Life Behind the Wall

by Robert Elmer

  That did it. Erich looked over his shoulder, just to be sure. The tall man reached out, offering a brown-wrapped candy bar. Erich couldn’t ever remember having a Hershey bar all to himself. A bite, once. Never a whole bar. His stomach danced at the thought.

  “Come on,” said Andy. “Take it before I change my mind. You’ve got to be hungry, right?”

  Erich could already taste the chocolate, sweet and warm and rich. He turned back to accept the gift, expecting the man to pull it away at the last second. But no.

  “Dankeschön.” Erich looked up at the man whose skin seemed as dark as the chocolate he offered. “Thank you.”

  “Andy!” someone yelled from inside the flughafen. “Need you back here!”

  “See you around.” The man winked at him as he turned to go. “Only next time, you stay outside the fence, okay?”

  “Andy!” The voice did not belong to a patient man.

  “Aren’t you going to eat it, kid?” Andy asked as he start ed back through the main gate. “I thought everybody liked chocolate.”

  “Ja.” Erich fingered the treasure, knowing how wonderful it would taste. It had been given to him, had it not? Didn’t he have every right to enjoy it? He paused. “Yes. But it will be for . . . Oma, Grandmother.”

  And before he could change his mind, he slipped the precious Hershey bar into his shirt pocket, turned, and sprinted away.

  2

  KAPITEL ZWEI

  GOOD EXCUSE

  “I told you, I didn’t steal it.” Erich pedaled up Potsdamerstrasse, Potsdamer Street, as fast as his old bike would let him. “I can’t believe you would even think that of me.”

  “Sure.” Katarina checked over her shoulder and slowed down as they entered the spooky wasteland of the Tiergarten — once a beautiful, green city park but now sheared of all its trees by bombs and firewood scavengers. Some of the grand statues still stood, headless, high on their columns, ruling over rubble and ruins. Others had long since toppled to the gravel pathway. “But I don’t think your story’s going to help us explain what took us so long to get home.”

  “We’ll just tell them the truth. A big green lizard monster grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I was . . . kidnapped!”

  Katarina wasn’t buying it.

  “Okay, then how about a big American soldier in a brown uniform?”

  “And then are you going to explain why he stopped you?”

  “Well—”

  Katarina led the way on a rusty old bike with warped wheels and a chain that fell off every other block. Which was actually fine, since it gave them a chance to catch their breath. Meanwhile, Erich did his best to keep up on Frankenbike, a monster he’d wired together from the skeletons of several dead or smashed bicycles he’d discovered in bombed-out buildings. At least traffic seemed lighter now, after dinner, so that was good. Shops had closed for the day. But his front tire — the one that didn’t fit quite right — wiggled a little more than it had earlier that evening, and he had to keep jiggling the handlebars to keep it lined up right.

  “You going to make it?” she asked him. They had skirted the Soviet sector of the city, districts to the east where Russian soldiers were in charge. Here at the eastern edge of the American sector, jeeps with American soldiers — like the ones at Tempelhof — passed them every couple of blocks. The cousins would reach Oma Poldi Becker’s flat in a minute or two.

  “Yeah, I’ll make it. It’s just this stupid wheel.” He gave it one more good shake, jerking back his handlebars and planting the wheel squarely on the pavement. That should fix it.

  And it did — sort of. The next thing he knew the front wheel bounced out ahead of him, even as he continued to pedal. Without a front wheel, the front end of his bike nosed down and jammed the fork into the street, launching him chin-first to land — OOMPHH! — spread-eagle on the pavement. The frame of the bicycle tied itself into knots around his legs, bending him into an impossible pretzel.

  “Erich!” Katarina kneeled next to him, but her words only buzzed in his ears. “What happened?”

  What happened? He slowly untangled himself from the bike and tried to sit up straight.

  “Wheel decided to go solo, is all.” And sure enough, it still bounded down Bernauerstrasse. “It wanted a new life as a unicycle.”

