Life Behind the Wall

by Robert Elmer

  “Listen, Sabine, you’ve really got to be more careful.” He followed her, but Sabine didn’t slow down. “There are holes and old bunkers and broken sewers like that all over the city. It seems like every time they start a construction project or tear down another bombed-out building, they find something strange underground. If I didn’t come to find you — ”

  “I could have gotten out.” Still she didn’t slow down.

  “Oh, come on. And look at yourself. What are you going to tell Mutti when you get home? That you were out playing in the sandbox? You’re a mess!”

  Sabine stopped and looked at herself for the first time. The knees of her brother’s cast-off pants had ripped, and she was coated with dust. She knew Erich had a point, especially when she looked up at Wolfgang’s window and saw him watching them through his binoculars. She scowled at him but couldn’t help feeling like a bug under a microscope. And yes, he would likely take notes and probably call the authorities. But worse than that —

  Her mother would not be pleased.

  3

  KAPITEL DREI

  ESCAPING THE GOATEE

  “Sabine, stop reading that stupid storybook and pay attention to the broadcast!” Uncle Heinz’s words startled her, but he’d barely opened his eyes as he reclined. Oma Poldi’s old flowered couch sagged under his weight. Sabine wasn’t quite sure how he managed to fit on it. But he had claimed it for his own, and she rarely saw him anywhere else.

  Aunt Gertrud moaned from her chair in the corner, black shades covering her eyes and a smoldering cigarette dangling from her lips. So maybe it didn’t look like a good East German socialist worker thing to wear. But she said she could “see” her migraines even with the blinders on.

  “Bitte, Onkel Heinz . . . please.” Sabine knew it would do no good. She could count on only three people in this world — and he was not one of them. But Oma was confined to her bed, as usual, while Sabine’s mother and brother were still at work. Her uncle belched like a bullfrog (no “excuse me,” or anything) and wagged a pudgy finger at her the way he did when no one was around to defend her.

  “Don’t Onkel Heinz me. I’m doing you a favor. In fact, you’re going to thank me when you go back to school tomorrow and you can tell the teacher what Comrade Ulbricht said in his speech. Every good young Communist needs to know this.”

  “I’m not a good young Communist.” She lifted her book even higher to cover her face. “I’m a Christian, and I don’t like the Goatee.”

  The Goatee was their nickname for Walter Ulbricht, the leader of Communist East Germany, and it was all his fault. The man trimmed his beard like that; what did he expect? The way Sabine saw it, he deserved every nickname they could give him.

  “Have a little respect, eh?” Uncle Heinz puffed his cheeks. “One of these days, I’m not going to be able to help you anymore. You and your mother both. If she weren’t my sister — ”

  She’d heard that line before. Next he would remind her, again, of her duties to the state, what faithful Communist working masses were supposed to do every day. Just like the big red banners that draped East Berlin’s drab buildings said: Work hard. Stay away from spy-infested West Berlin. Support the people’s factories and the German Democratic Republic. Meet your work quotas. Never mind that Uncle Heinz, the good Communist, spent most of his time right here on the couch. He wasn’t even really related to Oma, his sister’s mother-in-law. But he and Aunt Gertrud had invited themselves for a visit to Oma’s apartment and had never left.

  Sabine kept reading Black Beauty, a horse story she’d especially liked the first two times she’d read it. And she did her best to block out the put-me-to-sleep drone of Comrade Ulbricht’s speech, broadcast on the official East German state radio station. Suddenly the novel flew from her hands.

  “What did your onkel tell you?” Aunt Gertrud glared down her long nose at Sabine; she’d pulled back the sleep mask and had parked it on her forehead. Sabine thought all she needed was a wart and a black hat to complete the look. And maybe a broomstick.

  Black Beauty lay on the floor, facedown. Sabine sighed and stooped to pick it up. Aunt Gertrud would never dare act like this when Sabine’s mother was around.

  “But we’ve heard it all, Tante Gertrud. He goes on and on about how terrible the capitalists in the West are — the decadent Americans and their puppets, the West Berliners.”

  “Well, of course they are.”

