Life Behind the Wall

by Robert Elmer

  “I-I’m not sure.” Her tears let loose again, and they nearly choked her next words. “Maybe they’re too afraid because it’s been so long.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Or maybe they’re just afraid they’ll discover that you had your own family and kids and grandkids, and that you wouldn’t want to, you know, hear about us.”

  “But you’re not afraid?”

  “Ja, I’m afraid.”

  Afraid, and she wondered what to say next. Maybe he was wondering the same thing in the silence that followed.

  “May I write to you?” she finally blurted out. He didn’t answer right away, but he did answer.

  “You can if you want. You probably have my address, I’m guessing.”

  “Greybull, Wyoming state, USA.” The words echoed back at her across the long-distance lines.

  “You got it.”

  So was that it? As she said good-bye and hung up, Liesl could have kicked herself. What could she have said differently? At least she knew he hadn’t died. But this conversation hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped. Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to do this on her own. She’d only made a mess of things.

  She could only think of one person who could help her make this right — and he didn’t live on this side of the wall.

  18

  KAPITEL ACHTZEHN

  LONG-DISTANCE CALL

  Nick looked up from his homework when the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” his mother said, leaving their hamburgers frying on the stove, sputtering and popping in a familiar sort of way. The warm smell kind of massaged his nose, made him grin without really knowing why, like a secret untold, or a joke. And for just a moment, if he didn’t look around too much, he could almost imagine himself back in the States, Dad heading home from work, Mom fixing dinner, him doing his math homework at the kitchen table.

  Just like back home in Wyoming.

  So was anything really different, living here in Frankfurt? All the American kids went to school on the base, so most of the day he swam in a sea of American kids, teachers, and books. On the surface, who could tell the difference, really? Sure, they learned German in school. And of course everybody off the base was German. So the accents sounded thick and hard to understand sometimes, and once in a while he had to use a little sign language to get his point across. But other than that —

  He heard his mother’s voice from the den, almost shouting. She always did that when someone called long distance, no matter how good the connection. Maybe that made sense when his grandma from Dallas called. She had a little trouble hearing anyway. But everybody else?

  “I’m so glad to hear it, Mr. DeWitt, and — ”

  Nick’s ears perked up even more. Fred? Calling here? He walked into the den to see what was up, and his mother waved him over to the phone.

  “Yes, and here he is. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear from you.”

  She nodded and handed Nick the receiver.

  “Hey, Fred . . . Yeah, I miss hanging around the airport, too . . . Oh, pretty good. It’s actually not so bad here, I guess . . . Yeah, lots of cool planes to watch on the base.”

  He twirled the phone cord around his finger as they talked about what he was doing (not much), whether he missed Wyoming (he did), and how his parents were doing (just fine). But of course, that wasn’t the real reason the man had called. Fred said he guessed Nick might be wondering.

  “Well, sure — I guess you could say that. Not every day I get long-distance calls from the States . . .”

  He listened for a moment.

  “That cup?” he said. “Sure. I was going to write and tell you all about it, too . . . Yeah, it was pretty weird how it turned out. A little confusing, but I think the lady who — oh . . . You know all that already?”

  Nick nodded as his friend explained about the call from Liesl Stumpff.

  “Right! She told me about that, too. Yeah, I know it sounds weird . . . Uh-huh. I guess there are a lot of scams out there. But all I know is what she told me.”

  The hiss and sputter on the other end of the line told him Fred hadn’t hung up.

  Into the silence, Nick ventured, “So does this mean maybe you’ll come visit Germany? Kinda check out your long-lost relatives at the same time?”

  Well, he’d thought it sounded like a good idea. Fred had a different way of looking at it.

  “Oh. Right . . .” Nick agreed. “Sure, I understand it’s all pretty sudden. Yeah, I’d feel that way, too . . .”

  Nick wasn’t sure what else to say, except —

  “Anyway, if you change your mind you could always stay here. I mean, I could sleep on the couch and you could have my bed if you want.”

  And what was the chance of that ever happening? Maybe that’s why they both chuckled, which seemed a better way to end the conversation, anyway.

  “Sure. I’ve got to go, too. It’s probably expensive to talk like this. Long distance, I mean. My dad’s always getting after my mom for calling her sister back in Oklahoma, says it costs big bucks for overseas calls. Yeah. See you, maybe.”

  Or maybe not. As he hung up the phone, he wondered if he could have said something else.

  19

  KAPITEL NEUNZEHN

  DETENTION

  Liesl checked her watch once more. In less than an hour she’d answered most of the usual East German checkpoint questions — name, age, address. And where were her parents this afternoon? No, she hadn’t crossed before without her mother or father. But she had to go see her uncle. It was very important.

  After the mess she’d made of the phone call to Fred DeWitt, she’d taken the time to think things through before acting this time. She decided to show Onkel Erich the letters she’d found, not just tell him about them. She just had to convince him to help her.

  She suddenly realized the guard had asked her another question. Yes, she replied, her parents would know where she was (if they looked in her room, they would see the note on her dresser). But she’d be home before dinner, no problem. She could do this on her own.

