Cloud and Wallfish

by Anne Nesbet

“But Cloud,” said Noah, and then he was stuck for a moment. He was so rattled by the whole thing that thoughts he had kept carefully hidden inside were now threatening to spill right out.

  “You do know — you do know — they can’t really be there?” he found himself saying. “Your parents — they can’t be there.”

  The Astonishing Stutter had done its best to hold back those reckless words, but somehow they got through the gates all the same.

  Cloud-Claudia’s back stiffened some beside him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because in real life it’s a city for — for — living people,” said Noah. He felt like a skunk, pointing that out. But he was so worried, he couldn’t help it.

  “It’s the Changelings’ Land,” said Cloud-Claudia.

  “On our map, it’s for changelings, but in real life,” said Noah, trying to be gentler now, in the way he said it, “people live over there. Ordinary living people.”

  Cloud-Claudia spun around to glare at him.

  “You think I’m crazy,” she said.

  “No!” said Noah. That is, he certainly hoped she wasn’t.

  She looked at him, and her eyes got wider and wider and stranger and stranger.

  “But how can they be dead?” she said. “How can they be? How can that have happened?”

  It was like a wild kind of crying, too wild even for tears, right there in the streets of Berlin.

  “Shh, shh,” said Noah helplessly. “Oh!”

  He had messed this up, messed everything up — that was for sure. He put his hand on Cloud’s shoulder and found that under his hand, her arm was bony and fiery, both at once, and all that pain that was burning in her — the loss of the mother who loved her, the father who loved her — jumped like a prairie fire right from her to him and ran through everything, burning through all the cautious little walls he had put up everywhere inside him and making him cry, too.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Noah. For a while, that was all he could say.

  When he had to wipe his tears away on his other sleeve, to see where they needed to be going, he saw she was still dry-eyed and staring, those sobs heaving up from somewhere deep inside her.

  “They won’t even tell me what day they died,” said Cloud-Claudia in a tiny, awful voice. “They won’t even tell me the date. What day. What day they died.”

  “But your grandmother — she must know —”

  “She won’t tell me. I need to know what day they died. They left me all alone, and I don’t even know how long I’ve been all alone. I need to know what day they died.”

  “You could ask —” said Noah, but he didn’t know whom she could ask. “I mean, that’s something they keep written down somewhere. Someone knows that.”

  Cloud-Claudia took a breath and was already more like herself.

  “I could write an Eingabe,” she said. “I could write an Eingabe of my own about it, and make them tell.”

  Secret File #25

  PEEKING OVER

  In the East German newspapers, they liked to run little interviews with ordinary, happy workers. Propaganda was a big part of every newspaper’s job, which meant making East Germany look as good as possible, no matter what. That was getting harder and harder. Other countries in the East Bloc (like the Soviet Union) were loosening some of the controls on their citizens and allowing more travel, but for the East Germans, whose whole country was just about the same size as the U.S. state of Virginia, the world seemed to be shrinking rather than getting bigger.

  In June 1989, the newspaper profiled a young woman who had become a model worker.

  Here’s what the writers said she said about the Wall:

  I’m almost as old as the Wall. Exactly one year younger. That kind of thing sort of makes you think. When I drive along the border, sure I’d like to take a peek at the other side. But live over there? No.

  What happens if you’ve got children and maybe no work, after all? All right, that doesn’t have to happen. But it’s bad enough that it could happen. . . .

  The Wall should stay where it is.

  I’m certain of everything here. If a brick doesn’t fall on my head and I don’t do anything myself that’s wrong, in principle nothing can happen to me my whole life long.

  You can imagine how some people in East Berlin groaned when they read that. Some of them — more and more of them — more and more and more of them — really didn’t want to live in a place where “in principle nothing could happen” their whole lives long.

  Their country was shrinking.

  And they were trapped in it.

  Noah was still a little shaky when he got home, and from the way his parents shot sidelong glances his way, he could tell that the shakiness was showing. That was all right. He needed them to notice so that they would take him out on a stroll around the block so that he could ask them what to do about Cloud-Claudia’s Eingabe.

  It was his mother who took him on the debriefing walk, as it turned out, while his father did the dishes.

  “All right, what’s wrong?” she said. “You look like you just witnessed the sinking of the Titanic, not that the Titanic would fit in Berlin’s tiny little river.”

  Noah felt too worried to laugh.

  He explained about the whole idea of the Eingabe, how Cloud-Claudia’s father had used one to complain about a bad tent and how Cloud-Claudia had written one for his school principal.

  “Oh, dear,” said his mother. “Very nice of her, of course, but you’ll have to tear that right up. The Rules!”

  Complaining about not being allowed to speak in class apparently violated the “Be polite! Don’t let your worries show!” Rule (#4), not to mention the “Don’t stick out!” Rule (#3).

  At this point his mother was still smiling, though. She seemed amused, not horrified.

  Then Noah tried to explain to her what had happened to him and Cloud-Claudia, there by the Wall, how they had both basically fallen apart for a moment.

