By Katharina Gerlach
“Tim? Katie? We’re getting close to the border. Remember, no talking! Even if they ask you something, you’re not to speak,” Father reminded us as we sped along the tarmac. Trees stood on either side of the road, flitting past so fast they blurred into each other. The melting snow made the whole countryside look gray and forlorn, and the air coming through the air vents smelled of snow and wet soil.
“Pah,” Tim said. “I’m not afraid of some border patrol guards.” My brother, only eleven months younger than I, liked to pretend he knew everything, but he didn’t. Maybe he needed to grow as old as me to understand how dangerous this journey was.
“We will all end up in prison,” Mother said in a shaky voice that scared me more than father’s threat to burn all our toys if we talked at the border. Tim snorted and folded his arms in front of his chest. His bright red jumper crumpled as he stared at his jeans with a deep crease on his forehead. I buried my face in the book I’d taken along to pass the time. It was a long journey.
A tiny house made of red bricks with an equally red roof stood in the middle of the road like a toll booth. Two border guards dressed in dark green uniforms stood inside. Father slowed the car and stopped while Mother fished our passports from the handbag she’d clutched for the last half hour.
Suddenly my heart thumped in my throat. I pressed my lips together, watching one of the green men study the documents.
“You could have gone six years ago,” he said to my father.
“Didn’t trust them.”
“So why now?” The border guard handed back the passports.
Father shrugged. “A friend of mine encouraged me. He said he never had any trouble going.”
“And anyway, it’s Christmas,” Mother added. Her smile looked a little wobbly on her face, as if it didn’t belong.
“Have a good time.” The border guard stepped back into his little hut and waved us along.
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Tim said as Father accelerated.
“That was the West German border guard.” My father’s voice sounded like the time Tim had fallen off a ladder and everyone thought him dead. “The others will be…” He didn’t finish his sentence. A concrete tower came into view—square, gray, and with a machine gun in the windowless room at the top that pointed at the road. Father slowed the car to a crawl.
“Do we have to go so slow?” Tim shifted in his seat and stared at the barbed wire fence that stretched out to either side of the road. I could tell he was getting nervous, too. So, I wiped one of my sweaty hands on my jumper and squeezed Tim’s hand. He didn’t pull back, which confirmed his fear.
Mother pointed to a street sign, a red bordered white circle with a black thirty in the middle, and then to the watchtower that now loomed nearly overhead. Tim slipped closer to me.
We drove along the road for a good, long while, but the ice in my stomach never melted. The road widened into seven, eight, or more lanes. A young man in a gray uniform waved us into the second lane toward some waiting cars. I wondered why we couldn’t use one of the empty lanes but didn’t dare ask.
Father stopped the car behind three vehicles just as the first one moved into a gigantic hall covered with a roof. The whole setup resembled a very big fuel station, but instead of pumps, small gray houses sat between the lanes. The car that had been motioned to enter stopped and all its passengers stepped out of the vehicle. They took their suitcases and followed another gray guard into one of the houses. At once several grays moved around the car. Too many crowded around to see what they were doing, but they had a long rod and a handle attached to a nearly horizontal mirror on wheels, so they were up to something.
Then, the wait began. Tim grew fidgety, but whenever he opened his mouth to ask one of his endless questions, I put a finger to my lips and jerked my head toward the gray clad guards. They scared me even worse than the silence of my parents.
A car approached on the far lane, slowed, stopped, and was waved on by the guards. I wondered about that, and knew Tim would too, but before he could ask his inevitable questions, Father explained. “That’s the transit route to Berlin. Since the people in that car won’t enter the German Democratic Republik, they don’t have to be searched.”
The car in front of us shifted forward, and so he started the motor again and moved up to a white line on the road. Another gray guard stood there, holding out his hand. Father cranked down the window while Mother held out our passports again.
“Where to?” The guard practically ripped the documents from mother’s hand. I flinched at the ice in his voice and because the cold air sliced through the comfortable warmth of the car’s interior.
“Feldberg, Brandenburg.” Father snapped out the words, not adding an explanation or greeting or anything else.
“Are those your children?” The guard bent down and stared into the back of the car. I’d never in my life seen brown eyes that looked so cold. I froze like a drop of water in winter and barely dared to breathe. Tim stiffened, too, and his hand squeezed mine harder. Even if we had wanted to, we couldn’t have uttered a word.
The guard straightened and went back to studying the passports, only glancing at my mother. Then, his eyes bored into my father’s. “Well, well. Republikflüchtling, eh?”