  But now she fidgeted in her seat next to the same wooden table where the guard had made her and her mother dump their purses on the last crossing. Today’s guard fired questions at her just as she’d expected.

  “What is your business?”

  She wondered what to tell him. Why not the truth, again? “Well, you see, I was working on a paper for school, and my onkel promised to tell me more about my grandfather. He’s the only one who can really explain — well, my grandmother could, too, but she’s kind of in shock, since she found out that my grandfather is still alive. But I’ve never met him, you see, and so last week I tried to call him on the telephone, and — ”

  “Ja, ja.” The guard waved for her to stop. “That’s enough.”

  She almost smiled, but didn’t, of course. He didn’t believe a word of it, or didn’t care. And this time she wasn’t worried about getting caught with Bibles tucked into her socks. So what was taking so long?

  Another of the border Vopo guards entered the room and squinted at her as if she were wearing face paint or might be carrying a bomb. But this time, she felt confident. Go ahead and look through my purse, she thought.

  Just as long as they hurried it up. If they did, she could see Onkel Erich and get back before dinner, no problem. And maybe he could help her convince Herr Fred DeWitt of the truth. If her uncle couldn’t, then who?

  The first guard found her letters.

  “These are yours?”

  “They’re just old family scrapbook things. Old.”

  He could see that. Liesl sighed with relief when he tossed them aside. Then he pulled another scrap of paper from her purse and held it up to the light.

  “Who is this person and what is this number?”

  “Oh.” Liesl wondered if this might mean trouble. Good thing they hadn’t seen where she’d written the matching phone number on her palm. “That’s my grandfather. The one I was just telling you about?”


  “But this is an Amerikanisch name? You said nothing of this. A telephone number in Amerika?”

  “He’s Amerikanisch, ja.” She shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

  And did they want to hear it? He frowned and called over yet another guard. This was getting to be a replay of the last time she had crossed with Mutti. Only this time she didn’t see the guard who had the crush on her mother.

  “Is something wrong?” Liesl felt her hands start to shake, though she had nothing to shake about this time. All this fuss over a silly phone number?

  No one answered. And they called over a fourth guard, who carried a binder full of photos that they all crowded around. She could only see the corner of the collection, but when one of the guards pointed at a photo, they all looked closely at Liesl, then back at the photo. They nodded in agreement.

  “That’s her,” said the first guard, and there could be no mistake in his voice. The others agreed and straightened up.

  “May I see?” They could at least give her that courtesy, and now despite her shaking hands, she could feel the heat rise to her face.

  Guard 1 took the photo binder and spun it around in her direction.

  “This is you, is it not?”

  Liesl gasped when she saw the photo. It must have been taken with a high-powered camera lens — it looked grainy and far away, taken from an East German guard tower, for sure. Yet there was no mistaking Liesl Stumpff, carrying a rather large protest sign, standing near the wall. It looked as if she were scowling, or shouting, or both. Not the best shot she’d ever seen.

  “You will come with us to the detention center for further questioning.” The first guard pointed at the door. “We’ve been instructed to detain anyone involved in subversive activities against the state.”

  “But I’m not an adult.”

  “We recognize no age limits in this matter.”

  “You mean, you don’t care if I’m only thirteen?”

  “You will follow us, please.”

  “Wait a minute. Subversive activities? I don’t even know what that means, and I’m not East German. I was born in West Berlin. You can’t do this to me.”

  “We will continue this conversation in the detention center.”

  “But my things — ”

  “You will not be needing them.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “You will be fed and accommodated, if that’s what you’re concerned about. For the time being, consider yourself a guest of the East German government.”

  “But what about my parents? They’ll be worried.”

  Maybe they’d already found her note?

  Back by 5:30. No worries. Love, Liesl.

  “They will be notified in good time,” replied the guard, who didn’t know about any notes and wouldn’t have cared if he did know. “But perhaps you should have thought of that before you attempted to cross the border.”

  Liesl thought of all the times she had crossed smoothly. Now her first solo crossing was going so wrong. What would they do to her now?

  “Can you at least call my onkel, tell him I’ll be late?”

  As if he knew she would be coming.

  “No calls. No more discussion.”

  This time the Vopo meant business. He grabbed her arm — hard — and dragged her through the door. Okay, okay! She looked back at her stuff and wondered why she had decided that crossing alone was a good idea.

  Liesl remembered waiting for an hour and a half in a doctor’s office once. Or maybe at the dentist’s office.

  But she’d never waited this nervously this long.

  She checked her watch once more, just to be sure. Six hours, twenty-three minutes. Already past dinnertime, and still the Vopos hadn’t come. She didn’t know what to expect, but so far no beatings, no interrogations, no nothing. No one had shoved a light in her face and said, “We have ways of finding things out, you know.”

  No, they must have forgotten her.

  And the “detention center” had turned out to be a miserable little concrete-walled jail cell — with four bare walls, no windows, and a metal door (also with no windows). A previous guest had scribbled his initials in the faded green paint. She pounded on the door one more time, skinning her knuckles on the cold steel.

