She suffered a moment of panic, then she realized that the figure was familiar.
‘Walli?’ she said.
What the hell was he up to? Obviously, he had followed her and Bernd. But to what end? And where was he heading in such a hurry?
There was nothing she could do but worry.
They came to the back wall of the apartment building on Bernauer Strasse.
The windows were boarded up. Bernd and Rebecca had talked about breaking through the boards to get in, then breaking through another set at the front to get out, but they had decided it would be too noisy, time-consuming and difficult. Easier, they guessed, to go over the top.
The ridge of the roof they were on was at the level of the gutters of the high adjacent building, so they could easily step from one roof to the next.
From then on they would be clearly visible to the guards with the machine guns on the side street below.
This was their most vulnerable moment.
Bernd crawled up the house roof to the ridge, straddled it, then scrambled up on to the higher roof of the apartment building, heading for the top.
Rebecca followed. She was breathing hard now. He knees were bruised and her shoulders ached where Bernd had stood on them.
When she was straddling the lower roof she took a look down. She was alarmingly close to the policemen on the street. They were lighting cigarettes: if one should glance upwards, all would be lost. Both she and Bernd would be easy targets for their sub-machine guns.
But they were only a few steps from freedom.
She braced herself to wriggle on to the roof in front of her. Beneath her left foot something moved. Her sneaker slipped, and she fell. She was still astride the ridge, and the impact hurt her groin. She gave a muffled cry, leaned vertiginously sideways for a horrifying moment, then regained her balance.
Unfortunately, the cause of her stumble, a loose slate, slipped down the roof, tumbled over the gutter, and fell to the street, where it shattered noisily.
The cops heard the sound and looked at the fragments on the pavement.
Rebecca froze.
The police looked around. Any second now it would occur to them that the slate must have fallen from the roof, and they would look up. But, before they did, one was hit by a flung stone. A second later, Rebecca heard her brother’s voice yelling: ‘All cops are cunts!’
* * *
Walli picked up another stone and threw it at the police. This one missed.
Baiting East German policemen was suicidally stupid, he knew that. He was likely to be arrested, beaten up, and jailed. But he had to do it.
He could see that Bernd and Rebecca were hopelessly exposed. The police would spot them any second now. They never hesitated to shoot escapers. The range was short, about fifty feet. Both fugitives would be riddled with machine-gun bullets in a few seconds.
Unless the cops could be distracted.
They were not much older than Walli. He was sixteen, they seemed about twenty. They were looking around in confusion, their newly lit cigarettes between their lips, unable to figure out why a slate had shattered and two stones had been thrown.
‘Pig-faces!’ Walli yelled. ‘Shitheads! Your mothers are whores!’
They saw him then. He was a hundred yards away, visible despite the mist. As soon as they set eyes on him they started to move towards him.
He backed away.
They started to run.
Walli turned and fled.
At the cemetery gate he looked back. One of the men had stopped, no doubt realizing that they should not both leave their post at the Wall to chase someone who had merely thrown stones. They had not yet got around to wondering why anyone would do something so rash.
The second cop knelt down and aimed his gun.
Walli slipped into the cemetery.
* * *
Bernd looped the clothes line around a brick chimney, pulled it tight, and tied a secure knot.
Rebecca lay flat on the roof ridge, looking down, panting. She could see one cop pounding along the street after Walli, and Walli running across the cemetery. The second cop was returning to his post, but – luckily – he kept looking back, watching his colleague. Rebecca did not know whether to be relieved or horrified that her brother was risking his life to divert the attention of the police for the next few crucial seconds.
She looked the other way, into the free world. In Bernauer Strasse, on the far side of the street, a man and a woman stood watching her and talking excitedly.
Holding the rope, Bernd sat down then slid on his bottom down the west slope of the roof to the edge. Next he wound the rope twice around his chest under his arms, leaving a long tail of fifty or so feet. He could now lean out over the edge, supported by the rope tied to the chimney.
