Going Over

by Beth Kephart

  In the day Sebastien goes to Bethaniendamm to work on the mural that will make him famous. (“Putting chickens before eggs,” Omi says.) In the afternoons and evenings he’s here, turning our squatter flat into a color village. He has decided that what we need most are yellow, pearl, and green—a different color for each of our rooms. He’s painted checkerboard squares on the narrow bathroom floor, a wire bridge arch over the place where the mirror will be, when and if we find a mirror. He’s bought Timur a painted tin and some seeds, commissioned him to grow my mother flowers. It’s early May, and the seeds have sprouts. I pass them going in and going out of the courtyard.

  He cooks. Mutti eats. We all sit there chewing, Omi deliberate as ever and dark-eyed somber. Mutti’s men don’t ever last this long. Mutti’s never been this happy. Omi keeps chewing and watching, reads in her pearl room or goes out for an afternoon of vanish and twice in these past two weeks she has been gone all day, but she won’t confess to where she’s been. I smell the East on her, the brown air, but I know not to ask her. I see her packing things, moving things, setting off for the flea markets with the things she doesn’t want in her hands. She comes home with coins in her pockets and no more castoffs in her hands.

  “What are you doing, Omi?”

  She doesn’t say. She watches me. She asks me sometimes about Stefan.

  “I don’t know,” I’ll say.

  “You don’t know what?” she’ll say. Staring at me through half of her eyes.

  “I don’t know anything about Stefan,” I’ll tell her. “I don’t know anything about miracles.”

  “You make room for miracles, Ada,” she’ll say. “Do you hear me?”

  She’ll say it and leave. She’ll do her business in the shadows of her thinning room. She’ll go away and come back. The space around her grows bigger.

  “Omi,” I will say to her. “Please tell me what you are doing.” But she has said all that she will say, and I have neither lied nor told her something.

  I leave, too—leave when I can. I find myself places to go and things to do, like making a mobile for Arabelle’s baby. I draw all the people the baby will know and string them together with hangers and yarn. Arabelle and Peter and Felice and the ladies and Mutti and Omi, and me, too, Aunt Ada—all of us in black and white, stark and true, our mixed-up Kreuzberg blood. I want the baby to know who the world is made of. From its very first days on this earth.

  So I go. I sit. I draw. On the park benches and by the sausage trucks. In the shadows of trees, by the canal. Behind the market and in the sanctuary of the church, where Herr Palinski never asks why I’m not at the day care anymore. I use graffiti tricks in miniature, working from memory and intuition.

  And sometimes in the afternoon, when I can’t not think of him anymore, when it’s sadness I feel and not anger, when I think, What if it’s the Stasi taking my letters away, what if it isn’t even Stefan’s fault? I wind down around the belly of the church and past the Thirteen Great Escapes and through the narrow lane between Our Side and Their Wall until I reach the observation tower and climb. The green is coming in on the trees over there. Nobody waves when I do.

  FRIEDRICHSHAIN

  Two weeks, the early hour, and Lukas doesn’t come. You go to the park every day before starting time at the Eisfabrik and you wait, your back against the middle linden tree, your feet where you fell. They put ten stitches in your arm and the black threads itched beneath your sleeve, and you have tried to stay calm, to swallow past the sick hot spot high in your throat past your tongue. You didn’t know him, after all, did you? You trusted the wrong punker guy, and now he has your stuff and he’s guessed your story, and he knows where you live, and it’s not like you can go to the police for a stolen flying fox, come on, and you swear to whatever God there is that if the Stasi come for Grossmutter, you will kill them. You trusted everything to a skinny guy with a spider on his fist.

  And what about Ada? What about Ada, waiting, the letters you didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, because What if? What if you said you would come and it didn’t work out? What if something went wrong, and you had promised? What if the people who read the letters you write figured it out and came to get you? Losing Ada is nothing next to disappointing her, and losing Ada is enough.

