She was not. She was terrified. ‘Hell, yes,’ she said.
‘You’re a tiger,’ he said.
The coal bunker was chest height. They climbed on to it. Their soft shoes made little sound.
From there, Bernd got both elbows over the edge of the flat outhouse roof and scrambled up. Lying on his belly, he reached down and hauled Rebecca up. They both stood on the roof. Rebecca felt dizzyingly conspicuous, but when she looked around she saw no one but a single distant figure back in the cemetery.
The next part was forbidding. Bernd got one knee up on the window ledge, but it was narrow. Fortunately, the curtains were drawn, so that if there were people in the room they would not see anything – unless they heard a noise and came to investigate. With some difficulty, he got his other knee on the sill. Leaning on Rebecca’s shoulder for support, he contrived to stand upright. With his feet now firmly planted, albeit on a narrow footing, he helped Rebecca up.
She knelt on the ledge and tried not to look down.
Bernd reached out to the sloping edge of the pitched roof, their next step up. He could not climb on to the roof from where he was: there was nothing to grab but the edge of a slate. They had already discussed this problem. Still kneeling, Rebecca braced herself. Bernd put one foot on her right shoulder. Holding the roof edge for balance, he put all his weight on her. It hurt, but she took the strain. A moment later his left foot was on her left shoulder. Evenly balanced, she could hold him – for a few moments.
A second later he cocked his leg over the edge of the slates and rolled up on to the roof.
He splayed his body out, for maximum traction, then reached down. With one gloved hand he grabbed the collar of Rebecca’s coat, and she grasped his upper arm.
The curtains were suddenly pulled apart, and a woman’s face stared at Rebecca from a distance of a few inches.
The woman screamed.
With an effort, Bernd lifted Rebecca until she was able to get her leg over the sloping edge of the roof; then he pulled her towards him until she was safe.
But they both lost control and started to slide down.
Rebecca spread her arms and pressed the palms of her gloved hands to the slates, trying to brake her slide. Bernd did the same. But they continued to slip, slowly but relentlessly – then Rebecca’s sneakers touched an iron gutter. It did not feel sturdy, but it held, and they both came to a stop.
‘What was that scream?’ Bernd asked urgently.
‘A woman in the bedroom saw me. I don’t think she could have been heard on the street, though.’
‘But she might raise the alarm.’
‘Nothing we can do. Let’s keep going.’
They edged crabwise across the pitched roof. The houses were old and some of the roof slates were broken. Rebecca tried not to put weight on the gutter that her feet were touching. Their progress was painfully slow.
She imagined the woman at the window talking to her husband: ‘If we do nothing we’ll be accused of collaborating. We could say we were fast asleep and didn’t hear anything, but they’ll probably arrest us anyway. And even if we call the police, they might arrest us on suspicion. When things go wrong they arrest everyone in sight. Best just to keep our heads down. I’ll draw the curtains again.’
Ordinary people avoided any contact with the police – but the woman at the window might not be ordinary. If she or her husband was a Party member, with a soft job and privileges, they would have a degree of immunity from police harassment, and in those circumstances they would undoubtedly raise a hue and cry.
But the seconds ticked by, and Rebecca heard no sound of a commotion. Perhaps she and Bernd had got away with it.
They came to an angle in the roof. Bracing his feet on the opposing sides, Bernd was able to crawl upwards until he got his hands over the roof ridge. Now he had a safer grip, though he ran the risk that his dark-gloved fingertips might be noticed by the police on the street.
He turned the angle and crawled on, every second getting nearer to Bernauer Strasse and freedom.
Rebecca followed. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if anyone could see her and Bernd. Their dark clothing was inconspicuous against the grey slates, but they were not invisible. Was anyone watching? She could see the backyards and the cemetery. The dark figure she had noticed a minute ago was now running from the chapel towards the cemetery gate. A leaden fear made her stomach cold. Had he seen them, and was he hurrying to warn the police?
She suffered a moment of panic, then she realized that the figure was familiar.
‘Walli?’ she said.
What the hell was he up to? Obviously, he had followed her and Bernd. But to what end? And where was he heading in such a hurry?
There was nothing she could do but worry.
