Lilly and Anna are sitting on the sofa in the tower room of the old parsonage, the window overlooking an immense valley dropping away hundreds of feet down below. At sunset a fine mist covers the green meadows and vineyards in the distance. Lilly's three children are in bed, having gone without protest as the church bells tolled eight.
Anna’s three-year-old son, Anthony, serenely jet-lagged, is selecting one small house after another from the hand-painted chest of building blocks, a family heirloom. It’s to form a mediaeval town like the one they are visiting. His small pajamaed feet wiggle with excitement every time he completes another street, finds a piece for the town wall.
Lilly's golden local wine pours like oil, her lovely tiled kitchen gleams, her handkerchiefs are ironed, and she believes that children should be in bed by 8.00 p.m. on principle. Anna remembers that world and is grateful today that her son is growing up in Canada with Dr. Spock, Dr. Denton, and Dr. Seuss, not to mention “Chez Helene”. But neither woman says anything. Leo Leoni’s “Little Blue and Little Yellow” has been examined briefly, with warm thanks, then set aside.
Anna does agree, however, that it behooves mothers to avoid crying in front of their toddlers, and so she dabs at her cheek with paper tissues from a travel pack.
“I can’t believe it. Can’t believe they did this,” says Lilly. “What kind of people are they, to fence in an entire population! To lock them into a giant compound, like a jail. Haven’t they learned anything?”
John had called an hour earlier from Toronto, to say good night to Anthony and to ask Anna not to go to Berlin after all. There was talk of possible military skirmishes between the Western Allies and the Soviets, and an all-out intervention couldn’t be ruled out. There was the history of the Berlin Airlift, after all, in 1948, when the Soviets had cut off the city’s supply routes via land and water. Then, the Western Allies had organized the around-the-clock flights via three military air corridors and supplied approximately two million Berliners with food and other necessities, for months, until the crisis was settled. Foffie had been flown out to Hannover with a children’s transport. But this is different.
The government of the German Democratic Republic is building a wall along its borders, ‘to keep out enemies of the republic’.
American tanks have moved right up to the heavy barbed wire fence, the first stage, guarded by the East German militia, and shots were being fired into the air. An infuriated crowd of West Berliners were yelling at the soldiers, chanting insults and daring them to desert the dirty cause, and were yanking at the barbed wire. There were rumours that French soldiers in their sector had started to cut barbed wire to let people escape.
The world watches the crisis on TV.
Anna’s mother, in her West Berlin nursing home, is terrified her daughter and grandchild might come to harm, though she aches to finally meet Anthony and see Anna again.
It has been agreed that Anna and Anthony will spend the next two weeks in West Germany with relatives and then decide.
“I won’t go near that awful fence,” Anna had promised John, “if we go.”
At midnight Anthony is asleep in the nest they made for him out of a huge feather bed. From time to time he noisily sucks his thumb.
“He reminds me of your little brother when he was that age, back in Berlin,” Lilly says, and Anna nods, obediently sorting the building blocks back into their box. Lilly had lit the candles in a wrought iron stand.
“That little brother is heading into second year at Heidelberg and running a student jazz club. Good kid. Speaking of siblings of the shorter variety, what is happening with yours?”
“I have no idea. We’re not speaking. There’s just no way. He’s serving in the army right now. For another six months.”
“I’m so sorry to hear it, Lilly. That you’re not speaking, I mean.”
Both women contemplate their wine for a moment.
“You were going to tell me about Axel. Have you heard from him lately?”
“Yes! He’s engaged to a fellow student and they’re getting married soon. Isn’t it wonderful? He seems to be healing finally, except for the lung, of course.”
“Yes, very good. You look relieved, Lilly.”
“Relieved? Oh no. Just absolutely delighted that he’ll truly have a life, finally, like you and me. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course, I understand, and I’m thrilled, but you looked—”
“When he returned from Siberia ten years later, his parents invited me to come, but just wanted to give him a month to find his feet first. They found me via the Red Cross, remember, and had told him that I was married, but when I came with Lori — I had to, I was nursing — he completely shut down, felt so excluded from everything, still believed there was no hope and we had no right to put children into the world.”
“He wasn’t talking about the nuclear threat, I suppose. That’s what John and I were endlessly debating.”
“No, he looked at Lori and had tears in his eyes. She would be forced to live with the legacy of murderers, and so would HER kids. Then I started to cry.” She pauses. “Did you know we had never kissed, back then?”
