Edge of Eternity (20 page)

Both families went backstage. Evie emerged from the girls' dressing room looking demure in a twinset and a below-the-knee skirt, an outfit obviously chosen to say
I am not a sexual exhibitionist, that was Ophelia.
But she also wore an expression of quiet triumph. Whatever people said about her nudity, no one could deny that her acting had captivated the audience.

Her father was the first to speak. Lloyd said: “I just hope you don't get arrested for indecent exposure.”

“I didn't really plan it,” Evie said as if he had paid her a compliment. “It was kind of a last-minute thing. I wasn't even sure the nightdress would rip.”

Crap, thought Cameron.

Jeremy Faulkner appeared in his trademark college scarf. He was the only teacher who allowed pupils to call him by his first name. “That was fabulous!” he raved. “A peak moment!” His eyes were bright with
excitement. The thought occurred to Cameron that Jeremy, too, was in love with Evie.

Evie said: “Jerry, these are my parents, Lloyd and Daisy Williams.”

For a moment the teacher looked scared, but he recovered quickly. “Mr. and Mrs. Williams, you must be even more surprised than I was,” he said, deftly disclaiming responsibility. “You should know that Evie is the most brilliant pupil I have ever taught.” He shook hands with Daisy, then with a visibly reluctant Lloyd.

Evie spoke to Jasper. “You're invited to the cast party,” she said. “My special guest.”

Lloyd frowned. “Party?” he said. “After that?” Clearly he felt a celebration was not appropriate.

Daisy touched his arm. “It's okay,” she said.

Lloyd shrugged.

Jeremy said brightly: “Just for an hour. School in the morning!”

Jasper said: “I'm too old. I'd feel out of place.”

Evie protested: “You're only a year older than the sixth-formers.”

Cameron wondered why the hell she wanted him there. He
was
too old. He was a university student: he did not belong at a high school party.

Fortunately, Jasper agreed. “I'll see you back at the house,” he said firmly.

Daisy put in: “No later than eleven o'clock, please.”

The parents left. Cameron said: “My God, you got away with it!”

Evie grinned. “I know.”

They celebrated with coffee and cake. Cameron wished Beep was there to put some vodka into the coffee, but she had not taken part in the production so she had gone home, as had Dave.

Evie was the center of attention. Even the boy playing Hamlet admitted she was the star of the evening. Jeremy Faulkner could not stop talking about how her nakedness had expressed Ophelia's vulnerability. His praise for Evie became embarrassing and eventually kind of creepy.

Cameron waited patiently, letting them monopolize her, knowing that he had the ultimate advantage: he would be taking her home.

At ten thirty they left. “I'm glad my father got this assignment in
London,” Cameron said as they zigzagged through the back streets. “I hated leaving San Francisco, but it's pretty cool here.”

“That's good,” she said without enthusiasm.

“The best part is getting to know you.”

“How sweet. Thank you.”

“It's really changed my life.”

“Surely not.”

This was not going the way Cameron had imagined. They were alone in the deserted streets, speaking in low voices as they walked close together through circles of lamplight and pools of darkness, but there was no feeling of intimacy. They were more like people making small talk. All the same he was not giving up. “I want us to be close friends,” he said.

“We already are,” she replied with a touch of impatience.

They reached Great Peter Street and still he had not said what he wanted to say. As they approached the house he stopped. She took another step forward, so he grabbed her arm and held her back. “Evie,” he said, “I'm in love with you.”

“Oh, Cam, don't be ridiculous.”

Cameron felt as if he had been punched.

Evie tried to walk on. Cameron gripped her arm more tightly, not caring now if he hurt her. “Ridiculous?” he said. There was an embarrassing quaver in his voice, and he spoke again more firmly. “Why should it be ridiculous?”

“You don't know anything,” she said in a tone of exasperation.

This was a particularly hurtful reproach. Cameron prided himself on knowing a great deal, and he had imagined she liked him for that. “What don't I know?” he said.

