Edge of Eternity (150 page)

Schabowski himself seemed uncertain. He put on a pair of half-moon spectacles and read the decree aloud. ‘Private travel to foreign countries can be applied for without presentation of existing visa requirements or proving the need to travel or familial relationships.’

It was all written in obfuscatory bureaucratic language, but it sounded good. Someone said: ‘When does this new regulation come into effect?’

Schabowski clearly did not know. Tania noticed that he was perspiring. She guessed that the new law had been drafted in a rush. He shuffled the papers in front of him, looking for the answer. ‘As far as I know,’ he said, ‘immediately, without delay.’

Tania was bewildered. Something was effective immediately – but what? Could anyone just drive up to a checkpoint and cross? But the press conference came to an end without any further information.

Tania wondered what to write as she walked the short distance back to the Hotel Metropole on Friedrich Strasse. In the grubby grandiosity of the marble lobby, Stasi agents in their customary leather jackets and blue jeans lounged around, smoking and watching a television set with a bad picture. It was showing film from the press conference. As Tania got her room key, she heard one receptionist say to another: ‘What does that mean? Can we just go?’

No one knew.

*  *  *

Walli was in his West Berlin hotel suite, watching the news with Rebecca, who had flown in to see Alice and Helmut. They were all planning to have dinner together.

Walli and Rebecca puzzled over a low-key report on ZDF’s seven o’clock
Today
programme. There were new travel regulations for East Germans, but it was not clear what they meant. Walli could not figure out whether his family would be allowed to visit him in West Germany or not. ‘I wonder if I might even see Karolin again soon,’ he mused.

Alice and Helmut arrived a few minutes later, pulling off their cold-weather coats and scarves.

At eight, Walli switched over to ARD’s
Day Show
, but did not learn much more.

It seemed impossible that the Wall that had blighted Walli’s life could be opened. In a flash of memory that was all too familiar, he relived those few traumatic seconds at the wheel of Joe Henry’s old black Framo van. He recalled his terror as he saw the border guard kneel down and aim the sub-machine gun, his panic as he swung the wheel and drove at the guard, his confusion as bullets shattered his windscreen. He was sickened as he felt the sensation of his wheels bumping over a human being. Then he crashed through the barrier to freedom.

The Wall had taken his innocence. It had also taken Karolin from him. And his daughter’s childhood.

That daughter, now a few days from her twenty-sixth birthday, was saying: ‘Is the Wall still the Wall, or not?’

Rebecca said: ‘I can’t make it out. It’s almost as if they’ve opened the border by mistake.’

Walli said: ‘Shall we go out and see what’s happening on the streets?’

*  *  *

Lili, Karolin, Werner and Carla regularly watched ARD’s
Day Show
, as did millions of people in East Germany. They thought it told the truth, unlike their own state-controlled news shows, which depicted a fantasy world no one believed in. All the same, they were puzzled by the ambiguous eight o’clock news. Carla said: ‘Is the border open or not?’

Werner said: ‘It can’t be.’

Lili stood up. ‘Well, I’m going to have a look.’

In the end all four of them went.

As soon as they stepped out of the house and breathed the cold night air, they felt the emotional charge in the atmosphere. The streets of East Berlin, dimly lit by yellow lamps, were unusually busy with people and cars. Everyone was headed the same way, towards the Wall, mostly in groups. Some young men were trying to thumb a ride, a crime that would have got them arrested a week ago. People were talking to strangers, asking what they knew, whether it was really true that they could go to West Berlin now.

Karolin said to Lili: ‘Walli is in West Berlin. I heard it on the radio. He must have come to see Alice.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I hope they like each other.’

The Franck family walked south on Friedrich Strasse until they saw, in the distance, the powerful floodlights of Checkpoint Charlie, a compound that occupied the street for an entire block, from Zimmer Strasse on the near, Communist side, to Koch Strasse, which was free.

Coming closer, they saw people pouring out of the Stadtmitte subway station, swelling the crowd. There was also a line of cars, their drivers clearly unsure whether to approach the checkpoint or not. Lili sensed the feeling of celebration, but she was not sure they had anything to celebrate. As far as she could see, the gates were not open.

