Life Behind the Wall

by Robert Elmer

  “He’s just leaving, Frau Kessler. And thank you, Fred.” She started to wave with her free hand, then changed her mind and folded her fingers one by one before poking Erich in the ribs.

  “Ow!” Erich yelped, but he knew what his mother wanted him to say. “I mean, thank you, Fred.”

  He wasn’t sure DeWitt heard him, anyway. And he wasn’t sure why he went to the living room window to watch the American step onto the sidewalk, look both ways, and hurry down the street.

  But that’s not what caught Erich’s attention. He might not even have noticed if he hadn’t seen the man move inside the old gray Mercedes.

  Actually, it looked like two men. One in the driver’s seat, the other putting on his hat and slipping out the passenger door to the far sidewalk. And when the passenger looked straight up at the window, Erich was quick enough to back away — but not before he got a pretty good look.

  “Can’t be.” Erich caught a quick breath as he backed even farther into the living room and tried to think of what to do. Good thing his mother had already gone into the kitchen to see what DeWitt had brought them. Because he was willing to bet a whole can of peaches that he had seen the man before, back in the ruins of the Versöhnungskirche. Even from across the street, it was hard to miss the square jaw and dark eyes.

  The only thing was, the man didn’t have on a Russian uniform this time. In the American sector of Berlin, he’d better not. No telling what would happen to him if he were caught. Erich understood this part of the Cold War.

  He just didn’t understand why the Shark was following Fred DeWitt.

  If it really was the Shark. Erich would have liked another look, just to be double-sure. But when he checked again, the car had gone. And thirty minutes later Erich had other things to worry about when he answered the urgent pounding at the door.

  Erich cautiously opened the door. “Herr Kessler?”

  The red-faced apartment manager pushed his way inside.

  “Frau Becker!” Herr Kessler headed straight for the kitchen. “You’ll want to hear about this urgent telephone message right away!”

  “Urgent?” She looked up from the dishes in the sink. “Who sends us an urgent message?”

  “That’s just it!” Herr Kessler only got this worked up when the plumbing plugged up or the coal ran out. “He sounded Russian. But he didn’t give his name.”

  “Well, that doesn’t matter. Just tell me what he said.” Erich’s mother offered the man a sliver of canned peach on a plate. He licked his fingers after downing the treat, looking for more payment. And he got it. After all, the building manager and his wife, the spy, owned the only working telephone in the entire apartment building.

  “He just said that he had visited your mother-in-law in her apartment and that she was in critical condition, that you should come quickly because the accident had been quite serious.”

  “Accident? Quite serious?” Frau Becker gasped and set the remaining canned peaches down on the table. “What did he mean by that? Did she fall? Does she need to go to the hospital?”

  “I just take the telephone messages, Frau Becker.” Herr Kessler kept his eyes on the can. “Although it does seem as if he said something else, perhaps. You don’t happen to have any more of those American peaches, do you?”

  “Mom!” Erich whispered, too late. His mother had already offered their building manager the last of the fruit.

  “Help yourself, Herr Kessler,” she told him. “It’s the least we can do for your kindness.”

  “Dankeschön.” He smiled and inhaled the rest of the treat in one swift move before scratching his bald head. “Thanks so much. Now I remember.”

  “What do you remember?” Erich had to know too. “What did the doctor say?”

  “Erich!” His mother scolded him while Herr Kessler wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “That was all, actually. He said nothing more before he hung up. I remember it clearly now.”

  Erich would have thrown the empty can at the man if his mother hadn’t held him back.

  “We’re grateful to you, Herr Kessler.” And two minutes later they were on their way to Oma’s apartment once more, after leaving a message for Katarina’s mother. At least the Mercedes hadn’t returned to its parking spot across the street. Still, Erich checked up and down Oranienstrasse as they hurried to catch the S-Bahn, one of Berlin’s streetcars.

  “They’ll be along,” his mother told him. “They” meaning Katarina and her mother. “I think they’re still waiting in a line somewhere.”

