The Girl Behind the Wall

by Mandy Robotham

  ‘Calm down, Karin,’ Jutta says, forcing their eyes to lock together. It’s when the thread is the strongest, the point at which they connect fully, though now it feels taut and strained. ‘Axel has no interest in betraying us – he needs me.’ He needs the portal the most, she thinks, but for now she and it go hand in hand.

  ‘As long as you do what he says?’ Karin hisses bitterly.

  ‘Yes! And I know that. And I will. I’ll do what he says, if it protects us – you, me and Otto.’ Jutta stares hard into her sister’s face. ‘I will give him no reason to betray us.’

  ‘But what if he has someone watching the entrance all the time, watching what you do?’

  ‘If he has, then he will see just me going through,’ Jutta asserts. ‘No one else, won’t he?’

  Karin sniffs and nods, the years suddenly stripped back to when they were small and she would fold herself in Jutta’s cradling arms each time she was upset. From birth, they took on and accepted their individual roles without question – Jutta as the more outgoing, seemingly stronger one, Karin as the caring provider, more sensitive, though with an iron will deep in her core. Now, Karin weeps with the full appreciation of not seeing Mama until … until she can achieve what still seems impossible right now.

  For Jutta, cloaking her sister’s thin body, a fleeting memory pushes up – no, not even a memory, the mere taint of an image, the flicker of a feeling. It could be entirely within her head, but Jutta has sensed it before, and now it seems more tangible, as if it really could become a proper recollection, were she to pinch at a corner and pull it properly into consciousness: that this is how they started, in their mother’s womb, she wrapping her limbs around the baby who was to become Karin. And she wonders: was it strength or protection? And which one is it now?

  54

  Sacrifice

  24th August 1963, East Berlin

  Karin hauls her body across the paving slabs leading to Friedrichstrasse, forcing energy into her limbs. The prospect of meeting Otto usually gives her the sensation of floating on air, but not today. Not with what she is planning.

  ‘Hey,’ he says as she approaches in the shadow of the railway, kissing her on the forehead as he folds a long arm around her shoulder, nestling her against his tall form. ‘You look amazing.’

  He’s being kind. She hasn’t made much effort – quite the opposite – but Otto is ever observant of something she’s rustled up on her sewing machine. A clasp pins back her hair to keep it out of the way, and her reflection in the mirror at home was appropriately stark. But he sees beauty in everything she does. He loves her, clearly, and that makes what she is about to do even harder.

  ‘No! You don’t mean it,’ Otto cries, his whole solid and dignified being deflated in an instant. ‘You can’t.’

  Karin nods, because if she speaks it will be only to agree. He’s right – she doesn’t mean a word of it, what’s she just revealed to him: that they should stop seeing each other. That she doesn’t feel for him anymore. Saying it once was hard enough, urging the false words out of her mouth. Now she can barely gesture her lie as they sit on the banks of the Spree, surrounded by noisy, happy children.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he mutters, tears scratching at his eyelids. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  There’s silence in the space between them, against a backdrop of people going about their business, a family’s joy invading their misery.

  ‘You should,’ she murmurs at last. ‘I don’t love you, Otto. It’s as simple as that.’

  He fidgets, scoffs, sighs and throws up his hands – a mosaic of reactions in his despair. ‘But where has this come from? I don’t understand, Karin. We’ve been fine, haven’t we? Having fun. I thought we loved each other.’

  We do. We really do.

  He stops for a second and seems to consider, leans closer so that she can smell his clean, soapy scent and the familiarity of his fibre. Oh God, she wants to kiss him so badly, fully and on the lips. But she can’t have him. She’s not allowed. The GDR says so. Circumstance says so. Axel makes it so. That fucking Wall dictates it.

  ‘Is this something to do with your family?’ he quizzes in a low voice. ‘Have you heard from them?’

  She snaps her head up, though determined not to give herself away with a rash, swift denial. Looking him straight in the eye is the only way to deceive him fully.

  ‘No,’ Karin says, with a stiffness she conjures from nowhere. ‘This is me, Otto, making my own decisions. I may be a poor alien on this side of the Wall, but I can do that. Think for myself. And this is what I think.’

