Then I stopped, as if I had just seen myself in a mirror for the very first time. Who was I to complain about them? Wasn't I guilty of the same thing? Of staring helplessly and doing nothing about my own problems?
The tourists couldn't do anything for me. Not even the powerful governments of the west could break through what they called the Iron Curtain. And everyone inside East Germany with any sort of influence stood shoulder to shoulder with Russia.
No, there was only one person who could change my situation. Me.
A couple of Grenzers were patrolling the wall this morning, but I didn't have their attention yet. Nor did I care. I knew down to my toes that my father would be on the platform, and I wanted to see him.
I didn't at first. But then as I kept walking forward, Dominic pushed to the front of the crowd and pointed to me. He gave a whoop I thought I could hear from where I stood, and then called down. Almost instantly, my father was on the platform too. He started into his dance with the digging, but the platform was far too crowded.
And he didn't need to do it. I understood what he wanted, just not where. So I counted out three long and deliberate paces. Then with only a peek his way, I knelt on the ground and drew a small X.
X marks the spot.
My father nodded back at me and I hoped he understood what I wanted to know. The problem was that even if he did, how could he possibly communicate to me something as complicated as where I should be digging, or what sort of treasure I might be looking for?
It had been risky enough for me to draw the X, and though I quickly brushed it out with my foot afterward, I still drew the attention of a couple of guards in the tower, who shouted down for me to walk on. I quickly obeyed, and hurried away with my heart pounding. But it wasn't from fear. It was excitement for what my father might do next.
Only a few days later, I found out.
On most school days, our teacher allowed us some time in the afternoon to quietly study with one another. And since it was near the end of the school year, there were some important tests coming up, so she gave us more study time than usual.
Although Anna had successfully avoided being anywhere near me for weeks, this time the teacher assigned her to join my group, and the only spare seat was right next to me. I glanced sideways at her, but she did a good job of pretending not to notice.
"Anna," I whispered. "Can we talk?"
She answered by raising the book in front of her face so that no one, especially me, could see her.
A sour-faced boy across from us snorted. "Since when did she become too good for the rest of us?"
I kicked him in the shins. Hard. When he started to complain, I slouched like I was preparing to kick him again. And I would have, if necessary. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Anna lower her book just a little, and I was pretty sure I caught the barest hint of a smile.
Nearing the end of group time, we were discussing the causes of America's Great Depression when Anna silently slipped a folded paper into my hand. All schoolkids know how to secretly pass notes, but this one surprised me.
I wanted to thank her. No, I wanted to grab her shoulders and pull her into the tightest hug ever. But I didn't do either. Instead, I slipped the note between the pages of my folder and began counting the minutes until school ended.
Once we were dismissed, I quickly found a quiet spot under a tree, and only then did I dare to unfold the paper. At first what I saw made no sense.
It was just a pencil drawing of an old building. Square and made entirely of brick, there were two long windows in the front, but with no glass in them except for jagged pieces in the corners. An old chimney ran up the side of the building, but the bricks were shaded darker, suggesting it was an addition to the original place. There were three ground-level window openings too, but no door, so I might've been looking at the back of the building. That frustrated me. As hard as it would be to find any building in East Berlin, it would be nearly impossible to see the backs of them without wandering from yard to yard. Anna couldn't draw a circle, much less a building, so I knew this hadn't come from her. But there was no letter, no artist's signature, and no explanation of why I should have received it.
Anna walked past me a minute later. I stuffed the picture into my folder and then caught up to her.
"Nothing's changed," she said. "Please go away."
"I will. I mean, I will in a minute. Just tell me about that picture."
"I don't know anything about it."
But she had to know something! So I touched her arm and said, "Please, Anna. Then I'll leave."
She stopped and I saw tears in her eyes. She looked around us and then, in a voice so low I barely heard it, said, "We have family in West Berlin. Someone told them about Peter's death and they sent us a letter of consolation. This picture was in that letter with your first name on it, but I don't know why or where it came from."
It was from my father, I was sure of that. And while I was less certain, I thought Dominic might have done the drawing. He used to be artistic, though I had no way of knowing if he still was.
I started to tell her so, but she shook her head to cut me off and said, "Don't say anything else, please. You don't want me to know why you got that."
"I don't even know!" She started to leave, but I added, "Anna, I want us to be friends."
I thought I saw her soften just for a minute, then her face became stone again until I barely recognized her as the girl I had once known so well. "I hid the picture before my parents saw it," she said, "but you and I both know it means something. I can't do any more favors for you, Gerta. Next time, I will tell someone."
I backed away to let her leave. If she suddenly pulled a mask from her face revealing a Stasi officer in disguise, I wouldn't have been any more surprised than I already was. Because that's who it felt like I was talking to. And who knew? Maybe I was.
I looked at the drawing one more time before setting off for home. Well, not directly home. Somewhere in East Berlin this building was waiting for me. I needed to find it, and that's where I would dig.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-- Albert Einstein, German physicist and intellectual
Three days of searching turned up nothing. So many places came close, but something was always different from the picture -- it had the wrong type of roof, or different windows, or no chimney at all.
