by Robert Elmer
“Hope you’re right.” But he couldn’t know that a scared little girl hid behind all her big talk and big promises. She just put the telescope back to her eye. Looking busy and in charge was the best way to not look afraid.
Down on the street, she could actually see the tight curls, tucked beneath a somber gray hairnet, on a passing woman’s head. “This is kind of fun,” she told him. “I can see — ”
The scowl of a very irritated Vopo guard, looking straight at her, filled the view of the telescope.
“Uh-oh.” Sabine ducked. “Not so good.”
“What?” Willi obviously had no idea what she had just seen.
She pulled the curtain shut. “We have to get rid of this telescope, quick.”
“Are you kidding? My father gave me that for Christmas. It’s — ”
“It’s going to get us in a lot of trouble if we don’t hide from the Vopo who just saw me with it. Now!”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
Willi quickly looked around and pointed under the kitchen sink. They squeezed together behind a checkered skirt that hid stuff like the scrub brushes, soap flakes, and a waste bucket.
“Have you even emptied the garbage since your mother went to the hospital?” Sabine whispered, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
“Sorry.” He sneezed once, then again. “I just thought maybe no one would look here.”
Maybe the Vopo would, and maybe they wouldn’t. But Sabine knew she and Willi had to keep silent when the Vopo broke down the front door of the Stumpffs’ apartment.
“On Day Two, Willi and Sabine find a safe place for the tunnel to end,” Willi whispered, as he planned his next journal entry. “Except — ”
They expected the Vopo to break in any minute to capture them. They’d be tried as spies. And Willi had just pulled out his journal again to fill it with more chicken scratching.
“Would you put that thing away?” Sabine hissed. She stiffened when she heard the sound of boots coming up the stairway.
“There!” Willi whispered. “You hear it?”
She nodded silently.
“We don’t answer the door, right?” Willi asked, panicked.
Sabine just sat with her knees in her face, waiting for the man who had seen her to burst into the apartment and drag them off. Strangely, the door didn’t pop off its hinges; it just squeaked open the way it always did. “Willi!” a man called, followed by a whistle.
“Oh, no.” Willi rolled out of his hiding place, sending a glass vase skittering across the linoleum. “It’s my dad.”
Good thing Sabine managed to crawl out from under the sink before Herr Stumpff came into the kitchen.
“So you’re the Sabine I’ve heard so much about.” Herr Stumpff looked like a grown-up version of Willi, only bald and a little grease-stained. He smiled and held out his rough mechanic’s hand. “Willi tells me your grandmother is in the same hospital as my wife and daughter.”
“Yes, sir. Different floors, though.” She wondered what to do when the Vopo pounded on the door. Herr Stumpff looked at the mess on the floor, then at her shoulder.
“Er, can I help you find something?”
“Oh — no, sir. We were just . . . that is — ”
That’s when she noticed the week-old potato peel stuck on her shoulder. “Actually — She felt her face heating up as she flicked the peel into the trash. “I was about to help Willi . . . get dinner started.”
Which explained everything, right? Willi stooped to pick up a runaway scrub brush as his father gave them a curious look.
“That’s very nice of you, Sabine. But I thought Willi and I would eat at the hospital tonight and keep his mother company. Of course, you’re welcome to join us — if it’s all right with your mother, that is.”
“Oh.” Sabine replaced another scrub brush and vase. “I should head home. But thank you for offering.”
She resigned herself to being arrested in the hallway. But Herr Stumpff kept her from leaving.
“I’m sorry, Sabine, but you should know something before you go out there. You too, Willi.”
Sabine nearly choked on her spit. What did he know?
“There’s another empty apartment on the third floor. The police have sealed it off.”
Oh. Another one.
“Do not stop there to look,” he went on, “and don’t ask questions. Just walk on by.”
Willi’s father looked dead serious as he let her go and went to the sink to wash his hands.
