Evony
Three days earlier
“Just think, Evony. In a few days we’ll be in the West.” Ana’s eyes are aglow as we walk through the darkened streets. A light snow is falling and we’re huddled close to each other so we don’t need to speak above a whisper, and for warmth. It’s almost impossible to get proper wool coats and the wind cuts through our synthetic ones. Mine’s too big as well, a bulky navy blue thing that used to belong to Dad.
“Shh, you mustn’t say that out loud,” I whisper, but I’m smiling as I say it. My arm is linked through hers and we practically vibrate with excitement. We’ve just left the final meeting with the group before we all make our escape: me, Dad, Ana and a dozen others who can’t face living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall any longer. We all have different reasons for leaving. Ana wants to go to university and study something artistic. The things she’s interested in aren’t offered in practical, utilitarian East Germany, and only a small fraction of the population are allowed to continue their education beyond sixteen. We’re supposed to turn ourselves into productive citizens, not over-educated bourgeoisie. My dad despises the government and the Soviets and chafes under the intrusive gaze of the Stasi. Anyone could be an informant, he likes to tell me urgently, and often. Anyone, remember that.
And me? I don’t know what I want, I just want something more than this. The unending work, the unending gray. The same people, the same streets, day in and day out. Shouldn’t there be more to life? Unlike Ana I don’t expect the West to be perfect and offer up a dream life. There are bad things in the West that we don’t have here, like unemployment and poverty. It’s just… Shouldn’t we have a choice? If the East is so good, as they like to tell us, why do they stop us from exploring what people’s lives are like there? If it’s really so great here we’ll come home again, but they don’t trust us to make that decision. And now we have the Wall, hemming us in and looming over us.
For weeks in 1961 there were rumors about a barrier being erected to make the border more secure. The East was hemorrhaging citizens to the West, young educated citizens like doctors and engineers, and the government were getting nervous. The papers told us that they weren’t really going to build a wall, but the State runs the media and you can’t always believe what they say. We awoke one morning eighteen months ago to low coils of razor wire splitting the city north to south with armed East German border guards stationed along it. Our own people, locking us in. The papers told us it was to protect us from the West: the Wall encircles West Berlin, not East Berlin. But who in their right mind wants to cross the Wall into the East?
The Wall is permanent now. The razor wire has been replaced by a thick concrete barrier that stands well above a man’s head. It’s not impossible to climb over if you have some equipment and the guards happen to be looking the other way, but the space beyond the Wall is patrolled by more armed guards with dogs. It’s called the Death Strip. It’s mined in places. There are watchtowers at regular intervals and the guards have orders to shoot to kill if anyone tries to escape. People have bled to death from gunshot wounds on the Death Strip, as the Western guards are too afraid of being shot at and are unable to reach them.
But they can’t patrol underground, which is why my father and some of his friends came up with the idea for a tunnel.
My heart pounds with excitement as I think of it. The tunnel begins in the basement of an abandoned bakery right next to the Wall, runs for sixty feet beneath it and comes out in an apartment building in the West. Ana and I did our bit along with the others, spending several late-night hours each week for the last two months digging with spades and pickaxes. It was filthy, dark and dangerous work and we never knew if the tunnel might collapse on us. We reinforced the walls and roof with timber but small fall-ins were common. Once I had to dig Ana’s legs out from beneath two feet of dirt.
“See you at the factory in the morning,” Ana says, giving my arm a squeeze and flashing me a last smile before peeling off to take a side street toward her apartment. We both work in a radio factory where we met when we were sixteen. I solder transistors and she screws the Bakelite casings together. It’s unchallenging, repetitive work. We’d likely keep the same job for the rest of our working lives if we stayed. Seven years later I already feel like we’ve been there a lifetime.
My route home takes me close to the Wall and my eyes can’t help but be drawn to it. It’s early evening, but as it’s January it’s full dark already and the Wall is floodlit. It stands out, a stark white looming presence. I look away quickly as it’s not wise to pay too much attention to it lest a patrolling guard thinks you’re considering escaping.