She pulled her arm out of his grasp with a vigorous jerk. “I'm in love with Jasper, you idiot,” she said, and she went into the house.

I
n the morning, while it was still dark, Rebecca and Bernd made love again.

They had been living together three months, in the old town house in Berlin-Mitte. It was a big house, which was fortunate, for they shared it with her parents, Werner and Carla, plus her brother, Walli, and her sister, Lili, and Grandmother Maud.

For a while, love had consoled them for all they had lost. Both were out of work, prevented from getting jobs by the secret police—despite East Germany's desperate shortage of schoolteachers.

But both were under investigation for social parasitism, the crime of being unemployed in a Communist country. Sooner or later they would be convicted and jailed. Bernd would go to a prison labor camp, where he would probably die.

So they were going to escape.

Today was their last full day in East Berlin.

When Bernd slid his hand gently up Rebecca's nightdress, she said: “I'm too nervous.”

“We may not have many more chances,” he said.

She grabbed him and clung to him. She knew he was right. They might both die attempting to flee.

Worse, one might die and one might live.

Bernd reached for a condom. They had agreed that they would marry when they reached the free world, and avoid pregnancy until then. If their plans should go wrong, Rebecca did not want to raise a child in East Germany.

Despite all the fears that troubled her, Rebecca was overcome by desire, and responded energetically to Bernd's touch. Passion was a
recent discovery for her. She had mildly enjoyed sex with Hans, most of the time, and with two previous lovers, but she had never before been flooded with desire, possessed by it so completely that for a while she forgot everything else. Now the thought that this could be the last time made her desire even more intense.

After it was over he said: “You're a tiger.”

She laughed. “I never was before. It's you.”

“It's us,” he said. “We're right.”

When she had caught her breath, she said: “People escape every day.”

“No one knows how many.”

Escapers swam across canals and rivers, they climbed barbed wire, they hid in cars and trucks. West Germans, who were allowed into East Berlin, brought forged West German passports for their relatives. Allied troops could go anywhere, so one East German man bought a U.S. army uniform at a theatrical costume shop and walked through a checkpoint unchallenged.

Rebecca said: “And many die.”

The border guards showed no mercy and no shame. They shot to kill. They sometimes left the wounded to bleed to death in no-man's-land, as a lesson to others. Death was the penalty for trying to leave the Communist paradise.

Rebecca and Bernd were planning to escape via Bernauer Strasse.

One of the grim ironies of the Wall was that in some streets the buildings were in East Berlin but the sidewalk was in the West. Residents of the east side of Bernauer Strasse had opened their front doors on Sunday, August 13, 1961, to find a barbed-wire fence preventing them from stepping outside. At first, many leaped from upstairs windows to freedom—some injuring themselves, others jumping onto a blanket held by West Berlin firemen. Now all those buildings had been evacuated, their doors and windows boarded up.

Rebecca and Bernd had a different plan.

They got dressed and went down to breakfast with the family—probably their last for a long time. It was a tense repeat of the same meal on August 13 last year. On that occasion the family had been sad and anxious: Rebecca had been planning to leave, but not at the risk of her life. This time they were scared.

Rebecca tried to be cheerful. “Maybe you'll all follow us across the border one day,” she said.

Carla said: “You know we aren't going to do that. You
must
go—you have no life left here. But we're staying.”

“What about Father's work?”

“For now, I carry on,” Werner said. He was no longer able to go to the factory he owned because it was in West Berlin. He was trying to manage it remotely, but that was nearly impossible. There was no telephone service between the two Berlins, so he had to do everything by mail, which was always liable to be delayed by the censors.

This was agony for Rebecca. Her family was the most important thing in the world to her, but she was being forced to leave them. “Well, no wall lasts forever,” she said. “One day Berlin will be reunited, and then we can be together again.”

There was a ring at the doorbell, and Lili jumped up from the table. Werner said: “I hope that's the postman with the factory accounts.”

