Edge of Eternity (7 page)

A tan Trabant 500 pulled up and Hans Hoffmann got out. Walli began to feel frightened. How could he be in this much trouble? All he had done was sing in the park.

Hans approached and said: ‘Show me that thing you have around your neck.’

Walli summoned up the nerve to say: ‘Why?’

‘Because I suspect it is being used to smuggle capitalist-imperialist propaganda into the German Democratic Republic. Give it here.’

The guitar was so precious that Walli still did not comply, scared as he was. ‘What if I don’t?’ he said. ‘Will I be arrested?’

The sergeant rubbed the knuckles of his right hand with the palm of his left.

Hans said: ‘Yes, eventually.’

Walli ran out of courage. He pulled the string over his head and gave Hans the guitar.

Hans held the guitar as if to play it, hit the strings, and sang in English: ‘You ain’t nothing but a hound dog.’ The Vopos laughed hysterically.

Even the cops listened to pop radio, it seemed.

Hans pushed his hand under the strings and tried to feel inside the sound hole.

Walli said: ‘Be careful!’

The top E string broke with a ping.

‘It’s a delicate musical instrument!’ Walli said despairingly.

Hans’s reach was constrained by the strings. He said: ‘Anyone got a knife?’

The sergeant put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a knife with a wide blade – not part of his standard issue gear, Walli felt sure.

Hans tried to cut the strings with the blade, but they were tougher than he thought. He managed to snap the B and the G, but could not saw through the thicker ones.

‘There’s nothing inside,’ Walli said pleadingly. ‘You can tell by the weight.’

Hans looked at him, smiled, then brought the knife down hard, point first, on the soundboard near the bridge.

The blade went straight through the wood, and Walli cried out in pain.

Pleased by this response, Hans repeated the action, smashing holes in the guitar. With the surface weakened, the tension in the strings pulled the bridge and the wood surrounding it away from the body of the instrument. He prised away the rest of it, revealing the inside like an empty coffin.

‘No propaganda,’ he said. ‘Congratulations – you are innocent.’ He handed Walli the wrecked guitar, and Walli took it.

The sergeant handed back their identity cards with a grin.

Karolin took Walli’s arm and drew him away. ‘Come on,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Walli let her lead him. He could hardly see where he was going. He could not stop crying.

4

George Jakes boarded a Greyhound bus in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday, 14 May 1961. It was Mother’s Day.

He was scared.

Maria Summers sat next to him. They always sat together. It had become a regular thing: everyone assumed that the empty seat next to George was reserved for Maria.

To hide his nervousness, he made conversation with Maria. ‘So, what did you think of Martin Luther King?’

King was head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the more important civil rights groups. They had met him last night at a dinner in one of Atlanta’s black-owned restaurants.

‘He’s an amazing man,’ said Maria.

George was not so sure. ‘He said wonderful things about the Freedom Riders, but he’s not here on the bus with us.’

‘Put yourself in his place,’ Maria said reasonably. ‘He’s the leader of a different civil rights group. A general can’t become a foot soldier in someone else’s regiment.’

George had not looked at it that way. Maria was very smart.

George was half in love with her. He was desperate for an opportunity to be alone with her, but the people in whose homes the Riders stayed were solid, respectable black citizens, many of them devout Christians, who would not have allowed their guest rooms to be used for smooching. And Maria, alluring though she was, did nothing more than sit next to George and talk to him and laugh at his wisecracks. She never did the little physical things that said a woman wanted to be more than friends: she did not touch his arm, or take his hand getting off the bus, or press close to him in a crowd. She did not flirt. She might even be a virgin at twenty-five.

‘You talked to King for a long time,’ he said.

‘If he wasn’t a preacher, I’d say he was coming on to me,’ she said.

George was not sure how to respond to that. It would be no surprise to him if a preacher made a pass at a girl as enchanting as Maria. But she was naive about men, he thought. ‘I talked to King a bit.’

‘What did he say to you?’

