I also had to ask myself exactly how serious I was about escaping. Now that I knew what Papa wanted, I better understood just how dangerous it was for me to be standing here. I didn't have to dig or tunnel or do anything but be inside this air-raid shelter to give them enough reason to arrest me, or worse. And if I started, I would have to finish, because a half-dug tunnel was no different to the Stasi than a failed escape attempt, and my punishment would be no less severe. If I started, I was committing myself to literally do it, or die. And my odds weren't exactly on the side of success.
My legs were shaking when I climbed out, and I took extra time to make sure the wood boards across the window looked exactly as they did the first time I'd found them. I'd been angry when I left here before and might've been more careless with the boards than I should've been. My footprints showed clearly in the softer part of the dirt, and Frau Eberhart had already seen me with a shovel. I hadn't even started digging yet, and already my mistakes were mounting.
I brushed over my tracks and then stuck to the hard soil instead, but I couldn't work up the nerve to dart across the empty field and into the alley. The best I could do was to slink along the edge of the wall and hope if anyone saw me that I looked casual enough to escape any further attention. But it was nearly impossible to pretend that my senses weren't focused on every detail around me. If the watchtower guards had binoculars, they might look at my hands and wonder how they'd gotten so dirty. I wished I had pockets like boys did for their pants, but my skirt didn't have any. So I hid my muddy fingers within the folds of my skirt and hoped that wouldn't look as strange or obvious to anyone else as it did to me.
Every person I passed on the way home seemed to be watching me closer than usual, and the expression on my face must have invited questions. But nobody said a word. Perhaps God still granted miracles to those behind the Iron Curtain.
The first thing I did after getting home was to scrub my hands until long after the water had run clean. Or, maybe, until they had stopped shaking. When I finished, I found a note from Mama on the counter. She hoped to be at Oma Gertrude's only until Sunday, and thought that if we were careful, there should be plenty of food in the house to last Fritz and me until then. And she was very clear that we weren't to get into any trouble or break any rules. Considering where I'd just come from, her note had come too late for me.
I paced the apartment for the rest of the afternoon, debating whether to tell Fritz about the tunnel. I knew I shouldn't. Tunneling under the Death Strip was probably impossible, and even if it wasn't, we'd still have to get through the tunnel without being shot like Anna's brother. Despite that, I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities if I were to succeed.
What would it take to build a tunnel? Lots of digging, obviously. Was I capable of all that on my own? Maybe, with enough time, but there was so much I didn't know. How would I know if I was going straight, or that I was deep enough? How would I know when it was safe to tunnel back up to the surface? That'd be my luck, to tunnel straight up into the center of the Death Strip. Considering the limits of my own abilities, I knew I needed help.
But Fritz was trying hard to be a model citizen, probably to get Claudia back, so I couldn't involve him, and there was no one else I trusted. If I was going to be smart about this -- and it was about time I did something smart -- then there was really only one option: let the tunnel be a good idea that wasn't meant to happen.
By the time Fritz came home, I had decided for certain not to tell him. And I knew that was the right thing to do once I saw the slump of his shoulders and frown on his face. He looked worse than sad -- it was like he'd simply accepted what the state was doing to his life. He'd given up.
Maybe he had good reason to look the way he did, but it was worse because I was helpless to cheer him up. Even if I could, there was nothing encouraging I dared say to him in our bugged apartment.
He mumbled a hello and said he was going to his room. I offered to make dinner, which really only meant I was going to warm up Mama's leftovers from last night. It wasn't much, but it was something.
When dinner was ready I called him to the table, but there was no answer. Even if he was seriously depressed, Fritz was never one to ignore a chance to eat. Thinking he must have fallen asleep, I went to his bedroom and opened the door to tell him to come. But he wasn't sleeping. Fritz was at his desk, writing on a paper, and when his door opened, he turned it over in a blink. I didn't know hands could move that fast.
My eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing!" Which was obviously a lie. Then his eyes darted around the room, as if the Stasi's secret bugs would be that easy to find. "Just a little extra homework, that's all."
"Oh right." My voice might've sounded like I agreed with him, but the expression on my face made it perfectly clear I knew something more was going on. "Food's ready."
We shared the usual meaningless chatter over dinner. We talked about school, about how long Mama might be at Oma Gertrude's, and about our plans for the summer. I didn't care about any of it and neither did he.
Fritz did let one piece of actual news slip into the conversation, something I had suspected for a while but never dared ask about. He had been fired from the bricklaying job, and we both knew why.
"I've tried to find other work for this summer, but nothing's turned up yet." His voice was hopeful, but his eyes were dead.
"Does Mama know?" Without Papa here, we counted on the money from Fritz's after-school job to get us through each year.
"Mama doesn't need any more worries."
I thought again about the tunnel I could build. With his bricklaying skills, he could easily get a job in West Germany, and their money was worth five times the value of ours.
After supper, Fritz returned to his room with strict instructions that I wasn't allowed to enter without knocking. He'd never done that before, confirming my suspicions that he had some big secrets. I would've snuck in and peeked at his papers if he left his room. But he never did. Not once.