  He recoils at the gravel in her voice, while inside she’s cringing at her own cruelty towards him. Otto of all people has always respected Karin’s intellect, her skill and creativity driving towards her own little business, despite the ethos of the GDR in enforcing equality. She shouldn’t have to return his total belief in her with this malice, to be so callous. But there’s no choice, is there?

  The night before had been long and arduous. After Jutta left the hospital, Karin retreated home to cry. Then, withered and dry of tears, she had worked through every scenario, though each avenue arrived at the same conclusion. Two and three a.m. had come and gone, the sulphur glow of street lighting streaming through her thin curtains like arrows. With a sense of urgency, Jutta had insisted that she try to sway Otto’s thinking, for them both to make the border crossing as soon as possible. But Karin knows such a seismic shift to separate Otto from his family and life will take time – time they haven’t got. Only one path now will preserve Otto and his family’s status and safety. But first she will have to break him to save him.

  ‘I won’t believe it, Karin. I don’t accept it.’ Otto’s badgering voice brings her back, his pain turning to indignation. ‘I know there’s something else here. Why won’t you tell me? Don’t we love each other, haven’t we pledged ourselves?’

  ‘It was a moment,’ she says coldly, rising from the bench, her limbs suddenly cast in concrete. ‘We got carried away. We had fun but now it’s over.’

  He grabs at her wrist, and she’s crying and dying inside, desperate to leave and end this agony, and yet her feet refuse to propel her.

  ‘Maybe now you feel this way, but I won’t give up on us,’ Otto says, his tears now evident and streaming. A woman walks by and her head turns at his distress; she slows and then walks on. ‘Perhaps we need a break – we can do that,’ he entreats. ‘A week or so, two. See how it is then. Please Karin, give us a chance.’

  How she wants to spin and tell him straight, to scream into his sodden face: that she has used up every chance of happiness by protecting him from the knowledge of Jutta’s gateway, by not going back when her sister begged her, by living this shitty life now so they can exist in a better one in the future. But now there is no future, for them at least. Not when Axel and his like have a stranglehold on their truth. Axel’s watchers might know of Otto already, and if so there’s the potential for him to be annihilated in one fell swoop, in one call to the Stasi. She will slip through the portal and go back to being a Westerner, misery or no.

  ‘Goodbye Otto,’ she says and wrenches her body from the spot.

  ‘I won’t give up,’ he says weakly, but doesn’t follow. His sobs track her to the edge of the park and then fade into the buzz of traffic.

  Karin sits in a café, at a table tucked into the corner, to hide her distress. But it won’t come. She’s devoid of tears, feels what she’s done has wiped away all emotion. ‘I’m barren,’ she thinks. Dry and grey as the bricks on that bloody Wall.

  55

  Needing and Loving

  24th August 1963, West Berlin

  It’s a sensation Jutta is ill-used to, and it sits awkwardly within as she walks with hurried steps towards Kranzler’s. It’s taken her a while to work through her unease, but deep down she knows the answer. It’s need. Throughout her life, she’s had need of her family, work, and Karin, of course. But never a man. Until now. Today she finds herself a
lmost breathless with her pace and the anticipation of seeing Danny, desperate to make contact with his body, even if it’s in a crowded café, and to hear his American banter, his grounded take on life, when hers feels anything but stable. So, is that need, or love? Just the mere thought – the L-word – causes her step to falter.

  Leaving Karin the day before had been worse than usual, in the confines of that small, soulless hospital room. Her tears had stopped but there was no end to her despair, like giving a child a toy and then revealing it has to be kept boxed on a shelf, never to be played with or enjoyed.

  There were also practicalities to deal with. Jutta would likely get scant notice of her trips across the Wall for Axel, and the sisters needed a reliable conduit for messages on days when Jutta crossed. Handing in a sealed envelope at the Charité reception only risked it being passed to the Stasi by an observant worker on its payroll. Karin had come up with a hidden niche in the brickwork, behind the hospital bench they’d met at, accessible to Jutta and somewhere Karin can check easily every day. It’s not perfect, or speedy, but the only option if they are to avoid Karin’s apartment and the hound dog that is Frau Lupke. More than ever, they will be forced to play it by ear. Take chances. What else is new?