  “Quit being silly.”

  “Who, me? I’m all right.” By that time he’d collected himself enough to stand up. That seemed to be a good sign: all his arms and legs worked. His elbow and right knee looked a little scraped. The worst part: his jaw.

  That, and the warm red stain on his shirt.

  “No, you’re not.” Katarina pointed at his chin and wrinkled her nose. “Oooh, gross. You’re bleeding all over the place.”

  Nicht so gut. Not so good. He cupped his chin in his hand, trying to keep from making more of a mess all over everything. That helped a little, but he had broken open his chin more than just a little. Good thing they were only a half-block from Oma Poldi’s place.

  “Can you walk?” Katarina wanted to know.

  He nodded, still cupping his chin tightly. And he supposed they looked a bit odd, him holding his chin and dragging what was left of Frankenbike, her juggling his runaway front wheel while pushing her bike.

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he told her. “It’s just a little scrape.”

  Or not. Five minutes later their Oma Poldi dabbed carefully at his chin with a damp washcloth and told him it most certainly was not just a scrape. Katarina turned green and looked the other way.

  “Does that hurt?” Oma studied him with her sharp blue eyes. Everything else in her body had wrinkled or twisted: her face and her hands, for instance. Her knees, she said, from spending so much time on them, praying. Her cheeks had aged even more in the last few years, like prunes that had been left out in the pantry too long. And at times she coughed so hard and so long that Erich and Katarina thought she might never be able to take another breath. Just a little tickle, she told them, but Erich’s mother had called it chronic bronchitis, which sounded a lot more serious than just a tickle.

  But she had nursed her share of children and grandchildren back to health, patched plenty of skinned knees and broken arms. She caught her breath and repeated the question.

  “No, Oma.” He shook his head and winced. Not as long as he didn’t move or breathe or try to open his mouth. Otherwise, no problem.

  “Then what were you doing out on the street at this time of night?” Of course she wanted to know everything as she patched up the gash on his chin with a slice of medical tape, cut into careful little pieces, just like a doctor would have done. And maybe she wouldn’t tell her daughter-in-law, Erich’s mother. Or maybe she would. But her question reminded him of something, and he reached down into his shirt pocket.

  “I went to get you this.” He presented the prize — a little broken, a little squashed, but all there. And for just a moment her eyes widened, the same way Katarina’s had.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked him, but she had to know the answer. Only the Americans —

  “A soldier gave it to me.” Erich still held the Hershey bar out to her, hoping the wrapper had stayed clean. “He was as dark as the candy. You should have seen him.”

  “He gave it to you?” She raised a knowing eyebrow and looked over at Katarina just to be sure. Katarina nodded.

  “Take it, Oma.” He held it out. “When was the last time you had chocolate?”

  For a moment she let herself gaze out her apartment’s single window, with her view of the tall steeple of the once-beautiful Versöhnungskirche, the Reconciliation Church, not much more than a block away.

  “When your father was still — ” she began, and her voice trailed off. Even she could not say the word alive. “Well, he would work on his sermons, and on his way home Saturday afternoon, a half bar of chocolate for his old mother he would bring.”

  It hurt Erich to smile as she shook her head and came back to the here and now.
r />   “But that was before you were born, of course. Before the war . . . and all this.”

  All this. A city in ruins, where most of the men were dead or disappeared, and where women worked all day shoveling rubble and clearing collapsed buildings, bucketful by bucketful. Rubblewomen, they called them. Like Erich’s and Katarina’s mothers.

  “Then you should have it, Oma.” He held it out once more. She wasn’t making it easy. “Please.”

  “On one condition only.” She finally held out her hand, then took the chocolate and divided it into three parts. “That you kids will share it with me.”

