Edge of Eternity (123 page)

She opened the flap and stepped inside.

Berthold was neat, for a man. His clothes were folded in a suitcase, and there was a drawstring bag full of laundry. He had a sponge bag containing a safety razor and shaving soap. His bed was made of canvas stretched across metal tubing. Beside the bed was a small pile of magazines in German. It all looked innocent.

Don't rush, she told herself. Look carefully for clues. Who is this man and what is he doing here?

A sleeping bag was folded on top of the camp bed. When Lili picked it up she felt something heavy. She unzipped the bag and rummaged inside. She found a book of pornographic photos—and a gun.

It was a small black pistol with a short barrel. She did not know much about firearms, and she could not identify the make, but she thought it was what they called a nine-millimeter. It looked designed to be concealed.

She stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans.

She had the answer to her question. Berthold was not a know-all braggart. He was a Stasi agent, sent here to spread scare stories and discourage escapers.

Lili refolded the sleeping bag and stepped out of the tent. Berthold was not in sight. She quickly laced up the tent flap with trembling fingers. Another few seconds and she would be safe. As soon as Berthold looked for his gun, he would know that someone had been there, but if she could get away now he would never know who. Lili guessed he would not even report the theft to the Hungarian police, for they would surely disapprove of a German secret agent bringing a pistol to one of their holiday camps.

She walked briskly away.

Karolin was in Helmut and Alice's tent, and they were talking in low voices, still arguing about whether the border crossing might be a trap. Lili interrupted the discussion. “Berthold is a Stasi agent,” she said. “I searched his tent.” She drew the gun from her pocket.

“That's a Makarov,” said Helmut, who had served in the army. “A Soviet-made semiautomatic pistol, standard issue for the Stasi.”

Lili said: “If the border really were a trap, the Stasi would be keeping the fact secret. The way Berthold is telling everyone pretty much proves it's not true.”

Helmut nodded. “That's good enough for me. We're going.”

They all stood up. Helmut said to Lili: “Would you like me to get rid of the gun?”

“Yes, please.” She handed it over, relieved to be rid of it.

“I'll find a secluded spot on the beach and throw it in the lake.”

While Helmut was doing that, the women put towels and swimsuits and bottles of sun lotion into the trunk of the Trabi as if they were going off for a day's outing, maintaining the fiction of a family holiday. When Helmut came back, they drove to the grocery and bought cheese, bread, and wine for a picnic.

Then they headed west.

Lili kept looking behind, but as far as she could tell no one was following them.

They drove fifty miles and turned off the main road when they were close to the border. Alice had a map and a magnetic compass. As they
wound around country roads, pretending to look for a picnic spot in the forest, they saw several cars with East German plates abandoned at the roadside, and knew they were in the right area.

There was no sign of officialdom, but Lili worried all the same. Clearly the East German secret police had an interest in escapers, but there was probably nothing they could do.

They were passing a small lake when Alice said: “I calculate we're less than a mile from the fence here.”

A few seconds later Helmut, who was at the wheel, turned off the road onto an unpaved track through the trees. He stopped the car in a clearing a few steps from the water.

He turned off the engine. “Well,” he said into the silence. “Are we going to pretend to have lunch?”

“No,” said Alice, her voice high-pitched with tension. “I want to go, now.”

They all got out of the car.

Alice led the way, checking the compass. The going was easy, with little undergrowth to slow their steps. Tall pines filtered the sunshine, throwing patches of gold onto the carpet of needles underfoot. The forest was quiet. Lili heard the cry of some kind of waterfowl, and occasionally the distant roar of a tractor.

They passed a yellow Wartburg Knight, half-hidden by low-hanging branches, its windows broken and its fenders already rusting. A bird flew out of its open trunk, and Lili wondered whether it had nested there.

She scanned the surroundings constantly, looking for the patch of green or gray wool that would betray a uniform, but she saw no one. Helmut was equally alert, she noticed.

They climbed a rise, then the forest ran out abruptly. They emerged onto a strip of cleared land and saw, a hundred yards away, the fence.

It was not impressive. The posts were of rough-hewn wood. There were several rows of wire, which presumably had once been electrified. The top row, at a height of six feet, was plain barbed wire. On the far side was a field of yellow grain ripening in the August sun.

They crossed the cleared strip and came to the fence.

Alice said: “We can climb over the fence right here.”

Helmut said: “They have definitely switched off the electricity . . . ?”

“Yes,” said Alice.

Impatiently, Karolin reached out and touched the wire. She touched all the wires, grasping each firmly in her hand. “Off,” she said.

Alice kissed and hugged her mother and Lili. Helmut shook hands.

A hundred yards away, from over a rise, two soldiers appeared in the gray tunics and tall peaked caps of the Hungarian Border Guard Service.

Lili said: “Oh, no!”

Both men leveled their rifles.

