Cloud and Wallfish (5 page)

“The truth is, buddy, we can’t do this without you,” he said. “Seriously. It’s a lot to ask, but it’s
necessary,
and you’re the smartest, best kid I know, and I know you can handle it.”

It was something about the way he said “necessary” that did it: out of that crazy, confused weed patch of emotions in Noah’s brain, a quiet tendril of something else was beginning to push its way toward the light. He didn’t understand why this was all happening, but something rang true in his father’s voice just now. Noah was needed. Noah was
necessary.

“And now Rules One through Nine, plus milk shakes for dessert,” said Noah’s mother. “All coming right up!”

They were flying the last leg of the trip to Berlin on a big, fancy Pan Am plane, though not quite as big and fancy as the plane that had flown them from the United States to Frankfurt, West Germany, and Noah (now Jonah), with his nose plastered to the little airplane window, was still, it’s fair to say, about one thousand percent in shock. But paying attention. Paying very close attention.

In fact, he was determined — and definitely not just because it was the tenth Rule — to
notice everything.

Because, yes, he was going to a new and strange place, quite far away from Oasis, Virginia. And because, yes, he was supposed to be a new person, with a whole new name and a whole new life. But also — perhaps even mostly — because his parents were behaving like people who had huge secret lives he hadn’t known anything about.

He was reminded of this every time his parents handed over the brand-new passports, the ones that claimed to belong to “Samuel Brown” and “Linda Brown” and, worst of all,
“
Jonah Brown,
”
at the counters and the check-in desks and the airport gates. All those familiar faces next to those unfamiliar names! He remembered going to the photo store to get that picture taken. His mother had said it was for his player pass for soccer. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!

So how had his parents done it, all those years? How had they disguised themselves — and Noah — as Kellers? Was it that easy to sign your kid up for school under a different name? Apparently so, if the one doing the signing-up was Noah’s mother. And then he started feeling sad all over again about his Batman backpack and the soccer game and the birthday party and everything that he had left behind in Oasis, Virginia, so it was almost a relief when the pilot’s voice came booming into the cabin:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the pilot, “we have entered the airspace of the German Democratic Republic. We’ll be flying along the narrow corridor permitted to Western air traffic approaching Berlin. We are not permitted to leave this corridor under any circumstances; otherwise there will be dire consequences. Fortunately, your pilot and copilot today have long years of experience and excellent navigation skills, and we are quite hopeful that we will manage not to get ourselves shot out of the sky — not today, anyway.”

“Really?” whispered Noah to his father. “They could shoot us down, really?”

He got stuck on the word “shoot,” perhaps because his mouth didn’t want his brain thinking about things like that.

“Seems like our pilot has a sense of humor,” said his father, who did not seem worried in the slightest. “But also — though don’t worry, it won’t happen — also, yes.”

The plane made a very tight coiling turn as it landed, staying carefully inside the area that belonged to West Berlin.

Noah’s father had explained it all on the Washington, D.C.–to– Frankfurt part of the journey: you couldn’t fly from Frankfurt right to East Berlin; you had to fly to West Berlin and then travel through the Wall. You could get to the border a bunch of different ways: car, train, subway, the S-Bahn, which was something in between a subway and a regular train and ran on tracks above the ground, or you could even go over on foot, if you didn’t have a lot of luggage.

Noah’s parents had it all figured out, though as Noah shivered a little in the cold air and lugged a suitcase up the stairs into a bus, he suspected they might not have chosen the
easiest
way: they were taking that bus to the nearest S-Bahn stop, and then riding to the Friedrichstraße Station, a place where hundreds or thousands of people crossed from West to East or East to West every day, under the tightest of controls.

“To get the full flavor of the border,” said Noah’s father to Noah. “You’ll see. It’s apparently quite astonishing. I’ve studied some diagrams. Used to be one ordinary railway station, and now it’s the most amazing underground labyrinth. Miles of tunnels twisting and turning, sorting who can go in and who can go out.”

Noah was listening with about half an ear to all this talk of tunnels, while his eyes studied the world outside the bus. This place didn’t look anything at all like Oasis, Virginia. Instead of comfortable houses at the back of long green lawns, Berlin was filled with old-fashioned buildings, several stories high. The signs were all in German. He hadn’t slept very much on the plane, and now he had that weird exhausted feeling in his stomach that makes it hard to believe that what is happening to you just at the moment is actually happening
in real life.

And there was a drizzle of rain, making everything grayer and stranger.

His father did some scribbling on a piece of paper.

“See, it goes something like this,” said his father, sketching the roughest of rough lines and pathways and arrows. “One of the tracks runs right through East Berlin but only carries West Berliners on it, from West Berlin stations to West Berlin stations, on a bit of the old route curling through East Berlin. And then the other track, for the trains East Berliners use, is blocked off right here, in the station. It just ends. So that’s how you turn one station into
two
stations, right next to each other. Just hammer up a wall between the tracks so people can’t jump from the East Berlin trains to the West Berlin trains.”