“In fact,” he said, “just pretend it’s not there and stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, sir.” She nodded, but her stomach knotted up. Pretend it’s not there? That’s exactly what was all wrong with this mixed-up country!
Pretend he’s not there. And Hitler will go away.
Pretend it’s not real. And the war will soon be over.
Pretend you don’t notice. And the wall won’t matter so much.
Pretend, pretend, pretend. And the Stasi will be nice to us.
Well, it never worked that way. But she tried her best not to glare at her friend’s father, no matter how silly he sounded, as she told them good-bye and let herself out.
“Thanks again,” she called back, knowing she would run straight into the guard as he made his way up the stairs.
But the fifth floor looked deserted, just like the fourth and third floors. Oh, and she caught a glimpse of the empty apartment, the one that wasn’t really there. And though she hadn’t known the people who had lived there, she prayed for them.
On the second floor, a couple of stooped men marched home, never looking up from the worn carpet runner. So she worked her way down the last few steps to the street level, one at a time, the same way she always did — but holding her breath, ready to flee. As if a girl with crutches could have outrun a soldier with a gun.
Sabine carefully pushed the outside door open and looked up and down the street.
No Stasi. Not even any Vopos.
14
KAPITEL VIERZEHN
PANIC ATTACK
Sabine stumbled through the chamber with her wooden buckets full of dirt and grunted as she passed by Willi going the other way. Carrying buckets with crutches was quite a trick, but she managed by hanging them on both ends of a makeshift yoke — a stout board — balanced on her shoulders.
And no, she wasn’t going to let anyone tell her she couldn’t do such a thing. Willi knew better than to even mention it.
“One hundred forty-two,” she told him.
“And that’s just today.”
Right. By the end of the first week, it was getting harder and harder to find room in the underground garage for more tunnel dirt. Even with all the rooms! She paused for just a minute to catch her breath.
“You’re lucky,” she whispered to Bismarck, who sat and watched them from his favorite spot on the front seat of the Volkswagen. “You don’t have to drag all this dirt out. But then, I asked to help, right? So who’s complaining?”
Bismarck stopped chewing his bone to look up at her, his head tilted sideways. The nagging little signal bell on the car’s windshield frame tinkled once. They’d tied one end of a kite string to it and rolled the string into the tunnel, where Anton and Albricht dug away for several hours at a time. One ring meant “Come and get more dirt.” She forgot what two bells meant. But three bells meant “Help!”
“Coming, coming!” Sabine picked up her buckets again, closed her eyes, and headed in. Good thing she’d worked through her claustro-whatever. Fear of dark closets and closed-in dark places. Or dark, damp places like tunnels, where the sides could collapse and bury you alive. What would Mother think if I didn’t come home to dinner? Already she’d used just about every excuse she could think of, trying her best not to lie to Mama. But how did her clothes get so dirty, even when she made an effort to stay clean by changing into scrubs from the hospital?
And, heavens, look at those fingernails! Du lieber Himmel, they’d gotten so dark and dirty. An
d the candles Erich placed on little stands every few feet don’t really help, either, since the tunnel was hardly wide enough to crawl through or turn around in, and the sides brushed against you as if they were alive, grabbing, clawing at you, squeezing the breath out of you —
“Sabine?”
She opened her eyes. Erich stood staring at her in the candlelight, his hand on her shoulder. She blinked her eyes and tried to remember. Had he just said something, or had he just sneaked up on her for fun? And how did she get back in the main room?
“What’s wrong, Sabine? Why are you ringing the bell out here? Are you hurt?”
Well, of course not. But that didn’t explain her sobbing and shaking. Greta and Willi had come running at the sound of the bells, while Bismarck tried to lick her face.
“Sabine?” Greta took her wrist, the way a doctor would have done. “Sabine, relax. Slow down. Your heart is racing.”
And her head wouldn’t stop spinning.
“I don’t know — ” Sabine tried to explain, but nothing came out. She saw herself back inside the closet at the hospital, and she knew Nurse Ilse would keep the door locked until she stopped crying. But she also knew how to stop.
