62
It was a cold November day in Berlin, with an obscuring mist and a brimstone smell of sulphur in the air from the smoky factories in the infernal East. Tania, hastily transferred here from Warsaw to help cover the mounting crisis, felt that East Germany was about to have a heart attack. Everything was breaking down. In a remarkable repeat of what had happened in 1961 before the Wall went up, so many people had fled to the West that schools were closing for lack of teachers and hospitals were running on skeleton staffing. Those who remained behind became more and more angry and frustrated.
The new leader, Egon Krenz, was focussing on travel. He hoped that if he could satisfy people on that issue, other grievances would fade away. Tania thought he was wrong: demanding more freedom was likely to become a habit with East Germans. Krenz had published new travel regulations on 6 November that would permit people to go abroad, with permission from the Interior Ministry, taking with them fifteen deutschmarks, about enough for a plate of sausages and a stein of beer in West Germany. This concession was scorned by the public. Today, 9 November, the increasingly desperate leader had called a press conference to reveal yet another new travel law.
Tania sympathized with the yearning of East Germans to be free to go where they wished. She longed for the same liberty for herself and Vasili. He was world famous, but he had to hide behind a pseudonym. He had never left the Soviet Union, where his books were not published. He should be able to go and accept in person the prizes his alter ego had won, and bask a little in the sunshine of acclaim – and she wanted to go with him.
Unfortunately, she did not see how East Germany could ever set its people free. It could hardly exist as an independent state: that was why they had built the Wall in the first place. If they let their citizens travel, millions would leave permanently. West Germany might be a prissily conservative country, with old-fashioned attitudes on women’s rights, but it was a paradise by comparison with the East. No country could survive the exodus of its most enterprising young people. Therefore Krenz would never willingly give East Germans the one thing they wanted above all else.
So it was with low expectations that Tania went to the International Press Centre on Mohren Strasse a few minutes before six in the evening. The room was packed with journalists, photographers and television cameras. The rows of red seats were full, and Tania had to join the crowd around the sides of the room. The international press corps was here in force: they could smell blood.
Krenz’s press officer, Günter Schabowski, came into the room with three other officials at six sharp and sat at the table on the platform. He had grey hair and wore a grey suit and a grey tie. He was a competent bureaucrat whom Tania liked and trusted. For an hour he announced ministerial changes and administrative reforms.
Tania marvelled at the sight of a Communist government scrambling to satisfy a public demand for change. It was almost unknown. And on the rare occasions when it had happened, the tanks had rolled in soon afterwards. She recalled the agonizing disappointments of the Prague Spring in 1968 and Solidarity in 1981. But, according to her brother, the Soviet Union no longer had the power or the will to crush dissent. She hardly dared to hope it was true. She pictured a life in which she and Vasili could write the truth without fear. Freedom. It was hard to imagine.
At seven, Schabowski announced the new travel law. ‘It will be possible for every citizen of East Germany to leave the country using border crossing points,’ he said. That was not very illuminating, and several journalists asked for clarification.
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.’