The Girl Behind the Wall

by Mandy Robotham

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ he says flatly. He leans over to look at her chart, clearly delaying, but Karin’s earnest look prompts him to reach into the pocket of his pristine medical coat and pull out a piece of paper.

  ‘Karin, we’ve had this back from the administration department,’ he starts, offering up the slip. It feels like no time for manners and Karin snatches it from him, her long, lean fingers shaking as she unfolds what is effectively a permit request from the hospital. The plain, black type swims in front of her eyes, only the stamped capital letters, huge in their redness, almost pulsing at her: ‘REFUSED’.

  ‘But … but, you said … I thought it was just a formality?’

  His sigh oozes regret, perhaps for his easy promise. Perhaps it’s for the system he lives in and – possibly until now – wholeheartedly believed in. ‘I’m sorry Karin. I really thought so too. We’ve appealed, questioned it, but …’

  ‘Why won’t they let me go home? Why?’ She’s furious and frightened in equal measure. ‘I’m no threat to anyone, I don’t even know any …’ As her face creases with distress, the tears roll and flow and Karin clutches at her belly to prevent the pain from her convulsed sobbing. She doesn’t consider herself worldly – while she’s no less intelligent than Jutta, she does admit to being less curious about life beyond Berlin than her sister. But Karin is not ignorant. She listened intently at art college, absorbing the late-night political discussions in candlelit student rooms. She knows what the GDR is capable of, in protecting its borders and what they view as ‘their’ workforce. She’s heard of the Stasi stories, the tales of people plucked from the streets of East and West Berlin by men in dark cars and taken across the border, sometimes never to be seen again. She’s often viewed as a wallflower, a quiet presence, but Karin Voigt is not stupid. She can predict all too well what this might mean.

  Through the warp of her tears, she sees the bright, clean ward suddenly as the dankest of dungeons, feels locked in its confines. What will she do? What can she do? How will Jutta, Mama and Gerda reach her now?

  Head bowed, Dr Simms stands and places a hand on Karin’s shoulder, then seems to sense the futility of such a gesture as she rocks with distress beside him. He walks wearily towards the nurses’ station and the exit.

  ‘Watch her carefully, please,’ she hears him say to the ward nurse. ‘I’ll be back to check on her soon.’

  13

  The Wall Closes In

  18th August 1961, West Berlin

  ‘Quick, there’s another one!’ someone shouts and Jutta’s eyes snap up to the windows above the throng of people lining Bernauer Strasse – firemen, reporters, television crews and ordinary, bemused Berliners like herself. The cameras swing towards the building while firemen hover under the windows, one at each corner of a large blanket, as an old woman climbs into the window space on the third floor and sits teetering on the ledge, her thin legs swaying. Even from a distance, Jutta recognises the fear etched in her features, her mind clearly wavering between one fate or another. The fate below is possible freedom mixed with potential death or injury if she misses the blanket; the one behind is a permanent life in the East, since the windows left and right have already been bricked up by Vopo police, all two thousand block residents facing eviction and forced to hand over their keys. Jutta’s heart aches at the split-second choice this poor, petrified woman faces: leaving a life, and possibly a family, behind.

  The crowd gasps again. The decision is made more urgent by the sudden appearance of a Vopo from behind, clawing forcibly at her limbs as she wrestles to make her leap of faith. It’s a bizarre human tug-of-war, the Vopo wildly grasping the arm of her coat as she flails and tries to squirm free, one terrified eye on the ground below. Eventually, gravity wins out and the horde holds a combined breath as the woman slips from the confines of her coat and into the air. Her terrified squeal is muffled by the blanket, but still Jutta doesn’t dare breathe until a hand rises to signal the woman is all right – alive at least – and then a cheer of relief goes up through the crowd. Until the next one.