Walli said: “I'm going to cross the Wall as soon as I can. I'm not going to spend my life in the East, with some old Communist telling me what music to play.”

Carla said: “You can make your own decision—as soon as you're an adult.”

Lili came back into the kitchen looking scared. “It's not the postman,” she said. “It's Hans.”

Rebecca let out a small scream. Surely her estranged husband could not know about her escape plan?

Werner said: “Is he alone?”

“I think so.”

Grandma Maud said to Carla: “Remember how we dealt with Joachim Koch?”

Carla looked at the children. Obviously they were not supposed to know how Joachim Koch had been dealt with.

Werner went to the kitchen cupboard and opened the bottom drawer. It contained heavy pans. He pulled the drawer all the way out and set it on the floor. Then he reached deep into the cavity and brought out a black pistol with a brown grip and a small box of ammunition.

Bernd said: “Jesus.”

Rebecca did not know much about guns, but she thought it was a Walther P38. Werner must have kept it after the war.

What had happened to Joachim Koch, Rebecca wondered? Had he been killed?

By Mother? And
Grandma
?

Werner said to Rebecca: “If Hans Hoffmann takes you out of this house we will never see you again.” Then he began to load the gun.

Carla said: “He may not be here to arrest Rebecca.”

“True,” said Werner. He said to Rebecca: “Talk to him. Find out what he wants. Scream if you need to.”

Rebecca stood up. Bernd did the same. “Not you,” Werner said to Bernd. “The sight of you might anger him.”

“But—”

Rebecca said: “Father's right. Just be ready to come if I call.”

“All right.”

Rebecca took a deep breath, made herself calm, and went into the hall.

Hans stood there in his new blue-gray suit, wearing a striped tie that Rebecca had given him for his last birthday. He said: “I got the divorce papers.”

Rebecca nodded. “You were expecting them, of course.”

“Can we talk about it?”

“Is there anything to say?”

“Perhaps.”

She opened the door of the dining room, used occasionally for formal dinners and otherwise for doing homework. They went in and sat down. Rebecca did not close the door.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hans said.

Rebecca was scared. Did he mean escape? Did he know? She managed to say: “Do what?”

“Get divorced,” he said.

She was confused. “Why not?” she said. “It's what you want, too.”

“Is it?”

“Hans, what are you trying to say?”

“That we don't have to be divorced. We could start again. This time there would be no deceptions. Now that you know I am an officer of the Stasi, there would be no need for lies.”

This felt like a stupid dream in which impossible things happen. “But why?” she said.

Hans leaned forward across the table. “Don't you know? Can't you at least guess?”

“No, I can't!” she said, although she had the glimmering of a creepy suspicion.

“I love you,” said Hans.

“For God's sake!” Rebecca shouted. “How can you say such a thing? After all you've done!”

“I mean it,” he said. “I was faking it at first. But I realized after a while what a wonderful woman you are. I
wanted
to marry you, that wasn't just work. You're beautiful, and smart, and dedicated to teaching—I admire dedication. I've never met a woman like you. Come back to me, Rebecca—please.”

“No!” she shouted.

“Think about it. Take a day. Take a week.”

“No!”

She was yelling her refusal at the top of her voice, but he acted as if she were coyly pretending reluctance. “We'll talk again,” he said with a smile.

“No!” she yelled. “Never! Never! Never!” And she ran from the room.

They were all at the open door of the kitchen, looking scared. Bernd said: “What? What happened?”

“He doesn't want a divorce,” Rebecca wailed. “He says he loves me. He wants to start again—give it another chance!”

Bernd said: “I'm going to fucking strangle him.”

But there was no need to restrain Bernd. At that moment they heard the front door slam.

“He's gone,” Rebecca said. “Thank God.”

Bernd put his arms around her and she buried her face in his shoulder.

“Well,” said Carla in a shaky voice, “I wasn't expecting
that.
”

Werner unloaded the pistol.

Grandma Maud said: “That's not the end of it. Hans will come back. Stasi officers do not believe that ordinary people can say no to them.”

