Liesl never got over how odd it seemed, writing a letter to someone who lived so close — and yet so far away. She chewed on her pencil eraser for a moment. How far away did her uncle live? Two kilometers? Three? Close enough to walk. But the ever-present wall made it seem much farther.
So she started and stopped, wondering how to begin. She had decided to write a letter instead of calling, in case what she wanted to ask him didn’t quite come out right.
“Dear Onkel Erich,” she wrote, reading the words aloud as she used her best handwriting. “How are you? We’re doing fine. It’s been a couple of months since Mutti and I visited.”
Well, he knew that already. She crossed out the last sentence and started over.
“We’ve missed seeing you.”
No. That sounded dumb. She crossed it out and began one more time.
“I’m wondering if I could ask you a few questions for a paper I’m writing in my history class. Oma Brigitte said you would be able to tell me more about what happened when you were my age. Could you . . .”
And so she filled up her letter with questions, questions, questions. A lifetime of questions, saved up for as long as she could remember. Why were the Americans here, and how did people feel about them? How did the Americans treat people on the street? How did you feel about it? About him?
She tried twenty different ways to ask the same thing, trying to find out how he got to know Sergeant DeWitt and what kind of a man he was — but never mentioning his name. A couple of times she came close but decided — no. She hoped her uncle would see what she meant. Even though Oma Brigitte had given her a green light more or less, she still remembered how her mother had acted on her birthday.
She folded the letter and stuffed it in an envelope, addressed it, and prayed it would get across the border in one piece. Letters didn’t always. Even if it did, she really had no idea what her uncle would write back.
On the other hand, hadn’t he meant it when he’d said she had a right to know? She believed he would tell her.
He had to.
“That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard!”
Liesl stopped, puzzled. The voice came from down the hallway next to the St. Matthäuskirche sanctuary. But her mother’s evening council meeting at the St. Matthew’s Church should have ended by now.
So who was shouting in the side room?
“Oh, come on. You know better than that.”
“Well, even if you’re afraid to take a stand, I’m not.”
It sounded like a couple of teenage boys ready for a fistfight. Should she call the pastor? First she tiptoed a little closer to see what she could figure out.
“Nobody’s afraid here, Jürgen,” a quieter voice said. “We can’t just march out and make a scene when the time isn’t right.”
“And when will it ever be right? You’ll always find some reason to wait!” responded the first voice.
“Think about what happened to that East Berliner kid yesterday. The one who was shot. Doesn’t that tell you anything about how dangerous it’s getting?”
“You can whine and complain about how dangerous it is. But if we don’t do something big, more people will just get killed. More kids. Don’t you see?”
“But — ”
The voices echoed down the hallway, louder and louder. Liesl peeked into the room to see what kind of meeting — or battle — she had stumbled on.
Turned out to be about twenty intense-looking kids sitting in a big circle on wooden folding chairs. Mostly boys but a few girls, too. She thought most of them looked about sixteen years old; a couple looked older. And they had to be a little bit official since they were meeting in the church, and she didn’t think just anybody could do that. But they sure couldn’t agree. And the argument was so hot, no one seemed to notice her watching from the doorway. And she could pass for fifteen or sixteen, couldn’t she?
“Listen, we’re not going to solve this tonight.” One of the girls spoke up. “So the wall will just have to stay up for one more day. Why don’t we all go home and think about it, then come back tomorrow night to decide?”
Well, that sounded like a good idea to Liesl, judging by the way the conversation was going. And now she knew what kind of group this was.
These were the “criminals” her mother had been so angry about the other day. Kids who were trying to bring down the wall any way they could. A protest group that could possibly help her write the best paper in history — if she could just talk to some of them.
“Everyone in favor of voting tomorrow?” The five girls all raised their hands, as did a number of the boys. They outnumbered the hotheads — but barely. And that’s when someone noticed Liesl.
“You’re too late,” one of the kids called at her. “We’re just finishing up.”