When the entrance to my building comes into view I notice a woman standing in the street in the snow, staring at the Wall. Her eyes are hollow and bereft. It’s Frau Schäfer, a woman who lives a few floors below me. She lives alone because her husband and young children are in the West. They were visiting family in West Berlin the night the Wall went up and haven’t returned. I know they’ve offered to but Frau Schäfer has forbidden it; she won’t allow her son and daughter to grow up in a country that can split a family so cruelly in two. She’s written many letters to officials, filled out every form, stood in every queue at the government offices, but they won’t let her emigrate to the West or even visit. Your family are East Germans, they tell her. If you want to see them they should come home.
Dad and I have tried to convince Frau Schäfer that she needs to be more careful about who she tells her troubles to and be better about hiding her emotions, but here she is, standing in the street for anyone to see, looking towards the Wall and weeping.
I hurry to her side and take her arm. “You must be cold, Frau Schäfer. What are you doing out here? Let’s go inside and I’ll make coffee for us.”
She pulls away. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to leave. I want to die.”
My eyes dart up and down the street. It’s empty, for now, but I’m conscious that there are dozens of windows overlooking us. “We need to go inside. It’s not safe out here.”
Frau Schäfer begins to cry even harder, speaking of her children and her husband. I listen, torn. She doesn’t know it yet but we’ll be taking her with us the night we leave. Dad has forbidden me to tell her this as he says she’s too emotional to be trusted to keep it secret, or she’ll suddenly be blissfully happy and make an informant suspicious. But shouldn’t I tell her now? There are only three days to go. On the one hand I think he’s being paranoid; on the other he’s not the only one who says there’s an informant in every apartment building in East Berlin. There could be several looking down on us right now.
“It will be all right, I promise. Just hold on a little longer. Just a little longer.” I’m doing my best to comfort her when I hear the sound of marching feet. I go still, straining to listen. “Hush a moment.” She doesn’t heed me, still weeping and wailing, but I hear them, and they’re coming in this direction.
I’m done trying to persuade her. Taking her arm I start to drag her towards the building. “We need to get inside, now.”
“No. I want to die. My babies,” she moans.
You might get your wish in a minute. “Stasi,” I hiss at her, pulling on her harder still. She’s a heavy woman and she won’t budge. “There are Stasi coming.”
But it’s too late. A detachment of border guards comes marching along the street perpendicular to the one we’re standing on, not twenty feet from us. They’re led, as I thought they would be, by a uniformed secret police officer. I feel a thud of anger at the sight of them. It’s not right that they march about the city arresting people. We’re all East Germans. We’re all Germans, for that matter, East or West.
If we’re very still he might not notice us. Unfortunately, Frau Schäfer chooses this moment to realize that there are soldiers nearby and lets out a high shriek.
The officer turns his head, sees us, and holds up a black gloved hand. The marching guards behind him come to a halt with a stamping of feet. I recognize him immediately from his height, the hard line of his jaw, the dark blond hair at the nape of his neck. Der Mitternachtsjäger. Oberstleutnant Volker. He eyes us curiously, the top half of his face in shadow beneath his peaked cap. I’ve never been this close to him before and his features are as cold and hostile as I expected.
I hate you, I think as I look at him, unable to tear my eyes away. I hate what you do to us. I’ll never miss this place when I’m gone.
Frau Schäfer recognizes him and she begins to shake, pulling my attention away from him.
“Into the building, quickly,” I whisper to her, and finally she lets me lead her away. I glance over my shoulder and I’m startled to find that Volker has taken several steps toward us, leaving his guards standing in the middle of the street. He hasn’t called out to us. If he calls out we’ll have to stop, so I walk even faster, hoping he’ll decide we’re not worth it. It’s not late so we can’t look that suspicious.
Except that I’ve just left a secret dissidents’ meeting and both Frau Schäfer and I will be in the West by the end of the week.
But he can’t know that. Can he?
I get Frau Schäfer over the threshold and push her toward the stairs. Risking a last glance over my shoulder I see that Volker is standing in the street, staring at us. Staring at me. Maybe the stories are true. Maybe he can smell it on us when we’re traitors.