In the rear view mirror, I saw my father’s face harden. The word must mean something really, really bad—like murder. But I just knew my father had never killed a man. They must be mistaken.
“Pre seventy-two,” he said. His voice was pressed. My heart dropped and I stiffened as if my whole body had turned to ice. My father—my strong, invincible father—was clearly afraid. Was my heart even still beating?
The guard took a step backward without returning the documents. He pointed to the next lane over in the gigantic hall. “Park there and step out of the car.”
Pale as death, Father complied. When he and Mother helped us out of the car, their hands trembled enough for me to notice. I wanted nothing more than to run home, but my body moved only sluggishly. Even the icy air seemed warmer than the border guards. We lined up beside one of the doors of the little gray houses and waited. I tried not to breathe too deeply since the air stank of exhaust fumes.
In moments, a bunch of grays surrounded our car. They used a long, bendy metal rod to poke into our fuel tank and pushed a little mirror on wheels under our car. Someone measured widths and heights of the interior with a tape measure. Tim’s mouth opened and closed, a telltale sign for his rising curiosity. I grabbed his hand again to remind him to be silent and willed him to remember. Father had explained before the journey they would be looking for smuggling compartments. Since we had none, we would be fine. But the cold glances of the grays didn’t reassure me one bit.
“Fetch your suitcases and come with me,” a female voice beside me said. I spun around and stared at a stocky woman in a gray dress that went down to her knees. Somehow it reassured me a little to see the gooseflesh on her bare legs. It indicated that she wasn’t all that different from us. I wouldn't have been able to follow her order otherwise.
I picked up my backpack with the books and the toys I’d decided to bring and followed my family into a room. The woman asked us to put our suitcase and the backpacks on a big table and step back. Leaning against the wall, we watched in silence as the woman turned our suitcase inside out. She took everything out, emptied both backpacks, and left everything in an untidy pile.
A man entered and told my father to follow him. As I watched them leave, my knees wobbled so hard, I could barely stand, and a giant fist squeezed my heart. Would I ever see him again?
“Spread your arms and legs wide,” the woman said to Mother, and my mother complied. Beads of sweat covered her forehead, and I thought I heard her heart thunder. But it was only my own.
The woman patted Mother down, then waved her to the table. “You can re-pack your suitcase.” She turned to Tim and me and crouched. There was a gentleness in her eyes I hadn’t expected. “Don’t worry, dears,” she said. “I only need to make sure you’re not carrying anything illegal into the GDR.” Carefully—as if we were made of porcelain—she patted me and then Tim down, too. “There, that didn’t hurt, did it?” She even smiled.
Still, Tim hid his face in my teddy bear the minute we got our toys back. I could have used the bear myself but decided not to fight about it. Tim was so much younger, he probably needed it more.
You can’t imagine my relief when Father returned just as Mother closed the suitcase. Without a word, he picked it up and carried it back to the car where the flock of gray border guards had vanished. We entered and waited. Only when yet another guard waved us forward did Father start the engine and drove the few meters forward.
The man handed us back out passports. “Remember that you’ve got to report to Feldberg police station by tomorrow morning latest,” he said. “You’ll need your letter of admission, the passports, and the receipt for the money exchange.”
Father just nodded. The guard pointed out of the hall toward a tiny, ugly, gray, flat roofed house. “You can use the exchange station here.” Then, he waved us on.
As instructed, Father left the car at the money exchange station, entered the building, and returned with a wad of bills and coins. The coins were made of alloy. Holding them felt like holding no money at all, they were so light.
Mother put the money into her purse, and Father snorted. “Thirteen West Mark a day for every person except the children. That must be the most expensive zoo in the world.” It was meant as a joke, but no one laughed.
As we drove on, I expected to feel relieved, but I didn’t. There were still watch towers with guns trained on our car, still barbed wire fences, still long stretches of land without any sign of habitation. At last, we passed a white and red striped bar that could be used to block the road but that stood open at the moment. Another tiny hut with a gray border guard stood beside it. He paid us no heed.
Once past that, Father said. “That was that. You may now speak again, kids.”
I was too shaken from the experience, but Tim had thousands of questions. “Why do they point guns at the cars? Is the piece of fence standing off from the main fence at an angle there to keep people from crossing the border? But why is it pointing toward the GDR? Why did they search all out luggage? Why… why… why...”