“Hadn’t you? I was wondering, but — I believe you. None of us did, not even Monika, who was so, so physically present all the time. At least I don’t think she was kissing anybody. Not that the boys weren’t attractive. Boy, were they ever. But do you recall how dog-tired we all were all the time? Tell about Axel. Have you talked lately? Has he changed his outlook on the future?”
“Well, yes, it sounds like he’s more optimistic after these six years back home. His girlfriend is seven years younger, and she apparently has a very uncomplicated, energetic, focused outlook.”
“Thank God!”
“Yes, thank goodness.”
“You looked relieved, Lilly, as though you’d felt somehow guilty. Did you? Have you been?”
“Anna, I think we don’t remember what it was like. It feels as though it all happened a hundred years ago. At the time…”
Lilly hesitated.
“There are nights when I lie awake and I DO remember what it was like, Lilly. In a strange way I felt as though we were a bunch of teen moms who had spent a month nurturing and fretting about a big bunch of noisy little kids, and then faded into the backdrops when some mythical ogre appeared to gobble them up. And I think it was WORDS we didn’t find to help save them. The right language, the convincing argument, the single thing that wouldn’t have sounded childish, irresponsible or panicked, but would have allowed them to consider a duty of survival to their defeated country, not death to its crooked leadership. I mean we all needed their living arms, their ideas, not their dead bodies. I just couldn’t put it in words. What came out was my desperation. They were so totally convinced they had to be heroes, martyrs, period. Ulli was reading Theodor Körner a few nights before they went out.” Anna covered her eyes.
“But do you remember how tough WE were, Anna? We were raised by the same regime as the boys, a tough, no-nonsense bunch of kids, and steeled by the terrible experiences we had had on the home front. Maybe part of us was embarrassed by the thoughts and feelings you describe? Just like them?” said Lilly.
“No, Toni called me a ‘defeatist element’ once. I’ll never forget it. Look, we were all so thrilled that Hansi got away, our mascot and our baby. Why just him? There were at least two other refugee boys who were only fourteen. The Sergeant knew it. I think the boys couldn’t fathom the immense responsibility of surviving. You know what I mean? Sacrifice their lives they were exhorted to do over and over. The notion of living on—”
“It may have been too much? Tom’s attempted suicide, remember? I had almost forgotten.”
“Oh God, yes. Me too. Poor Tom. But it had to do with the hideous misunderstanding about his girlfriend. Someone told him she was pregnant, remember? I never heard what really happened there. So late. Now for Motz, he seemed so totally suited for survival. He wanted to be like his parents. They lived and loved passionately, from the way he described the family, never let anybody corrupt their beliefs. And he wanted to make a commitment to his community, had already started, out in Stolpe, and seemed to expect to continue to do that. It was so normal to him. But they talked a lot at his place. His family did.”
“So what were your plans then? Do you remember having any? I don’t think I did. Not then. Nobody asked me either.” Lilly looked at Anna.
“No, we had taken on the roles of adults years earlier, we talked about that, Lilly. We were fast-forwarded out of childhood, past adolescence, and into ‘the emergency’, strictly verboten to even mention.”
“Yes, and? What are you driving at?”
“I’m saying that we were tall enough, big enough to fetch and carry, strong enough to help bombed-out families in the shelters and after the raids, and then go home and put some kind of meal together for our own families. I became my Mom’s mother at the age of twelve. She and our maid were breaking down in tears all the time. Remember, Lilly? I’m just thinking, we were pretty tough, but we were not adults, and didn’t want to be like them. We felt a terrible contempt for most adults, remember? And among the general confusion we learned we wouldn’t get a chance to grow up, at least not normally, if at all. The British call it, ‘Muddling through from crisis to crisis’.”
“That’s good. That’s a very apt expression,” said Lilly laughing.
“Yes, the British have a few other gems like that,” said Anna.
“So you were saying?” said Lilly.
“In a nutshell, there was no order in my mind, and I just plain lacked the courage to suggest something so outrageously momentous as survival to the boys, when they were firmly headed for honourable death.”
“Sometimes, when I think of the kids from the East, I wonder if they simply gave up, like Henning - a sort of lethargy?”
Lilly looked at the floor.
“Anna, I have never told this to ANYBODY, BUT I DID TRY TO TALK TO AXEL about — you know.”
“You DID? Tell me? When? What did he say?”
“Let’s see, about twelve hours before they pulled out. Yes, the Corporals were there.”