I turn and hurry into the building, praying he won’t follow. Standing in the darkness of the hall I hold my breath and listen. A minute ticks by, and then I hear marching feet receding into the night and I exhale. I shouldn’t have stared at him so. How awful it would have been to be brought in for questioning just days before we are to escape.
This is why I have to get out. I can’t live like this.
Peeling myself away from the wall I run upstairs and knock on the door to Frau Schäfer’s apartment. She’s terrified when she peers out, thinking I’m Volker.
“It’s all right. It’s Evony from upstairs.” I put a hand on her arm. “You’ll stay in tonight, won’t you? You won’t go back outside?” I talk to her quietly in the doorway for several minutes, trying to console her as best I can. The truth would be the most cheering thing but Dad’s right. We can’t risk it. I think about how happy she’ll be when we come for her in a few days’ time, then bid her goodnight and go upstairs.
Dad was the last to leave the meeting and he returns home half an hour after me, and by that time I’ve made us a dinner of roasted cauliflower and boiled mutton. There are no potatoes to be found in the shops right now, only mounds of cauliflower, so we have to make do. No one ever goes hungry in East Berlin but the supply of produce is erratic. We go a year without seeing peppers, and then suddenly we can’t move for peppers.
He scratches a hand through his messy, curly hair and grins at me. It’s all we dare in reference to the meeting, even in our own apartment. He suspects the Stasi of bugging us. Maybe that’s more paranoia but I suppose it’s better to be safe when we’re this close to our goal.
“Cauliflower, again,” Dad mutters gloomily, but tucks in and gives me a wink. “It’s good, Schätzen.” He’s always called me little treasure, on account of pulling me from the rubble of our bombed-out house when I was very small. His buried treasure.
“Danke,” I say, smiling at him.
Later, when I’m lying in bed, eyes wide in the darkness, the image of Volker standing in the street haunts me. What was the expression on his face? Curiosity? Suspicion? If only I had been able to see his eyes. Then I shudder, and I’m thankful I couldn’t as being in close proximity to a man like that can only be dangerous.
I lull myself to sleep imagining how good the sunsets will look when we’re finally in the West. Brighter and bigger than I’ve ever seen before.
In the morning Dad goes off to the mechanics he works at and I head for the Gestirnradio factory. Before I leave the building I go down to the third floor and check on Frau Schäfer. I knock for some time but there’s no answer. Cold fingers of worry clutch at my belly. She should be here at this time of the morning. Finally the next-door neighbor puts his head round the door. It’s Herr Beck, a pensioner with unruly gray hair.
“No point in knocking. She’s gone.”
I stare at him. Gone as in escaped? How could she have managed that? “What do you mean?”
“Took her, didn’t he? In the night.” Herr Beck wears the overbright expression of someone excited to impart grim news. I hate that attitude. It’s not me so isn’t this fun.
“Who took her?”
But already I know. I picture him returning to the building late last night, without his guards, and rousing poor confused and bereft Frau Schäfer from her bed and taking her away, all for the crime of being separated from her family. I’m shaking with anger. He’s a monster. How can he live with himself? How can he do this to us?
“Who do you think?” Herr Beck disappears back into his apartment and slams the door.
I leave for the factory with a lump in my throat. I don’t understand the world sometimes. It’s not right that we should be forced to choose between our family and the State. Without our loved ones, who are we?
If I keep thinking about Volker and Frau Schäfer I’ll burst into tears, so as I put away my bag and coat and tie an apron on over my street clothes I put them out of my mind. The factory is a new multistory building with designated areas for each part of the assembly process. I work on the third story, and as I emerge onto the factory floor I’m assailed by he sweet tang of melted solder. My workbench is against one wall and I take my seat and flick on the soldering iron. As I wait for it to heat up I check over the boxes of wires and transistors to make sure I have everything I need.
The work is repetitive, but today I’m grateful for the soothing monotony. I lose myself in the tedium of tiny wires and the smoke and glimmer of the melted solder. These are my hours. These are my days. But they will not be my years.