  Oh, dear. Sabine wasn’t going to try to understand what the screaming men were saying. Comrade Ulbricht and his friends just repeated what the Russians told them to say. She believed that the only puppets were right there in East Berlin.

  “He says much more than that,” Uncle Heinz told them, lifting a finger to his lips. “You just have to listen.”

  “Can’t I change it to the station that plays Frank Sinatra songs?” Sabine wondered aloud. Aunt Gertrud glared once more and settled back into her chair, pulling the sleep mask back over her eyes. Sabine pretended to listen while waiting for her chance to run. Her mother wouldn’t be home for another two hours.

  At least it wasn’t hard to tell when Uncle Heinz fell asleep again. His hands twitched once, and his lips and cheeks puffed out like a blowfish. On the radio, Comrade Ulbricht was just getting warmed up.

  “The enemy is trying to use the open border between the German Democratic Republic and West Berlin to undermine our government and its economy — ,” he droned on. “Aggressive forces and subversive centers — ” blah-blah. “Serious losses in our workforce — ” more blah-blah.

  And Aunt Gertrud’s mask still covered her eyes. Sabine took the chance to quietly limp to the dining room table and grab her book.

  If she was extra careful, maybe —

  In the kitchen, she found a couple of candle stubs and some matches, which she slipped into her little backpack. She also grabbed a couple of scraps of bread as she quietly made her way to the door.

  “You’re not leaving, are you, child?” Aunt Gertrud screeched. “You know how upset your mother was last time, with all that dirt and — ”

  “Be back in just a few minutes, Tante Gertrud.” Sabine didn’t slow down to explain, didn’t wait for the door to close behind her as she hustled down the hall and down the outside steps, into the late afternoon sunshine. Never mind that Wolfgang would probably see her. She glanced up at his third-floor window and sighed with relief. Empty.

  “Sabine!” Aunt Gertrud’s screech followed her outside. Sabine bit her lip.

  “You should listen to your tante.” The quiet, menacing voice made her jump. Wolfgang, his arms crossed in challenge, stepped out of a doorway to block her way. “A person like you could get hurt.”

  As if he cared. Comrade Wolfgang would be pleased only when they came to take Sabine and her family away, as “Enemies of the State.”

  “Danke for your concern,” she said, trying not to let the fear creep into her voice. But as she passed the gangly man with the wrinkled shirt and tousled black hair, she could smell the darkness on his breath. Or was it just that he hadn’t taken a bath in weeks?

  “Sabine!” Aunt Gertrud’s voice faded behind her as Sabine grabbed a stair railing for balance, then hobbled toward the ruined apartment building on Bergstrasse as fast as her noodle legs would carry her. Someday, she told herself, she’d run without her dumb crutches. For now, she worried that Wolfgang might follow her.

  But he didn’t — this time. And as she passed Number 14, she heard the familiar woof of the dog that no one claimed. He bounded out of an alleyway.

  “Hey, Bismarck!” She smiled with relief and bent down to scratch his ear. She didn’t mind that he had been named after a famous war hero, or that he sometimes tried to run off with her crutches. “Sorry I don’t have anything for you this time.”

  But the German shepherd mutt had already sniffed out her backpack and knew better. He parked himself on the sidewalk, right in front of Sabine, and sat up on his hind legs.

  “You little beggar.” Sa
bine dug into her backpack for the treat, a small crumble of dried cheese. “You can’t follow me around the whole neighborhood.”

  But unlike Wolfgang, he did, all the way down Bernauerstrasse and past the tall steeple of the once-beautiful Versöhnungskirche, the Reconciliation Church on Ackerstrasse. Finally they came to the bombed-out apartment block, where Sabine hoped to find the entrance to the bunker. Wolfgang would have lost interest in her by now, wouldn’t he?

  “It’s hidden in the floor,” Sabine explained to her friend, who sniffed around the ruins. Come to think of it, the dog might be good to have around. Just in case.

  “What do you think?” she asked Bismarck, who scampered across piles of rubble and concrete, with no problem at all. If only she could borrow his legs once in a while.

  Finally she struggled into a room with peeling rose wall paper. This must be it. Bomb blasts from long ago had left gaping holes in the walls and ceiling, and Sabine could see right out to the American sector. She dropped to her knees and searched the floorboards for any sign of the trapdoor — the one that blocked the circular staircase below. Bismarck helped with a few sniffs.