George hesitated. It was King’s words that had scared George. He decided to tell Maria anyway: she had a right to know. ‘He says we’re not going to make it through Alabama.’

Maria blanched. ‘Did he really say that?’

‘He said exactly that.’

Now they were both scared.

The Greyhound pulled out of the bus station.

For the first few days George had feared that the Freedom Ride would be too peaceful. Regular bus passengers did not react to the black people sitting in the wrong seats, and sometimes joined in their songs. Nothing had happened when the Riders defied
WHITES ONLY
and
COLORED
notices in bus stations. Some towns had even painted over the signs. George feared the segregationists had devised the perfect strategy. There was no trouble and no publicity, and coloured Riders were served politely in the white restaurants. Every evening, they got off the buses and attended meetings unmolested, usually in churches, then stayed overnight with sympathizers. But George felt sure that as they left each town the signs would be restored, and segregation would return; and the Freedom Ride would have been a waste of time.

The irony was striking. For as long as he could remember, George had been wounded and infuriated by the repeated message, sometimes implicit but often spoken aloud, that he was inferior. It made no difference that he was smarter than 99 per cent of white Americans. Nor that he was hardworking, polite, and well dressed. He was looked down upon by ugly white people too stupid or too lazy to do anything harder than pour drinks or pump gas. He could not walk into a department store, sit down in a restaurant, or apply for a job without wondering whether he would be ignored, asked to leave, or rejected because of his colour. It made him burn with resentment. But now, paradoxically, he was disappointed that it was not happening.

Meanwhile, the White House dithered. On the third day of the Ride, the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, had made a speech at the University of Georgia promising to enforce civil rights in the South. Then, three days later, his brother the President had backtracked, withdrawing support from two civil rights bills.

Was this how the segregationists would win? George had wondered. By avoiding confrontation then carrying on as usual?

It was not. Peace had lasted just four days.

On the fifth day of the Ride one of their number had been jailed for insisting on his right to a shoeshine.

Violence had broken out on the sixth.

The victim had been John Lewis, the theology student. He had been attacked by thugs in a white restroom in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Lewis had allowed himself to be punched and kicked without retaliation. George had not seen the incident, which was probably a good thing, for he was not sure he could have matched Lewis’s Gandhian self-restraint.

George had read short reports of the violence in the next day’s papers, but he was disappointed to see the story overshadowed by the rocket flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Who cares? George thought sourly. The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been the first man in space, less than a month ago. The Russians beat us to it. A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.

Then, in Atlanta, the Riders had been cheered by a welcoming crowd as they got off the bus, and George’s spirits had lifted again.

But that was Georgia, and now they were headed for Alabama.

‘Why did King say we’re not going to make it through Alabama?’ Maria asked.

‘There’s a rumour the Ku Klux Klan are planning something in Birmingham,’ George said grimly. ‘Apparently the FBI knows all about it but they haven’t done anything to stop it.’

‘And the local police?’

‘The police are
in
the damn Klan.’

‘What about those two?’ With a jerk of her head Maria indicated the seats across the aisle and a row back.

George looked over his shoulder at two burly white men sitting together. ‘What about them?’

‘Don’t you smell cop?’

He saw what she meant. ‘Do you think they’re FBI?’

‘Their clothes are too cheap for the Bureau. My guess is they’re Alabama Highway Patrol, under cover.’

George was impressed. ‘How did you get to be so smart?’

‘My mother made me eat my vegetables. And my father’s a lawyer in Chicago, the gangster capital of the US.’

‘So what do you think those two are doing?’

‘I’m not sure, but I don’t think they’re here to defend our civil rights, do you?’

George glanced out of the window and saw a sign that read:
ENTERING ALABAMA
. He checked his wristwatch. It was 1 p.m. The sun was shining out of a blue sky. It’s a beautiful day to die, he thought.

Maria wanted to work in politics or public service. ‘Protestors can have a big impact, but in the end it’s governments that reshape the world,’ she said. George thought about that, wondering whether he agreed. Maria had applied for a job in the White House press office, and had been called for interview, but she had not got the job. ‘They don’t hire many black lawyers in Washington,’ she had said ruefully to George. ‘I’ll probably stay in Chicago and join my father’s law firm.’