I didn't find out anything until breakfast the following morning. He came out of his room with the papers in his hand. He commented on how cold it was and that he wanted a fire. It was actually a perfect spring morning, one in which we'd never build a fire. Not unless we needed to burn Fritz's papers, of course.
I told him I'd help with the fire, and after it was started, he let me see the papers. I had figured it must be some way of getting back together with Claudia, but it wasn't. What he had written was so much worse.
Page 1: There's no future here for me. I'm leaving East Berlin tonight.
My eyes widened and I drew in a sharp breath. He shook his head as a warning for me to keep quiet, and then crumpled that page and threw it in the fire.
Page 2: I found a place near the Spree that isn't well guarded. I can run for the water and swim across before I'm seen.
I shook my head as violently as I dared. The Spree was a powerful river, and the Berlin Wall ran along much of its wide banks. Large, heavy boats navigated that river, and everyone knew the current was stronger than it looked on the surface. Even for an experienced swimmer, it was dangerous. For Fritz, it would mean death.
Remembering the microphones, he commented that the fire should get us warm soon. I was too stunned and angry to make any response. Then he raised his pages again.
Page 3: I wanted you to know so you can explain to Mama. It's not fair, but it's the best I can do.
No! I continued shaking my head and tears stung my eyes. He wasn't the first to try escaping through the Spree, and so many people had died in the attempt. Either they drowned on the way or else were shot in the back by Grenzers as they swam. Even on the small chance that Fritz got as far as jumping into the water, he wasn't likely to get out again.
Page 4: I will not join their military. Eventually, I'll think like they do. And I will not let them ruin my life. You must understand, Gerta.
His eyes pled with me to accept his decision, but I couldn't. Yes,
I understood the desire to leave, and his frustrations over feeling that there was no hope for him here. I felt just as boxed in as he did, maybe even more. There probably wasn't much hope for me either, and it would only get worse if he left me behind. I wanted to leave just as much as he did. But not in this way.
Page 5: You can't stop me. My mind is made up. I am going to leave.
He started to crumple up that page and toss it in the fire with the others, but this time I grabbed it and ran for a pencil. While making a lame comment to the microphones about breakfast, I smoothed the paper out again. On the back, I drew a map to the building I'd found near the wall, and then pulled out the picture Papa had sent to me. On his paper, I wrote, Meet me here after school. Be careful.
Fritz looked up at me, his eyes burning with curiosity. I wrote one more word: Tunnel.
Once I was sure he knew where to go, I crumpled up his paper and tossed it into the fire.
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
-- Franz Kafka, German author
I arrived at the building first, and despite how anxious I was to get down into the shelter and begin digging, I forced myself to wait in the basement to be sure Fritz got in safely.
He approached the building the same way I had, using the shadow of the wall to hide him. I waved him in through the window, and after he slid inside, we shut the boards up again. Fritz was bigger than me, so he had separated the boards even wider and the nails were bent. If someone really looked at this window, they might notice that the boards didn't shut tight anymore. That made me nervous, but there wasn't much we could do about it.
He started to talk, but I'd already opened the heavy metal door into the air-raid shelter and quietly motioned for him to follow me. The shovel was down there too, ready to begin.
Without saying a word, Fritz stood in the shelter, inspecting it just as I had a day earlier. He opened the crates, patted at the walls, and dug into the dirt to test it. His eyes ran along the ceiling, no doubt questioning where the line for the Berlin Wall should be. If we weren't beneath it already, then it couldn't be more than a meter away.
"How did you find this place?" he asked.
In a whispered voice, I told him everything. About seeing Dominic and Papa, the dance Papa did on the platform, and getting the picture from Anna. I fully expected his excitement to grow at the prospect of tunneling to freedom, to see his eyes widen the way mine had when I first realized the possibilities down here. If he planned to swim the Spree anyway, this was a much safer plan. And this offered the chance for all of us to get to the west.
But instead of showing any enthusiasm, it was just the opposite. With every new revelation, his shoulders slumped further, and the light dimmed in his face.
"You were young when Father left, so you didn't know him as well." The tone in Fritz's voice was sympathetic, as if my innocence deserved his pity. "You must've misunderstood his message, if there even was a message. Father never would've asked us to put ourselves in this much danger. Never."
"But he did, Fritz! I saw him and you didn't."
"You saw him doing a children's dance and read meaning into it."
"Then why did he send that picture?"
"How do you know it's from him?" In frustration, Fritz turned from me and ran a hand through his hair. "How do you know it's not some test from the Stasi to get us here and then have a legitimate reason to arrest us?"
"They don't play games like that!"
"They do, Gerta. They do that all the time! If they believe our family has some sort of rebellious streak, do you really think they'll sit back and wait for us to commit a crime when they could just trap us now? Or maybe Anna's family drew this picture to lure us here so they can turn us in to the Stasi and get forgiven for what Peter did."
"Anna's family wouldn't --"
"Yes they would, and if you want to stay naive about how dangerous this tunneling idea is, then you have no business even thinking about it! Our friends could betray us, family members could betray us. Some stranger on the street could report us and we'd never know who it was. There is nobody we can trust!"