  “Thanks, boy.” She ran a hand across the rough, weather-beaten floor. “It’s not as easy to find as I hoped. Maybe you can — ouch!”

  Something sharp poked her finger, like a sliver. Au! But that was okay if it was the board she’d split the other day, pounding on the door from beneath. She followed the board and saw the splintered corner of the trapdoor. Yes!

  She set to work prying it open with her crutch, pulling out the nails, lifting it up. Whew! She could see how the hidden trapdoor had stayed hidden for so long. Nervously, she checked over her shoulder once more. No telling if a friend of Wolfgang’s had followed her here.

  “Here we go!” she told her friend. Bismarck turned circles and barked as Sabine lowered herself down. The dog jumped down after her. From the top of the staircase, she held the dog’s collar and waited for her eyes to adjust.

  “Let me show you something.” She stooped low and closed the trapdoor over their heads. “I think you’re going to like it.”

  Bismarck didn’t wait, he just bounded down the stairs she had to take one at a time. He wagged his tail at her and ran off to sniff. She whistled at him, keeping him close as she set up her reading retreat in the Volkswagen staff car. First she lit her two candles, setting them just behind the shattered windshield. They lit her area pretty well, actually, and Bismarck even jumped aboard for a ride. After circling a few times, he made himself comfy in the back of the car, while Sabine curled up on her blanket in the front.

  “Not bad, huh, boy?” She pulled out her book and returned to the chapter she’d been reading when Aunt Gertrud had snapped the book away. Without a breeze, the candles barely flickered. Sabine listened to the quiet of her own breathing . . . and the dog’s. Pretty soon she just closed her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” She sat up with a start. The candles had nearly burned down, but Bismarck still kept watch. “How long did I sleep?”

  Bismarck nuzzled her arm and thunked his tail as if to say he was ready to get home too.

  4

  KAPITEL VIER

  THE RIGHT THING

  “Where in the world have you been?” Sabine’s mother wiped her hands on a dish towel as her daughter slipped into a chair at the little kitchen table. The others stopped eating long enough to frown at her. And Aunt Gertrud looked over at Frau Becker to see what she would do next.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Sabine’s mind raced to think of the right way to say it. Cabbage and potatoes looked as if they had long ago collapsed into a cold heap in the middle of her plate. “I was . . . I mean, I — ”

  Her mother’s lifted eyebrows looked as if they were saying, “Yes?”

  “I was reading, and I fell asleep.” Sabine blurted out the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but —

  “Not again, Sabine.” Frau Becker reached over and brushed a stray wisp of hair from Sabine’s face. “And look at you. You look as if you’ve been . . . digging ditches or something.”

  Sabine’s mother couldn’t know how close she’d come to the truth.

  In the silence that followed, Uncle Heinz helped himself to an extra spoonful of watered-down brown gravy.

  “So why do you always sneak away to read those books of yours?” Aunt Gertrud wanted to know. “Isn’t our company good enough for you?”

  “Gertrud, please!” That put Sabine’s mother on the defensive. “I can handle this.”

  “Just like you handle her staying home from school all the time? Just like you coddle her? ‘Oh, my poor baby can’t walk, we mustn’t distress my poor baby.’ ”

  Frau Becker’s eyes filled with tears the way they had so many times before, but Gertrud wasn’t done yet.

  “What I don’t understand is why you even stay here, if you hate East Berlin so much. Why don’t you just pack your bags and run back to the West, the way all your friends are doing?”

  As if they could just do that — without risking being arrested for trying.

  “You can’t talk to my mother like that!” Sabine stuck her chin out and would have said something else, but her mother shushed her.

  “You know very well why we stay, Gertrud.” Frau Becker’s voice sounded as still as Gertrud’s sounded shrill. “Not because we enjoy being locked up in a police state, or because we’re forced to stay, which we are. But because I’ve already lost two husbands, and I will not just run away and leave her. Even if I could. Do you understand what I’m saying? I made her that promise even before I joined — ”

  She stopped short, but that wasn’t good enough for Gertrud.

