The Girl Behind the Wall

by Mandy Robotham

  Karin is gone in a second, lithe as she exits and disappears without hesitation.

  ‘Good. Don’t look back, Karin,’ Jutta murmurs. But will you come back?

  41

  Being Karin

  3rd August 1963, East Berlin

  Jutta sits for a time in a dusty old armchair left in the corner of the kitchen, feeling tempted to simply stay put for the entire day, whiling away the hours with the book she’s crammed into her small shoulder bag – something by Eastern writer Anna Seghers, safe and acceptable to be seen with. Her stomach, however, gives off a grinding complaint; she’d managed to force only a piece of bread down at home, unable to face any more, and now her body is protesting. She needs to go and play her part, being seen in the GDR, as if all is completely normal and routine in the life of Karin Voigt.

  Smoothing down Karin’s dress – her dress for now – she fingers the expertly sewn seams and the keyhole pockets, notes it’s the same short, waist-less style Karin favours now, and wonders if her sister wears it to hide the lack of meat on her frame. But then these dresses are in fashion too, though in West Berlin they are made from distinctly lighter and more breathable material; Karin’s creation is a patchwork of beautifully matched offcuts, but throwaway all the same. Some parts of it itch against Jutta’s skin and she wonders how long it’s taken Karin not to notice the cheap, nylon fibres rubbing up against her.

  It’s almost eleven by the time Jutta heaves herself through the window and out into the alleyway, perching Karin’s cap on her head, pushing back her shoulders and sucking in a large breath. I am Karin. Karin Voigt. I answer to Karin. I am Karin.

  She decides on walking towards her sister’s apartment, which – Karin has assured her – isn’t far from the Presse Café. It will waste some time, and she’ll become more familiar with East Berlin, in case they do this again. She feels a slight panic at the thought – will they? Will this become a routine for months on end, until Karin makes the final break?

  Beyond the alleyways of the industrial area, people are out and about doing their Saturday chores; the queues at several of the state-run Konsum stores are lengthy, and Jutta decides to join one of the lines, feeling that she’s far enough away from Karin’s place not to be recognised by one of her neighbours. It’s a chance to satisfy her genuine hunger, as well as an appetite for stories and conversations while they wait, and for a fleeting minute she thinks of Danny and his similar fascination for the ‘nitty gritty’. Danny – what she wouldn’t give right now to be in a beer garden with him, on the edge of a lake in the Tiergarten, his fingers linking into hers, conversation free and flowing. Free to do anything. The sky is blue and the sun is shining in East Berlin, but the ceiling of oppression looms suddenly dark and low over her.

  The chatter in the queue is both sad and heartwarming; little ones with their mothers are endlessly patient, amusing themselves with little games and singing songs, and Jutta wonders whether infants of the West ever display such tolerance, instead of hanging from their mothers’ skirts and whining of boredom. For these children, waiting clearly becomes second nature from a tender age.

  The lines are made up mostly of women, and the talk is chiefly of which shops are currently stocking hard-to-find groceries. ‘Someone over near Spittelmarkt managed to get some lemons – did you ever hear of it?’ one woman says, though there’s no bitterness in her voice, merely surprise. Jutta senses only one snippet of near dissent, when the woman directly behind lowers her voice and tells her line neighbour of a raid in her block the night before.

  ‘They took her away, screaming, in front of her children,’ the woman whispers gravely. ‘You’d think they would wait until the kids were at school, wouldn’t you? Poor children, the last sight of their mother, like that.’

  ‘What for?’ her neighbour says.

  ‘No idea,’ the first woman says. ‘Her husband is a Party man, too. But he was nowhere to be seen. Makes you think.’

  The conversation drifts as the line moves forward, and Jutta is soon through the doors of the shop. She’s determined not to compare it with the brightly lit stores of West Berlin, not to judge harshly, but it’s hard when the atmosphere is immediately dour, with its yellowy strip lighting fizzing as if there’s a fly caught in the filaments, stuttering above and threatening to cut out completely. The women alongside seem not to notice and plough towards the bread counter.

