Cloud and Wallfish (9 page)

“Ah,” said Noah’s father every now and then. “Interesting. Hmm.”

(Nothing ever got Noah’s father ruffled.)

At the end of the evening, the nervous man with the car took them almost all the way home, but not quite all the way, perhaps because he was in such a rush to get back to his own house, where maybe he could finally relax and stop sweating. He did offer to take them to their door, but after that painful party, Noah and his parents naturally wanted to breathe some nice, refreshing, coal-laden outdoor Berlin air. So they did not mind walking the last couple of blocks.

“Well,” said Noah’s mother, “that was truly
something.
Every person in that room was a Party member, I do believe. A Party party!”

She hooted with laughter, but when she looked over at Noah, that laugh turned into something else, more like a sigh.

“I’m afraid you may have to spend some more time with those boys,” she said. “That mother of theirs has agreed to let you write a little essay about Berlin and how you want to be educated. She seemed to think that would help the administration decide whether to let you into the schools or not. They are going to borrow you on Monday and show you around town. I imagine they will grill you constantly. Then you write your essay and see what happens.”

“Oh,” said Noah. His heart had just sunk right into the ground. Nothing in that plan sounded good to him.

“They didn’t like curry in their nice fried rice, either,” said Noah’s father sadly. He had that big bowl in his hands.

“Don’t feel bad about that. We’ll eat it when we get home!” said Noah’s mother. “With extra spices and extra garlic! Come on, people — cheer up!”

That was a Rule. That was Rule #4.
Smile. Be polite. Don’t let your worries show.

“They’re probably all writing reports on each other right this minute,” said Noah’s mother with relish. “On each other and on us. Think of all the nonsense they’ll be having to write.”

Then she looked sternly at Noah: “I say that only because we’re out of doors, Jonah.”

Jonah.
Would he ever get used to that name? Would it always feel unfamiliar and cold?

“Well,” said Noah. “If I wrote a report, I’d say . . . when they were fighting over my book, they looked like — like — like —”

His parents waited. Say what you want about Noah’s parents, even if they sometimes took their child’s name and birthday away and dragged him across the world to a place that smelled like coal smoke, they knew how to wait patiently for his words to appear.

“Like . . .
Tweedledum
!” he said finally, and it was an explosion. “And . . .
Tweedledee
!”

And then they all really did laugh like ordinary happy people, and went upstairs and had lots and lots of curried rice.

His parents were nice about it, but Noah knew the truth: this outing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee and their half-frowning mother was a test. A huge test. A test without hints or extra time or second chances.

Frau Huppe didn’t think he should be allowed to go to school. That was enough to make Noah want to show how very ready for school, any school, school in any language, he actually was. And it wasn’t just a question of his German; it was a question of how well he answered questions, maybe even questions about life back home in
Roanoke,
Virginia.

His parents tried not to show how worried they were. Noah could tell, however, because whenever they were safely outdoors together, far from whatever bugs inhabited the apartment, his parents kept dropping casual reminders into every possible conversation, about Rules 4 (
Smile
) and 5 (
Don’t talk about the past!
), not to mention 7 (
When asked questions, say as little as possible!
). And when they were indoors they curled up on the couch with him and the Jonah Book, “remembering” the past that had never happened.

Sometimes Noah was tempted to say to his dear parents — ideally with that cutting lilt some of his classmates back in Oasis had already mastered, “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

But that would have been a violation of Rule 4, right? That would not have been smiling.

And he knew his parents didn’t think he was stupid. He knew that. They were just worried, that was all. Worry might not have been showing on their faces, but it was seeping out of every other seam of them.

So as much as he could, Noah kept his own worries to himself.

His father scrambled a few eggs for breakfast that morning.

“Protein!” he said. “To fortify you on your long expedition!”

They made sure he had his jacket and an extra sweater in his bag, plus his map of East Berlin and a bit of money, in the very unlikely case Frau Huppe and the young Tweedle-Huppes managed to lose him somehow. And some chocolate bars for Ingo and Karl.

Noah made a point of leaving
Alice
safely behind, though — enough lost pages.

“Jonah, your friends are here!” said Noah’s parents when the Huppes arrived, even though it could hardly have been less accurate to call any of those three people at the door Noah’s “friends.”

The young Huppes had on track jackets over their turtlenecks. They all — the boys and their mother — looked somewhat put-upon and under stress, as if Noah himself were a great big enormous bowl of curried rice they didn’t know what to do with.

“It’s so kind of you to take Jonah around Berlin!” said Noah’s parents, even though they knew it had very little or nothing to do with kindness.

“Our pleasure,” said Frau Huppe, while the upper half of her face frowned.

“Have a lovely time, Jonah!” said Noah’s parents, even though it was exactly zero percent likely that Noah — or, from the looks on their faces, any of the Huppes — would have a lovely time. Tests aren’t like that.

That was the moment when Noah stood extra straight and got ready to implement his secret plan: the Turn-the-Test-Tables Plan. He had prepared that weekend because, as his mother used to say back in Oasis, where it wasn’t even really necessary, “The best defense is a good offense.” Noah’s secret offense involved two German sentences he had practiced quite a bit, under his breath, that weekend, and they were:

1. “Could you please tell me about X?”

and

2. “Could you please tell me more about X?”