Many people held back, just out of range of the floodlights, afraid to show their faces; but the bolder ones approached nearer, committing the criminal offence of ‘unwarrantable intrusion into a border area’, despite the risk of arrest and a sentence of three years in a labour camp.

The street narrowed as it approached the checkpoint, and the crowd thickened. Lili and her family pushed through to the front. Before them, under lights as bright as day, they could see the red-and-white gates for pedestrians and cars, the lounging border guards with their guns, the customs buildings, and the watch towers rising over it all. Inside a glass-walled command post, an officer was talking on the telephone, making large, frustrated arm-waving gestures as he spoke.

To the left and right of the checkpoint, stretching away along Koch Strasse in both directions, was the hated Wall. Lili felt a sickening lurch in her stomach. This was the edifice that for most of her life had split her family into two halves that almost never met. She hated the Wall even more than she hated Hans Hoffmann.

Lili said aloud: ‘Has anyone tried to walk through?’

A woman next to her said angrily: ‘They turn you away. They say you need a visa from a police station. But I went to the police station and they didn’t know anything about it.’

A month ago, the woman would have shrugged her shoulders at this typical bureaucratic foul-up and gone home, but tonight things were different. She was still here, unsatisfied, protesting. No one was going home.

The people around Lili broke into a rhythmic chant: ‘Open up! Open up!’

When they tailed off, Lili thought she could hear chanting from the far side. She strained her ears. What were they saying? Eventually she made it out: ‘Come over! Come over!’ She realized that West Berliners, too, must be gathering at checkpoints.

What was going to happen? How would this end?

A line of half a dozen vans came along Zimmer Strasse to the checkpoint, and fifty or sixty armed border guards got out.

Standing beside Lili, Werner said grimly: ‘Reinforcements.’

*  *  *

Dimka and Natalya sat on the black leather chairs in Gorbachev’s office feeling excited and tense. Gorbachev’s strategy, of letting the Eastern European satellites go their own way, had led to a crisis that seemed about to boil over. This could be either dangerous or hopeful. Perhaps it was both.

For Dimka the issue was, as always, the sort of world his grandchildren would grow up in. Grigor, his son with Nina, was already married; Dimka’s and Natalya’s daughter, Katya, was at university; both would probably have children in the next few years. What did the future hold for those kids? Was old-fashioned Communism really finished? Dimka still did not know.

Dimka said to Gorbachev: ‘Thousands of people are gathering at the Berlin Wall checkpoints. If the East German government does not open the gates, there will be riots.’

‘That’s not our problem,’ said Gorbachev. It was a litany. He always said it. ‘I want to speak to Chancellor Kohl of West Germany,’ he went on.

Natalya said: ‘He’s in Poland tonight.’

‘Get him on the phone as soon as you can – not later than tomorrow. I don’t want him to start talking about German reunification. That would escalate the crisis. The opening of the Wall is probably all the destabilization that East Germany can deal with right now.’

He was dead right, Dimka thought. If the border was opened, a united Germany could not be far in the future; but it was better not to raise such an inflammatory issue right now.

‘I’ll get on to the West Germans right away,’ said Natalya. ‘Anything else?’

‘No, thank you.’

Natalya and Dimka stood up. Gorbachev still had not told them what to do about the immediate crisis. Dimka said: ‘What if Egon Krenz calls from East Berlin?’

‘Don’t wake me up.’

Dimka and Natalya left the room.

Outside, Dimka said: ‘If he doesn’t do something soon, it will be too late.’

‘Too late for what?’ Natalya asked.

‘Too late to save Communism.’

*  *  *

Maria Summers was at Jacky Jakes’s home in Prince George’s County, having an early supper with her godson, Jack. The TV was on, and she saw Jasper Murray, in a coat and scarf, reporting from Berlin. He was on the Western, free side of Checkpoint Charlie, standing in a crowd near the little Allied guard post that had been built in the middle of Friedrich Strasse, beside a sign that said ‘You are leaving the American Sector’ in four languages. Behind him she could see floodlights and watch towers.