“Stand still, everyone,” said Helmut.

Alice said: “I can't believe we got this close!” She began to cry.

“Don't despair,” said Helmut. “It's not over yet.”

Coming closer, the guards lowered their rifles and spoke in German. No doubt they knew exactly what was going on. “What are you doing here?” one said.

“We came to picnic in the woods,” Lili said.

“A picnic? Really?”

“We meant no harm!”

“You are not allowed here.”

Lili was desperately afraid the soldiers would arrest them. “All right, all right,” she said. “We'll go back!”

She feared that Helmut might put up a fight. They might be killed, all four of them. She felt shaky and her legs were weak.

The second guard spoke. “Be careful,” he said. He pointed along the fence in the direction from which he had come. “A quarter of a mile from here is a gap in the fence. You might accidentally cross the border.”

The two guards looked at one another and laughed heartily. Then they went on their way.

Lili stared in astonishment at their retreating backs. They kept on walking, not looking back. Lili and the others watched them until they were out of sight in silence.

Then Lili said: “They seemed to be telling us . . .”

“To find the gap in the fence!” Helmut said. “Let's do it, quick!”

They hurried in the direction in which the guard had pointed. They kept close to the edge of the forest, in case they needed to hide. Sure
enough, after a quarter of a mile they came to a place where the fence was broken. The wooden posts had been uprooted and the wires, snapped in places, lay flat on the ground. It looked as if a heavy truck had driven through it. The earth all around was heavily trodden, the grass brown and sparse. Beyond the gap, a path between two fields led to a distant clump of trees with a few roofs showing: a village, or perhaps just a hamlet.

Freedom.

A small pine tree nearby was hung with key rings, thirty, forty, maybe fifty of them. People had left behind the keys to their apartments and cars, a defiant gesture to show that they were never coming back. As the branches were moved by a light breeze, the metal glittered in the sunlight. It looked like a Christmas tree.

“Don't hesitate,” Lili said. “We said good-bye ten minutes ago. Just go.”

Alice said: “I love you, Mother, and Lili.”

“Go,” said Karolin.

Alice took Helmut's hand.

Lili looked up and down the cleared strip alongside the fence. There was no one in sight.

The two young people walked through the gap, stepping carefully over the fallen fence.

On the other side, they stopped and waved, even though they were only ten feet away. “We're free!” Alice said.

Lili said: “Give my love to Walli.”

“And mine,” said Karolin.

Alice and Helmut walked on, hand in hand, up the path between the fields of grain.

At the far end they waved again.

Then they entered the little village and disappeared from sight.

Karolin's face was wet with tears. “I wonder if we'll ever see them again,” she said.

W
est Berlin made Walli nostalgic. He remembered being a teenager with a guitar, playing Everly Brothers hits in the Minnesänger folk club just off the Ku'damm, and dreaming of going to America to be a pop star. I got what I wanted, he thought—and a lot that I didn't.

While he was checking into his hotel he ran into Jasper Murray. “I heard you were over here,” said Walli. “I guess what's happening in Germany is exciting to cover.”

“It is,” said Jasper. “Americans aren't normally interested in European news, but this is special.”

“Your show,
This Day,
isn't the same without you. I hear its ratings are down.”

“I probably ought to pretend to be sorry. What are you up to these days?”

“Making a new album. I left Dave mixing it in California. He'll probably fuck it up with strings and a glockenspiel.”

“What brings you to Berlin?”

“I'm meeting my daughter, Alice. She escaped from East Germany.”

“Are your parents still there?”

“Yes, and my sister Lili.” And Karolin, Walli thought, but he did not mention her. He longed for her to escape, too. Deep in his heart he still missed her, despite all the years that had passed. “Rebecca's here in the West,” he added. “She's a big shot in the Foreign Office now.”

“I know. She's been helpful to me. Maybe we could do a piece on a family divided by the Wall. It would show the human suffering caused by the Cold War.”

“No,” said Walli firmly. He had not forgotten the interview Jasper
had done back in the sixties, which had caused so much trouble for the Francks in the East. “My family would be made to suffer by the East German government.”

“Too bad. Good to see you, anyhow.”

Walli checked into the Presidential Suite. He turned on the TV in the living room. The set was a Franck, made in his father's factory. The news was all about people fleeing East Germany via Hungary and, now, via Czechoslovakia too. He left the set on with the sound low. It was his habit to have the TV on when he was doing other things. He had been thrilled to learn that Elvis did the same.

He took a shower and put on fresh clothes. Then the desk called to say that Alice and Helmut were downstairs. “Send them up,” Walli said.

He felt nervous, which was silly. This was his daughter. But he had seen her only once in her twenty-five years. At that time she had been a skinny teenager with long fair hair, reminding him of Karolin when he had first met her, back in the sixties.