  ‘Hey, you look flushed, have you been running?’ Danny stands up from the table and kisses her neatly on the cheek. Then, sensing something else, he moves his lips to hers and presses firmly. ‘You smell good,’ he whispers into Jutta’s ear before drawing away, and she’s giddy with him already.

  ‘I just left late, and I didn’t want you sitting here like you’ve been stood up.’ She laughs to hide the embarrassment of her lie.

  ‘Very considerate of you,’ he bounces back. ‘I’ve got coffee and pastries on order already.’

  They sit looking out from under the Big Top awning of Kranzler’s top floor at the people moving along the Kurf’damm – among Danny’s favourite places because, he says, the red and white stripes remind him of being at the circus as a child. Jutta watches as his vibrant eyes flick back and forth over the traffic of people and cars. With work commitments, it’s the first time they’ve met since returning from Rome, and she’s hungry for him, in every way. So when he says: ‘What do you fancy doing today?’ her mind goes to more than a walk in the Tiergarten and beer by the lake.

  He spies the desire rippling across her features. ‘Jutta Voigt, you are incorrigible!’

  They do walk in the park, but only sandwiched between a small hotel on the outskirts, and lazy, protracted daytime sex.

  ‘We can’t keep doing this,’ Jutta pitches as she lies in the crook of his arm.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He flashes concern.

  ‘In hotel rooms,’ she qualifies. ‘You’ll be bankrupt, and then they’ll send you back …’ She stops herself. It’s the first mention of him leaving, by either of them. It’s too scary to address that now.

  ‘Well, short of my meeting your mother and we disappearing into your room …’

  ‘Hmm, not a good prospect,’ she cuts in.

  ‘… there’s only my place. I didn’t think you’d want to, with my roommate. Though he’s quite often away, with his girl in Frankfurt. In fact, he’s going next weekend.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Jutta says. ‘I really don’t need wining and dining all the time, Danny.’

  ‘I will tidy up,’ he promises. ‘I’ll even change the sheets.’

  ‘Well then, Mr Strachan, I hereby formally book a room for next weekend. You provide the bed, I’ll bring the breakfast.’

  ‘Deal.’

  Later, Jutta stares at the shadowy outlines on the hotel ceiling as Danny sleeps soundly beside her. How did she get here – to this place in her life, with its layers piling on top of one another? Common sense tells her the pile will teeter and topple eventually. But how to stop it growing higher and higher?

  The toughest but softest tier is lying right beside her. Surely, it’s the one she won’t be forced to forsake?

  56

  The Blacklist

  13th September 1963, West Berlin

  To Jutta’s surprise, Axel doesn’t demand her courier services for almost four weeks, and although she’s desperate to see Karin and hear of the progress with Otto’s persuasion, they had both agreed it’s unwise to cross any more than the messages dictate. Those lazy days of idling in the park are long gone, both sisters realising that contact has to take second place to self-preservation.

  As with their previous liaison, Axel approaches Jutta in her library department and they meet in a different part of the campus. Her reaction to him is civil but distinctly cool.

  ‘How’s your sister?’ he asks, drawing casually on his cigarette.

  Jutta’s face snaps towards him, flashing immediate suspicion.

  ‘Hey, relax,’ he shoots back. ‘I’m only asking – it’s not a veiled threat. Believe it or not, I do care about those over there. That’s my purpose, remember?’

  ‘Yes, well, you have a funny way of showing it.’ Jutta struggles to breathe any warmth into her encounters with Axel. He’s still impossible to read and not above her suspicion.

  ‘Needs must,’ he prickles. ‘It’s all about making sacrifices for the greater good.’

  ‘And what might those be on your part?’ Jutta bites back, eyeing the spectre of Bibi hovering nearby like a determined limpet. He follows her gaze, but doesn’t answer. ‘Don’t worry, I am keeping to my side of the bargain,’ Jutta mutters.

  ‘I know you are,’ he says pointedly and grinds his stub into the dirt, before sliding over an envelope and walking away to link hands with the limpet.

  A note inside says he wants the message delivered as soon as possible, but not on a weekend, and Jutta has to hastily arrange another day off for Monday. At this rate, she’s in danger of running out of holiday. For a brief moment she considers fabricating an illness at home to warrant more time off, but decides it might only tempt fate or add another layer of deceit to her life that she can’t control.