He returned to Rebecca and straddled the ridge. ‘Sit upright,’ he said. He tied the free end of the clothes line around her and tied a knot. He held the rope firmly in his leather-gloved hands.
Rebecca took a last look into East Berlin. She saw Walli nimbly scaling the fence at the far end of the cemetery. His figure crossed a road and vanished into a side street. The cop gave up and turned back.
Then the man happened to look up, towards the roof of the apartment building, and his jaw dropped in astonishment.
Rebecca was in no doubt what he had seen. She and Bernd were perched on top of the roof, clear against the skyline.
The cop shouted and pointed, then broke into a run.
Rebecca rolled off the ridge and slowly slid down the slope of the roof until her sneakers touched the gutter at the front.
She heard a burst of machine-gun fire.
Bernd stood upright beside her, bracing himself with the rope tied to the chimney.
Rebecca felt him take her weight.
Here goes, she thought.
She rolled over the gutter and slid into thin air.
The rope pulled painfully around her chest, above her breasts. She dangled in the air for a moment, then Bernd paid out the rope and she began to descend in short jerks.
They had practised this at her parents’ house. Bernd had let her down from the highest window all the way to the backyard. It hurt his hands, he said, but he could do it, if he had good gloves. All the same, she was instructed to pause briefly any time she could rest her weight on a window surround to give him a moment’s respite.
She heard shouts of encouragement, and guessed that a crowd had now gathered down on Bernauer Strasse, on the West side of the Wall.
Below her she could see the pavement and the barbed wire that ran along the façade of the building. Was she in West Berlin yet? The frontier police would shoot anyone on the East side, but they had strict instructions not to fire into the West, for the Soviets did not want any diplomatic incidents. But she was dangling immediately above the barbed wire, in neither one country nor the other.
She heard another burst of machine-gun fire. Where were the cops, and who were they shooting at? She guessed they would try to get up on the roof and shoot her and Bernd before it was too late. If they followed the same laborious route as their quarry they would not catch up in time. But they could probably save time by entering the building and simply running up the stairs.
She was almost there. Her feet touched the barbed wire. She pushed away from the building, but her legs did not quite clear the wire. She felt the barbs rip her trousers and tear her skin painfully. Then a crowd gathered around and helped her, taking her weight, disentangling her from the barbed wire, unwinding the rope around her chest, and setting her on the ground.
As soon as she was steady on her feet, she looked up. Bernd was on the edge of the roof, loosening the rope around his chest. She stepped backwards across the road so that she could see better. The policemen had not yet reached the roof.
Bernd got the rope firmly in both hands then stepped backwards off the roof. He abseiled slowly down the wall, slipping the rope through his hands as he went. This was extremely difficult, because all his weight was supported by his grip on the rope. He had practised at home, walking down the back wall of the town house at night when he would not be seen. But this building was taller.
The crowd in the street cheered him.
Then a cop appeared on the roof.
Bernd came down faster, risking his grip on the rope for more speed.
Someone shouted: ‘Get a blanket!’
Rebecca knew there was not enough time for that.
The cop aimed his sub-machine gun at Bernd, but hesitated. He could not fire into West Germany. He might well hit people other than the escapers. It was the kind of incident that could start a war.
The man turned and looked at the rope around the chimney. He might have untied it, but Bernd would reach the ground first.
Did the cop have a knife?
Apparently not.
Then he was inspired. He put the barrel of his gun against the taut rope and fired a single round.
Rebecca screamed.
The rope split, its end flying into the air over Bernauer Strasse.
Bernd fell like a stone.
The crowd scattered.
Bernd hit the sidewalk with a sickening thump.
Then he lay still.
* * *
Three days later, Bernd opened his eyes, looked at Rebecca, and said: ‘Hello.’
Rebecca said: ‘Oh, thank God.’
She had been out of her mind with worry. The doctors had told her that he would recover consciousness, but she had not been able to believe it until she saw it. He had undergone several operations, and in between he had been heavily drugged. This was the first time she had seen the light of intelligence in his face.
