Cloud and Wallfish (30 page)

He had the vague impression that the men were talking to each other; one of them actually started shouting at the other one of them in German; some dim part of his brain registered the door of the cell opening as one of them left. But he did not care anymore.

Finally somebody took his arms and lifted him out of the chair so that he was standing — wobbling on his own two feet.

“Come!” said the woman who had led Cloud-Claudia down the hall so long before — how long had it been? Long!

Noah followed her out the door. At the last minute, he remembered the map and turned around for it, but the woman gave him a pull forward.

“Quick, now,” she said. “Faster!”

They went down various halls and through various doors. Noah could not have said whether these were halls he had been in before or not. They came into a sort of waiting room, and there at the end of it was Cloud-Claudia, asleep on a bench. There were great smeary tracks down her face. She had been crying before she fell asleep.

“Oh, Cloud,” said Noah, more for himself than for her, because she was so solidly asleep.

“Quiet, you,” said someone he hadn’t noticed before, filling out papers on a table.

It was Cloud-Claudia’s horrible grandmother.

She looked like she had been crying, too. Her hand was shaking as she wrote on those sheets of paper.

The guard who was leading Noah grabbed his shoulder and turned him forcibly away, so that he was facing the other side of the room.

“Sit still and mind your own business,” said the guard.

He fully meant to do that — sit still and mind his own business — because he was practically asleep himself, and he didn’t want to cause any more trouble. But there was a noise from behind him, where Cloud-Claudia’s grandmother was struggling with those papers.

“You!” she hissed. “Why were you dragging an innocent child out through the streets at night? Telling her such lies? Now you’ve ruined her life. A child, and you’ve
ruined her life.
”

That made him angry enough that he turned to glare at her, despite all the guards around.

“It wasn’t — wasn’t — wasn’t — me telling the worst lies,” said Noah, feeling the warm tide of anger spreading over his face.

“Silence!” barked a guard.

Noah and Frau März glared at each other for what felt like a very long time. But she looked away first, wiping tears from her eyes with a handkerchief. All of Noah’s anger turned immediately into an ickier feeling, something like shame and miserableness. And he was shivering, maybe because they had taken his jacket away and maybe because he was so tired. Being very tired can feel like standing outside on a day when the temperature is sinking and sinking.

Noah studied his scuffed-up shoes for a while and tried to think about nothing, while his shivers continued.

That was when an indignant bustling whirlwind came breaking through the far doors.

“There you are! There you are! Oh, my God, there you are!” said the whirlwind, gathering Noah up in all of its four arms.

Because the whirlwind, of course, was Noah’s parents.

“Stand up,” said the guard when Noah’s parents came into the waiting room, but he was already in their arms by then.

“Grab your things, kiddo,” said his father. “We’re getting you out of here.”

He didn’t have any things, so he just stood there, feeling wobbly.

His mother looked at him and then said angrily, “They’ve kept him up all this time. Look at him! Were they
questioning
you? How dare they!”

And then she turned to the guards and started raking them over the coals in very good German. She kept gesturing at a third man who had come with them. Noah hadn’t noticed him at first, but apparently he was from the American embassy. She pointed at him and pointed at Noah and said angry, angry things about human rights and worldwide conventions on the treatment of children.

Noah stared at her. Of course they had been asking questions. Isn’t that what police did when they took you into their garages and their cellars and their tiny little offices? The questions hadn’t been the worst part. The worst part had been the standing.

No, he took that back.

The worst part had been when they took Cloud-Claudia in one direction and Noah in another.

That made him look over at Cloud-Claudia, who was no longer asleep. She was sitting up on her bench now, woken up by all the commotion, looking over at Noah.

“Hey,” he called out to her while the grown-ups argued all around.

She looked distressed by everything she was hearing.

“They’re taking you away?” she said.

“Just going home,” he said. “Just going home to sleep.”

His father gave his shoulders a big squeeze.

“Afraid not, kiddo,” he said. “We’re leaving the country. They’re sending us out, to West Berlin.”

“Quiet!” said the various guards. They were already moving to hustle Cloud-Claudia and her grandmother through a door into some different space.
“The agents hostile to the German Democratic Republic will not continue to disrupt this essential post as it upholds our collective security.”

“Wait! What? You’re going away?” said Cloud-Claudia while her grandmother tried desperately to hush her. She actually managed to break loose from her grandmother’s hands and come running over to Noah, miserable wildness all over her face. “You’re leaving? Why are you leaving? They all always leave. My mom and dad — they didn’t die — they
left me behind on purpose.
They told me, the ones here.
They chose to leave me behind!
And now you, Wallfish! And the ones here took the names away from me. They took them. Now you’ll forget, and they’ll forget. Nobody will remember anything.”