“And they're right,” said Werner. “Rebecca, you have to leave today.”

She detached herself from Bernd's embrace. “Oh, no—today?”

“Now,” her father said. “You're in terrible danger.”

Bernd said: “He's right. Hans may come back with reinforcements. We have to do now what we planned to do tomorrow morning.”

“All right,” said Rebecca.

Rebecca and Bernd ran upstairs to their room. Bernd put on his black corduroy suit with a white shirt and a black tie, as if going to a funeral. Rebecca, too, dressed all in black. They both put on black gym shoes. From under the bed Bernd took a coiled washing line he had bought last week. He slung it across his body like a bandolier, then put on a brown leather jacket to hide it. Rebecca donned a dark short coat over her black roll-neck sweater and black pants.

They were ready in a few short minutes.

The family were waiting in the hall. Rebecca hugged and kissed them all. Lili was crying. “Don't get killed,” she sobbed.

Bernd and Rebecca put on leather gloves and went to the door.

They waved to the family one more time, then they went out.

•   •   •

Walli followed them at a distance.

He wanted to see how they did it. They had not told anyone their plan, not even the family. Mother said the only way to keep a secret was to tell nobody. She and Father were ardent about this, leading Walli to suspect that it came from those mysterious wartime experiences that they never explained.

Walli had told the family he was going to play the guitar in his room. He had an electric instrument now. Hearing no noise, his parents would assume he was practising without plugging in.

He slipped out through the back door.

Rebecca and Bernd walked arm in arm. Their pace was brisk, but not hurried enough to attract attention. It was half past eight, and the morning mist was beginning to lift. Walli could easily follow the two figures, the washing line making a bulge on Bernd's shoulder. They did not look back, and his sneakers made no sound as he walked. He noticed that they, too, were wearing sneakers, and he wondered why.

Walli was excited and scared. What an amazing morning. He had
almost fallen over when Father pulled out that drawer and revealed a damn pistol. The old man had been ready to shoot Hans Hoffmann! Maybe Father was not such a doddery old fool after all.

Walli was frightened for his beloved sister. She might be killed within the next few minutes. But he was also thrilled. If she could escape, so could he.

Walli was still determined to escape. After he had defied his father by going to the Minnesänger club against orders, he had not after all got into trouble: his father had said that the destruction of his guitar was punishment enough. But all the same he was suffering under two tyrants, Werner Franck and General Secretary Walter Ulbricht, and he intended to be free of both at the first opportunity.

Rebecca and Bernd came to a street that led directly to the Wall. Two border guards were visible at the far end, stamping their boots in the morning chill. Slung from their shoulders they had Soviet PPSh-41 submachine guns with drum magazines. Walli saw no chance of anyone getting over the barbed wire with those two watching.

But Rebecca and Bernd turned off the street and entered a cemetery.

Walli could not follow them along the paths through the graves: he would be too conspicuous in that open space. He walked quickly at a right angle to their route until he was behind the chapel in the middle of the cemetery. He peeped around the corner of the building. They evidently had not seen him.

He watched them walk to the northwest corner of the graveyard.

There was a chicken-wire fence and, beyond that, the backyard of a house.

Rebecca and Bernd climbed over the fence.

That explains the sneakers, Walli thought.

What about the washing line?

•   •   •

The buildings on Bernauer Strasse were derelict, but the side streets were still occupied normally. Rebecca and Bernd, tense and fearful, crept across the backyard of a row house on such a side street, five doors from the end of the road where the Wall blocked it off. They climbed a second fence, then a third, each time moving closer to the Wall. Rebecca
was thirty years of age, and agile. Bernd was older at forty, but he was in good shape: he had coached the school soccer team. They reached the back of the house third from the end.

They had visited the cemetery once before, again dressed in black to pose as mourners, their true purpose to study these houses. Their view had not been perfect—and they could not risk using binoculars—but they were fairly sure the third house offered a possible route up to the roof.