I tuned him out and watched the streets where slowly more cars showed up. The scent of the air coming through the vents changed to an ugly mix of snow, exhaust fumes, and the sweet-ashy odor of burnt coal. Most cars looked like cardboard boxes on wheels, some gray, some beige, and some baby blue. The villages and towns we passed were gray, too; gray walls with holes in the plaster, gray tarmac and cobble stone roads with gray snow sludge in the gutters, gray roofs, gray front gardens—even the trees and the people seemed gray. I asked my parents if gray was the GDR’s national color.
Mother shook her head. “It’s just difficult to get supplies and tools for renovations. Also, everything looks grayer in winter than usual anyway.”
Hours later—Tim had fallen asleep—we entered yet another one of the gray cities. It was already late afternoon and the sun lost the fight against the sky’s cloud cover.
“I think we’d better get it over and done with,” Father said. “Then we can think about Christmas again.”
Mother agreed, and so we parked our car and walked up a steep, cobble stone road to the town’s police station. When Father explained at the information desk why we had come, the clerk pointed us to a corridor with many doors. The walls were painted a weak green, and the air smelled of cleaning detergents. We sat on a row of uncomfortable brown wooden chairs and waited for the door in front of us to open. Tim fell asleep again on Mother’s lap.
And then, everything went very fast. We were ushered into a room just as green as the corridor. Mother still carried Tim who buried his head against her shoulder. Another woman in gray sat at a wooden desk. She didn’t look up from the papers in front of her and didn’t greet us either. Pen poised, she asked, “You arrived today?”
“Yes,” Father said and laid the passports, a letter, and the receipt of the money exchange onto the table. “We’ll be staying with my best friend and his family.” He gave her the address, and she nodded.
“How long are you going to stay?” Finally, she looked up. I wasn’t surprised to see that her eyes were gray too. Maybe everyone in this country turned gray eventually.
“Second of January.” Mother’s voice sounded firm and warm as she set Tim down. My brother clung to her like a toddler. I relaxed a little, leaning against her other side.
“Make sure you’re on time,” the woman said. “We’re not looking gently at Republikflüchtlinge that are late.”
“Naturally.” Father bowed his head slightly.
“Due to year-end holidays, you’ll have to check out on December 28th.” She handed Father a slip of paper, and soon after we walked back to our car. It was telling that Tim didn’t dare ask a question until we drove out of town.
“What is a Republikflüchtling?” he wanted to know. He’d woken enough to be his old eager self.
“When I was a young man, Germany was divided into four zones. We’d lost the war, and so the four parties that won split up the country,” Father explained while we drove the final half hour to his best friend’s house. “The parts that are now West Germany eventually got their independence back, but the part that’s now GDR, the part where I used to live, remained under Soviet supervision.
“You know that I always wanted to become a forester and nothing else? Well, since I always spoke my mind, my marks were really bad and eventually I got kicked out of school for a critical essay I wrote. The only way to become a forester was a school in West Germany, and so I left the GDR just before they built the German-German border. The government here considers that a major crime they call Flight from the Republic, or Republikflucht. They only pardoned people who fled before seventy-two a few years ago.”
“So they know you!” I had a lightbulb moment.
“They surely have a file on me, yes.”
Mother threw Tim a stern look. “Therefore, we need to make sure not to offend them in any way until we’re out of the country again, or we will all end up in prison.”
A shiver rolled down my spine nearly as cold as the air outside.
* * *
Our destination was the house of a forester in a village of maybe ten houses and a shop in the center. There were potholes in the cobble stone road deep enough to become small lakes when it rained. Father drove around them to prevent damage to the car.
But his best friend’s house was a positive surprise. Green garlands hung everywhere, and the family wore colorful clothes. From the car we stepped into a world separate from the rest of what I’d seen of the GDR.
The next days passed in a flurry of activities. Christmas presents had to be sorted and food cooked. We searched and found a fir tree in the forest, cut it, took it home, and decorated it.
My father’s best friend had a family with children too, and we hit it off immediately. We roamed through the forest, discovering whatever there was to discover, building forts, pretending to fight, and generally having a good time. Christmas came and went, and soon the time for our departure neared.
“I’m going into town to get us checked out with the police,” Father said to Mother. We were sitting at the huge, wooden breakfast table with the checkered cloth and enough room to feed an army.
Naturally we escaped parental supervision as soon as we could. Outside, we played Zorro, with me as the vigilante’s girlfriend—which I hated; I rather wanted to be Zorro, but that honor went to the eldest of us. I waved as Father drove off. For a moment, I worried he wouldn’t come back, but then play took over and time flew. I never noticed his return until I saw our car parked in the driveway. An ice ball in my stomach melted I hadn’t known existed.
