pile at the entrance to slow the Grenzers if they came.
But I was only halfway there before I heard noises above us, in the basement of the Welcome Building. It wasn't voices, or at least none I could detect from here. But there were footsteps, several of them.
I ran back into the tunnel. "Someone's here!" I hissed. "We must go now!"
The gap had opened enough that I could fit through and maybe Frau Muller, but none of the rest could. And there was a jagged rock jutting out from the center that would probably keep us from getting all the way through. They had been working to gently pry it free.
There was no time left to be gentle. It had to be now! I'd rather have had the tunnel collapse than be arrested or shot. Officer Muller withdrew his gun and ran back down the tunnel. I wasn't sure what to do. Did he plan on shooting whoever had come? Or shooting us?
Then he said, "I'll hold
off whoever's there as long as I can." He looked over to Fritz. "Get my wife and baby out first -- you owe me that."
If Muller intended to protect us, he needed help. With everyone else busy, I grabbed a couple of rocks from the tunnel floor. If someone got past Muller, I could throw hard enough to slow him down until the others escaped.
Muller shouted out a warning that he was armed and for whoever was approaching to stop. Then a voice called, "Where's Gerta? Is she here?" That was Anna!
I dropped the rocks and ran past Muller to the mouth of the tunnel. "Lower your gun," I hissed at him. "Don't shoot!"
Anna was waiting in the shelter with her mother while her father finished climbing down the ladder. Seeing my curiosity, she only shrugged and said, "You asked me to figure out why Peter wanted to leave. Well ... we did."
My mother appeared right behind me. "And we're glad to have your family here."
Anna's father nodded at us in return, but said, "Then let's go now. I'm afraid we were noticed being out after curfew and may have put some officers on our trail. They're not far behind us."
Flashlights were already showing in the garden patch. It wouldn't take the Grenzers long to follow us inside. They were coming.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., American civil rights activist, 1963
Once we were close enough to see him, Fritz motioned that the gap was open and to hurry. Women and children were to go through first, which was fine by me, but Anna didn't seem to be adjusting as well to the closed-in tunnel. I took her clammy hand and half dragged her to the very end, then whispered that everything would be all right, even if I wasn't convinced of that yet. Frau Muller was there too and Fritz told her to lie on her stomach and crawl through the low opening. She thrust her baby into my arms while she went through.
I hadn't expected that and took her child somewhat clumsily. The baby reacted to the awkward change of position and began fussing in my arms. I bounced him and tried to coo at him, but he must've sensed my own anxiety and started crying louder.
"Stop him," Fritz hissed.
But I didn't know how. I was certain that somehow, this baby could sense the panic inside me, and so everything I tried only made him more upset. Then without even asking, Anna took the baby from me and cradled him in her arms as comfortably as his own mother had. He instantly quieted down until Frau Muller said she was through, and then Anna crouched down to pass the baby through the opening into her hands.
Anna had saved the moment but, just as important, the baby had forced her to gather her own courage enough to go through the gap, an opening so small that it didn't look like it should be able to accommodate her body, much less any of the rest of us. Fritz told Mama to go next, and Anna's mother would be next after that.
I got in place for my turn and watched my mother easily slide through the gap. I heard her brief reunion with my father and could only imagine what it must have taken for her to push away from him as he begged her to keep running to the end.
Anna's mother went next, but she was too close to one edge and got stuck. She panicked and began squirming and kicking, trying to roll over to her back. In the process, she kicked out and her foot struck the wall of dirt. Instantly, a large chunk crashed down on her upper legs. She gave a cry, though I didn't think she was seriously hurt.
"Give me your hands," my father said. Just like that, Anna's mother was pulled through.
"I don't like this," Fritz said, feeling the wall above the collapsed chunk. "This whole thing is going to come down. Hurry, Gerta. It's your turn now."
I went down to my stomach and put my cheek against the cold ground. With my hands in front of me, I clawed at the dirt, wiggling forward like a worm or a snake. Dirt crumbled down onto my back, more of it than I liked. Fritz was right. This wall was going to come down, and maybe the rest of the tunnel with it.
Papa grabbed my hands when I was halfway through and yanked me forward just as he had done for Anna's mother.
Once on the other side, I was immediately caught in my father's tear-stained embrace. Even through the dirt and sweat, he smelled to me just as he had when I was young. Over the last four years, I had tried so many times to recreate in my mind that combination of strong cheese and stronger coffee, just to hold on to his memory, but now everything about him rushed back at me, as if we had never been separated at all. It was too dark to see much of his face, but I did see a tender smile and the whites of his eyes when he said, "Run, Gerta. Go."
But I wouldn't leave without Fritz. Not after everything he and I had been through together. Anna's father came through next and needed no urging to run past us toward his family.