At midday I go to the lunchroom on the eighth floor. While I wait for Ana to join me I entertain myself by thinking of the life I’m leaving behind. This old Evony would continue to solder in the factory five days a week. She would attend the military parade every October 7 to celebrate the Republic. She would choose a husband from among the men who live in her neighborhood or work at this factory.
I look around at the young men eating their lunches, sitting in small groups, laughing and talking. I know most of them by name. Some I like quite well and some very well. Many of us used to go to Free German Youth meetings together and in the summer we’d be sent out to the countryside to work on farms or go on nature walks. There would be dances, and I would have partners. Some boys even seemed to quite like me, though Ana was, and is, always preferred for her honey-blonde hair and long legs. I never wanted to leave the dances and go for a walk in the moonlight with any of the boys, or dance every dance with just one. I liked each of them, but there was never any spark.
That’s because my husband’s in the West, I think with a smile. He’ll be unlike any of the men I’ve known in my life. He’ll have something special. I don’t know what that something will be but I’ll know it when I see it. He’ll be remarkable, the man I fall in love with.
“What’s that smile about?” Ana plops down into the seat opposite me and starts to unwrap a paper packet of sandwiches.
My daydream pops and I remember what I have to tell her. Leaning across the table I whisper, “Never mind that. Something happened last night. Something bad.” Immediately her face drains of color. Bad things that happen in the night usually have something to do with the Stasi. “It’s Frau Schäfer. She was taken by der Mitternachtsjäger.”
She can’t help her cry of shock and dismay. She’s too careful to say anything out loud but I know what she is thinking: Frau Schäfer was so close to getting out. I tell her about the encounter on the street, with Frau Schäfer looking at the Wall and crying, and me not being able to get her inside before Volker saw us.
Ana’s silent for a long time, staring at her sandwiches. “It was because she was looking at the Wall, wasn’t it? It wasn’t because of…anything else?” She gives me a meaningful look. It wasn’t because he knows about the tunnel?
I’d considered this, but there was no way Frau Schäfer could have known about the plan and still been that upset. She’s not that good an actor. I shake my head.
Ana picks up her rye and cheese sandwich but doesn’t take a bite. “Ugh, it’s too awful to think about, her in prison. Or someplace worse. Somewhere that awful man took her. What’s he like, up close?”
I picture Volker standing in the street. “Unsettling. He’s a foot taller than most of his men and he was like a hungry lion, sizing us up.”
“But he didn’t go after you?”
“No, it was very strange. Perhaps he knew that there was no hurry, that he could come back for Frau Schäfer later. I mean, it’s not like she was going anywhere.” I mutter under my breath, “Not last night, anyway.”
Ana takes a bite and chews for a moment, and then says, “Why just her though? Why not you? I mean, if she looked guilty you must have as well.”
I think back to that moment and recall Frau Schäfer’s tear-streaked, terrified face. How had I looked? “I don’t think I looked guilty,” I say slowly. “In fact I think I looked angry. That was probably stupid of me, to show how much I hate him.”
“I bet it’s been a long time since anyone looked at Volker with anything but pure terror. Schwein.” Ana tears a shred off her lunch wrapper and balls it up thoughtfully. “You know, there are some women on my floor who think he’s handsome. Can you believe it? Marta saw him outside a State reception last year and said he looked very gallant in his dress uniform. Even kissed a lady’s hand. But who cares what he looks like when you consider what he does.”
I snort with laughter, mostly at the expression of disgust on Ana’s face. “Kiss her hand? More likely bite her fingers off.” Volker’s a big man, broad and impressive, and he’s got strong features. The mouth I glimpsed last night was firm with purpose but if he smiled I have the feeling he could look quite pleasant. I imagine him in his dress uniform bowing over my hand and kissing it, and then shake myself. Constant daydreaming is a side-effect of the repetitive work we do but I will not start daydreaming about der Mitternachtsjäger.