  It’s getting late. You have nothing to carry but the stitches beneath your sleeve and the jacket you’ll need inside the factory of ice. You study the break in the hedge, the tops of cars in the streets, the few people who pass by and stop to study you, as if they’re waiting for the circus to come. The church bells from the other side ring. It’s starting hour, and Alexander’s there waiting, with his clipboard and his careful eyes. “You fell where?” he asked. “In the flat,” you said. His letting you lie, again, being his greatest act of friendship. You will never forget Alexander. You’ll owe him big time someday.

  There’s that black cat again, on its white feet. There are the birds, and the sun sticking to the bottom shelf of the clouds that came in fat last night, blocked your view of Kreuzberg. The scope only sees so far. It’s losing part of the color spectrum, and its capacity for pink. You stayed out late on the balcony last night, until it was only you and the TV tower, awake.

  People in the street, cars passing. The cat rubbing its nose against the rough cloth of your jeans. The whistle of a policeman blows, more of a screech than a note, and it’s time to go. You step away from the tree. You’re halfway through the park when you hear the muffler yanking itself down the street.

  Lukas?

  You turn in the direction of the noise, and you wait. You see the pineapple Trabbi shivering at the curb, shutting its minuscule powers down, spitting Lukas out of its driver’s seat. You stand where you are, not moving. You watch him trot, but slow, around the park’s perimeter, toward the break in the hedge, across the hard earth, toward you.

  “Hey,” he says, like it hasn’t been two weeks, like you’re not just standing there with a look of something fierce on your face.

  “What the hell, Lukas?” you say, when you can speak.

  “Man,” he says, lifting your pack off his back. “There was some work to do.” He crouches down by your feet, works the zipper on the pack. Talks down, toward the ground, so you crouch, too, and he unzips, and he talks, and you interrupt him.

  “Two weeks,” you say.

  “This was never going to work,” he says. “Good thing you went first.” He chuckles.

  “I thought you were gone,” you say.

  “I was busy,” he says, and by now the flying fox is out of the pack and on the ground, laid out for your inspection, much improved, according to Lukas, who is still explaining how you didn’t lathe the grooves deep enough, didn’t counterweight the handles, needed a stronger harness strap. No wonder you fell. You’ll be late to the Eisfabrik if he goes on like this, but he doesn’t stop, until finally, abruptly, the words shut off and he stares at you until you shift your gaze and look directly in his eyes.

  “Corner of Schmollerstrasse and Bouchestrasse,” he says.

  You shake your head, shrug, and say that you don’t understand, he’s talking crazy, and two weeks, man. You thought he’d absconded.

  “Listen, Stefan. It’s perfect. I went there. I looked. The place is abandoned. We’ll make like repairmen.”

  He’s done his own math. He estimates a distance of fifty meters from the five-story house in the East to the four-story house in the West. He talks about how lucky we are that the house on our side is taller than the house on the other—how the angle of our escape will give our flying fox just enough speed. Yeah, sure, there’s a watchtower in the midst. But if we play it right and wait until late dark, the guard might not see us.

  “What are you talking about?” He could be a trap, you think. He could be Stasi ears, testing you. You have to test him back. Study his face, wonder what he knows and whom he’s told. Like suddenly, after all these mornings in the park, and everything between you, and everything neither of you carefully said, you have to
get the kid’s credentials.

  “No. 68-A Bouchestrasse,” he presses on. “Neukölln. I’ve got friends who will be waiting for us there with a car.”

  “Friends?”

  “All right, not friends. My brother. One guy, but it’s enough. He made the escape last time, and I didn’t. I got lockup. Twenty months. He’s there, and I’m here, and there’s nothing for me, unless I jump. It’s our time to jump. I knew you were the one the first time I saw you shooting lousy arrows in the park.”

  Your heart pounds in your gut, against your throat. You keep your eyes on him, saying everything fast and everything in a whisper. He fiddles with the fox the whole time so that anybody passing will assume he’s teaching you new laws of physics and mechanics. “We’ll need more cable,” he’s saying. “We’ll need a fishing line.”