Then a voice from far on the eastern end shouted, "Whoever is in this tunnel, you are ordered to stop!" I didn't need to see them. I already knew the Grenzers were here.
Shots fired into the tunnel, their echo so loud that even from this end it rang in my ears. Officer Muller came through after that and when his eyes met mine I wanted to hurt him. Why had he come through next? Where was Fritz? I nearly screamed with terror. I fell to my knees to slide back to the other side of the gap. If he was injured, I could still drag him through. And if he was worse than injured -- I couldn't even think about that. Papa grabbed my arms and pulled me back to my feet. I started to protest, but he wrapped his arms around me, put a hand over my mouth, and hushed me.
"They know Fritz is there," he whispered. "They don't have to know you're here too."
He tried to make me run again, but I wormed free and went back to my knees. Where was Fritz?
Then I saw his head poke through. He was alive, but wasn't wiggling through as quickly as he should have. Working together, Papa and Officer Muller pulled him through.
"I'm shot," he said through clenched teeth. "A bullet got my leg."
Papa helped him to his feet, then motioned for me to come over. "Get him out of this tunnel," Papa said. "Bear up his weight."
"I will." I wasn't sure how, but I would get him out.
Fritz wrapped one arm around me and used the other to brace himself through the tunnel. He couldn't use his injured leg at all, and whenever we moved too fast or it bumped against a rock, he grunted with pain and clutched my shoulder so tight that we both nearly collapsed. Still, we kept going forward. I had the strength to support him, but not the height, and he had to lean over too far. Papa would've done better. Where was he? What about Muller? What were they waiting for?
After several meters, more gunfire echoed in the tunnel. With a strange cracking sound, the bridge between our two tunnels collapsed. That's what Papa was doing, then. Shots still rang, but they wouldn't pass through the dirt. The Grenzers were trapped behind us. But a lot of tunnel remained ahead.
In the dim light, I could see where Papa had put in supports to hold up the dirt roof, but they weren't as strong as Fritz's bricks, and dirt rained down on us, some of it in large chunks that signaled a bigger collapse was coming. Suddenly, several meters ahead, shovels pounded in the ground. Their crunch and plunking sounds were all too familiar to me now. Maybe we'd left officers behind in the tunnel, but more of them were in the Death Strip directly above us. The layers of dirt to the surface weren't nearly thick enough to hold them out for long.
I wondered where the outer wall was, when we would pass beneath it. Wherever it was, I knew we hadn't crossed it yet. Not with the length of tunnel still remaining.
"Agh!" Fritz's leg bumped into some protruding rock and his hand pinched my shoulder so tight that I wanted to cry out too.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled.
"I'm slowing you down." Fritz leaned heavier on me and swayed as if he was dizzy. "Leave me here."
"That's the dumbest idea you've ever had," I told him. "Stay with me, Fritz. We're going to make it."
Then Papa and Officer Muller ran up behind us. Papa picked up Fritz in his arms, drawing strength I never imagined he had to run with a body nearly as large as h
is own. And Muller grabbed my hand to pull me along with him. I yanked it free and dug my feet into the ground. Maybe he was on our side, but just barely. My family had taken all the risks to get us this far, while he had stayed in the safe zone just in case things turned bad. I didn't want his help now and certainly didn't need it.
But Muller didn't seem to care. He grabbed my arm again and this time his grip had no forgiveness. I would run at his side or get dragged behind him.
Papa and Fritz weren't far ahead of us, but they rounded a short bend out of our sight and I held my breath. Muller probably didn't think of himself as a Grenzer anymore, but I still did.
Then right above our heads, one of the holes being dug crashed through from the surface. Dirt cascaded over us, and a large rock fell at my feet, momentarily forcing Muller and me back. I looked up, expecting to see starlight, but saw only shadows of several Grenzers standing over the hole. There were foul curses and orders being shouted to widen the hole, but Muller steered me around the rock so we could keep running. Then a hand reached down into the tunnel with a gun at the end of it. It aimed directly at me, so that even in this dim light I thought I could see directly down the barrel. I froze, as if every part of me had just turned to ice.
All that remained was for someone to order him to fire.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. I take pride in saying, "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
-- John F. Kennedy, US President, 1963
Muller gave me a hard shove, forcing me toward the bend, then turned back and reached for the gun, evidently hoping to grab it before any damage was done. I rounded the bend in time to hear the echo of gunshots inside the tunnel and a body's collapse onto the ground.
I wanted to keep running; I couldn't be more than a minute away from safety. But I also couldn't ignore that Muller had just saved my life, putting himself between the gun and me. I had to help him.
I crept back to the bend. The hand with the gun was gone, but shovels were digging back into the dirt, widening the hole. Muller was on the ground directly below them. There was enough moonlight now that I could see the blood on his chest.