“I’ll be good,” she whispered. “I promise.”
“I’m taking you home,” announced Erich. And by the tone of his voice, she knew better than to argue. She let him lead her to the trapdoor.
When they reached the street, she made Erich stop while she waited for the tightness in her chest to settle down, for the crawly feeling on her skin to go away. She took a deep breath as a Trabi sputtered by, and the car’s nose-curdling fumes made her choke. At least the afternoon sun felt good on her face.
“I don’t know if you should go down there again,” Erich said quietly.
What are you talking about? And who do you think you are, some kind of doctor? Just because you work in a hospital — Sabine’s mind screamed.
Sabine swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth, sniffed, and wiped away the tears with her sleeve. There. Enough baby-bawling. She set her jaw, adjusted her crutches, and shrugged her brother’s hand away.
“Thanks for your help,” she told him as she headed down Bernauerstrasse on her own power. She navigated around a tree, full in its summer umbrella of leaves. And she did appreciate his help, except — “I can make it from here. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”
So he let her go, and a few minutes later, she stopped at the faucet in the alleyway beside their apartment building. If she looked up, she could probably see her mother through the living room window, just above her head. Instead, she spent a few minutes cleaning up in the cool water. She hoped she’d rinsed away the tracks of her tears — and the mud. The sound of footsteps made her turn.
“Glad you made it back home.” Erich stepped up to the faucet and began to wash up himself. Sabine rested on her crutches, glaring at him.
“Told you I would. Why’d you follow? Didn’t you believe me?”
“You can be pretty stubborn sometimes. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Fine. But I’m still going back tomorrow. You can’t talk me out of it.”
He didn’t answer, just scrubbed his hands like a surgeon, over and over.
“Did you hear me?” she tried again.
“I heard you. I’m just going to have to talk with Greta and Dietrich. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Especially not after today.”
“What do you want me to do, stay home all day where it’s safe, the way Mama wants me to?”
“Don’t bring her into it,” Erich snapped back. “If it wasn’t for Mama — ”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to end up like all our neighbors.”
“Not all of them, Sabine.”
“No? The only ones who have any guts have already escaped. And then everyone else tiptoes by the sealed apartments, like they’re not allowed to look. It makes me sick, Erich.”
“I know how you feel, Sabine. And I’m helping my friends because they need me. But maybe, sometimes, God calls us to stay.”
“Not me. Every time I look across that fence, I know where I’m supposed to be. Free. Over there.”
“Then what about our family, Sabine? Or is this just for you?”
Low blow. She fought hard to stop her angry tears. And she gripped the handles of her crutches, wishing she could use them to knock her big brother across the side of his head.
“That’s not fair.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is finally something I can do, something that will actually make a difference. Not just passing out stupid flyers or trying to get people to strike. But you’ve decided to swoop in and say it’s ‘too dangerous.’ ”
She didn’t mean to sound quite as sassy as she probably did. But Erich didn’t miss a beat.
“I’m just thinking about what’s best for you and what’s best for our family. Maybe you haven’t thought of it that way yet. But I have.”
“Well, then, tell me something: why are you mixed up in this?”
“I told you. They’re my friends, Sabine. I want to help them. I have to help them.”
“Yeah, but are you going too, or not?”
Erich studied his shoes and pressed his lips together. He did that when he got upset. But Sabine didn’t care. She had to know.
“So will you go with your hospital buddies, or stay?”
“Keep your voice down, all right?” Erich hissed.
“All right.” She lowered her voice a notch or two. “But you always told me God put you in the hospital for a reason. Right here in East Berlin. Did he, or didn’t he?”
Again Erich didn’t answer right away. Was it all boys, or just Erich that had to think so long before responding? Sometimes it almost made her want to strangle him. She looked straight at Erich, waiting.
“I’ve asked myself the same thing, Sabine.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know, for sure.”
“Well, thanks for nothing.” She turned away.