  “I need to use the toilet!” She yelled until her lungs gave out, until she started to sound hoarse. But someone must have heard her. Some minutes later, a prune-faced woman in a gray military-style skirt yanked the door open and kicked a metal bucket into the room. It spun like a top as it skittered across the damp floor.

  “What’s that for?” asked Liesl.

  The woman hardly looked at her, only pointed at the bucket and started to close the door again.

  “You asked, so there you go. I trust the accommodations are to your satisfaction.”

  “No! Wait!” Liesl jumped as the door clanged shut and the lock slammed into place. The bucket reeked of disinfectant and — other things.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Now she almost wished she hadn’t said anything. “You’re not serious, are you?”

  The whole day seemed like a bad dream. Liesl kicked at the door and didn’t care that it hurt her toe. At least the pain pointed out that she wasn’t dreaming. After six hours and twenty-three minutes, she only cared about getting home. What had she been thinking, trying to visit her uncle alone, anyway? She laughed bitterly at how sure she’d been about getting home way before dinner. She faced the door and imagined it had become the prune-faced guard.

  “What do you think of Ronald Reagan, huh?” She challenged the closed door, but in a hoarse whisper. She gave it a good kick every few words or so for good measure. “Have they told you about him over here? Born the sixth of February, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois state, USA. Fortieth President of the United States. How do I know this? Because I’ve been writing a stinking report on the stinking wall for the past two stinking months, and if I ever get out of here I’m going to write it all over again so it’ll be the best stinking report in the whole eighth grade at the Hans Eichendorff Schule.”

  Maybe that was one too many stinkings, but in this room that word (which she could rarely remember using before) seemed to make a whole lot of sense. Unfortunately. And she wasn’t stinking through, yet, either.

  “You remember, now?” She lowered her voice even more, just in case the walls had ears. “You heard his speech, didn’t you? Ja, you did. They had the loudspeakers pointed straight at you! Half the people in East Berlin could hear it — especially you people.”

  She did her best Ronald Reagan imitation, which wasn’t very good at all. “ ‘Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!’ ”

  Well, even if they didn’t remember those words, she did. And if she could have torn that stinking wall down, she would have, right then and there. With her bare hands. But she could only cry and pray and whisper, until she crumpled to her knees on the cold concrete floor next to the stinking bucket, bawling her eyes out.

  “This wasn’t quite what I had in mind, Lord,” she prayed. “I tried. I give up.”

  But she figured the Lord had probably let her get into trouble on her own — since she’d decided she could do everything by herself, right?

  Right. And she couldn’t help wondering about her parents. She’d long since missed dinner and a whole lot more. By now they’d have found her note and were probably going crazy. She bet they even had the police out looking for her.

  Oh, yeah — wrong country. She wasn’t even on her own side of the wall! If only her uncle knew, if only they’d let her call him. On the American TV shows, criminals always got one phone call when they got thrown in jail. These people obviously didn’t watch American TV shows.

  Someone yelled down the hall, and the sound sent a cold, electric shiver up the back of her neck. He didn’t sound well.

  At least she didn’t see any rats in the cold blue-white light of the overhead fluorescent lamp. But it had started flickering as if deciding to go out. The
fluctuating light was starting to drive her crazy. Everything was driving her crazy. And she started to understand how people in these kinds of places might confess to all kinds of weird things they had never done. If it would help get them out, hey, sure.

  Just get me out of here, Lord. Please. She didn’t want to start crying again — if she did she felt she’d never stop. So she shivered and huddled on the floor, afraid to touch anything, afraid, suddenly, that she might never get out of this hole.

  She checked her watch again — seven-thirty. A noise in the hallway got her attention. It sounded like someone running down the outside hallway, boots clicking fast. And then again and again — then shouts echoed back and forth. Guards yelling? If only she could make out their words. She pressed her ear to the door — and nearly fell over when someone yanked it open.

  “Oh!” When Liesl reached out to keep from falling, she ended up grabbing the prune-faced guard around the waist. A little awkward, ja? “Excuse me, bitte. I was just — ”

  “On your feet.” Frau Prune-face brushed Liesl off with a look of distaste. “Follow me. Now.” Her voice commanded action.

  Liesl hoped she’d get to use the phone now. But the way Frau Prune-face grabbed her arm and half marched, half dragged her down the hall squelched that hope. At least she’d gotten out of that stinking room.

  A couple of guards rushed by. Liesl realized they were decked out in full riot gear — heavy black jackets and motorcycle-style helmets with Plexiglas shields — and guns.

  “Ow!” she cried as a guard’s rifle butt caught her in the back, nearly knocking her off her feet. But he didn’t slow down, no “Excuse me, bitte.” And Frau Prune-face didn’t seem to notice. She just marched on. Liesl at last gathered the courage to ask, “What’s going on? Where are you taking me?”

  20

  KAPITEL ZWANZIG

  RIOT

  The prune-faced guard never said a word as she led Liesl down the hall of the olive-drab detention center.

  “Please tell me where you’re taking me.” Liesl tried one more time.