  “She doesn’t know what day her parents died! Her grandmother won’t say. Nobody will tell her. Even though they’re her parents!” His throat clenched up tight. “That’s why she’s got this plan, to write this other Eingabe, about asking someone official to tell her the date —”

  “Good Lord!” said his mother, and now she was clearly shocked, and Noah’s mother was never shocked by anything. “You talked her out of that, I hope!”

  “No, why?” said Noah. “They must have the date written down in their papers somewhere. Why shouldn’t she know when her parents — her parents —”

  He got stuck again, but his mother didn’t wait for him this time.

  “You have to tell her not even to think about asking questions like that,” she said. “I’m serious. Her whole family could get into terrible trouble.”

  “But she doesn’t have a family anymore, not really,” said Noah. He was beginning to feel mad about all of it. “And who cares if that awful Frau März gets into trouble?”

  He paused for breath and only felt madder.

  “Anyway, why can’t she ask what day her parents died? It’s only fair for her to know that. I think she should know everything she wants to know. You can’t say her family would get into trouble, not when her parents aren’t even alive anymore. Nobody can hurt them.”

  “No, no,” said his mother. “Stop. You can’t think that way. Trust me. You don’t understand.”

  “Why don’t you ever explain anything?” said Noah. “That’s what I don’t understand. And what I think is, they should tell Cloud when her poor parents died.”

  He wasn’t smiling. That meant he was breaking the Rules. But maybe sometimes a friend is worth breaking rules for.

  “Well,” said his mother after a pause, “they can’t.”

  “Why?”

  She was gripping his arm, and he could feel her hand trembling as it held on to him, held a little too hard. She was trying to decide something.

  “Because it’s not true,”
she said finally.

  “What’s not true?”

  Here she gave him a quick hug, just so she could say into his ear in one of her quietest voices, “They aren’t dead.”

  “What?” said Noah. “What? What?”

  He couldn’t find his way past that one shocked word.

  “Quiet, now,” said his mother, still smiling carefully. “I’m only telling you this so you’ll understand how important it is for your friend to back down.”

  “But — the accident,” said Noah, and then he got stuck again: “What?”

  “Do try to smile,” said his mother. “There was no accident. Well, there was, but not a car accident. They were trying to get over the border, from Hungary into Austria.”

  “What?” said Noah. How could any of this be? “Are you sure?”

  “Happened back in June,” said his mother. “The border wasn’t completely dismantled yet. They were climbing a fence, and something went wrong, and her father got caught. Broke his leg and got stuck on the fence. And the Hungarian border guards came —”

  “No, really?” said Noah. He was remembering the border guard at the Pan-European Picnic, the long, mysterious conversation that man had had with his mother in Hungarian. What had they been talking about back then?

  “Don’t look so distressed,” said his mother. “It’s too noticeable. Anyway, the border guards came, but they were already under instructions not to do things like shoot people anymore, so they waved Claudia’s mother away, farther into Austria. And they took Claudia’s father back into Hungary, saying he needed medical help for his leg. And then he could go through regular channels to request a visa — that’s what they said. Can you imagine how awful that must have been? So the mother ended up going on into Austria without her husband —”

  “And without Cloud,” said Noah. Why didn’t she see the worst part of this whole story? Cloud-Claudia’s parents had decided to run away, leaving their own daughter behind.

  “Yes, without anybody,” said his mother. “But it was even worse for the father, I’m afraid. The Hungarians patched him up and then some mucky-muck said the rules required them to return him to his country of residence.”

  “Here,” said Noah.

  “That’s right. Here. Where he was arrested for breaking the law against ‘illegal abandonment of the GDR’ and put into prison. Oh, it’s awful. So that’s the point: they can all still be hurt — badly, badly hurt. Understand? You have to make sure she doesn’t write that letter.”

  “Yeah, okay,” whispered Noah, but it was hard even to make his tongue move properly to form the words.

  They walked another block, and then Noah thought of the most important thing: “Mom, you have to tell Claudia and Frau März. You can’t let them keep thinking —”

  “Oh, Frau März knows. She knows perfectly well.”

  His mother’s eyes narrowed for a mere moment.

  “No, she doesn’t,” said Noah. “She’s the one who told Cloud-Claudia about the car accident.”

  “It wasn’t true, and she knew it. At first she was trying to keep her job, I guess. Someone higher up in the ministry probably put pressure on her: told her she’d better lie to everyone or be fired. Can’t have the mother of criminals in a high post.”

  “Not criminals,” said Noah.

  “Criminals,” said his mother. “They broke the law. They tried to abandon their country. They tried to leave. So, in the GDR: criminals.”

  “How could she lie like that?” said Noah.

  “I guess she’s afraid,” said Noah’s mother. “Frau März must figure it’s better for her granddaughter to think her parents are dead than for her to know one of them’s in prison and one of them is over the border in the West.”

  “But that’s wrong,” said Noah. He felt so furious that he thought something might just go pop in his brain. “We have to tell Claudia the truth. It’s horrible. That’s just so wrong, what Frau März is doing.”