“I never said I had all the answers.”
And then he burped, just like Uncle Heinz, like a bullfrog. Why did boys always have to do that? Disgusting.
“Excuse you,” she told him, glancing back over her shoulder with a frown.
“That wasn’t me.” He put out his hands and looked up, and her stomach flipped. Just above their heads, the breeze caught a corner of her mother’s lacy window curtain. When had Uncle Heinz opened the window?
15
KAPITEL FÜNFZEHN
HOMECOMING
“Your mama and the baby finally get to come home? How exciting.” Sabine did her best to keep up with her friend as they walked to St. Ludwig’s. “After a whole month in the hospital!”
“Five weeks. And sure I’m excited.” He squinted both ways at the corner of Invalidenstrasse. Sabine grabbed his sleeve just in time to keep him from stepping into the path of a speeding Trabi. “I’m just not sure anybody’s going to get any sleep at home anymore. Have you heard that kid scream since they brought her out of intensive care?”
“I’ve heard.” Sabine smiled as they crossed the street. Not that she had any idea how having a new baby sister would change things. Sabine couldn’t wait to see them “graduate” from the maternity ward.
“Do you think they’ll let me hold little Effi?” she asked. “She’s about the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t know. They’ve pretty much had Elfriede under lights for the past few weeks. Remember? Like a little plant in a greenhouse.”
Sabine laughed. And for one happy moment, she wished she could skip through the street, maybe dance a little. Instead, she swung high on her crutches. Watch out! She could still kick up her heels . . . sort of.
“What are you doing?” Willi didn’t get it. “You’re crazy.”
“Maybe,” she answered as he opened the hospital’s front door. A nurse wheeled Frau Stumpff toward them, baby bundled in her arms. Good timing! H
err Stumpff kept pace alongside.
“She’s beautiful,” Sabine cooed when the wheelchair came near. Yellow mottled skin, button nose, bright little blue eyes, little curly tufts of dark hair — “And so tiny. Like a little baby doll.”
Sabine offered her pinky to Effi and laughed when the baby’s miniature fingers curled around it. After all the little one had gone through, Sabine did her best not to breathe on the baby. Willi’s mother smiled weakly as she watched her daughter. Herr Stumpff walked away for a moment to sign some papers at the front desk.
“It will be good to get home, won’t it?” his mother asked. “I hear Sabine’s taught you to cook since I’ve been in the hospital.”
Willi sort of coughed. Well . . . if you called burned boiled oatmeal cooking.
“Willi, could you do me a favor?” Herr Stumpff looked up from the paperwork. “We left your mother’s suitcase in her room. Could you — ”
“Sure.” Willi nodded and hurried away. And since Sabine knew she couldn’t help much, she decided to check in with Greta and Dietrich. Erich wouldn’t report to work for another couple of hours.
“I’ll be right back.” She stroked the baby’s cheek before following Willi. But by the time she’d reached Greta’s second-floor duty station, Willi had already picked up his mother’s suitcase and beaten her there.
“You’re sure she’s not working today?” she heard Willi ask. He looked puzzled. “She always works Mondays.”
But Frau Ziegler, the supervising nurse, didn’t even look up. She just chewed on the end of her pencil and flipped open a notebook. Sabine noticed the woman’s knuckles had turned white, gripping the edge of the desk.
Odd. She’d always had a smile for them.
“What about Dietrich?” Sabine wondered as she neared the counter.
“Dietrich no longer works here, either.”
Either? Finally the nurse looked up at them. The dark panic in her eyes nearly made Sabine’s heart stop. “Please. I must ask you to leave right away. This is not a good time for you to be here.”
Wait — what had happened to Greta and Dietrich? The shock must have registered on their faces, but Frau Ziegler only snapped her pencil in half as her face turned pink, and she pointed to the exit. Her eyes, however, looked in the opposite direction. How strange. As if she were pointing at something they should know about, something she couldn’t tell them about.