They came to the back wall of the apartment building on Bernauer Strasse.
The windows were boarded up. Bernd and Rebecca had talked about breaking through the boards to get in, then breaking through another set at the front to get out, but they had decided it would be too noisy, time-consuming and difficult. Easier, they guessed, to go over the top.
The ridge of the roof they were on was at the level of the gutters of the high adjacent building, so they could easily step from one roof to the next.
From then on they would be clearly visible to the guards with the machine guns on the side street below.
This was their most vulnerable moment.
Bernd crawled up the house roof to the ridge, straddled it, then scrambled up on to the higher roof of the apartment building, heading for the top.
Rebecca followed. She was breathing hard now. He knees were bruised and her shoulders ached where Bernd had stood on them.
When she was straddling the lower roof she took a look down. She was alarmingly close to the policemen on the street. They were lighting cigarettes: if one should glance upwards, all would be lost. Both she and Bernd would be easy targets for their sub-machine guns.
But they were only a few steps from freedom.
She braced herself to wriggle on to the roof in front of her. Beneath her left foot something moved. Her sneaker slipped, and she fell. She was still astride the ridge, and the impact hurt her groin. She gave a muffled cry, leaned vertiginously sideways for a horrifying moment, then regained her balance.
Unfortunately, the cause of her stumble, a loose slate, slipped down the roof, tumbled over the gutter, and fell to the street, where it shattered noisily.
The cops heard the sound and looked at the fragments on the pavement.
Rebecca froze.
The police looked around. Any second now it would occur to them that the slate must have fallen from the roof, and they would look up. But, before they did, one was hit by a flung stone. A second later, Rebecca heard her brother’s voice yelling: ‘All cops are cunts!’
*
Walli picked up another stone and threw it at the police. This one missed.
Baiting East German policemen was suicidally stupid, he knew that. He was likely to be arrested, beaten up, and jailed. But he had to do it.
He could see that Bernd and Rebecca were hopelessly exposed. The police would spot them any second now. They never hesitated to shoot escapers. The range was short, about fifty feet. Both fugitives would be riddled with machine-gun bullets in a few seconds.
Unless the cops could be distracted.
They were not much older than Walli. He was sixteen, they seemed about twenty. They were looking around in confusion, their newly lit cigarettes between their lips, unable to figure out why a slate had shattered and two stones had been thrown.
‘Pig-faces!’ Walli yelled. ‘Shitheads! Your mothers are whores!’
They saw him then. He was a hundred yards away, visible despite the mist. As soon as they set eyes on him they started to move towards him.
He backed away.
They started to run.
Walli turned and fled.
At the cemetery gate he looked back. One of the men had stopped, no doubt realizing that they should not both leave their post at the Wall to chase someone who had merely thrown stones. They had not yet got around to wondering why anyone would do something so rash.
The second cop knelt down and aimed his gun.
Walli slipped into the cemetery.
*
Bernd looped the clothes line around a brick chimney, pulled it tight, and tied a secure knot.
Rebecca lay flat on the roof ridge, looking down, panting. She could see one cop pounding along the street after Walli, and Walli running across the cemetery. The second cop was returning to his post, but – luckily – he kept looking back, watching his colleague. Rebecca did not know whether to be relieved or horrified that her brother was risking his life to divert the attention of the police for the next few crucial seconds.
She looked the other way, into the free world. In Bernauer Strasse, on the far side of the street, a man and a woman stood watching her and talking excitedly.
Holding the rope, Bernd sat down then slid on his bottom down the west slope of the roof to the edge. Next he wound the rope twice around his chest under his arms, leaving a long tail of fifty or so feet. He could now lean out over the edge, supported by the rope tied to the chimney.
He returned to Rebecca and straddled the ridge. ‘Sit upright,’ he said. He tied the free end of the clothes line around her and tied a knot. He held the rope firmly in his leather-gloved hands.
Rebecca took a last look into East Berlin. She saw Walli nimbly scaling the fence at the far end of the cemetery. His figure crossed a road and vanished into a side street. The cop gave up and turned back.
Then the man happened to look up, towards the roof of the apartment building, and his jaw dropped in astonishment.