  Of course there was no arguing with Oma Poldi, and no way to get her to nibble more than a couple of squares of the rich chocolate. Erich closed his eyes and let it roll over his tongue, again and again, before he finally had to swallow. And when he opened his eyes again they watched the Russian soldiers on the street below. One of the thick-armed guards had stopped a row of people as they stepped off the S-Bahn streetcar. He rummaged through their shopping bags and removed what he wanted: a loaf of bread, several packages of cigarettes, a kilo of coffee. They meekly took back their empty shopping bags, stared at their shoes, and hurried off.

  Is this what his father had meant by “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”? Well, there wasn’t much left to inherit, not in this Berlin. Only what the Soviet soldiers could steal from people coming in from the other side of town, the western side. And, as the Soviet blockade wore on, that supply was getting thinner and thinner.

  Just like Oma Poldi.

  In this section of Berlin they kept starving old women alive with hand-me-down bars of American chocolate, smuggled across the invisible line between east and west.

  “It’s not getting any better, Oma.” Katarina was the first to break their silence. “Why don’t you come live with us, over in the American sector?”

  Oma carefully licked her fingers, making sure to get every chocolate smudge. She seemed to think about her granddaughter’s question for a moment before answering.

  “How could I leave?” She stared out the window once more. “You know my grandfather grew up in this building. Your father and uncle, even. I belong in this place where God has called me.”

  And there could be no arguing with that, chocolate or no chocolate.

  “And besides,” she added, “your father and his brother loved the people in this neighborhood. Some of them are still left here. Frau Schnitzler. Poor Ursula Ohlendorf. They all went to church at the Versöhnungskirche.”

  The church, the kirche that now lay quiet and empty and ruined.

  Just like Oma Poldi. She could hardly speak anymore. Still she kept Erich in her sights.

  “They all heard your father preach against the Nazis, against the evil. I honor my sons by staying, now. So this is my place. This is where I will live and die.”

  “Oma.” Erich nearly choked on his last bite of chocolate. “You’re not going to — ”

  But he knew she was going to, even if he brought her a chocolate bar each day. She needed much more than snacks to survive.

  “Of course I am going to die, when God wills it.” She reached out and mussed his hair, and the effort must have drained her. She leaned back in her chair and closed her sunken eyes. “Now go on home. You’re a sweet boy to be bringing your old grandmother sweet treats, even if you’re a bit clumsy on that old bicycle of yours.”

  He’d almost forgotten about the accident and his blood-stained shirt. He still had some explaining to do at home.

  “I’ll be sure to let your mother know that you were visiting here,” added Oma. “And a bit late it was.”

  Erich rose and nodded, reached over and kissed his grandmother on the cheek.

  “Let’s go, Katarina.” And he was out the door before his cousin, bounding down the stairs two at a time. “I’m headed back to the airport.”

  “What are you talking about?” Katarina stepped on his heel as they hurried through the landing to the door out to Rheinsbergerstrasse.

  “Tomorrow, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m going to try again.”

  3

  KAPITEL DREI

  ERICH BECKER’S PRIVATE WAR

  “Yes, Erich, I’m glad you were visiting your grandmother yesterday.” Erich’s mother barely got the words out as she sat at the small kitchen table the next evening, her head in her hands. “Sitting there in that dark apartment all alone. Almost starving, and goodness knows the Russians don’t care what happens to old people in that sector, much less if they get anything to eat.”

  It was true. Erich licked the back of his spoon to make sure he’d cleaned up his serving of thin cabbage soup, though it didn’t begin to put a dent in his stomach-clutching hunger. The kind of hunger that just ate and ate at him, that sapped his energy and made him want to just stay in bed all day. Come to think of it, though, maybe it was a good thing they’d had soup tonight; it had taken little effort to chew. His jaw still hurt when he bit down, but no one needed to know. He touched the bandage on his chin and looked up at his mother, who had closed her eyes.

  Was it just his imagination, or did his mother look almost as old and wrinkled as his grandmother? No blood relation, of course; Oma was his father’s mother. But since the Americans had killed his father in the war, it seemed his mother had aged a whole generation, maybe ten years for every one.