  Exhausted by the angst of watching, and yet compelled to witness it, Jutta peels away with a heavy sigh. It’s six days since Karin’s operation, and five days since the GDR’s ‘barrier’ went up. As it gets higher, a lengthy hotchpotch of rubble and concrete slabs, the will to pull it down seems to lessen. They hear on the radio that the Allies have moved thousands of troops into West Berlin to showcase their defence of Western democracy, but with little action. Hugo comes home with news of panic-buying as West Berliners fear their walled city could be entirely cut off if the GDR restricts road access again, prompting Ruth and Gerda to patrol the streets and shop for whatever they can find, the memories of the ’48 blockade and the threat of hunger still fresh in their minds.

  Jutta observes it all, with her own eyes, or via the radio and newspapers, but she is consumed by waiting anxiously for news of Karin. She hovers impatiently at work in the hopes of receiving another visitor, and checks the post box at home at every opportunity, but nothing. Frantic, she tries her luck at more checkpoints, sometimes waiting to piggyback on a long line of visitors – those with foreign passports are still allowed access – and hoping the border guards will be overwhelmed with the numbers and less likely to check meticulously. But they are too good, or at least too frightened to be bad. The answer remains the same: ‘Sorry Fräulein.’

  She and Hugo make a tour of the border again, looking for relatively unguarded patches of the Wall backing onto Berlin’s many allotments; they spot one and affect to be a couple walking hand in hand near the wire, only to have the owner’s chickens kick up a squawking fuss as they approach the barrier, making them sprint away from an alerted border guard. Breathless, her back to the cool concrete of a nearby house, Jutta realises only then what she is risking. For Karin and for herself, she would do it – make a run for it across – but suddenly she remembers Mama and Gerda. And Gerda’s allusion that her sister should not suffer again. Jutta can’t be responsible for her mother losing both of them, or the pain it would cause.

  Still, the panic is closing over her. The East Germans are battening down the hatches and Jutta can see no cleft for either sister to slip between. How and when will someone help Karin wheedle her way through?

  14

  Hope and Kindness

  19th August 1961, East Berlin

  Karin’s progress is better than expected and it soon becomes clear that she’s well enough not to occupy a precious hospital bed any longer. It’s perhaps a testament to her youth and fitness that she’s outdone even Dr Simms’ estimation of her recovery, and he arrives to tell Karin of her imminent release.

  ‘Will there be a further appeal for my permit?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve already tried again,’ he replies gravely. ‘And it’s the same answer.’

  ‘So what will I do? Where will I go …?’ She feels the panic spiral again, the same dread that has kept her awake the past two nights, swimming in visions of herself on the street, dirty, hungry and begging, even though the propaganda tells her there is no such thing as homelessness in the people’s state of the GDR.

  But Dr Simms is prepared for her distress and is ready to offer some respite.

  ‘You can come and stay with us, my wife and me,’ he says quietly. ‘Our daughter is away at university and, well, we have the space. We’d welcome the company if I’m honest.’

  ‘But won’t that put you …’ – her eyes skitter left and right – ‘under the spotlight?’

  He nods his understanding, but there’s a smile on his lips and his normally intent, grey eyes are bright. ‘Luckily, I’m too useful as a doctor for anyone to think about getting rid of me,’ he says. ‘Not just yet anyway.’

  Karin stares through the beads of tears collecting on her lower lids, swallows and thinks she may now cry not with distress, but with gratitude for his kindness, that there are people like the Simms in the world.

  ‘Yes, I would like that
. Just until I manage to get ho …’ Her voice cracks.

  ‘Just until then,’ he finishes for her. ‘So, it’s settled. I’ll take you to my house tomorrow. Though I’m guessing that my nursing skills aren’t anywhere as good as your Aunt Gerda’s. But, luckily, my wife used to be a nurse.’

  The dread in Karin subsides and she manages a laugh. The grim tableau of an itinerant life on East Berlin’s streets recedes. For now, she will be all right. But what then? Will a breach in the East German will – or the Wall – ever let her through? More, perilous visions rear up in Karin’s mind: of being forced to hunt for her own chink in the brickwork, scrabble in darkness over or under the wire, or risk drowning to see her family again. In the end, will it really come to that?

