After two hours that seemed like an eternity the plane finally touched down, and the moment it had taxied to a halt, the passengers leapt out of their seats. The usual orderly queue that the Germans are so famed for disintegrated, to be replaced by an undisciplined charge as the passengers rushed down the steps, across the tarmac and into the airport. Tonight, no one would be standing still.
Once they had cleared customs, Giles and Karin headed out of the terminal in search of a taxi, only to discover a heaving mass of people with the same thought in mind. However, to Giles’s surprise, the line moved quickly, as three, four, or even five passengers piled into each cab, all of them heading in the same direction. When they finally reached the front of the queue, Giles and Karin joined a German family who didn’t need to tell the driver where they wanted to go.
‘Englishman, why you come to Berlin?’ asked the young man squeezed up against Giles.
‘I’m married to an East German,’ he explained, placing an arm around Karin’s shoulder.
‘How did your wife escape?’
‘It’s a long story.’ Karin came to Giles’s rescue, and it took her three slow miles of unrelenting traffic, speaking in her native tongue, before she came to the end of her tale, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause. The young man gave Giles a new look of respect, although he hadn’t understood a word his wife had said.
With a mile to go, the taxi driver gave up and stopped in the middle of a road that had been turned into a dance floor. Giles was the first out of the car and took out his wallet to pay the driver, who said simply, ‘Not tonight,’ before swinging round and heading back to the airport; another man who would tell his grandchildren about the role he’d played the night the wall came down.
Hand in hand, Giles and Karin weaved their way through the exuberant crowd towards the Brandenburg Gate, which neither of them had seen since the afternoon Karin had escaped from East Berlin almost two decades ago.
As they drew closer to the great monument, built by King Frederick William II of Prussia, ironically as a symbol of peace, they could see ranks of armed soldiers lined up on the far side. Giles thought about Harry’s suggestion that he should write down everything he witnessed, for fear of forgetting the moment, and wondered what his brother-in-law would have considered the appropriate word to describe the expressions on the soldiers’ faces. Not anger, not fear, not sadness; they were simply bemused. Like everyone dancing around them, their lives had been changed in a moment.
Karin stared at the soldiers from a distance, still wondering if it was all too good to be true. Would one of them recognize her, and try to drag her back across the border even now?
Although a united people were celebrating all around her, she remained unconvinced that life wouldn’t return to normal when the sun rose. As if Giles could read her thoughts, he took her in his arms and said, ‘It’s all over, my darling. You can turn the page. The nightmare has finally come to an end.’
An East German officer appeared from nowhere and barked out an order. The soldiers shouldered their weapons and marched off, which caused an even louder roar of approval. While everyone around them danced, drank and sang ecstatically, Giles and Karin made their way slowly through the crowd towards the graffiti-covered wall, on top of which hundreds of revellers were dancing, as if it were the grave of a hated foe.
Karin stopped and touched Giles’s arm when she spotted an old man hugging a young woman. It was clear that, like so many people on that unforgettable night, they were finally being reunited after twenty-eight years apart. Laughter, joy and celebration were mingled with tears, as the old man clung on to the granddaughter he had thought he would never meet.
‘I want to stand on top of the wall,’ declared Karin.
Giles looked up at the twelve-foot-high monument commemorating failure, on which hundreds of young people were having a party. He decided it wasn’t the moment to remind his wife that he was nearly seventy. This was a night for shedding years.
‘Great idea,’ he said.
When they reached the foot of the wall, Giles suddenly knew what Edmund Hillary must have felt when faced with the final ascent of Everest, but two young Sherpas, who had just descended, cupped their hands and made the first rung of a ladder, so he could take their place on the summit. He couldn’t quite make it, but two other young revellers reached down and yanked him up to join them.
Karin joined him a moment later and they stood, side by side, staring across the border. She was still unwilling to believe she wouldn’t wake up and find it was all a dream. Some East Germans were attempting to climb up from the other side, and Karin stretched down to offer a young girl a hand. Giles took a photograph of the two women, who’d never met before, hugging each other as if they were old friends. A photograph that would end up on their mantelpiece in Smith Square to commemorate the day East and West returned to sanity.