  “You’re assuming a whole hell of a lot.”

  “Listen to me, okay? Just listen. The building at Schmollerstrasse is empty, and the chimney is solid stuff, thick and strong enough to take our weight. The skylights above the attic lead directly to the roof. We’ll make them think we’re repairmen. Carry our stuff in during broad daylight, and stay up there until any thinking guard is asleep in his watchtower. We fish the three lines out, one after another, over the wall. We hook our wheels in. And then . . .” He lifts his eyebrows like they can swoop off his face. He throws his hands up high, then scatters them, far as his skinny arms can reach. To Neukölln.

  He keeps talking. You half hear him. You know this part of the story. It’s what you’ve thought through, drawn up, imagined, tested over and over, every day, while you weren’t making your promise to Ada. It’s the arrow, shot straight, that will take the fishing line across the gap above the wall, over the watchtower, the dogs, the rabbits, the sharp grass, the blaring lights, the hedgehogs, the guard with his radio on, the death trap. It’s Lukas’s brother—maybe—who will anchor the line to the fender of his car, and when the tug comes, when the first line is secure, when you get the sign, you’ll knot a thicker line to the fishing line so that it too might be pulled across the gap. Now there’s only the cable to send on in just the same way—its one end tied to the heavier line and pulled across the gap. It’s the cable, one half centimeter thick and steel, that will carry you across the sky. The cable that will run like a rail from the house in the East to the house in the West, at a momentum-gaining angle. You’ll belt in, unhook your lathed wheels, take a strong grip of your handles, and take your freedom ride. Ten seconds, no more, no less. You know this. You’ve dreamed it. You let Lukas talk. You have to.

  “What are you talking about?” you ask, when he finishes his story.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says.

  “Why do you think . . . ?”

  “Are you serious, Stefan? You’ve been leaving the East since I met you.”

  You study him hard. He studies you harder. He shows you with his hands, again, how it will all go down, how it can happen. He announces the risks and he wipes them away. “Worst thing of all,” he says, “would be not to try.” The spider on his knuckle walks as he talks. His hair falls into his eyes. Out in the street the traffic is starting. There’s a group of kids on the park’s other side, singing the Pioneers’ song.

  “Since you met me?” you finally ask.

  “Since the very first day.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because I didn’t have to, man.”

  “You didn’t have to?”

  “It’s all over your face.” You bring your fist to your cheek, like you could rub the look away. You bring your eyes to his, and they are clear, black, honest.

  “When?” you ask.

  “Two days,” he says. “May 22. Meet me there. Bring what you have. I’ll bring the rest. You’ll need socks for the outsides of your shoes—silence, right? You’ll need sandwiches, pop, because you’ll be hungry. You’re a repairman, remember. Dress like one. And tell no one, right? Not a word.”

  “There’s somebody on that side who needs to know,” you say.

  “Write me a note. I’ll get it to her.”

  You don’t ask how he knows it’s a she. Your face isn’t built for the Stasi.

  SO36

  I see her coming from a long way off, her bike streaming, her hair wild, her belly cradled by the handlebars. She’s wobbly, out of balance, in the channel between two walls. She sees me up on the observation tower. Lifts her hand. Calls, “Hey!”

  “Hey.” I stand up. My butt’s cold. I watch her wiggle down the path, then stop. She wears a Columbia University T-shirt and a pair of boy’s shorts. Her legs are dark in her tan, high-heeled boots.

  “You should be careful,” I say.

  “Yeah? And you shouldn’t be so hard to find.”

  “Isn’t it Tuesday?”

  She nods.

  “Shouldn’t you be at the Köpi?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then what are you out here for?”

  She looks up, scans the clouds—the pink and blue fat candy clouds that came in last week and have stayed. She touches the sapphire ring she wears on a chain at her neck. “From Peter,” she said, when I asked her. She pinky fingers the tattoo by her eye.

  “Special delivery,” she finally says.