A minute later the bell rang and he opened the door. Alice was now a young woman, with no teenage gawkiness. Her fair hair was cut in a bob, so she no longer looked so strikingly like the young Karolin, though she had Karolin's thousand-candlepower smile. She was dressed in shabby East German clothes and down-at-heel shoes, and Walli made a mental note to take her shopping.

He kissed her awkwardly on both cheeks and shook hands with Helmut.

Alice looked around the suite and said: “Wow, nice room.”

It was nothing by comparison with hotels in Los Angeles, but Walli did not tell her that. She had a lot to learn, but there was plenty of time.

He ordered coffee and cakes from room service. They sat around the table in the living room. “This is weird,” Walli said candidly. “You're my kid, but we're strangers.”

“I know your songs, though,” Alice said. “Every one. You weren't there, but you've been singing to me all my life.”

“That's kind of awesome.”

“Yeah.”

They told him the story of their escape in detail. “Looking back, it was easy,” Alice said. “But at the time I was scared to death.”

They were living temporarily in an apartment rented for them by the Franck factory accountant, Enok Andersen. “What are you going to do, long term?” Walli asked.

Helmut said: “I'm an electrical engineer, but I'd like to learn about business. Next week I'm going on the road with one of the salesmen for Franck televisions. Your father, Werner, says that's the way to begin.”

Alice said: “In the East I was working in a pharmacy. At first I'll probably do the same here, but one day I'd like to have my own shop.”

Walli was pleased they were thinking about work. He had nursed a secret anxiety that they might want to live on his money, which would have been bad for them. He smiled and said: “I'm glad neither of you wants to be in the music business.”

Alice said: “But the main thing we want to do is have children.”

“I'm so glad. I can't wait to be a granddad rock star. Are you going to get married?”

“We've been talking about that,” she said. “We never cared about it, living in the East, but now we kind of want to. How would you feel about that?”

“Marriage itself is not a big issue for me, but I'd be kind of thrilled if you decided to do it.”

“Good. Daddy, would you sing at my wedding?”

That came from behind and knocked Walli over. It was all he could do not to cry. “Sure, honey,” he managed to say. “I'd be glad to.” To cover his emotion he turned to the television.

The screen was showing a demonstration the previous evening in Leipzig, in East Germany. Protesters carrying candles marched in silence from a church. They were peaceful, but police vans drove into the crowd, running over several people, then the cops jumped out and started arresting marchers.

Helmut said: “Those bastards.”

Walli said: “What is the demonstration about?”

“The right to travel,” said Helmut. “We've escaped, but we can't go back. Alice has you, now, but she can't visit her mother. And I'm separated from both my parents. We don't know if we'll ever see them again.”

Alice said angrily: “People are demonstrating because there's no
reason why we should live like this. I should be able to see my mother as well as my father. We should be allowed to go to and fro between East and West. Germany is one country. We should get rid of that Wall.”

“Amen to that,” said Walli.

•   •   •

Dimka liked his boss. Gorbachev in his deepest soul believed in the truth. Since Lenin died, every Soviet leader had been a liar. They had all glossed over what was wrong and declined to acknowledge reality. The most striking characteristic of Soviet leadership for the last sixty-five years was the refusal to face facts. Gorbachev was different. As he struggled to navigate through the storm that was battering the Soviet Union, he held on to that one guiding principle, that the truth must be told. Dimka was full of admiration.

Both Dimka and Gorbachev were pleased when Erich Honecker was deposed as leader of East Germany. Honecker had lost control of the country and the party. But they were disappointed by his successor. To Dimka's annoyance, Honecker's loyal deputy, Egon Krenz, took over. It was like replacing Tweedledum with Tweedledee.

All the same, Dimka thought Gorbachev would have to give Krenz a helping hand. The Soviet Union could not permit the collapse of East Germany. Perhaps the USSR could live with democratic elections in Poland and market forces in Hungary, but Germany was different. It was divided, like Europe, into East and West, Communist and capitalist; and if West Germany were to triumph that would signal the ascendancy of capitalism, and the end of the dream of Marx and Lenin. Even Gorbachev could not allow that—could he?

Krenz made the usual pilgrimage to Moscow two weeks later. Dimka shook the hand of a fleshy-faced man with thick gray hair and a look of smug satisfaction. He might have been a heartthrob in his youth.

In the grand office with the yellow-paneled walls, Gorbachev greeted him with cool courtesy.

Krenz brought with him a report by his chief economic planner saying that East Germany was bankrupt. The report had been suppressed by Honecker, Krenz claimed. Dimka knew that the truth about East Germany's economy had been hidden for decades. All the
propaganda about economic growth had been lies. Productivity in factories and mines was as low as 50 percent of that in the West.

“We have kept going by borrowing,” Krenz told Gorbachev, sitting on a black leather chair in the grand Kremlin room. “Ten billion deutschmarks a year.”