  Jutta is conscious of simply meandering but, in all truth, there’s very little to browse for. Jars are spaced out on the shelves to help make them look less empty, which is difficult when compared with the plentiful supply of Spreewald pickles, a speciality of the East and something Oskar is partial to. Somehow, though, she doesn’t think a souvenir is appropriate today.

  The bakery counter is swamped with yet another queue so Jutta picks up a packet of dry-looking biscuits; they will sustain her until she can reach Karin’s flat.

  She pays automatically, and then freezes on seeing the frown of the till girl, instantly cursing herself. The girl’s hand closes over the coins slowly, her wide eyes carrying an added weight to her expression. Will she shout or scream, waving her hands about to signify a capitalist spy in their midst?

  Instead, she merely says: ‘Have you got any other change, Fräulein?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I have,’ Jutta stutters, and pulls out the right coins – East currency, instead of the West she’s handed over. Stupid, stupid mistake!

  ‘Thank you,’ Jutta says, her own look relaying intense gratitude, and hoping it’s not misplaced. Her entire fate now rests on this young girl’s reaction; mercifully, she moves on to the next customer without a second glance. Still, Jutta’s nerves are drawn tight as she strides away from the Konsum, bracing herself for the heavy footsteps behind that might yet come. Only they don’t.

  You were lucky, Jutta. Don’t push it.

  Wearily, she trudges north in the midday heat, still unconsciously avoiding any groups of Vopos hanging around on street corners, pretending to patrol when they’re simply eyeing up pretty girls. She checks her whereabouts twice on a street bench by taking out the copy of Sybille that Karin has lent her and hiding the map inside. So far, so good.

  The Presse Café’s imposing, stone columns are a relief, and she makes a decision to divert there: the biscuits have left her with a raging thirst and she needs both the coffee she missed out on at breakfast and several glasses of water, plus Karin’s shoes have started to pinch – another element of identical twins that is not entirely exact. Once inside, she’s also glad to see it’s half full, enough to be seen and blend in, but not to stand out like a sore thumb as the lonely girl.

  ‘Afternoon, Karin. Hot out there, eh?’ the barman asks. ‘What can I get you?’ Shock and relief floods Jutta as at least one person is taken in.

  ‘Oh, my usual coffee,’ she ventures, ‘and a glass of water.’ She spies dishes of smoked sausage and potato salad on the counter behind him and her stomach rumbles again. Does Karin often eat in here? Can she afford to?

  Jutta’s nerves triumph over hunger and she decides coffee will have to satisfy for now.

  The barman hands over the drinks and Jutta checks twice in giving over the right currency. Satisfied, he leans in close with the change.

  ‘Hey, tell Otto there’ll be another band next week – no date yet, but we’ll get the word out.’ She nods knowingly, and wires a message to her brain: remember to tell Karin.

  Settled at a table next to the window, she pulls out her book and pretends to be absorbed, though the words swim past her eyes and she can’t pin them down. Perhaps Seghers’ tale about concentration camps isn’t the best choice for today. ‘Relax, relax,’ Jutta half-mumbles behind the page. She sips at her coffee and there’s some comfort in the thick, strong liquid. In minutes, she’s beginning to calm down at last.

  ‘Is that book as good as they say?’ a voice pushes in; male, a little tentative.

  ‘Sorry?’ Her tone spirals up towards alarm.

  ‘You
r book. I was just wondering, only my sister is reading it …’

  Jutta looks across at the table to her left. A young man – a grown-up boy really – is eyeing her earnestly. ‘Um, I don’t know really, I’ve only just started it.’ She smiles weakly and cuts away, tries to slink back behind the page. Damn! Her plan is to be Karin’s visible but largely silent alibi, with minimal contact. And this guy is not helping.

  But he won’t be thrown off, leans from his chair a little closer. ‘Haven’t I seen you in here before?’

  Is that a chat-up line, Jutta thinks, or is he hinting at something else? He could simply be a nice soul. Lonely, and a little odd, but harmless. Or not; caution is by far the best tactic, especially today.

  ‘Yes, I come here sometimes with my boyfriend,’ she says. Firmly, but with a smile, then slices her gaze away a second time.