In the Pergamon Museum, on the Museum Island, in the misty, drizzly morning hours of that long day, Noah started out bravely with “Could you please tell me about this castle?”

It was amazing: a huge blue-tiled structure right in the museum under a greenhouse roof. Just enormous! And with ceramic lions and dragons all over it and castle-like toothy battlements all along the top! But apparently it wasn’t really a castle. Apparently it was a famous gate, the Ishtar Gate, the entrance to the old city of Babylon.

“Perhaps your parents have traveled to some of these old cities,” said Frau Huppe at the end of her long explanation. “Have they talked about their travels with you?”

“Could you please tell me more about Babylon?” said Noah. Sometimes a sentence, even a German sentence, will just surprise you by tripping easily off your tongue. “And these lions?”

Ingo and Karl were already staring at him with astonishment. We will not say admiration; we will leave it at astonishment.

Soon enough Frau Huppe ran out of things to say about Babylon; they looked at the enormous Pergamon Altar, which is absolutely covered with statues of gods and goddesses and monsters and heroes all fighting one another.

Ingo liked the gore and the weapons, so Noah had a bit of a break from his two magical questions, but eventually Frau Huppe became impatient with Ingo and mythological battles and announced they were going next to a street called Husemannstraße, not so far away, where old buildings had been carefully preserved and renovated into a new Museum of Working-Class Life in Berlin Around 1900.

The museum was a reconstructed apartment from almost a hundred years ago. Ingo lost interest about one minute after pointing out the funny old bicycle on the wall. He had already been here on a school field trip, and he wasn’t eager to do it all over again. Ingo frowned at the old-fashioned cookstove in the kitchen.

“It gives us insight into the struggle of the working people,” said Frau Huppe. “Perhaps your parents, Jonah, have said something about how they feel about the working classes?”

“Oh!” said Noah, and this time he happily let the Astonishing Stutter slow him down. “Could you . . . Could you please tell me more about the working classes of Berlin?”

For lunch, they went to a restaurant in the Palast der Republik, a vast and modern building with windows that reflected the gray sky in a metallic bronze.

“This is the people’s palace!” said Frau Huppe. “In it the people’s parliament meets. And there are concerts.”

“And good ice cream,” said Ingo.

“Like your Washington, D.C., where your government works,” said Frau Huppe. “Don’t your parents often go to Washington, D.C., perhaps for their jobs?”

“Hmm,” said Noah, looking over the menu. “Could you please tell me more about . . .
bratwurst
?”

That struck Tweedledum and Tweedledee as incredibly funny. They couldn’t imagine a universe where anyone could ask questions about bratwurst, which turned out to be a kind of sausage. Lunch was followed by ice cream, and for a moment even Ingo was smiling.

After the sausage and the ice cream, however, Ingo said, “Let’s take him home now.”

Frau Huppe and Karl both frowned at the youngest Huppe.

“First, the Treptower Park,” said Frau Huppe firmly. “Paying respect to the great Soviet sacrifice.”

“Or let’s go to the Pioneer Palace!” said Ingo. “Let’s go see the cosmonaut exhibit!”

Frau Huppe’s stress wrinkle dug deeper into her forehead.

“Not today,” she said. “It’s the forty-fourth anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Berlin this week, so we will go pay our respects.”

Treptower turned out to be an enormous park that was also sort of a cemetery: long garden alleyways led to a small hill on which the most massive statue of a Russian soldier held a statue of a small German child in its arms.

“Please could you tell me about this . . . park?” said Noah, running out of questions — and out of nouns. A miserable thin rain began to spit down from the gray sky, and he was suddenly desperately tired.

“What does your family think about the Soviet Union?” asked Frau Huppe. She seemed tired, too. “How do they feel about socialism?”

“It’s raining,” said Karl and Ingo. Ingo went on to say it three or four more times; plus he pointed out that if they had gone to the cosmonaut exhibition in the Pioneer Palace, they would have been safely indoors.

So they took Noah home.

And thanks to that long day, 54 Max-Beer-Straße actually felt something like “home” now — when Noah’s parents opened the door of the apartment, Noah was so glad to see them, he almost burst into tears.

“Jonah!” said his mother, and his father gave him an enormous, enormous hug. “Did you have a nice time? Say good-bye to your friends.”

They weren’t his friends. But they all shook hands anyway.

Frau Huppe made a brisk little speech to Noah’s mother about how much there was for her office to do before the huge FDJ gathering beginning in just a few days now. And about how the schools were about to go on their middle-of-May spring vacation, too, so really nothing could be done before June. And June was practically the end of the school year. So . . .

“Your Jonah should of course write up his petition, asking to be sent to school. Why not? But we mustn’t expect success.”

“I thought
you
were the authority who could tell the schools what to do about a visiting child’s education,” said Noah’s mom. That was more or less what she said, Noah guessed, but since his brain was pretty well worn out by now, some of his mother’s long German words washed right over him like seawater.