  “Excuse me?”

  She walks the bike to the wall and leaves it there. Climbs the stairs to the deck, where I’m still sitting. Heaves herself up, one railing clench at a time, because that baby is that big. She hands me an envelope—all taped shut, not postmarked. She waits for me to open it. I don’t know the handwriting.

  “Can’t be for me,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t know that writing.”

  “It says your name. See? Right there. Open it, Ada.”

  I turn the thing over. It’s torn up and beat. It has my first name, no last name, no stamps.

  “Who’s Lukas?” Arabelle asks.

  “I don’t know any Lukas.”

  “Hmmm. That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Because this Lukas guy went to a lot of trouble to get this to you. Five different messengers, from what I heard, until it landed with Felice, at the Köpi, and it’s a good thing that I was there. He had directions: Deliver to Ada. I’m following my orders, thank you.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “For Chrissake, Ada. Will you open the thing?”

  “I’m getting to it,” I say. But I’m trembling. I search for the click-light in Arabelle’s eyes, draw in my breath, and hold it.

  FRIEDRICHSHAIN

  You stand beside her on the balcony looking out on Berlin. The parts that belong to you, the parts that belonged to her, once.

  “What will you do?” she asks, “when you get there?”

  “Love Ada,” you say. “Apply to university. Become a Professor of Stars.” You don’t know if that’s enough. It’s all you have for now. Tell no one, Lukas had said, but he doesn’t know Grossmutter. He doesn’t know about all the people in her life who have left. About how cruel you feel, leaving her. Choices. Consequences.

  She smiles. A tooth just past her incisor is missing, something you hardly see, but now you do, now you try to freeze everything about her, remember it just so, frame the picture. Ada was wrong. Grossmutter loves you. She loves you enough to let you go, to let you think that you can teach her to see, to let you believe that she’ll stand on the balcony scoping, that she will actually find you. That you aren’t being cruel, but self-preserving. That you are being not just a boyfriend, but a man. She understands. At last and finally you know this.

  “The world is here,” you tell her, showing her the knobs and things on your grandfather’s old scope, the way the focus can be changed, the light. You show her the star maps, and how to read them. You show her the dome of St. Thomas and the birds you can just make out, roosting up there in their nests.

  “Look for your mother,” she says, listening but not botheri
ng to try it out. Looking at you, not through the scope. “When you get there. She’ll want to see you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m a mother, Stefan, and I was one before I was your grandmother.” She has tears in her eyes, but they aren’t angry tears. You try to see all her past faces, her future ones. If you want to see something at night, look past it, you told Ada. You look past your grandmother. You look toward her. You wonder when you’ll see her again.

  “I found something,” you tell her. “In Grandfather’s trunk.” She steps away from the scope, leans back against the railing, as if it can brace her for whatever is coming. You swallow past the lump in your throat, dig deep into your pocket. You feel around with your hand, present her his gift in the night.

  “I think he’d want you to have these,” you say. Tears in your eyes now, the whole night and your Grossmutter blurring.

  “Oh,” she says, laying her hand on her heart. “Oh. His cufflinks.” You have had them made into earrings. You screw one onto each ear. She shines like two stars, like love is.

  “Someday,” she says, “the wall will come down.”

  And you hug her so hard you feel your own bones pop.

  There’s nothing easy about it.

  SO36

  “Stop crying, Ada, and tell me.” Arabelle is insisting, but I can’t. We sit on the tower steps, side by side, my face in my knees, the note in my hands, Stefan’s handwriting. Arabelle smooths my peroxide hair with her fingers, tries to lift my chin, but all I can say is the one word, Yes, until finally I give her the note to read, because there’s no way that I could read it out loud myself.

  No. 68-A Bouchestrasse

  May 22. Midnight More or Less.

  Yes.

  “What the hell?” she asks, whispering.

  “Tomorrow,” I say.

  “But,” she says.

  I shake my head—up, down, sideways. “Somehow,” I say. “Somehow.”