Across the aisle from George was a middle-aged white woman in a coat and hat, holding on her lap a large white plastic handbag. George smiled at her and said: ‘Lovely weather for a bus ride.’

‘I’m going to visit my daughter in Birmingham,’ she said, though he had not asked.

‘That’s nice. I’m George Jakes.’

‘Cora Jones. Mrs Jones. My daughter’s baby is due in a week.’

‘Her first?’

‘Third.’

‘Well, you seem too young to be a grandmother, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

She purred a little. ‘I’m forty-nine years old.’

‘I would never have guessed that!’

A Greyhound coming in the opposite direction flashed its lights, and the Riders’ bus slowed to a halt. A white man came to the driver’s window and George heard him say: ‘There’s a crowd gathered at the bus station in Anniston.’ The driver said something in reply that George could not hear. ‘Just be careful,’ said the man at the window.

The bus pulled away.

‘What does that mean, a crowd?’ said Maria anxiously. ‘It could be twenty people or a thousand. They could be a welcoming committee or an angry mob. Why didn’t he tell us more?’

George guessed her irritation masked fear.

He recalled his mother’s words: ‘I’m just so afraid they’ll kill you.’ Some people in the movement said they were ready to die in the cause of freedom. George was not sure he was willing to be a martyr. There were too many other things he wanted to do; like maybe sleep with Maria.

A minute later they entered Anniston, a small town like any other in the South: low buildings, streets in a grid, dusty and hot. The roadside was lined with people as if for a parade. Many were dressed up, the women in hats, the children scrubbed, no doubt having been to church. ‘What are they expecting to see, people with horns?’ George said. ‘Here we are, folks, real Northern Negroes, wearing shoes and all.’ He spoke as if addressing them, although only Maria could hear. ‘We’ve come to take away your guns and teach you Communism. Where do the white girls go swimming?’

Maria giggled. ‘If they could hear you, they wouldn’t know you were joking.’

He wasn’t really joking, it was more like whistling past the graveyard. He was trying to ignore the spasm of fear in his guts.

The bus turned into the station, which was strangely deserted. The buildings looked shut up and locked. To George it felt creepy.

The driver opened the door of the bus.

George did not see where the mob came from. Suddenly they were all around the bus. They were white men, some in work clothes, others in Sunday suits. They carried baseball bats, metal pipes, and lengths of iron chain. And they were screaming. Most of it was inchoate, but George heard some words of hate, including
Sieg heil!

George stood up, his first impulse to close the bus door; but the two men Maria had identified as state troopers were faster, and they slammed it shut. Perhaps they are here to defend us, George thought; or maybe they’re just defending themselves.

He looked through the windows all around him. There were no police outside. How could the local police not know that an armed mob had gathered at the bus station? They had to be in collusion with the Klan. No surprise there.

A second later the men attacked the bus with their weapons. There was a frightening cacophony as chains and crowbars dented the bodywork. Glass shattered, and Mrs Jones screamed. The driver started the bus, but one of the mob lay down in front of it. George thought the driver might just roll over the man, but he stopped.

A rock came through the window, smashing it, and George felt a sharp pain in his cheek like a bee sting. He had been hit by a flying shard. Maria was sitting by a window: she was in danger. George grabbed her arm, pulling her towards him. ‘Kneel down in the aisle!’ he shouted.

A grinning man wearing knuckledusters put his fist through the window next to Mrs Jones. ‘Get down here with me!’ Maria shouted, and she pulled Mrs Jones down next to her and wrapped her arms protectively around the older woman.

The yelling got louder. ‘Communists!’ they screamed. ‘Cowards!’

Maria said: ‘Duck, George!’

George could not bring himself to cower before these hooligans.

Suddenly the noise diminished. The banging on the bus sides stopped and there was no more breaking glass. George spotted a police officer.