  Like everyone else in Berlin. But they would make it to Oma’s soon. Erich checked over his shoulder once more, just to be sure no one else was following them.

  13

  KAPITEL DREIZEHN

  HELMUT WEISS, CHURCHMOUSE

  “Brigitte?” Oma Poldi’s face showed her surprise as she opened her door wide and motioned for them to step inside. “A pleasant surprise.”

  “Wait a minute.” Erich’s mother stopped short in the doorway. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “Bed? It’s only eight o’clock, child. A summer night in August, and it’s too warm to go to bed early. I may be old and sick, but — ”

  “No, but is the doctor still here? We came as soon as we could.”

  “Doctor? What doctor are you talking about?”

  “The doctor that called our apartment house an hour ago,” Erich explained. This was getting too strange. “The one who told Herr Kessler to tell us that we should come right away, that you might die.”

  Oma Poldi, in her flowered pullover dress, looked as though she might start coughing any minute. But near death?

  “You didn’t actually talk with this . . . this doctor?” asked Oma.

  Erich’s mother shook her head no. “Only Herr Kessler, who passed along the message.”

  At this Oma Poldi leaned her head back and laughed, which was probably a mistake, as it set off her coughing. They had to wait several minutes while she caught her breath once again.

  “I wonder if you gave him something for his trouble?” Oma finally asked, still wheezing.

  “Of course.”

  “Nearly a half can of American peaches!” Erich put in.

  “There, you see?” Oma had it figured out, this mystery. “Kessler is no fool, only a liar and a thief. He sees something he wants, and he finds a way for you to give it to him. So he makes up the story about me on my deathbed, which is not so far from the truth, after all, so you believe it. He makes up this pretend doctor, and the pretend urgent telephone call. You are in his debt. ‘Oh, dankeschön; thank you so much, Herr Kessler. You will have some peaches, bitte?’ Humph! Not such a mystery.”

  “That makes sense,” replied Erich’s mother, “except Herr Kessler didn’t know about the peaches before he pounded on our door.”

  “If not peaches, then something else,” replied Oma.

  “But what about when we found out the truth?” Erich wondered. “Did he think we would just come home and say, ‘Oh, well, that was a funny joke’? What would he do then?”

  “Maybe he didn’t think it through that far.” Oma shrugged. “Men can be like that, you know.”

  Maybe. Erich still had a hard time believing old Herr Kessler was that good an actor, though. And he worried about who had really called them, and why. He couldn’t shake the image of the Shark outside their apartment. But as far as the ladies were concerned?

  “Well, never mind,” said Oma. Then she offered to make tea for them, and they shared the few crackers Erich’s mother had brought along.

  “I’m going outside for a few minutes,” Erich told them. He checked his pocket to make sure he still had the key. “To see if Katarina is coming.”

  Or maybe their friend Wolfgang would be waiting for him.

  It didn’t matter either way. Waiting for Katarina and her family gave him time to search his father’s study again. This time without the Russians on his tail. He hurried outside, munching his half-cracker,
keeping one eye over his shoulder.

  Was that man a half-block behind following him? He couldn’t tell. But when he stopped at an apotheke, a pharmacy, the shadow also stopped. And when he sped up, the shadow also sped up. He passed two Soviet guards, laughing and smoking on the corner of Ackerstrasse. They stood at attention as the shadow passed by them.

  Not a good sign. And Erich could not forget where he was: in the Soviet sector.

  Why did I come out here alone? he asked himself.

  He sprinted around the corner in front of the church, ducked into an alley, and counted to neunundneunzig, ninety-nine. A mother walked by pushing a stroller. A couple of old people, going slow. A group of four young women, probably off work for the day. But no shadow.

  So okay. He darted across the alley and approached the ruined church from the back, where he and Katarina had made their escape the other day. No one seemed to notice on a Thursday evening; everyone probably just wanted to be home. He pushed past a temporary fence and slipped inside.