  15

  An American Comes to Town

  19th August 1961, West Berlin

  In her cocoon of the Charité’s white walls, Karin can’t be aware of the tumult happening across the city, near to where she has always called home. Jutta, though, is there to see it, balancing on the back of Hugo’s bike again as he points his microphone in the direction of the crowds, capturing the excitement of those that have come to see, cheer and applaud the visiting US representative: President Kennedy has sent his second-in-command, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, to pacify West Berliners with reassurances that they are supported by the might of the United States. It’s a Saturday of hot sunshine between brief showers and, looking at the streams of people on the streets, Jutta tries to imagine her city only a week previously, as she had headed to the cinema and Karin in the opposite direction, with her identity card and her portfolio of designs tucked under her arm, full of hope. The colourful summer had been in full swing then. As sisters, they’d had few cares, both having decent jobs and feeling secure in the household they loved, though they had talked in private of breaking free and renting an apartment together, not daring to tell Mama or Gerda until they were sure. That ideal seems a long way off to Jutta now.

  Today, the city is awash with good feeling, old women leaning over their balconies and waving white handkerchiefs at the motorcade winding its way slowly through West Berlin. Its first stop is Potsdamer Platz, where ‘LBJ’ and Willy Brandt walk ten metres from the patchwork grey of the Wall, young East German soldiers clambering up and taking pictures of the pair. Back on the road, the big American stands tall in the open-topped car next to Mayor Brandt and dodges the bouquets of flowers raining down upon him; if Berliners have been irritated by the Allies’ muted reaction to the Wall’s sudden arrival, they aren’t showing it. LBJ works the crowd almost as if it’s an election rally, hopping out and kissing available babies, shaking the hands of excited Berliners, who stretch to touch him as if he’s bringing the city some material hope. Better that he’d brought a sledgehammer in his suitcase, Jutta muses.

  Her cynicism has grown within the last seven days and her expectations of tangible Allied action are low. But, amid the rubble, the continuing barricades, the expanding, emergent carbuncle of a concrete divide, Berliners need something to hold onto, and their near hysteria at a visiting American reflects it.

  She and Hugo park the bike some way from Schöneberg town hall and immerse themselves in the swaying crowd of three hundred thousand or so in the square; the early evening sun bathes one side with an orange canopy, the other half in shadow. Another divide.

  Settling the masses by dipping his head and putting on his glasses, LBJ sets his voice to a sombre growl up on the plinth. ‘The president wants you to know that the pledge we have given to the freedom of West Berlin and of Western access is firm.’ He pauses for the roar that goes up in the heated crowd, then with a firm defiance: ‘This island does not stand alone.’

  When the cheering subsides, Hugo points his microphone towards the people’s chatter nearby. ‘So, does it mean they’ll actually do something now?’ a woman says, bobbing her baby high on her hip.

  ‘I doubt it,’ someone else responds. ‘They talk well enough. They bring in more troops, more armoury. But did he say one thing about getting rid of the damn monstrosity that’s killing our city? I’d rather Kennedy had sent a bulldozer.’

  Hugo gestures for the two of them to leave as the numbers begin to disperse and again Jutta feels at a loss. Now is the time on a Saturday night when she and Karin would be thinking of getting dressed to go out and meet friends, for drinks and sometimes on to a party. They weren’t keen club-goers, but often just sitting at the pavement cafés around Kurf’damm, surrounded by the lights and the buzz of life, was enough to amuse them for an entire evening. Jutta would tune into the different languages and accents in the air, picking up some English and French, and a little Russian, mostly idle chit-chat. She loved also to watch Karin’s fingers twitching, desperate to record what she saw, as fashionable men and women paraded up and down the boulevard, small nuances that she would squirrel away and absorb into designs of her own. The boutique she worked in had sold a few of Karin’s handmade dresses, with enquiries for more, and she was considering employing a sewing shop to stitch up her little collection.

  ‘I’ll start small,’ she told Jutta with real conviction. ‘That’s the way all of the big designers progress. I will make it, Ja-Ja. I will.’