  “Go ahead and say it.”

  But Sabine’s mother only shook her head.

  “Then I will finish for you. Before you joined the Communist Party. Why don’t you say so?”

  Sabine held her breath. Could it be true? Her mother finally looked up with tears in her eyes.

  “I’m not proud of it. But it was the only way to get help for Sabine. They said they would take care of her . . . her treatment.”

  “And now look how well she gets around.” Gertrud swept her hand at Sabine.

  “No. They gave her crutches, and that’s the end of it. They broke their promise. But maybe the Americans would be no better, so I will not break mine.”

  Aunt Gertrud shrugged as Frau Becker went on.

  “And since we’re the only ones left to take care of Oma, we remain — for now. It’s that simple.”

  Of course Oma meant Sabine’s grandmother, who lay ill in her bed most of the time. But Aunt Gertrud would not back down. She held her forehead with both hands.

  “Aw, it just gives me a headache. You and that foolish promise again. You know she can’t hold you to it. And we all know she belongs in a genesungsheim.”

  “That’s enough, Gertrud.” Uncle Heinz looked up from stuffing his face, but she shook him off. Sabine’s mother leaned over so her nose practically touched her sister-in-law’s. Aunt Gertrud didn’t blink. “Let me tell you something, Gertrud, just so you don’t forget.” Her voice trembled this time as it rose. “As long as I live, and as long as Oma lives, she will never be put away in a rest home, out of sight. Do we understand each other? And what’s more — ”

  A bell tinkled from Oma Poldi’s room, just as someone knocked on the door. Frau Becker paused and looked toward Oma’s room then toward the front door.

  “Go see what your grandmother needs, please,” she said to Sabine. “I’ll get the door.”

  As Sabine balanced on one crutch and offered her ailing grandmother a glass of water, she could hear everything in the front room — from her mother’s polite “Guten abend” to the visitor’s “Wie geht es ihnen?” But as soon as the pleasantries of “Good evening” and “How are you?” were out of the way, the visitor got down to business.

  “I understand about her weakness.” The woman’s voice sounded as if she did not — or maybe that she did un
derstand, but didn’t care. “However, your daughter still needs to attend classes every day. And I don’t know why she refuses to join the Junge Pioniere. Perhaps you have not encouraged her?”

  Obviously one of the rektors from her polytechnical schule had come. And she wanted Sabine to join the Young Pioneers? Perfect, if you liked Communist pep talks (like Comrade Ulbricht’s) or enjoyed shouting Communist slogans and parading the streets with flags and banners. No, thanks.

  “It’s just that — ” Sabine’s mother sounded far away. “Well, since the school year is over in just a few days, and she is so weak sometimes. . . . It’s very hard for her, with her legs — ”

  Sabine didn’t make a sound. But that’s what it always came down to — her gimpy legs that refused to work the way they should. However, just this once, she didn’t mind — as long as it kept her out of the Junge Pioniere.

  Sabine noticed Oma Poldi had closed her eyes again. By the peaceful look on her impossibly wrinkled face, she hadn’t heard a word.

  “Beginning of year, end of year, there is no excuse. Weak or not, she will attend her classes more regularly, or else — ”

  The threat from the rektor hung in the air like thick smoke.

  Or else what?

  “She reads good books,” Frau Becker put in. “Many good books. I believe she has learned as much from reading as . . . well, she is quite a bright girl.”

  “If she is as bright as you say, she will be wise to join in the Pioniere. And when she turns fourteen, she will go through the Jugendweihe dedication ceremony and graduate to the Freie Deutsche Jugend.”

  Not the Free German Youth! Sabine wanted to yell. I’m being confirmed in the church instead!

  “She’ll receive very good training in the FDJ,” added the rektor.

  Brainwashing, you mean. Sabine bit her tongue to keep from yelling it.

  “I will discuss it with her,” Sabine’s mother whispered.

  “Discuss?” The visitor sounded like a lawyer in a courtroom. “You simply tell her what is expected, Comrade, and that will be the end of it. Most young people eagerly anticipate going through the Jugendweihe. They dedicate themselves to socialist ideals. Far superior to the old religious ceremonies, don’t you agree?”