  “There’s a lot about all of this that’s wrong,” said his mother, and her smile brightened itself up again. They were almost back to their own street at this point. “And believe me, you mustn’t say a single word to your friend. I’m only telling you this because I had to make you see how serious the situation is. With the fortieth anniversary coming up, there isn’t a millimeter of tolerance left anywhere in the system. So I can trust you to be sensible, yes? You mustn’t tell her anything. Not a single thing.”

  Noah sputtered.

  “I’m serious. It wouldn’t be fair, asking her to keep a big secret like this — and what if she couldn’t do it? What if she said something?” His mother, still smiling, shook her head. “No, we shouldn’t be messing with this case at all, really. We could all get kicked out, and then I’ll never finish my dissertation. I’ll never be able to make you call me Dr. Mommy, when I finally get my PhD! And I’ve been looking forward to that for years!”

  Noah had one last horrible thought.

  “Oh, Mom,” he said. “If her parents had just waited until August, none of this would have happened. If they’d been at the picnic thing we went to. And with Claudia, too.”

  “They could have just walked through the gate,” said his mother. “It’s true. But they didn’t know. None of us knew that was going to happen. I’m afraid that’s how history works in real life. You don’t know what the future’s really going to bring until it’s already the past.”

  Noah was not as good at keeping a fake smile on his face as his mother was. He leaned his head against her coat for a moment as they came around the corner, trying to make sense of a world where such awful things could happen to a kid like Cloud-Claudia.

  “That seam is going to come loose soon,” his mother added suddenly, poking at Noah’s jacket. “I’ll sew it up when we get back home.”

  Every seam everywhere is loose, thought Noah.

  He got home and hung another couple of clouds in the window. Cutting paper and hanging things up is usually another good way not to think about things. Projects. Projects help.

  But his mind kept circling around Cloud-Claudia’s family, and every time he looked at the details of the story, something new and terrible jumped out at him.

  It was awful, what had happened to her parents. But the whole thing was awful. What would make parents so desperate to leave a place that they would even leave their own daughter behind — and not just anywhere, but under the thumb of Frau März? How could they have thought that was okay?

  Oh, Cloud! Oh, Cloud!

  And then he thought about his mother telling him he absolutely must not tell Cloud-Claudia the truth, and he had the strangest feeling.

  He thought that his mother, who was almost always right about things, might this time be wrong.

  How would Noah feel if he had been told a lie about his parents, and a friend had known the truth and hadn’t told him?

  He guessed he would feel pretty bad. That friend wouldn’t have been a true friend; that’s how Noah would feel — once he found out the truth, of course. And people always find out the truth in the end. That was something Noah had noticed over and over, in books and movies and sometimes in real life, too. Someone always lets the secret out. Faces have guilty looks. Evidence turns up.

  Someday, surely, Cloud-Claudia would find out.

  Her mother might finally be able to send a letter, maybe, once the border people had calmed down. All right, that would probably be a long time from now. But eventually.

  And her poor father would get out of prison at some point, right? They’d have to explain it all to her then.

  But that might be years from now. She could be thinking for years that her parents were dead when they really weren’t.

  But if it wasn’t safe for her to know? He didn’t want her hurt more than she already was.

  His mind was running in circles now. How was he going to be able to face Cloud-Claudia after this? He kept thinking, I’ve got to decide what to do.

  Because he didn’t know what
to do, he ended up opening the puzzle box that Cloud-Claudia had given back to him not that long ago. All those tiny pieces! He was impressed that she had done that puzzle on her own. Twice.

  He ran his hands through the little pieces — there was something comforting about that, almost like playing with sand at the beach. He thought vaguely about starting the puzzle again himself, but he was really too restless for puzzles.

  Then he noticed something on the back of one of the pieces. He looked closer.

  In little, precise handwriting, someone had written a name: Sonja.

  He started sifting through all the pieces, looking at the blank sides now, not the picture sides.

  He found another one: Matthias.

  And, after a lot of searching, another: Claudia.

  Names!

  And when he flipped those three pieces over, he saw that they went together, of course. They made the picture of a little house to the left of the tower.

  He could see how it would feel good to put those pieces together that way.

  If the world he and Cloud-Claudia were living in was a kind of jigsaw puzzle, it was one that had been shaken up into a thousand pieces, for sure. No, not a thousand pieces — a million pieces.

  A million pieces, and no picture on the box to help them get it right.

  Secret File #26

  FORTIETH-ANNIVERSARY PLANS

  Here are some of the things that were planned for October 7, 1989, the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic:

  • On the night of October 6, a parade of 100,000 young people carrying torches was to pass through Berlin to demonstrate the loyalty of the Free German Youth to their motherland.

  • On Saturday morning, October 7, along the Karl-Marx-Allee, there would be a grand honor parade of the National People’s Army of the GDR and of Troops of the Border Patrol, passing for review before Erich Honecker, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party and leader of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic, and before “eminent guests from the entire world.” The most eminent guests, including Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, where democratic reforms were already well under way, were to stand with Honecker before an absolutely enormous red banner that said 40 YEARS GDR above a copy of the GDR seal, which combined a hammer and a compass within a wreath of rye. Many tanks and jeeps would roll down the street.