Life Behind the Wall

by Robert Elmer

  “Careful.” Liesl pushed her papers out of the way so her father wouldn’t splatter them with mustard. “That’s hot.”

  “Now she tells me.” But Herr Stumpff was smiling, and he bowed his head for a moment to pray before digging in. A few moments later he looked up and studied her through his thick glasses. “History, right?”

  “Mutti says not to talk with your mouth full.” She could get away with that kind of teasing once in a while. He pointed his fork at her and winked, as in, you got me. But she quickly explained the paper to him before her mother had joined them.

  “Sounds to me like you’re looking for family stories again.” His low voice matched hers. “But you know how sensitive your mother is about — ”

  “But it’s not like he was her husband. He was her father. Why does she have to make everything so mysterious and — and terrible?”

  Her father shrugged. “I think it was just hard for her, not having a father when she was growing up. Kids used to give her a rough time. And not just because of her polio and needing crutches to walk.”

  “What, then?”

  “Oh, you know, all the bad jokes about GI Joe, the American. Her father who was never there. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “But her parents were married!” Liesl knew that much, at least. “It wasn’t like that!”

  “Ja, even so. But silence is just the way your mother has learned to deal with it.”

  “Was she always like this?”

  “Maybe not always.” He shook his head and took off his glasses to clean them on the edge of the tablecloth. “I think she used to try to make up for her legs by being sort of a tomboy.”

  “No way! Mutti, a tomboy?”

  “People change.” He smiled and replaced his glasses. “Especially when they have kids of their own.”

  Yes, but that much? Liesl tried to imagine her mother as a tomboy (and couldn’t) as Frau Stumpff joined them in the kitchen.

  “Either I’m going deaf,” Sabine said, resting on her crutch, “or two people are whispering in here.”

  Liesl’s father moved his mouth as if speaking, but nothing came out. Liesl took up the joke, gesturing with her hands, as well.

  “Very funny.” Frau Stumpff looked over Liesl’s shoulder to check out her paper but said nothing.

  “It’s for history,” Liesl explained once more. “Our teacher is letting us write about the wall.”

  “That’s good, dear.” Frau Stumpff nodded as if she had a hundred other things on her mind. “But — ”

  “I mean, what’s better?” Liesl rambled on. “It’s history. And here we are, right in the middle of it. Kind of like your church society stuff, right?”

  “Well . . .” Her mother sighed. Something obviously weighed on her mind. “It just seems like there are so many other things to write about, without getting into — ”

  She didn’t finish her sentence.

  “You mean without getting into all the trouble you did when you were my age?” Liesl knew she shouldn’t push it, but still she did. “That kind of stuff?”

  But Frau Stumpff merely pressed her lips together. Papa signaled Liesl with his eyes and a shake of his head to stop before she said something she would regret. But she was just getting warmed up.

  “Well, even if I can’t find out much about when the wall went up, I thought I might write something about the groups protesting the wall today.”

  Whoops. Why did she say that last part? Big mistake. Her father stopped chewing for a moment and studied her through his thick glasses, as if he expected something to blow. The room felt eerily like her uncle’s kitchen had on her birthday.

  “You mean the groups of criminals we see on the news, I assume,” said Liesl’s mother, the fire growing in her eyes.

  “No, I don’t mean criminals, exact — ”

  “Then you mean the people who throw beer bottles at border guards or pose for the American news cameras, making big, violent scenes, is that it? That kind of protest?”

  Well, at least they were doing something. And Liesl didn’t think it was like that, at all. She felt her face turn a light shade of pink before her father came to the rescue.

  “You know, dear,” he told his wife, “you shouldn’t be so shy. If you have an opinion, maybe you should just come right out and express it.”

  “And you think you’re so witty sometimes.” Sabine grabbed a dishtowel and swiped him over the head. He held up his hand to defend himself.

  “Watch out for this woman, Liesl. She always says her society is against violence, but she’s armed with knitting needles!”