  As it happens, there is no lack of drama elsewhere. Jutta arrives home on Saturday afternoon after a lunchtime date with Danny to find the apartment in disarray. The hub of the noise comes from Gerda and Oskar’s bedroom, but she can tell someone is hurt, with a spread of Gerda’s medical supplies on the parlour table, surrounded by abandoned, bloodied gauze.

  ‘Mama, what is it?’ she pants, seeing Ruth emerge from the room, her face pinched with worry. ‘Is Gerda hurt? What’s going on?’

  ‘No, it’s not her,’ Ruth sighs bitterly. ‘It’s Oskar.’

  Her tone signals that, as far as Jutta’s uncle is involved, it’s not so much a tragedy or an accident as an inevitability. The company and the hours he keeps, as well as the dark, basement clubs he frequents. More and more of late, arriving home drunk and contrite, only to repeat the cycle again.

  ‘Is he badly hurt, Mama?’

  ‘He’ll live,’ Ruth scoffs. ‘It’s Gerda I care about, worrying herself to death over him.’

  When Gerda reappears, her face grey and drawn against the crimson smears on her dress, she confirms her husband has one or two broken ribs, alongside a bloodied face that she’s patched up.

  ‘He’s adamant that he won’t go to hospital,’ she says, ‘so I suppose I’ll have to nurse him here.’

  ‘It’s not fair on you!’ Ruth blusters, bashing about the kitchen angrily. ‘You shouldn’t have to put up with this worry, Gerda. He shouldn’t do this to you.’

  Gerda is unusually subdued, and Jutta can see the wind has been sucked out of her aunt’s normally sturdy sails, though she remains intensely loyal to her husband.

  ‘And wouldn’t you do it for Rolf, if he was here?’ Gerda says quietly, silencing her sister with a question they all know the answer to. None of them doubt Oskar has been involved in some dubious dealings over the years, moving black-market goods, but at times it served the family well in the blockade of ’48 when the rest of Berlin went hungry. In the past, he was often blasé and eve
n boastful over the status it gave him. Not now. Sitting in the corner of the parlour night after night, smoking endlessly, he’s become a shadow of his former self. And when he does venture out, it’s late and there are clearly dangers lurking.

  ‘Stupid bastard. It was bound to happen eventually.’

  ‘Hugo! That’s your father you’re talking about.’ Up on the roof, wrapped in blankets against the autumn evening chill, Jutta is shocked at her cousin’s reaction, even if she suspects Oskar has likely brought the beating upon himself.

  ‘Before the Wall, he could hop across the border to his heart’s content, and even buy off the border guards to keep quiet,’ Hugo continues spitting. ‘Everyone turned a blind eye, especially when he was supplying the GDR elite. And making profit out of them. He should know better than to try it now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Hugo turns to Jutta, expression grave in the dusky air space, perhaps wary he’s revealed something he shouldn’t. ‘I only found out by accident – someone at work doing a story. A name came up, a good friend of Papa’s caught supplying Western goods to the fortress over at Wandlitz.’

  Even Jutta knows of the specially built compound on the woody outskirts of East Berlin where GDR leaders live in their complex of ideal homes. They claim to live like ‘the people’, but it’s only the elite who have access to those nice houses and an array of Western goods. And Stasi protection.

  ‘I guessed then that Papa had been involved,’ Hugo adds. ‘Which meant that as soon as the Wall went up, his business and his income all but disappeared.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Hugo?’

  His eyes narrow, as the orange tip of his cigarette flares, ash dispersing in the wind. ‘Oh, I don’t know – why do you think, Jutta?’ he comes back, heavy with sarcasm, though his voice is laced with guilt too.

  It takes a second for the cogs of her mind to work out his meaning. ‘Is that the reason we couldn’t get a visa to visit Karin, because of Oskar’s dealings in the East?’ Just the thought makes her stomach roll. And her fury begin to swell. ‘It’s down to your father being on a Stasi blacklist?’ She thinks of her frantic pleading in those first few days at the Wall border when the guards consulted their lists and came back shaking their heads, of her hopeful visits to the town hall in applying for visitation, utterly naive to the fact she had zero chance of success. The Wall might as well have been twenty feet high even then, for all the good her pleading did.