  Back then, Jutta had never doubted it. Does she now? Seven days already seems like so far into the past, the longest they’ve ever been parted. It feels like an age. Her sister, her soulmate, is barely a few kilometres away, and yet it might as well be a million miles, at the end of a rainbow. With each day, her hope of clutching at Karin again dwindles. The city has been bisected and segregated, made smaller and turned upside down, and still it feels as if she’s floating in a vast sea of nothingness, with no horizon to focus on.

  Jutta looks towards the east and wonders how the residents of East Berlin and the GDR are feeling on this Saturday night. They are beyond the Iron Curtain, effectively restrained, while West Berlin becomes an unreachable and solid fortress, behind a monstrous, jagged fence.

  Jutta wonders inside her head: just which side is the prison, and who are the prisoners?

  16

  A New Existence

  10th November 1961, East Berlin

  The noise startles her, heavy footsteps running towards her with urgency, echoing off the hospital corridors. Instantly, Karin flattens herself against the wall, trying to make herself small as she had two days before when men in long, dark coats had marched into the building and swept past her. They had stopped abruptly only a few yards on, surrounding a fellow cleaner and her newest friend, a diminutive young woman called Dora. Karin heard her protestations: ‘No, I don’t know anything, really I …’ before she was swallowed in the folds of the Stasi wings and dragged away, sobbing. Karin’s last vision of Dora is etched in her mind: eyes wild with sheer and utter terror.

  Trembling with shock, and some relief at not being the target, it had taken a half hour for Karin’s heart to stop racing. They’re not after me, they’re not after me, she chanted to herself, curled up like an animal in the dark confines of the cleaning cupboard.

  Now, the footsteps are equally swift and a tall man careers around the corner, almost skidding on the tiles she’s just mopped. His features are stricken, eyes blazing, and Karin freezes as he stops abruptly.

  ‘Which way is the men’s medical ward?’ he pants, and Karin points tentatively to her left.

  ‘Along the end of the corridor, last set of doors on your left.’ She can’t control the tremor in her voice, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Thank you,’ and despite his hurry, he nods.

  Karin is hauling her floor polisher into the storage room almost an hour later when she becomes aware of a presence behind. On turning, it’s the same man, though he’s much less anxious she notes. He’s young and lean, handsome. More importantly, he appears friendly.

  ‘Oh hello, can I … Are you lost again?’ Karin ventures.

  ‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to apologise for surprising you before – you seemed
quite alarmed.’

  His face breaks into a warm smile and Karin wonders how his world could have improved in so short a time.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Actually, I thought it was you who looked worried. Is everything … Sorry, I don’t want to pry …’ She’s suddenly flushed with embarrassment, oddly conscious of her coarse nylon overall and hair held back with grips.

  ‘It’s my father,’ the man nods. ‘A suspected heart attack – gave us a bit of a shock. But thankfully, it’s not too serious. He’s just resting now.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m glad.’ The pause sits between them, though the man doesn’t seem inclined to move.

  ‘Well, I’m pleased you’re all right,’ he says at last. ‘Have a good day.’

  And then he’s gone, though only until the next day, when Karin is working the same corridor. The man arrives at visiting time with a small bag of fruit, making a point of saying ‘Hello’ on his way past and holding up the bag. ‘I’ve eaten several pieces on the way over,’ he says with an air of mischief.

  ‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Karin calls after him.

  The next day she finds herself lingering a little in looking out for him, pleased when he arrives with a greeting. She’s even more delighted when he stops the day after and asks if she’s free to join him in a cup of coffee sometime after work. Should she? After only a few months, Karin knows that Stasi officers come in all shapes and sizes – Walter Simms and his wife, Christel, are solid East Berliners, but even they’ve taught her to be naturally guarded. They’ve been so kind in making her feel wanted, at home – if the East ever can be – taking her out to functions and introducing her to friends of their daughter. Even so, she’s made only a few friends of her own – and one had been dragged away from her as quickly as they’d met.