It seemed like everything built since the war looked alike, and the building in the drawing appeared older than that. About a half mile east of my school was a street of older homes, but I didn't see the one from the drawing among them. I was beginning to wonder if this building really existed, at least in East Berlin.
The fourth day was another Saturday, a week since I had last seen Papa. Mama sent me to school with a loaf of bread to give to Anna's family. It wasn't much, but it was all we had to spare. And Mama wouldn't have dared offer more anyway. Anna's family was still being shamed for what Peter had done. Mama didn't want it to look like our families were that close.
But Anna wasn't in school that day, and the teacher said she had complained the day before of not feeling well. So I decided to deliver the bread on my way home that afternoon. At least it gave me the opportunity to walk a different neighborhood of Berlin, and a part of me hoped that as her sorrows healed, so would our friendship.
Anna met me at the door, and although she looked as healthy as anyone else, I didn't question her. If I could get away with faking sickness to skip school, I'd do it every day and not feel a hint of guilt.
Before Anna slammed the door, I shoved the loaf of bread at her. "This is from my mother," I said lamely. "She thought your family might want it."
She didn't seem too enthusiastic about accepting it. And though I wanted to believe the Stasi couldn't find anything wrong with my mother's simple gift, I wasn't that naive, not anymore. But whether she wanted it or not, the bread was in Anna's hands now and the only way she could refuse it would be to drop it on the floor or hurl i
t back at me. If she did, I wouldn't have much cared. All Mama had asked was that I give her the bread, not force her to keep it.
Finally, Anna mumbled, "Thank you." She started to close the door, but I put a foot on the jamb to block it.
"I'm sorry Peter's gone, but you shouldn't be ashamed of what he tried to do." Though I hadn't planned to say that, the words poured out of me. The thoughts had swirled in my head for so long, it was a relief to speak them, and at least I was careful to keep my voice low. "He wanted a better life, a free life. You can't blame him for that. Or at least, I don't."
"We have a good life here," Anna said. "Why wasn't it enough for him?"
I explained it to her the way Fritz explained it to me long ago. "You've seen the sun, Anna. Now that you have, could you ever be content with just the stars for light? Would that be enough for you?"
Anna bit her lip and her eyes darted both ways along the hallway. If anyone had been there, she'd already have shut her door on me. When she was sure that we were alone, she whispered, "The night he tried ... escaping, Peter left a letter for us on his bed. The Stasi have it now, but his roommate at the university found it first and told us what it said. The final line was, 'If I don't stand for freedom, then I must sit in chains.' Is that what you believe too, Gerta?"
Of course I did. We were in chains, even if she couldn't see them. I spent six days a week in a school that taught me freedom was a lie, and every minute in public pretending I believed it. She knew the consequences for speaking out just as I did. Why else was Herr Krause arrested?
And, there was the wall. If life was so terrible beyond it, then why force us to stay here?
But I couldn't say any of this to her, not anymore.
Anna seemed to already have the answer for her question. Her gaze hardened. "I told my parents the real people in chains are those who break our laws. They must know they're going to be caught sooner or later."
Suddenly, our simple conversation began to sound like an accusation. I wasn't sure why. As far as I knew, I wasn't breaking any laws. None of the big ones anyway.
A door opened down the hallway and I turned to see who was coming. In that instant, Anna slammed her door shut, and I became a disease again.
I marched from her apartment with a few unkind phrases in mind that I wished I had said while I had the chance. She was practically quoting the state's propaganda, no better than a puppet on their string. Besides, I had only brought bread -- not smuggled goods or revolutionary pamphlets. No secret messages were baked inside and we asked for nothing in return. It was only bread, and yet she had treated me like I'd brought the plague.
No, she believed something worse, that wherever I went, the Stasi would eventually follow. That was a ridiculous idea.
Wasn't it?
I decided to take a shortcut home, which sent me down a narrow alley that I usually avoided because of the leftover rubble from the bombings at the end of the last war. But this time, all I wanted was to get home and slam my bedroom door behind me and try to forget I had ever been friends with Anna.
Except where I should've turned back onto the main road, I looked farther down the alley and saw it led to the back of some other older buildings. I'd never been on this abandoned street before, yet it still felt familiar.
Walking faster to keep pace with my racing heartbeat, I took in the details of one particular building. It was old and square and made of brick and looked like it would crumble if hit by a strong enough wind. Two long windows ran up the back and a chimney going up the side was made of a darker-colored brick. The three square windows at ground level were boarded up, and once I left the alley it was easy to see why.
The building now served as part of the Berlin Wall. Tall cinder-block rows butted up directly against the old building, and the barbed wire emerged from the wall all the way up and over the top of the building. I could only assume the front of the building was inside the Death Strip, and that it was sealed up too. Two more old buildings connected in a row to the building in front of me, then the wall continued on from there.
The ground where I now stood looked like a small patch of forgotten farmland. It was infested with weeds, some that were almost as tall as me. Halfway to the road, a deep irrigation ditch supplied a small pond.