  And if it had seemed dark before, this time . . . he held his hand out in front of him and felt the way with the toe of his shoe. At least he’d come prepared, with a candle stub and a single match. He would save them, though, until he approached his father’s study once more. There! The candle flickered and cast a pale puddle of light, a meter to every side.

  Once more he stood in his father’s study, the same way he had when he’d been five or six, only it had seemed so much bigger then. Now it hardly seemed the same place. Then, his father would sit at his desk, writing sermons. His bookshelves covered the walls. Now, nothing looked right, and he could find nothing that would fit the key. Not even close. What did he expect? A magic door? After several minutes of fruitless searching he sighed and leaned against the wall.

  “Why did I come here?” Hot wax dribbled onto his finger, and when he jerked back, the candle blinked out — just as a hand came down on his shoulder.

  “I have no idea, preacher’s boy. Why did you come here?”

  Erich might have died right there if the man hadn’t held on to his shoulder. And honestly, he tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth except a chattering “yaa-yaa-yaa!” Too bad Katarina wasn’t here this time; she could have let loose with a real screech.

  “Relax.” The man spoke softly, as he might to a scared animal. He stepped back and lit a small candle lantern of his own. “You’re not in trouble, not with me. Now, the Russians who were following you the other day, that could be another thing.”

  “You, you know who I am?” Erich croaked as he tried to get a closer look at the man’s wrinkled face. But he had seen hundreds of men like him in Berlin. Scarecrows, really, with sad, hollow sockets for eyes and sunken cheeks that made them look like concentration camp survivors. The skin around his arms hung loosely, as if he had once filled out his frame much better.

  “You don’t remember, of course.” A shadow passed across the man’s expression as he looked up and around. “I used to clean this building, keep the furnace lit, dust the altar. That kind of thing.”

  Once he got used to the man’s toothless lisp, Erich could follow the words plainly. And yes, he did remember, though faintly. A large round man who laughed, an old man even back then. The maintenance man, Herr —

  “Helmut Weiss.” He nodded when he said it, the way a doorman or a train conductor might. “Glad to serve you.”

  Glad to serve me? As if he had stumbled upon some long-lost family butler. But yes.

  “My mother — ” A ghost of a thought tickled the edge of Erich’s memory. “My mother used to pack little pfeffernusse cookies for my father’s lunch. Well, they weren’t really pfeffernusse, since we didn’t have any sugar or eggs. But she tried. I would bring them at lunchtime, and we would leave some for you on a plate.”

  The man chuckled and closed his eyes. “You do remember.”

  “But what are you doing here? And how did I not hear you come up behind me?”

  In other words, what kind of ghost had he met in this spooky old church?

  “I live here, young Master Becker.” He carefully scooted a twisted book aside with his foot. “Actually, not in this room, but in another, that is, in the basement. I’ve learned to get around.”

  Erich shivered to think of someone actually living here, someone watching him and Katarina as they walked through the building, someone slipping through the shadows.

  “Isn’t it cold and damp?”

  “I don’t mind so much, living as a churchmouse. No one bothers me. And the pigeon eggs, well, they’re small, but tasty. Perhaps you’d like to try some?”

  “Nein, danke.” Erich shuddered and tried not to look at the man’s haunted face. “No, thanks. I was just looking for — ”

  But he couldn’t finish the sentence, and his hand went to the key once more. Maybe Herr Weiss could help him. Maybe not. Erich wasn’t sure if he could take the chance. Better to ask questions than tell secrets. The old man held up his lantern and looked at Erich more closely.

  “You look just like your father, you know.” That seemed an odd thing to say in a place like this, in the ruins of his father’s life and work. “Your father was a good man.”

  “He was, until the Americans did all this.” Erich couldn’t help kicking at a stray piece of plaster. “Until they killed him with their bombs.”

  Herr Weiss said nothing for a long moment, only breathed in through his mouth, making a raspy wheezing sound.

