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 on to 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 on to 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 grey 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 on to 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 grey tunics and tall peaked caps of the Hungarian Border Guard Service.
Lili said: ‘Oh, no!’
Both men levelled 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 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 lorry 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 goodbye 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.
61
West 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 in to 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 in to 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. Protestors 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 grey hair and a look of smug satisfaction. He might have been a heartthrob in his youth.
In the grand office with the yellow-panelled 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 per cent of that in the west.