Trying not to cry, she leaned over the hospital bed and kissed his lips. ‘You’re back,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad.’
He said: ‘What happened?’
‘You fell.’
He nodded. ‘The roof. I remember. But—’
‘The policeman broke your rope.’
He looked along the length of his body. ‘Am I in plaster?’
She had been longing for him to come round, but she had also been dreading this moment. ‘From the waist down,’ she said.
‘I . . . I can’t move my legs. I can’t feel them.’ He looked panicky. ‘Have my legs been amputated?’
‘No.’ Rebecca took a deep breath. ‘You’ve broken most of the bones in your legs, but you can’t feel them because your spinal cord is partially severed.’
He was thoughtful for a long moment. Then he said: ‘Will it heal?’
‘The doctors say that nerves may heal, albeit slowly.’
‘So . . .’
‘So you may get some below-the-waist functions back, eventually. But you will be in a wheelchair when you leave this hospital.’
‘Do they say how long?’
‘They say –’ She had to make an effort not to cry. ‘You must prepare for the possibility that it may be permanent.’
He looked away. ‘I’m a cripple.’
‘But we’re free. You’re in West Berlin. We’ve escaped.’
‘Escaped to a wheelchair.’
‘Don’t think of it that way.’
‘What the hell am I going to do?’
‘I’ve thought about this.’ She made her voice firm and confident, more so than she felt. ‘You’re going to marry me and return to teaching.’
‘That’s not likely.’
‘I’ve already phoned Anselm Weber. You’ll remember that he’s now head of a school in Hamburg. He has jobs for both of us, starting in September.’
‘A teacher in a wheelchair?’
‘What difference will that make? You’ll still be able to explain physics so that the dullest child in the class understands. You don’t need legs for that.’
‘You don’t want to marry a cripple.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But I want to marry you. And I will.’
His tone became bitter. ‘You can’t marry a man with no below-the-waist functions.’
‘Listen to me,’ she said fiercely. ‘Three months ago I didn’t know what love was. I’ve only just found you, and I’m not going to lose you. We’ve escaped, we’ve survived, and we’re going to live. We’ll get married, we’ll teach school, and we’ll love each other.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I want only one thing from you,’ she said. ‘You must not lose hope. We’ll confront all difficulties together, and we’ll solve all problems together. I can put up with any hardship as long as I’ve got you. Promise me, now, Bernd Held, that you’ll never give up. Never.’
There was a long pause.
‘Promise,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘You’re a tiger,’ he said.
Part Three
ISLAND
1962
14
Dimka and Valentin rode the Ferris wheel in Gorky Park with Nina and Anna.
After Dimka had been called away from the holiday camp, Nina had taken up with an engineer and had dated him for several months, but then they broke up, so now she was free again. Meanwhile, Valentin and Anna had become a couple: he slept over at the girls’ apartment most weekends. Also, significantly, Valentin had told Dimka a couple of times that having sex with one woman after another was just a phase men went through when they were young.
I should be so lucky, Dimka thought.
On the first warm weekend of the short Moscow summer, Valentin proposed a double date. Dimka agreed eagerly. Nina was smart and strong-minded, and she challenged him: he liked that. But mainly she was sexy. He often thought about how enthusiastically she had kissed him. He wanted very much to do that again. He recalled how her nipples had stuck out in the cold water. He wondered whether she ever thought about that day on the lake.
His problem was that he could not share Valentin’s cheerfully exploitative attitude to girls. Valentin would say anything to get a girl into bed. Dimka felt it was wrong to manipulate or bully people. He also believed that if someone said ‘No’, you should accept it, whereas Valentin always took ‘No’ to mean ‘Maybe not yet.’
Gorky Park was an oasis in the desert of earnest Communism, a place Muscovites could go simply to have fun. People put on their best clothes, bought ice cream and candy, flirted with strangers and kissed in the bushes.