  “This is what they told you? That your father was killed in a bombing raid?”

  Erich felt himself tense up, as if he’d put up his fists. Who was this man, really? What was he saying?

  “Isn’t that what happened?”

  Herr Weiss turned deadly serious, and the look on his face made Erich shiver.

  “Listen to me, young man. Your father was not killed by an American bomb, and his death was no accident.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  Did Erich really want to know? This was getting ridiculous, this strange meeting in a ruined church. Was this man crazy? But once more Herr Weiss turned quiet, and when he spoke again, Erich had to lean closer to hear him.

  “I can’t tell you the whole story, but this much I know: your father was involved with something . . . something against the Nazis. A plot of some kind. Something very dangerous. They came to ask him questions many times. And the last day you saw him?”

  By that time Erich was nearly face-to-face with the man, hanging on every word.

  “He was not killed here in the bombs. They took him away.”

  Erich didn’t need to ask who they were. The Gestapo — Hitler’s secret police. So it wasn’t the Americans, as he had believed for so long?

  Erich finally broke away, shaking his head. “I don’t believe you.” He stumbled backward and sat down hard on a pile of books. “You’re just making up stories.”

  Herr Helmut Weiss looked at him with his sad, sunken eyes. He held out his hand to help Erich to his feet.

  “I wish I were, Master Becker. I wish I were.”

  So did Erich. Maybe it was the sad shock of what Helmut Weiss had told him. Or the look in his eyes. Either way, Erich could not stop the tears, as if they had been stored up for all these years. Now he knew, and he wished he didn’t. It had been easier just being mad at the Americans.

  He turned away and buried his face. And as his shoulders shook with sobs he felt the horrible weight of this new truth. Love your enemies? Easy for Katarina to say. But he’d been so good at hating these people, maybe too good. Now, if he was honest, he couldn’t think of a reason to keep it up, anymore.

  I miss you, Papa.

  After a couple of minutes, he gulped for air and tried to dry his eyes on the dusty sleeve of his shirt. When he felt ready to stand, he reached for Herr Weiss’s outstretched hand — just as the man stiffened and turned his head.

  “What’s wrong?” Erich didn’t hear anything. But like a bat in a cave, Herr Weiss see
med to know.

  “Someone’s come in the front doors.” His whisper blew out the candle. “You will leave the back way again, as you did the other day. Quickly!”

  There would be no argument with Herr Weiss, who disappeared the same way he had appeared — without a sound. Erich had no idea how someone could be so quiet. He felt his way out of the room, praying that whoever had entered the church would make more noise than he did. Once again Erich left the Reconciliation Church with more questions than answers.

  14

  KAPITEL VIERZEHN

  BORDER STANDOFF

  “Too bad you couldn’t have asked that man more questions.” Katarina kept her voice down that late-summer night as they walked ahead of their mothers by a few steps. Another half-block and they’d be back in the American sector, almost home.

  “Well, you should have been there, then. I didn’t have a chance.” Erich dragged his feet a little, which wasn’t so odd, considering everything that had already happened that night. And though it would have been nicer if they’d had the money to ride a tram this time, it really hadn’t taken long for them to walk the mile and a half from Oma’s apartment. Just long enough to tell Katarina everything that had happened in the church — from the stranger in the shadows who had followed him, to the odd church janitor who had told him about his father.

  Her eyes grew wider with each detail as they neared his apartment building on Oranienstrasse. They could almost see it, on the other side of the line between the American and Soviet sectors, which sort of wandered through this neighborhood. Except for the signs, you couldn’t always tell just by looking where one sector stopped and the other began.

  But Katarina held back.

  “What’s wrong?” asked her mother, bumping into them from behind. Katarina pointed up ahead.

  “Someone,” she whispered, and Erich followed her gaze to see someone sitting in the shadows of the apartment building’s front steps.

  “Is that Fred?” Frau Becker’s step lightened. “I hope he hasn’t been waiting for us all this time.”