But he had said "us." Fritz and me, together. Fritz would never betray me, and even if the Stasi locked me up for a century and did their worst, I would never betray him.
I picked up the shovel and pushed it into the dirt wall. "Look at the way it crumbles, Fritz. This is soft dirt!"
He put his hand to it, and more dirt fell. "Where's the boundary for the Death Strip?"
I pointed to his feet. "You're standing on it now."
He stood back and watched me, which was something. At least he wasn't leaving and dragging me away with him.
"We could never do something this big," Fritz said. "I don't know a thing about tunneling."
"We can figure it out as we go," I said. "All we have to do is keep moving forward and make sure the ground above us doesn't cave in. A couple of weeks of digging, and then we're out on the other side."
"They sweep the Death Strip with sound sensors," he said. "But thanks to this shelter, we're already pretty deep. If only we knew how wide the Death Strip is here." Now his mind was working. "And we would have to make sure this tunnel came out into a safe place on the other side, inside another building or something. How can we find that exit when we can't see over there?"
"We can figure that out too," I said. "And Anna's apartment isn't far away. I can see the Death Strip from her bedroom and figure out how wide it is from there."
"How will you get inside? She isn't speaking to you."
I shrugged. First I had to get him to agree to this plan. Details like getting into an ex-friend's home could be worked out afterward.
Fritz took the shovel and dug at the dirt, trying it for himself. Within a few minutes, he already had a gap wide enough that he could stand inside it. Then he turned around. "What would we do with all the dirt? There's going to be a lot of it."
"We can leave it in the room right above us. Nobody looks in there, so it won't be noticed."
"Yes, but we would be. It'll take a long time to dig this. Someone will see us coming and going from here and start to wonder why. And we'll be dirty, with no way to wash off until we get home."
I'd already thought about that too. "On my way to bringing the shovel here, Frau Eberhart asked where I was going. I told her the shovel was for a garden. What if we did plant one, right outside the building? It's only dirt out there, and nobody appears to be using it. We could garden in the day while people are watching, and then tunnel when they aren't."
He dug at the tunnel again, his way of thinking it over. "I dunno, Gerta."
I grabbed his arm. "This is better than trying to swim the Spree. You'll die if you go that way, and whether you make it to the other side or not, what will the Stasi do to Mama and me afterward? We know they've terrified Anna's family. Do you want them to come after us that way?"
"No," he mumbled. "No, of course not."
"If you are going to escape, then we need a way for all of us to escape. We're a family, Fritz. Half of us are already on the other side. If we're going to cross, to be together, it has to be all of us."
Fritz stared at me a moment, then crouched down to stare at the dirt wall in front of him. "You're right," he finally said.
My heart leapt. "Then we're building a tunnel?"
"No." Fritz drew himself back to his full height. "No, you're right about the danger. Mama will be home on Sunday, and she'll never agree to this plan. I don't know what message Papa intended to send you, but he wouldn't want us to dig either. If anyone could make such a crazy idea work, it's you, but it's not worth the risk to our family."
This was a good plan, and it was slipping through my fingers like water. "Listen to me, please! If we just --"
"It's over, Gerta." Then he rubbed my head with his hand, something I didn't appreciate at all this time.
We climbed back up the ladder into the basement and pulled the boards closed as best we could. Never t
o return there again.
There are none so blind as those that will not see.
-- German proverb
The night before the last day of school was a long one. I wasn't sleeping well anyway because of my excitement to begin summer break, so when I heard the sounds in the apartment next door, I easily woke up.
Someone was crying in the neighboring apartment, but not just anyone. It was Herr Krause. I couldn't understand that at first. Herr Krause was a strong man who'd come through two world wars and hunger and the death of his wife. I wouldn't have thought anything could affect him so greatly now. Maybe even though he had been released from his arrest, the Stasi had done something that was still torturing him.
Because he clearly was crying, which made me hurt too. In the week before the wall went up, at almost the same time he had warned my own family to leave, he had sent his children and their families across the border. If his wife had been well enough to travel, I knew he would've gone with them. Now he was alone, surrounded by a crowded apartment of assorted tools, car parts, and trinkets that would do nothing to comfort him.
The crying bothered me enough that I got out of bed and walked into the kitchen for a drink of water. I was surprised to see Fritz there. "Herr Krause woke you up too?" he asked.
I nodded, and Fritz turned on the water tap and then a small radio that Mama kept on the counter. While it blared out some all-night dance music, he motioned for me to lean toward him.
He whispered directly into my ear, "He's done that every night since he came home. It was his crying that finally made me decide to swim the Spree."
"I thought you weren't --"
"I won't. You were right before, about the risks of trying to escape that way. But I've been awake all night listening to Herr Krause and wondering what happened to make him cry like that. Then I wondered if that could become me or you or Mama one day. My mind was already made up to leave, Gerta. I just wasn't sure about how." He drew in a breath and then said, "Papa might not want us to dig, and Mama would never give us permission, but it doesn't matter anymore. We're going to build that tunnel."