Even Gorbachev was shocked. “Ten
billion
?”

“We have been taking out short-term loans to pay the interest on long-term loans.”

Dimka put in: “Which is illegal. If the banks find out . . .”

“The interest on our debt is now four and a half billion dollars a year, which is two-thirds of our entire foreign currency earnings. We must have your help to deal with this crisis.”

Gorbachev bristled. He hated it when East European leaders begged for money.

Krenz wheedled. “East Germany is in a sense the child of the Soviet Union.” He tried a masculine joke. “One should acknowledge the paternity of one's children.”

Gorbachev did not even smile. “We are in no position to offer you assistance,” he said bluntly. “Not in the present condition of the USSR.”

Dimka was surprised. He had not expected Gorbachev to be this tough.

Krenz was baffled. “Then what am I to do?”

“You must be honest with your people, and tell them that they cannot continue to live in the manner they have become used to.”

“There will be trouble,” Krenz said. “A state of emergency would have to be declared. Measures must be taken to prevent a mass breakthrough across the Wall.”

Dimka thought this was approaching political blackmail. Gorbachev did, too, and he stiffened. “In that case, do not expect to be rescued by the Red Army,” Gorbachev said. “You have to solve these problems yourself.”

Did he really mean it? Was the USSR really going to wash its hands of East Germany? Dimka's excitement mounted with his astonishment. Was Gorbachev willing to go all the way?

Krenz looked like a priest who has realized there is no God. East Germany had been created by the Soviet Union, subsidized from the Kremlin's coffers, and protected by the strength of the Soviet military.
He could not take in the idea that that was all over. He clearly had absolutely no idea what to do next.

When he had gone, Gorbachev said to Dimka: “Issue a reminder to commanders of our forces in East Germany. They must not
under any circumstances
get involved in conflicts between the government there and its citizens. This is an absolute priority.”

My God, Dimka thought, is this really the end?

•   •   •

By November there were demonstrations every week in major towns in East Germany. The numbers grew larger and the crowds grew bolder. They could not be crushed by brutal police baton charges.

Lili and Karolin were invited to play at a rally in the Alexander Platz, not far from their home. Several hundred thousand people showed up. Someone had painted a huge placard with the slogan
WIR SIND DAS VOLK
, “We are the people.” All around the edges of the square were police in riot gear, waiting for the order to wade into the crowd with their truncheons. But the cops looked more frightened than the demonstrators.

Speaker after speaker denounced the Communist regime, and the police did nothing.

The organizers permitted pro-Communist speakers, too, and to Lili's astonishment the government's chosen defender was Hans Hoffmann. From her position in the wings, where she and Karolin were waiting for their turn onstage, she stared at the familiar, stooped figure of the man who had persecuted her family for a quarter of a century. Despite his expensive blue coat he was shivering from the cold—or perhaps it was fear.

When Hans tried to smile amiably, he succeeded only in looking like a vampire. “Comrades,” he said, “the party has listened to the voices of the people, and new measures are on the way.”

The crowd knew this was bullshit, and they began to hiss.

“But we must proceed in an orderly fashion, acknowledging the leading role of the party in developing Communism.”

The hissing turned to booing.

Lili watched Hans closely. His expression showed rage and frustration. A year ago, one word from him could have destroyed any of
the people in the crowd; but now, suddenly, they seemed to have the power. He could not even shut them up. He had to raise his voice to a shout in order to be heard, even with the help of the microphone. “In particular, we must not make every member of the state security organizations into scapegoats for whatever mistakes may have been made by the former leadership.”

This was no less than a plea for sympathy on behalf of the bullies and sadists who had been oppressing the people for decades, and the crowd was outraged. They jeered and yelled: “
Stasi raus,
” “Stasi out.”

Hans yelled at the top of his voice: “After all, they were only obeying orders!”

That brought a roar of incredulous laughter.

For Hans, to be laughed at was the worst fate. He flushed with rage. Suddenly Lili recalled the scene, twenty-eight years ago, when Rebecca had thrown Hans's shoes at him from the upstairs window. It had been the scornful laughter of the women neighbors that had driven Hans into a fury.

Now Hans remained at the microphone, unable to speak over the noise, but unwilling to give in. It was a battle of wills between him and the crowd, and he lost. His arrogant expression crumpled, and he seemed close to tears. At last he turned from the microphone and stepped away from the lectern.

He cast one more look at the crowd, laughing and jeering at him, and gave up. As he walked off, he saw Lili and recognized her. Their eyes met as she walked onstage with Karolin, both carrying guitars. In that instant he looked like a beaten dog, so tragic that Lili almost felt sorry for him.

Then she passed him and moved to center stage. Some of the crowd recognized Lili and Karolin, others knew their names, and they roared a welcome. They went up to the microphones. They strummed a major chord, then together they launched into “This Land Is Your Land.”