  Liesl smiled with relief. She’d put her foot in her mouth, badly, again. She was a master at saying just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. But she still had a paper to write, and obviously her parents (meaning, her mother) wouldn’t help much. But she couldn’t stop digging until she found out what had really happened in her family. Even the parts her mother refused to talk about. If it ended up that she couldn’t use her history for this paper, well, she still wanted to know.

  And if her parents wouldn’t tell her, she knew someone who might.

  6

  KAPITEL SECHS

  FIRST CLUES

  “Come in, come in, mein Amerikanisch friend!” Herr König scurried around the counter waving a book in his hand. “Wait until you see what I have found for you!”

  Nick paused just inside the shop as the jeweler took another customer by the arm and led her to the door.

  “Come back in an hour, Frau Putzkammer,” he told her. “I will have your watch cleaned and ready by then.”

  “But — ” Frau Putzkammer didn’t seem ready to leave, but she didn’t have much choice. Herr König slammed the door behind her with a jingle of bells before he locked it and flipped the sign in the window from Geöffnet to Geschlossen. What was this all about?

  “Now, I told you I would find out about this church for you, did I not?” Herr König was almost breathless at his detective work. “So here it is. In Berlin!”

  He held the book open and nailed a page with his finger. Nick tried to read it, but —

  “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to read that for me. My German — ”

  “Ah, ja. I keep forgetting.” He pulled his jeweler’s glasses over his eyes, as if preparing to clean Frau Putzkammer’s watch. “I shall translate for you: The history of the Reconciliation Church ran not straight-lined, but breaks experiences. Thusly, with the jahr 1894 Empress Auguste Victoria participated in inauguration place of worship donated of their, which offered one thousand humans seats. The empress — ”

  “Wait a minute, Herr König!” Nick held up his hands. “Excuse me.”

  Herr König looked up as if Nick had just interrupted the performance of a symphony.

  “I’m sorry.” Nick didn’t quite know how to say it. “But I’m not following a word of what you’re saying. Are you sure that’s English?”

  “What?” Herr König paused for a minute to reread his book, then flipped up his glasses. “Of course it’s English. Only sounding a little bit like the German, perhaps. Translation is — not always so easy.”

  “Yeah, I’m finding that out. Why don’t you just tell me what it says, without — I mean, you don’t have to read the whole thing.”

  “Hmm.” Herr König looked at Nick as if he thought Nick were cheating. The building, the first years, the war years — more than Nick wanted to know. But still he listened politely. Finally he had a chance to ask a question.

  “So this church was right on the line between East and West Berlin, and it was already called the Church of Bringing Back Together? That’s pretty cool.”

  “Ja.” Herr König nodded. “Cool, as you say. Unfortunately, it was damaged by Allied bombings during the war.”

  “Oh.” Nick wasn’t sure if he was supposed to apologize for that sort of thing, or not. “That’s not so good.”

  “I said damaged, not destroyed. Many other buildings were dest
royed, turned into piles of bricks. Not this one. It was beautiful, the steeple so tall. Some damages, ja, but it was repaired some years later and used again as it had been.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Ja, except for one problem.” He jabbed at his book and read — or translated — once more. “It says here that a ‘Minister Hildebrandt tried 1960 to energize building and add community center. But before this could happen the East German government created other facts.’ ”

  “Facts?” Once more, Nick felt lost.

  “They built the wall in 1961.”

  “That’s not so good. But I knew that. Did that mean people couldn’t use it anymore?”

  “They tried, but it was no good. And so in 1985 — four years ago — the government finished what the Americans and the British had started.” He closed the book and put it aside. “They tore it down.”

  “Oh.” Nick turned away. “I guess that pretty much ends the story. Maybe I’ll find someplace else to take Fred’s cup.”

  “Nein, nein. But here I am forgetting to tell you the best part of what I have learned!”

  “The church is history. What else is there to tell?”