Jasper said: ‘The crisis of Communism is reaching a new peak of tension here tonight. After weeks of demonstrations, the East German government today announced the opening of the border with the West – but it seems no one has told the border guards or the passport police. So thousands of Berliners are gathering on both sides of the infamous Wall, demanding to exercise their brand-new right to cross over, while the government does nothing – and the armed guards grow increasingly nervous.’

Jack finished his sandwich and went off for his bath. ‘He’s nine years old, and newly shy,’ Jacky said with a wry smile. ‘He tells me he’s too old to be bathed by his grandmother.’

Maria was fascinated by the news from Berlin. She was remembering her lover, President Kennedy, saying to the world: ‘
Ich bin ein Berliner
.’

‘I’ve spent my life working for the American government,’ she said to Jacky. ‘All that time, our aim has been to defeat Communism. But, in the end, Communism defeated itself.’

‘Why is it happening?’ said Jacky. ‘I can’t make it out.’

‘A new generation of leaders came to power, most importantly Gorbachev. When they opened the books and looked at the numbers, they said: “If this is the best we can do, what’s the point of Communism?” I feel as if I might as well never have joined the State Department – me and hundreds of other people.’

‘What else would you have done?’

Without thinking, Maria said: ‘Got married.’

Jacky sat down. ‘George never told me your secrets,’ she said. ‘But I thought you must be in love with a married man, back in the sixties.’

Maria nodded. ‘I’ve loved two men in my life,’ she said. ‘Him, and George.’

Jacky said: ‘What happened? Did he go back to his wife? They usually do.’

‘No,’ said Maria. ‘He died.’

‘Oh, my goodness!’ said Jacky. ‘Was it President Kennedy?’

Maria stared at her in astonishment. ‘How did you figure that out?’

‘I didn’t, I guessed.’

‘Please don’t tell anyone! George knows, but no one else does.’

‘I can keep secrets.’ Jacky smiled. ‘Greg didn’t know he was a father until George was six.’

‘Thank you. If it ever gets out I’ll be all over those trashy supermarket newspapers. Goodness knows how much damage that would do to my career.’

‘Don’t worry. But listen. George will be home soon. You two are practically living together now. You’re so well matched.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I like you much better than Verena.’

Maria laughed. ‘And my folks would have preferred George to President Kennedy, if they had known, you can bet on that.’

‘Do you think you and George might get married?’

‘The problem is that I couldn’t do my job if I were married to a congressman. I have to be bipartisan, or at least appear so.’

‘You’ll retire one day.’

‘Another seven years and I’ll be sixty.’

‘Will you marry him then?’

‘If he asks me – yes.’

*  *  *

Rebecca was at Checkpoint Charlie, on the Western side, with Walli, Alice and Helmut. Rebecca was being careful to avoid Jasper Murray and his television cameras. She felt that joining a street mob was not the right thing for a Bundestag deputy, let alone a government minister. But she was not going to miss this. It was the greatest ever demonstration against the Wall – the Wall that had crippled the man she loved and blighted her life. The East German government could not possibly survive it – could they?

The air was cold, but she was warmed by the crowd. There were several thousand people in the stretch of Friedrich Strasse leading to the checkpoint. Rebecca and the others were near the front. Just past the Allied hut, a white line was painted across the road where Friedrich Strasse intersected Koch Strasse. The line showed where West Berlin ended and East Berlin began. On the corner, the Café Adler was doing a roaring trade.

The Wall ran along the cross-street, Koch Strasse. There were, in fact, two walls, both made of tall concrete panels, separated by a strip of cleared land. On the Western side, the concrete was covered with colourful graffiti. Opposite where Rebecca stood was a gap beyond which were several armed guards standing in front of three red-and-white gates, two for vehicles and one for pedestrians. Behind the gates were three watch towers. Rebecca could see soldiers behind the glass windows, scanning the crowd malevolently through binoculars.

Some of the people near Rebecca were talking to the guards, imploring them to let the people through from the East. The guards did not respond. An officer came up to the crowd and tried to explain that there were as yet no new regulations about travel from the East. No one believed him: they had seen it on TV!

The press of the crowd was irresistible, and gradually Rebecca was forced forward until she crossed the white line and found herself technically in East Berlin. The guards looked on helplessly.