She was hugging him now, and all the grown-ups were already pulling at her, peeling her away. Noah tried to hold on, but the guards and the grandmother were stronger than he was.

Everything had been awful, that whole night long, but this was by far the worst.

They were carrying Cloud-Claudia right out of the room.

“I’ll remember everything!” shouted Noah after her. “Everything!
Ever
ything! Cloud! Every single thing! And
they
haven’t forgotten you. I’m sure they haven’t. I won’t, either!”

Then she was gone, and his parents were holding him up or holding him back or some combination of the two.

“Shocking,” said the man from the embassy. “Really shocking. Well, we should be on our way now.”

“Jonah, where’s your jacket?” asked his mother. “It’s chilly outside.”

“They took it away,” said Noah.

“Please bring him his jacket and scarf,” said his mother to the guards. She was still hanging on to him tightly. “Then we’ll go.”

They brought Noah his jacket and scarf.

He checked, but of course the map of the Changelings’ Land wasn’t in his pocket anymore. Or the five marks or the key. He was only sad about the map, though. All of Cloud’s wonderful little pictures, locked up in some evidence file in this awful building forever.

He was hustled out into the dark, chilly night and put into the backseat of a car with his mother and father.

The man from the embassy sat in the front with another man, the driver.

“Out we go!” said the man from the embassy. And to Noah, he said, “You’ve caused a lot of trouble here, young man.”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Noah. “I didn’t mean to at all. She was running away — all alone at night — I —”

“Shhh,” said his mother. “No discussion here — they’ll be listening, sweetheart. We’ll talk about it all once we’re well away from here.”

There were headlights shining through the back window the whole way. The East Germans had sent police cars to shepherd them, one ahead and one behind, to make sure their car went right to the border and through. It was like being a criminal, for sure.

The streets were empty now. It was still night, though the date must now be the eighth of October instead of the seventh. Noah caught glimpses of buildings and streets and more buildings and lampposts. When he lowered his head, he could see the television tower, high, hovering above everything else, looking down at them, looking and watching as the three cars drove toward the checkpoint: the police car, the embassy’s car, and the other police car.

They were the only people going in that direction through the checkpoint. Actually, there was nobody going in the other direction, either.

“They’ve shut the border, you know,” said the embassy man. “That’s why it’s so quiet here. All the troubles this weekend; they don’t want newspeople or tourists with cameras or what-have-you. They can’t keep us diplomats out, of course, but everyone else —
verboten.
”

At the checkpoint, a policeman jumped out of the car in front and talked to the soldiers there, pointing at the car Noah’s family was in and saluting.

They looked at the passports of everyone in Noah’s car, but that was it.

Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

That was the border guard stamping their passports with some vicious-looking red stamp.

“Well, that’s it. You’ve been kicked out of a country now,” said Noah’s father. “And before the age of eleven! Kicked out and told never to come back.”

Noah was still so tired, he almost didn’t care. “What about our stuff?”

“Most of it’s in suitcases in the back,” said his mother, giving him a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. It’s only stuff.”

And then he was asleep, dreaming that he was awake and standing and being shouted at, dreaming that he had gotten lost on the way into the Changelings’ Land and had ended up in that terrible, horrible police building instead, dreaming above all that he wasn’t asleep and would never be allowed to sleep again.

And then they were leading him from the car into a building, through the bite of cold air.

No brushing teeth. No changing clothes. No nothing. He just flung himself down onto the cot they led him to and slept.

Oh, there was one strange moment, before he fell completely asleep. Somebody was taking his shoes off, and then his jacket. His mother, he thought. Then he opened his eyes, although he was really still mostly asleep, and saw his mother ripping open the seam of his jacket.

“Oh, no,” she was saying under her breath. “Oh, no. Oh, no!”

Her hands were tense fists, hiding her eyes.

“Pointless!” she said to herself. “All pointless, after all!”

It was frightening to see her that upset. Noah’s mother was so good at not letting anything show.

“Mom?” said Noah.

She took the fists from her eyes immediately. Tried to put one of her normal expressions on.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Completely fine. Lost something — that’s all.”

“Not lost,” he said, the Astonishing Stutter becoming an extraordinary mumble, he was so tired. “I’ve got it.”

She smiled then, though her hands stayed tense.

“Sweet boy. Jonah. You should be asleep.”

Jonah? Was he still Jonah, even here on the western side of the Wall?

Apparently so.

Apparently the listening just went on and on, no matter which side of the Wall you happened to be on.

The Wall! When would they ever be far enough away from it?

“I
am
asleep,” said Noah.