  Herr König opened the book once more, this time to the end, to a part that looked to Nick like an index. He pointed at a name and address as if it meant something important, along with one of those German words that seemed to go on and on, out the door and around the block. “See here?”

  “Uh — ” Nick squinted at the printing, trying to make out any familiar words. And there! “Isn’t that the start of our church word? Vers . . .”

  “Versöhnungskircheerinnerungsgesellschaft. Which means, The Reconciliation Church Remembrance Society. ‘Dedicated to the Future of East-West Relations, Not the Past.’ Well, at least that sounds — forward-thinking, no? And look here: This is the name of the society’s president and her office address. It appears she’s a social worker of some kind, works for the Ministry of Church Affairs, or some such agency.”

  “No kidding? So all I have to do is talk my folks into taking me to Berlin, and we can give this to — ”

  “Frau Sabine Stumpff.”

  “Frau Stump, okay. Maybe you could write that down for me?”

  “Didn’t I tell you I would find out?” Herr König beamed as if he had just cracked the mystery of the century. He went to the door, pulled back the lock, and turned the sign back over with a flourish and a bow. “I only wish I could have had the chance to buy that chalice myself.”

  The American boy tried to make sense out of his tourist guidebook, but all he understood were the little black-and-white photos.

  “Wish they’d make these things in English sometimes,” he mumbled, “for all us non-German types.” Oh, well. He was the foreigner here, and he’d better get used to it. His father would be stationed here for a few years, at least, before they could get back to the States. He wasn’t sure he would call that “bad” news, exactly. But the good news was that after eight weeks he could recognize a number of German words, thanks to Herr König’s help.

  Ja meant yes and nein meant no, of course. Everybody knew that from watching old World War 2 movies on TV. Okay meant okay, which seemed pretty convenient, and then there were bitte, danke, and bitte, again. Please, thank you, and “don’t mention it.”

  So far, so good. If he only knew that much when he started at the American Academy in the fall, he’d do okay. But a couple other phrases might come in handy. He studied his dog-eared little copy of How to Speak German in Thirty Days and tried out a phrase.

  “Ikh fer-shtay-e nikht!” He looked up from his book with a smile. “Did I say that right?”

  His mother looked over at his dad, who had lifted the top off a frying pan for a sniff of pork chops. He breathed in deeply but shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said, replacing the lid. “Although — that sounds an awful lot like ‘I don’t understand.’ I think I’ve heard that one a lot around the base.”

  “Bingo!” And possibly some of the best words he could learn. Even so, Nick graduated to the next page, stumbling through the foreign words one at a time. “Gehen wir nach Berlin?”

  His parents both stared at him blankly this time. Not a clue.

  “That just means, ‘Are we going to Berlin?’ Pretty good, huh?”

  “Oh, I get it.” His dad chuckled.

  But it was supposed to be a hint, Dad. Nick waited with an expectant expression, and his mom stepped in.

  “I think he’s trying to tell you something, dear.” She picked up his uniform jacket and hung it in the little hall closet. “Since we’ve been here nearly two months and we haven’t seen anything more than the street between here and the base.”

  “We all knew it was going to be tough these first few weeks.” Mark Wilder — Master Sergeant Wilder — plunked down in an easy chair and propped his stocking feet up on the coffee table. “It’s not a vacation, even if it is summer. This is my job now.”

  “But not twenty-four hours a day.” She stood at the kitchen entry, hands on her hips. And Nick held off from adding to the argument. He’d run out of German words. And his mom was doing just fine on her own.

  “You know how much it means to him, dear.” When she started talking like that, she could sweet-talk a camel out of its hump. “With his friend’s — er, artifact, and all. And it would be an interesting trip for all three of us, don’t you think?”

  Nick did his best not to smile. But Dad would lose this one, no doubt about it.