Between misery over Frau Schäfer and nerves over our impending escape, the next two days pass lightning fast and in a rollercoaster of emotion. I barely sleep at night and I can’t look at Dad when we’re out on the street or Ana when we’re at the factory because I’m sure my excited, tense face will betray us.
Before I know it it’s Friday night, eleven-forty-five, just half an hour before we’re to meet in the basement of the bakery. Dad’s been pacing up and down our kitchen all evening, smoking cigarettes and staring at the linoleum. Frau Schäfer being taken has shaken him badly and I know he thinks he failed her. I’ve never seen him like this and I hope that he’ll find a way to calm down before we have to go out onto the street.
Ana and my dad’s best friend Ulrich have arrived, and the plan is that Ana and I will go together to the bakery, and Dad will go separately with Ulrich. If either pair are stopped we’ll tell the Stasi we’re going to a friend’s apartment. As it’s Friday night this is plausible.
Ana and I sit in silence at the kitchen table, and I expect that my face is as pale and tense as hers. Ulrich, a ginger-haired man with a thin but friendly mouth, is leaning against the cooker, cracking his knuckles. He’s watching Dad and frowning, and I can see he doesn’t like how rattled he is either.
The silence is so thick and tense that when Dad speaks, we all jump. “I want Evony to come with me.”
I gape at him. He’s changing the plan, now, at the very last minute? I want to ask him why and what he’s worried about, but fear that we’re being listened in on stops me. Instead, I say, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Glancing at Ulrich and Ana I see that they’re just as perplexed by this as me.
“Yes, I want you with me. Let’s go now.” And he hustles me out of the kitchen, his face tight and closed. I barely have time to wave to Ana and mouth see you there before he closes the apartment door behind us.
The night is dark and bitterly cold. I wait until we’re down on the street and crunching through the snow before I say anything. Dad’s walking quickly, his shoulders up around his ears. “This wasn’t a good idea. Ana and Ulrich being together will look suspicious. They’re not related and they don’t look like they’d be friends.” He doesn’t answer and I lose patience with him and hiss, “This is exactly what you warned us about, getting nervous and doing something that might give us away.”
Dad rounds on me suddenly, a wild expression on his face. “You’re all I have left in this world and I’m not losing you at the eleventh hour. You’re my daughter and I want you with me. Is that so hard to understand?”
I do understand, but that doesn’t mean I like it. “You didn’t fail her, you know,” I say, meaning Frau Schäfer. “Things like that happen all the time. She was unlucky.” And foolish, but I won’t speak ill of her now she’s gone.
Dad just shakes his head. “Let’s get moving. There’ll be time for talking on the other side.”
But it’s not as easy as that. We run into a patrol and have to hide in the shadows for a long time. I can see from Dad’s anxious face that he’s thinking what I’m thinking: if we can’t get to the bakery tonight then we’ll lose that escape route. A dozen people not turning up for work in the morning will tip the Stasi off that there’s been an escape. They’ll be out in full force tomorrow and will find the tunnel in no time.
Thankfully the soldiers eventually march away and we’re on the move again. When the bakery comes into sight my heart leaps. Dad squeezes my arm, relief washing over his face. “Make sure you stay close to me, Schätzen.”
“Of course.”
All is quiet on the ground floor of the bakery as we go inside. We descend the stairs to the dark cellar. Odd that it’s so dark. I expected there to be at least one lamp giving a little light.
“Hello?” I call softly, wondering if everyone has gone down the tunnel without us. Then I hear a scream, a long way off.
Dad grabs me and pushes me forward. “Someone’s been caught on the street. Quickly, down the tunnel! Gehen! Go!”
But as I scramble for the tunnel I hear running feet—not behind me, but coming toward me. People surge out of the tunnel, knocking me down. I see Ana, her face panicked. She and Ulrich must have overtaken us while we were held up by the soldiers. I run toward her, trying to reach her. There were soldiers down the tunnel, I realize, my heart in my throat. We need to get back onto the street. But there are soldiers all around us now and torches have come on, blinding me. I turn, looking for Ana and Dad but I can’t see them in the chaos.
Someone shouts an order, and the night explodes in a nightmare of screaming and gunfire.