Soon after lunch, the rain set in, and we were called inside. Luckily the house had a gigantic tiled stove fed from the hall but extending through all the downstairs rooms. In the living room, it ended three or four feet below the ceiling, leaving a bed wide enough for us children. So, we withdrew there to play.
“The rain has turned to snow.” Mother came in with her arms full of carrots from the garden shed for tonight’s salad. We children ran outside as fast as we could put on our coats. In a flurry of arms and legs, we tried to catch the snowflakes, laughing more than actually catching one. I was the best at that. The trick was to hold your breath as you stuck out your tongue or the snowflake would melt before its delicious iciness reached your tongue.
The snowfall intensified and even the toddler managed to catch a flake or two. When Mother called us in for dinner, little snowdrifts already formed at the lee side of the sheds.
I woke in the middle of the night when Tim crawled into my bed.
“It’s so cold,” he whispered. His breath condensed and rained down on us in little ice crystals.
“Maybe we should wake Mother,” I suggested just as the door to our bedroom opened and Dorie, the wife of Father's best friend, came in with a candle.
“The electricity failed which also means no central heating,” she said. “Come downstairs to the living room, children. Everybody is already there, and we've heated up the tiled stove.”
Downstairs, we huddled as close to the stove as we could while Dorie and Mother filled crooked apples with raisins and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon. The apples went into the oven part of the tiled stove, and we played card games, wondering when the electricity would be restored.
It turned out the snowfall developed into a blizzard, dumping piles of snow onto the world. Out of the windows, we could see snow drifts higher than I was tall. It was all a big adventure. We spent the rest of the night on the wonderfully warm bed on top of the tiled stove, talking and eating baked apples and feeling cozy and happy. After all, we were together.
But days passed and the snow didn’t go away. The phone line had died too, so we couldn’t even call anyone to ask for advice. Father suspected one of the overland poles had fallen due to the snow.
My Mother grew more and more unsettled as the second of January drew near. “When will the snowplows come?” she’d ask, but everyone just shook their heads. No one knew.
When New Year passed without celebration, I finally realized what being snowed in meant.
“Remember the gray lady at the police station?” I said to Tim, and he nodded.
“They’ll lock us up for good if we don’t make it out of the GDR before tomorrow night.” His face was as pale as the snow behind the window. “What can we do?”
I bent forward and whispered into his ear. “We need to fetch someone with a snowplow big enough to clear the road.”
Tim swallowed but nodded. “Tonight,” he whispered back.
“It’s only a kilometer or two to the village.” We’d walked to the small shop in the village’s center that people here called Konsum on the first day we arrived, so I knew it wouldn’t take all that long. Still, I had to encourage us both since walking through a snow filled night alone seemed pretty scary. “One of the farmers is bound to have a snowplow.”
“We’d better wear our snow trousers,” Tim said, but then one of the other children asked what we were doing and soon we were engaged in play again.
* * *
That night, the other children and I huddled together on top of the tiled stove, and the grown-ups drug mattresses as close to it as possible. They even went to bed at the same time as we did. Everyone lay buried under several blankets. Soon the children beside me relaxed into sleep. Tim even snored a little, but I couldn’t sleep. Listening to the howling wind outside, I watched the glowing world behind the windows. The moon was but a sliver of silver on a star-studded sky, but the snow reflected its light, brightening the night. At least we wouldn’t need a lantern.
Below me, the adults whispered quietly.
“What if the snowplow won’t come tomorrow morning?” The worry in Mother’s voice shook me. I pulled my blanket closer.
“Well, they can’t put you in jail if they’re responsible for uncleared roads,” Dorie said. “After all, you can’t make your car fly over the snowbanks.”
“I’m a Republikflüchtling.” Father’s voice held as much dread as Mother’s, which chilled me as if I’d spent the day outdoors. “I’m not sure the same rules apply for me as they do for others.”
They kept whispering for a while longer but didn’t find a solution for the problem. The only option was to wait for a snowplow. My determination to walk into the village to fetch someone intensified. I barely could wait for the grown-ups to fall asleep, too.
When I was sure that everyone slept, I nudged my brother. He groaned and rolled over. I shook him to no avail. Finally, I slipped off the tiled stove on my own. I fetched my clothes, went into the hall, and dressed there. I put on every bit of warm clothing I could find in the dark, including two scarves and Father’s gloves over mine. Then, I slipped out of the back door.