  7

  KAPITEL SIEBEN

  FOR AN EXTRA COOKIE

  “Anything interesting happen at the office today?” Liesl picked through the small pile of papers and mail her mother had dropped on the kitchen table.

  Frau Stumpff had already slipped out of her street shoes and headed for the bedroom. “We got a letter that might interest you.”

  Liesl looked at the top envelope, which carried a Frankfurt return address. But what kind of name was Nick Wilder?

  “The one from a British man?”

  “American.” Her mother’s voice drifted into the hall from behind the door. “And it’s not a man. It’s a boy your age.”

  “Oh?”

  This could be interesting. She looked at her mother’s name and the Reconciliation Church Remembrance Society scribbled in messy boyish handwriting. Wonder what made him write?

  She unfolded the letter to find out. And she hardly noticed when her mother came back into the kitchen dressed in jeans and a comfy black sweater.

  “Someone found a war trophy in an attic,” her mother began. “I think it’s — ”

  But Liesl hardly heard her mother’s words as she read about the chalice, possibly from her great-grandfather’s church? It sounded interesting.

  “Apparently he’s coming to Berlin with his parents for a few days,” Liesl’s mother explained as Liesl read the same thing in the letter. “And he wants to return the chalice.”

  Yes, but that didn’t explain everything. For instance —

  “How did he know to write you?” Liesl wondered aloud.

  “We’re not hard to find.” Frau Stumpff leaned in for another look at the note. “You know the society is listed in all those directories and local history books.”

  “Yes, but — ” The mystery swirled in a fog around Liesl’s head. “Why do you think he wants to bring it to you in person?”

  “I have no idea. There’s obviously more to it than what he says in the letter.”

  Obviously! And that made Liesl wonder, “Are you going to answer him?” She hurried on, not giving her mother a chance to reply. “Because if you’re not, it would — well, it would give me a chance to practice my English.”

  “Well,” Frau Stumpff hesitated. “That’s not exactly why I brought that letter home. I don’t know if — ”

  “It’s just a kid my age, right? And doesn’t he say his family is planning to visit Berlin?”

  “Well, yes, but — ”

  Frau St
umpff narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together the way she did when she and Liesl started to argue.

  “But what?” Liesl pressed.

  “Nothing.”

  Liesl tried not to smile. Not that she cared much about an American boy. Boys were boys, after all, American or German, and mostly a pain in the neck. But the chalice!

  “Oh, and did I mention?” Liesl thought she’d better say so. “I told Oma Brigitte I’d visit her Saturday morning.”

  Which should have pleased her mother, but the frown only stretched a little longer.

  “Hmm. Social call, or research for your school paper?”

  “Uh, both, I guess.” Liesl wasn’t going to lie. “Papa said it was okay.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Just don’t go asking her too many uncomfortable questions. You know what she went through.”

  “I know, Mutti. I won’t make her uncomfortable. But you never tell me anything. I just want to know, sometimes.”

  Well, that pretty much shut down the conversation-turned-argument. Liesl nearly added, just for the record, that when her mother said uncomfortable, she meant something entirely different from what most people did. Then she wisely decided to hold her tongue. When she tried to hand the letter back to her mother, Frau Stumpff shook her head.

  “No, you answer it. I said you could.”

  With that, her mother grabbed the handle of her crutch and hobbled out of the kitchen. End of discussion.

  Liesl’s grandmother sipped her tea after she settled into an easy chair in her den. Liesl looked around the tiny apartment on Hermannstrasse — Hermann Street. It was less than an hour away by U-Bahn, the subway, from Liesl’s apartment, and on the same side of the wall.

  “So, your mother tells me you’re on another one of your missions,” Oma Brigitte said. But she didn’t say it quite the same way Frau Stumpff would have.

  One of your missions. It was just a statement. Nothing more. How much did she know?

  “That’s what Mutti always calls them.” Liesl smiled and tried not to burn her tongue on her tea. She added another sugar cube to her cup. “She is always teasing me. She’s always worried about something.”