“And then add a lot of tunnels,” said his mother, sounding a little impatient. “Get ready to pay attention, now. Remember the Rules. All the Rules apply! And for Pete’s sake, don’t forget to throw out that suspicious-looking doodle of yours.”

They didn’t have a huge amount of luggage, but they sure had enough to stand out. People gave them a lot of polite sideways glances as they pushed themselves and their bags up a bunch of stairs and, finally, onto the S-Bahn train.

“All right. Are you ready?” said Noah’s father. “Heeeere we go.”

The train went past more buildings, across a gray river, through some complicated structures involving barbed wire, past more buildings —

“And this is already East Berlin,” said his dad. He sounded more excited than Noah thought was reasonable, considering how gray and drizzly the world outside the windows was turning out to be. “See that? We’re in East Berlin now, physically, but we won’t be really
in
East Berlin until we’ve gone through the border controls. All those tunnels. Okay. This is it. Grab your stuff.”

The train was pulling into a gray barn of a station.

Someone said something as they hauled their bags out onto the platform.

Noah’s father made a polite and noncommittal sound in response.

“What did that man say?” asked Noah as the train pulled out of the station, leaving them on the platform.

“Don’t be slowing us down with questions, now, Jonah!” said his mother, and the sharp edge of her eyes added:
Have you already forgotten the Rules? Rule Nine?
And always Rule One?

But his father smiled and said, “He said, ‘Aren’t you going the wrong way?’ Families with lots of luggage going into East Germany — probably not something you see every day.”

“Oh,” said Noah. He wasn’t sure how that explanation made him feel.

Then they turned to enter the Friedrichstraße labyrinth, and everything became more and more unreal.
Notice everything,
Noah reminded himself. They left the ordinary gray light filtering through the sooty glass of the S-Bahn station windows and went down a set of steps, down under the ground, where dozens of fluorescent tubes in the low ceiling cast a light that was probably actually quite bright but felt dark somehow, it was so much unlike sunlight or the sort of brightness that came from the friendly, old-fashioned lightbulbs Noah was used to. And the walls were covered in slightly glossy tiles, on the yellow side of yellow-brown, vertical rectangles everywhere, reflecting the unwarm light. It was chilly. It was like a place that didn’t know what exactly it wanted to be: the basement of a hospital, maybe, or a place where creepy things might be stored on metal shelves. And everyone who had come down the steps from the train platform with them was lining up in front of doors labeled with various letters:
DDR, BRD, ANDERE STAATSBÜRGER.

“That’s us!” said Noah’s father. “
Other nationalities.
Over here. You must be a little tired, Jonah. You look tired.”

Jonah.
It was meant as a reminder that he wasn’t Noah anymore, not here.

Noah just looked at him and nodded. He was tired; of course he was tired. But he was also
noticing everything.
He was, in fact, despite being tired, also incredibly, intensely awake.

There were cameras mounted up by the ceiling, for instance.

There were men in uniforms keeping the lines in order.

The door for
Other nationalities
led into a weird little hall of a room, with blond plywood walls and a man behind glass on the other side of a high counter. The counter was high enough that Noah didn’t see much of the man, just his officer’s hat and his small, grim eyes. Noah held on to his father’s hand, because this was a place designed to make you feel younger than you actually were, while his mother slid all the passports and papers across the counter.

There was another camera mounted up over there.

There was a mirror tilted right above their heads so that the man behind the glass window could look at the backs of Noah’s family’s heads, though what he expected to find back there, Noah had no idea.

The officer took what felt like forever, looking through those papers. He moved them around before him on his desk. He scrutinized every page of every passport. He asked Noah’s father to look one way and then the other way, so he could see whether the sides of his head looked right. He asked a bunch of questions that Noah was too nervous to understand, and then he stood up from behind the window and peered down at Noah himself.

Noah, who had more experience being stared at than most people his age, due to the Astonishing Stutter, had never ever been stared at quite as thoroughly as this: he felt very cold and small. And then the man’s face cracked into a brief, narrow smile, and he said something else that Noah also couldn’t quite follow.

The atmosphere was a little better now. Noah’s mother was saying thank you, and the man was stamping their papers.
SCHWAMP SCHWAMP SCHWAMP.

More doors to go through. More cameras eyeing them from above. More steps to go down and up.

At some point they were in a slightly larger space, with low counters for their suitcases. This was customs, where men in uniform went through all the bags, piece by piece by piece. They took away for closer inspection Noah’s father’s
New York Times
and a magazine and the books for his mother’s dissertation and his father’s empty notebooks and the two books in Noah’s backpack,
Alice in Wonderland & Through the
Looking-Glass
and the Jonah Book. Then they made Noah’s parents make a list of everything they were bringing into the country. Everything.

“Even the curry powder?” asked Noah’s mother.