Far to the left and behind the wall was a watchtower, which I knew from all my previous observations was always staffed with Grenzers, who constantly looked out for anyone getting too near the wall. But they'd need binoculars to see me well, and there didn't appear to be a border zone here, or at least, nothing was marked to keep us away from the wall, and the tire tracks from the Grenzer patrols didn't look too recent.
My eyes flicked back to the building in front of me as my heart pounded with possibilities. This was the place my father had wanted me to find, and something was buried inside it. I didn't know what, but the first chance I got to return with Mama's shovel, I intended to find out.
Who wagers nothing, he wins nothing. -- German proverb
My opportunity came the following morning. It was Sunday and Mama had plans to go to church. She never invited us along -- not because she didn't want us there but because she knew the state frowned on religion. They wouldn't punish her for being in church -- not directly anyway -- but she thought it might somehow affect Fritz and me. Another stain in our files.
Fritz said he had plans to meet up with some friends, which I think included a girl named Claudia. The only things I knew about her was she sold bicycles and wore her hair in the bouffant style like young women did in the west. I overheard Fritz's friends teasing him about her, and by his reaction it was obvious that he liked Claudia a lot. The minute he left, I hurried down to the basement of our apartment, grabbed our shovel, and left for that old building in Papa's picture.
I had hoped for an uneventful walk there, but a young girl hauling a big shovel through the city is hardly inconspicuous. I hadn't even left my own block when Frau Eberhart, a woman who lived in our apartment building, greeted me and asked, "Where are you going with that? Does your mother know what you're up to?"
Frau Eberhart always looked to me like the human version of a turkey, minus the feathers. She collected gossip like other women might collect buttons or teacups. In the west, she'd have been dismissed as a simple busybody or snooping neighbor. But behind the wall, we all knew the neighborhood tattler was as dangerous as fire. Stasi informants were paid well.
"I, um, want to surprise my mother," I stammered. "I found an area for a garden, just a few streets away." Inwardly, I kicked myself for the way my voice had trembled as I lied, for looking anywhere but at her. No, I was supposed to be smarter than this. Papa expected more of me. Somehow, knowing he would want me to lie made it easier.
Frau Eberhart's beak of a mouth pursed together as if she wasn't quite sure whether I had told the truth. I was sure she could read the deceit that was almost certainly written all over my face. But this wouldn't be my last lie. Mama often warned me that the Stasi had blanketed the country with informants. It might be a bus driver, or a coworker, or even a family member. And it wouldn't have surprised me in the least if the woman I was facing ran off to the Stasi to tattle on me, if she guessed the real reason for my shovel.
Finally, she smiled. "A garden is a delightful surprise for any mother. But if you want me to keep your secret, then I'll expect some of your harvest."
Maybe that was just polite conversation and was totally meaningless. Or maybe she wanted a bribe for her silence. I really didn't know. Either way, it presented a problem since there wasn't going to be any harvest. All I could do was avoid bumping into her again for a long time. Forever, if I could arrange it.
Once I spotted the building, I did a careful check for any officers in the area. This time, fresh tire tracks ran through the crusty dirt, so I knew they had come through only last night. Hopefully that meant they wouldn't feel the need to come back around anytime soon. I got as close to the Berlin Wall as I dared, but not because I was challenging the
Grenzers. Just the opposite, in fact. I knew if any eyes looked down on this area, then the closer I stood to the wall, the better chance I would have of slipping past them unnoticed. For my own safety, I would use their barricade against them.
My heart was locked in my throat as I crossed to the building, but nothing suggested that anyone had seen me. No sirens, or barking dogs, or soldiers shouting orders. After a tense moment, I finally allowed myself to breathe again. Like all the others around it, this building looked like an old shop that had been abandoned for longer than I'd been alive, and there was no reason for anyone to come to this out-of-the-way street. I crouched beside each of the ground-level windows and pressed at the boards, hoping for one that seemed loose.
The first two windows were still boarded up tight, but the third seemed to have some give. I had to use the shovel to pry the boards loose, but I finally managed to open up a small gap, then slide through it.
Once inside, I had a short jump onto a hard dirt floor. It smelled of mold and rotting wood from the floorboards above me, and the standing water in the corners probably still hadn't dried out from winter. The only light came in slivers between the wood boards across the windows and painted creepy, dusty shadows. It gave me a shiver, though I couldn't be sure if that was because the room was chilly or because I was afraid. No matter how eerie this room was, I also knew full well that the boundary for the Berlin Wall ran straight through this building. If I touched the brick on the far end of this room, I would be standing within the line of the Death Strip. In fact, I thought the Grenzers would probably consider this entire building inside that forbidden zone. If so, then I was in the Death Strip now.
I wanted to leave, to just climb back out the window and run to the safety of my bedroom. I never had to tell anyone about this place, and the next time I saw my father, I could just shrug at him as if I had never gotten that picture. He could go forward with his life, and I would go forward with mine.