“Do you, in your opinion, think she could have done more damage by loading explosives into a loaf of bread? Why garlic?”
“In your opinion, was the baker’s wife a traitor to the people?”
“What was her statement in throwing her little garlic bomb, in your opinion?”
Conrad’s job was not to hold opinions. His job was to guard the border. But at the end of that day, when Herr Muller intercepted him, it fully sank in that he now had another job as well. Today Muller rode a red bicycle, and traveled beside Conrad along the avenues of the Mitte.
“So tell me,” Muller began. “What were you and your friend discussing this morning, by the border?”
“You were there?” Conrad sped up, but Muller only followed.
“I’m asking the questions. So tell me. What’s on Axel Bauer’s mind these days?”
“Nothing. The weather.”
“You mean to say that he didn’t tell you about Emilie?”
“How would you know what we talked about?”
At that, Muller laughed and rode off in another direction. As he continued home, Conrad could hear the man’s cackle far into the distance. Once again he propped the bicycle against the tree, and was disappointed the next morning when it was still there.
He no longer spoke to Axel; it felt too dangerous. And now, he found that when the reporters called out to him, provoking him with their questions, he sometimes listened ponderously. He wished he could take his new concerns home to his father, but could see his parents had made a heavy peace with their past choices and only hoped that their children would follow the path of least resistance. A path Conrad believed no longer existed for him.
As he walked the border one afternoon, his attention kept landing on the black bicycle propped against a lamppost, his bicycle, with its menacing gleam. He hated it. Muller waited for him every evening, asking what the guards had discussed on their breaks. As if he spoke to anyone these days. There, in the distance, was Axel. He remembered bunkering under a homemade tent with his friend when they were children, late at night, bending their fingers to make shadow puppets dance on the glowing white sheet they had pilfered from the hall closet. He blinked away the reminiscence. Axel was lost to him. Any sort of intimacy would be impossible now; no one could be trusted, including him. And Emilie. Someday, when he looked back, would she glimmer in his memory as his one and only love? When he thought of the rumor of their child, blood pumped wildly at his temples, deafening him against the usual discipline of his thoughts. Hans was dead. Axel was a stranger. His father was heartbroken. Emilie had vanished into a world he staunchly refused to imagine.
Suddenly, without thinking, Conrad turned to face the lens of a photographer… and heard a click.
“Come on,” the man shouted. “Give us something to look at.”
Before he knew what was happening, Conrad was flying over the barbed coil, dropping his rifle on the eastern side and landing, suddenly, in the west.
The chaos that followed was instantaneous. Axel and another guard ran to intercept him, but were too late. The photographer’s camera clicked mercilessly, capturing Conrad’s every move. Others joined in. The mechanical clacks and whirs sounded more voracious than any of the excited voices. People were shouting but he heard nothing of substance. It happened fast: suddenly, without thought, he was over. For a moment his body felt light as a feather, though when he landed he experienced the full force of his weight. He thought of his father’s disappointments, the open sore of his own uncertainty, and ran.
Emilie’s Kreutzberg building would have been visible from Conrad’s side of Berlin, if he had known where to look. It turned out she hadn’t made it very far, but west was west and east was east whether you were an inch or a mile from the border.
Her window was open. From the street below he saw stained white curtains billowing on a lackadaisical summer breeze. A couple of books were piled beside a crusty-looking glass half-full with water. The high wail of a baby crying followed a breeze onto the street, landing painfully in Conrad’s ears.
The building’s front door was unsecured so he walked right in. He took the steps in pairs until he reached the third floor, breathless, and knocked three times.
Emilie’s porcelain face, stiff as a doll’s, held its composure when she opened her door and found him. “I saw the papers.” She wore the same crimson lipstick she used to.
“May I come in?”
“What took you so long?”
“I’ve been busy.” He didn’t have to explain why it had taken him nearly a week to find her. Defectors were always held and questioned by the Allies until their motivations were fully understood.
She was dressed for the office, in a skirt and blouse, and was barefoot; the red polish on her toenails was badly chipped. Conrad stood at the entrance of her small living room and listened for a baby. The tepid silence unnerved him. He was sure he’d heard it crying.
“Where is it?”
“What a nice greeting.” She plopped down on a tattered couch, bundling her knees in front of her. There was little furniture in the place other than the couch and a table with a single chair. There was no sign of a child. On a mantel across the room a pair of bricks served as bookends, with a single book lapsed sideways between them. This was the Emilie he remembered: haphazard, improvisational, a reader. Often selfish. “Why are you here, Connie?”
She had once whispered that in his ear at the height of passion. Connie. Teasing him, calling him a woman’s name, just at his moment of release. She had been his first and only lover. He had assumed they would marry, and was devastated when she disappeared across the border without warning.
“Just tell me: Is it true you had our baby?”
Her eyes were black scythes in a white face. A new pageboy haircut made her severe. Finally, she answered, “I gave it up. I had to. I couldn’t make it on my own with a child.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were expecting?”
“I didn’t know until I was already here, and then it didn’t matter anymore. I wasn’t going back, and you weren’t coming over. You were always too good a comrade for me.”
“And yet here I am.”
“Why?”
It was an excellent question. “The truth is, I’d rather be home.”
“But you defected.”
“It was an impulse. I wanted to…” Words failed him. It wasn’t as simple as finding her and learning the truth. He’d wanted to get away from Muller, and from the black bicycle. “Was it a boy or girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can that be?”
“They were instructed not to tell me at the hospital. I never even saw it.”
“So you don’t know where it is now?”
“How could I?”
She had walked away from her newborn, just as she’d walked away from him. Her mercilessness was electrifying. He wondered if she was telling the truth; if there really had been a baby. A shiver of cold passed through him. Why was he here?
“Want something to drink?”
He sat down beside her. “Why not?”
They drank beer until midnight, after which it was agreed that he should spend the night on her couch. By the second night, he was in her bed. It quickly made no sense for him to leave at all.
“The wall will be finished soon,” Emilie whispered in his ear. “They say it’s going to seal off West Berlin completely, turn us into a little island unto ourselves.”
Conrad thought of his father and mother, trapped on the other side. He’d written to them several times, but doubted any of his letters had gotten through. “I need to see my parents.”