  ‘You live nearby then?’ he keeps prodding.

  Jutta’s nerves fizz. It’s too much, even for an insistent suitor, and yet too blatant for Stasi – her guess is they would be more circumspect.

  She swallows back the panic in her voice, forcing it to be still. ‘Hmm, not far away.’ Surely he must get the hint soon, that I’m not interested?

  Finally, he seems to. He drains the last of his drink and moves towards the exit.

  ‘Bye then,’ he says as he passes. ‘Enjoy your book.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’ But there’s not a single letter of text that’s made it into Jutta’s brain as yet. Her entire focus is on willing him to go.

  Jutta watches him through the smear of the windows as he hesitates outside in the street, then walks off left. She’s about to lose sight of him when he pauses to talk to someone on the street corner; her eyes widen with alarm as the man-boy stands alongside a Vopo, helmet removed but a gun hanging from his shoulder. The soldier is smiling and his stance friendly rather than challenging.

  Who on earth is that young man? And why talk to her – as Karin? She’s sure Stasi wouldn’t be so overt or stupid, and certainly not foolish enough to waltz up to a Vopo and declare their GDR loyalty to all. Still, the episode leaves her disconcerted and thinking it’s high time to hide away for at least a portion of this very strange day.

  Karin’s apartment is half a dozen streets away, though with each stark, square block that goes by, the area appears darker and increasingly drained of life; where there are plants in the window boxes, they’ve gone to seed, withered and brown. The few people on the street are hurriedly making their way into identical doorways, each with a fleeting glance back across their shoulder as they enter. Or is Jutta reading too much into a simple gesture of the head, as she’s reading far too much into everything today?

  Karin’s building looks to once have been a dove grey painted over the concrete blocks, but it’s now streaked with damp and seepage from various pipes, lending it the strange look of a striped animal from afar. Jutta can’t help thinking it’s a long way from the aged grandeur of the Schöneberg apartment.

  The smell in the hallway is sharp rather than unpleasant; someone’s been busy with a bucket of disinfectant. She bangs the door shut purposely and clomps up towards the third floor as noisily as she can. No need because, as she reaches the second storey, a door on the left opens a few inches and a woman’s large, jowly face looms through the crack. Karin’s description of Frau Lupke is spot on – ‘Look out for a rhino with curlers’ – and Jutta has to stifle a laugh at the very sight in front of her.

  ‘Good day, Frau Lupke,’ she sings and sails on past. There’s a grunt of acknowledgement chasing her up the last flight. Mission accomplished. Perhaps now she can relax?

  The flat is as Jutta expects, though it takes her aback nonetheless; a small, rundown municipal apartment made quirky and welcoming by Karin’s unique style, with swatches of fabric covering up the dark, damp patches and her sister’s illustrations sketched directly onto the wall, the lines of peeling plaster incorporated into Karin’s own meandering cityscape. It strikes her then how much she misses Karin’s doodlings, often scattered on scraps of paper and café napkins in the apartment, or hidden under Jutta’s pillow as a surprise.

  Still, the apartment is tiny and in any other guise it would be entirely depressing. There’s a minute galley kitchen, pipework obvious and ugly above the stained sink, and a bedroom–lounge, the window of which looks out onto a similarly miserable landscape of grey blocks, each draped in washing fluttering in the slight breeze, which at least offers some colour. The concrete seems intent on obstructing the sun’s rays from making their way into the room, and Jutta thinks foolishly: is the light in East Berlin banned?

  On the single, small table sits Karin’s beloved sewing machine, surrounded by a dressmaker’s tools of pins and thread, and rough pattern pieces she’s made from old copies of Neues Deutschland. One cut mark slices straight across a picture of Walter Ulbricht and Jutta laughs aloud at Karin’s effrontery.

  On the bed, she finds a parcel, wrapped with old newspaper and bound by a strand of wool, a label on top in Karin’s script: For you. Unwrapping it, she finds another of her sister’s masterpieces, holding up the cotton-like fabric to reveal a straight shift dress of a style Jutta has glimpsed only in magazines, one that has caught her eye time and again. It’s Quant, but essentially Karin too: the sleeveless block of maroon colour contrasts with vents in the skirt of a light red, matched on the collar trim, and triangular patch pockets of a deeper purple, each expertly appliquéd with two black stripes.