Father and his best friend had cleared paths around the cars, to the sheds, and to the street, and the snow they’d shoveled away towered beside me, blocking out what little light the moon provided. They’d even cleared a little bit of the road but not as thoroughly as the paths through their yard. The air smelled fresh as if the snow had washed it clean. Determination coursed through my veins and so I turned left and walked toward the village.
With every step, I sank deeper into the snow. After but a few yards, I had to fight my way out of snowdrifts every single step of the way, only to crash through the thin layer of ice on the next one. I grew hot in the layers of my winter clothing, which made the snow melt. Ice water seeped in at the openings for arms, legs, and neck, mingling with my sweat and soaking me in no time.
I grew cold, most of all my nose. Moving forward was exhausting and I wished I could simply turn around and go back. The tip of my nose hurt, I was cold and miserable, and I shivered despite sweating profusely. But I made my way forward, step by step and inch by inch.
I kept telling myself that it wasn’t far to the village, and that was true—not on a snow free day. I soon realized that in this kind of snow, it might as well be on another planet. I tried to turn around to walk back, but by now the moon had set and I could no longer find my own trail.
I called for help. “Mother!” I was so tired I could barely lift my legs anymore. “Father!”
Were those flowers blooming along the way? Why was it so warm all of a sudden? And why did the air carry the scent of freshly mowed grass and the fragrance of roses? Hadn’t I been in the middle of a snow-filled night just now? This couldn’t be real. My eyelids were so heavy they kept drooping, and the tip of my nose hurt. When I touched it, pain shot through me and the world around me came back into focus. Yes, everything was snow as far as I could see.
“There!”
A voice. I must be near the village. I struggled out of the snowdrift once more to take the next step.
Warm arms encircled me and lifted me up. Father had come. Tears filled my eyes. Everything would be good now. We’d get a plow and return home and the grays wouldn’t have any reason to put us in prison. With a sigh I sank against his chest.
When I opened my eyes next, I rested naked on Mother’s lap, wrapped in blankets and surrounded by hot water bottles. Tim kept glancing at me with guilt written all over his face. So, he’d told them about my plan. But I didn’t have the energy to be angry, and if I thought about it—which was a lot more difficult than usual—he’d saved my life with his babbling. How far had I come?
“Did we get a snowplow?” Why was my voice so hoarse?
“Oh honey!” Mother hugged me so hard, I struggled to breathe. “Don’t ever do that again. Promise! I’d rather be in prison with you than back home without you.”
Those were the last words I heard before I drifted off to sleep again.
* * *
It turned out that I hadn’t even made it past the far end of the garden fence, a mere two hundred meters or so in the direction of the village. At least the energy came back the day after my failed try, but we had to wait another three days before a snowplow finally rumbled past the house.
We left early the next morning, promising to visit again sometime soon if we didn’t end up in prison.
The drive was uneventful but slow since the roads were still partially covered with snow and sludge. We arrived at the border way after dark and stopped at the end of a very, very long row of cars. It seemed more families than just us were caught by the snow.
It took forever to get to the gray clad guards. My heart clenched, and my stomach twisted. My hands and feet were as cold as during that night, but I still noted that the guard looked rather tired.
“You’re three days late,” he said as he took the passports from Father.
“The snowplow didn’t come.” It was our only excuse, and I shivered with fear. I didn’t want to go to prison.
“You’re a Republikflüchtling, right?”
“Pre seventy-two.” Father answered the same as the last time.
The silence stretched as the guard studied the passports. I felt like vomiting. Any second now, we’d be arrested and taken to prison. And only because I didn’t make it into the village. So, I did the only thing I could think of, despite my promise not to speak.
“I really tried to get a plow,” I said and pointed to the chilblain on my nose. “See? This is proof.”
Mother blushed and Father explained to the guard what had happened.
And then, something happened I never, ever expected. A smile grew on the guard’s face. It was as if the sun rose and melted his iciness.
“Quite the hero, eh?” He handed back the passports. “Have a good journey.”
As we drove away into the most glorious winter a child could dream of, I realized that the Eastern German border guards, under all their grayness, were as human as we were. And that they, too, waited for the spring.
The End
A studied forester and mother of three, bilingual Katharina Gerlach has been making up tales like forever. Since practice makes perfect-ish, she’s now writing daily, mostly fantasy and historical stories in English and German. In December, she runs the annual online Indie Authors’ Advent Calendar with daily flash fiction stories.
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