  Her hands had been the first to go: cracked and bleeding, covered now with calluses and blisters from holding her shovel. Her nails had nearly disappeared, too. But who could stay young-looking while shoveling bricks and rubble all day, clearing the city of ruined buildings?

  It was, she told him, the only job she could find. And though it paid nothing, it helped them get extra ration cards, so that was good. But at what price? And who had dropped the bombs that had destroyed all those buildings in the first place?

  She never wanted to talk about whose fault it was, or who had killed Father. Sometimes in the middle of the night, though, he heard her crying. And now, with her eyes closed, she moved her lips as if answering all his questions.

  Why did they drop so many bombs on us, then divide our city?

  Where will we find our next meal?

  How long will Oma live?

  Finally her lips stopped moving. The dull hunger still gripped him, still made him dizzy and sleepy and angry all at once. Of course they’d prayed for help; how could they not? And if crying or screaming would have helped, he would have done that too. But not today.

  Their single stub of candle flickered and sputtered, and still his mother didn’t move, only held her chin and let her long dusty hair flow freely. Good for her, Erich thought. She’s sleeping. He licked his fingers and quietly tried to snuff the flame — fsst!

  “Ow!” he muttered; the feeble little flame fluttered back to life. “I thought I knew how to do that trick.”

  Brigitte Becker blinked and shook her head in the half-dark, as if waking from a dream.

  “Oh!” She straightened up and checked her hair. “I must have dozed off.”

  “That’s okay. Thanks for breakfast.”

  “Mm-hm.” She nodded and began to push out her chair, and yes, he’d said breakfast. It took only a few seconds for her to freeze, though. “Wait a minute. It’s not . . . Oh, you!”

  She smiled for the first time all evening, a shy grin that spread slowly across her tired face. And that was the best reward of all.

  “Erich Becker, you’re more like your father every day. He would do the same thing to me. Tell me the silliest lies with a straight face, then when I believed him, he would grin and — ” She paused, dishes in hand.

  “Mom, I don’t remember him very well anymore.” Six years ago felt like a lifetime. “I can’t even remember his face, except for the pictures we have. I’m sorry.”

  She set down her dishes by the sink and rested her hands on his shoulders for a moment.

  “Don’t be sorry. You were much younger. It was a long time a
go.”

  “I do remember the last time I saw him, when I took his lunch to him at his study at the church.” He paused. “Do you remember the last thing he said to you?”

  His mother’s face went serious again. She turned to the small window over the sink that revealed the narrow space between their apartment building and the next one.

  “I don’t know why I asked that,” he told her. “It just slipped — ”

  “He was talking about books, always talking about his books.” She bent down to the bowl in the sink, splashed water on her face. The candle made her shadow dance on the wall, weird and larger than life.

  “What kind of books?” he finally asked.

  “Luther. He told me he’d been reading a volume of sermons by Luther. That he very much liked it.”

  “Doesn’t every Lutheran pastor read Luther?”

  “I suppose.” She nodded, hugging the dish towel to her chest, remembering. “But this was different. He said that if anything ever happened to him, I should not forget a book called Dr. Martin Luther’s Sämtliche Schriften.”

  “Collected Writings?” In other words, a book of sermons and short essays. “That was his favorite?”

  “I think so.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye with the towel. “He said he would explain it to me, but he had something urgent he had to do at the church first. So I still don’t know what he was talking about. It didn’t come up for another couple of days; we were so busy. And then the air raid — ”

  Erich knew the rest of the story, the bombs that fell near the church, how they never found his father’s body, all that. But not the part she’d just told him.

  “You never told me that before. That part about the book.”

  “It’s the first time I’ve thought about it in years, Erich.” Finally she turned back to face him. “I never thought it was important to anyone else. Now, as I was saying before I dozed off, I do appreciate your visiting your grandmother. But you must be more careful on that old bicycle thing of yours.”

  “Just a loose nut holding the wheel. I fixed it fine.”

  “Maybe, but your chin is not fixed so easily, and the stain in your shirt didn’t come out all the way.”