  In a second, Jutta has pulled the curtains across the window and cast aside Karin’s dress in favour of the new one. It fits like a glove, falling from her small breasts past her waist and just brushing her hips as she swivels inside. With the swish of her new bob – which she’s beginning to like more and more – Jutta parades in the few feet of space around the bed, prancing like a leggy Quant model on a catwalk somewhere in London or New York, and her one wish is that Karin was here to see her right now.

  She flops back on the bed, runs her fingers along the cool cotton of the dress – a rarity in East Berlin, she imagines – and wonders how much Karin sacrificed for it. Jutta draws in the scent of her sister on the pillow though, seconds later, there’s a jarring, unfamiliar aroma; it’s distinctly unfeminine, and Jutta is pulled back to a harsh reality. She is not in some faraway capital, but in a dingy apartment in the prison of East Berlin, taking in the scent of Karin’s lover, while her sister is somewhere across that infernal boundary. She feels confined, hemmed in after only a few hours, and so how does that make Karin feel, living it each and every day?

  For the next few hours, she reasons there is at least a door between her and the steely scrutiny of Frau Lupke, the Vopos and, she hopes, the Stasi. For now, she can feel relatively safe.

  42

  Being Jutta

  3rd August 1963, West Berlin

  Karin launches herself from the opening and onto the grubby cracked paving near Harzer Strasse, instantly reminded of a friend’s pet when she was younger, a grey rabbit whose talent was in popping his head in and out of his hutch in response to their encouragement. With everything else swirling around her head, she can’t imagine why she thinks of it now.

  Swiftly dusting herself off, she scouts around, relieved to see there’s no one else about. This part of Berlin is largely unfamiliar to her, but straightaway Karin is at home, on safe ground. Everything feels different, more solid almost. She hurries towards the nearest U-Bahn, keen not to waste time on a long walk to Mama. After almost two years, it’s the faces on the platform and in the carriages that strike her most as unusual: their features are open and alive, a general chatter between friends unafraid of their conversation being overheard, in contrast to those in the East – closed, guarded expressions sculpted into a flat nondescript look. And yet she’s become so attuned to it, she’s hardly noticed until now.

  When she finally exits onto the streets of her childhood, Karin’s nerves mesh like tangled wool. Before today, it had been a long wait, a happy ant
icipation, the thought of Mama’s face when she opens the door. Now, there’s unease nudging into the mix, of what she will say, how she will explain her need to go back East, to be with someone Mama and Gerda have never met.

  She spies Hugo’s face from the street, keeping watch from his bedroom window, and gives him a cursory wave as their eyes meet. Lovely Hugo – her best ally alongside Jutta, as a child, and now. A potential cushion against their mothers’ combined confusion.

  He opens the door and ushers her in, holding a finger against his lips. She hears Gerda’s chatter and her mother’s laughter from down the hallway, the sound of which springs immediate tears, and has to work hard to rein them in. This is a happy time, Karin. Happy.

  Karin walks into the parlour behind Hugo, and he peels to the side.

  ‘Jutta, what are you doing back? I thought you’d gone …’ Ruth’s words are held aloft, like dust on a warm breeze. It’s said that every mother knows the cry of her own child, like a pin drop in a clamour of sound, and the same is true of twins; since their very first hour of life Ruth has been able to distinguish one daughter from another, almost by smell alone. This time, her eyes sense the difference. Karin is in Jutta’s dress and with the same bob of dark hair – even Karin thought they had contrived well to look alike today – and yet the recognition is instant. Mama always says Karin possesses an extra, subtle curl to her lip, invisible to everyone else but a beacon to Ruth. She was half-standing, and now she is static, frozen in disbelief. She glances at Gerda for confirmation, as the only other person who can identify the girls instantly, and, when Gerda’s face displays equal astonishment, Ruth moves towards Karin.