“Oh!” Just then she remembered her mother was waiting for her, probably wondering why she hadn’t come by the council office yet. “Well, I have to get going, anyway.”
“Wait!” The girl who had wrapped up the meeting ran to follow her. “You don’t have to take off just yet.”
“But your meeting’s over.”
“Ja, but we usually hang around for a while after. The pastor doesn’t come around to lock the doors for another hour. Were you here to — ”
“To meet my mother. That’s all.”
“Oh. I thought — ”
“But I heard what you were saying,” Liesl blurted out, even as she kept a close eye out for her mother. “Are you planning to — I mean, is this a protest group?”
The tall, dark-haired girl’s expression turned serious, and she didn’t answer right away.
“That sort of depends.”
“Depends? On what?”
“Depends on who’s asking. We’re not an official church group, if that’s what you mean. Just a bunch of kids trying to — well, you can probably guess. Could you hear Jürgen all the way down the hall? He is so obnoxious!”
“Well — ” Liesl wasn’t ready to answer that question, considering who was joining them.
“Did someone mention my name?” Jürgen strutted up like a peacock. Liesl resisted the urge to reach out and wipe the smirk off his face. A couple of other boys had gathered around them, too.
“Hey, Katja, do we have a new recruit?” asked Jürgen. “Or maybe a spy?”
Katja stepped in front of Liesl like a shield, while the rest circled around as if for the kill.
“I’m no spy.” Liesl straightened her shoulders and stood a little taller, the way her mother always reminded her to. As if that would help against this school of sharks. “I’ve even — ”
They waited for her to finish.
“I’ve even smuggled some things across the border to East Berlin. Actually, more than once.”
Oh, brother. How was that for a crash landing? She realized she’d sounded a whole lot sillier than she’d hoped. Not a smooth delivery, not like Cher singing “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” on stage, though she wondered why she’d compared herself to Cher just now. Nobody was about to applaud her performance.
“Like what did you smuggle?” Jürgen, his face serious, stepped around Katja as he challenged Liesl. “Drugs?”
A few of the other boys snickered, and Liesl felt her cheeks flush. She wished she hadn’t opened her big mouth. Then she thought, What can it hurt to tell the truth? She crossed her arms and faced him.
“Bibles, actually.”
What do you think of that?
At first no one said anything. They just stared at her. Jürgen had finally picked up his jaw from the floor and cleared his throat, when they heard the sound of steps clicking down the hall coming toward them.
“Liesl?” Her mother called as she got closer. “Liesl, are you down here?”
Extremely good timing — sort of. Or maybe not.
“I’ve got to go.” Liesl wasted no time bailing out of the little room. So much for her prize-winning paper filled with firsthand accounts of the West German protest movement! But she didn’t want to have to explain this group to her mother, especially considering the argument she’d heard them having. Before she slammed the door behind her, though, Jürgen’s in-charge voice reached her: “Hey! Don’t forget we’ll meet again tomorrow night, Bible smuggler. Same time, same place.”
But Liesl had no idea what to tell her parents the next day. How could she convince them to let her go out alone — and did she even want to? She could imagine the scene:
Mutti, I’m going out to get into deep trouble with a gang of insane kids who want to get themselves killed in a foolish protest against the wall.
Really? That’s nice, dear. How do you plan to do that?
We’re talking about maybe charging the barbed wire with signs that say “Give Peace a Chance.”
Oh, that would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Liesl stabbed at a sausage on her dinner plate, sending a little spray across the table — whoops — as she twirled it through the gravy.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Her mother could read minds, which in this case could be pretty dangerous. As a defense, Liesl immediately stuffed the big piece of sausage into her mouth, way more than she should chew at one time.
“I guess you are.” Frau Stumpff shook her head. “Mind your manners, bitte. I can’t be here all the time to clean up after you. In fact, I’m running a little late now. I told you I have a commission meeting tonight, didn’t I?”
“Now you have.” Liesl’s father wiped his mouth with his napkin and scooted his chair back. “And I have to meet a client in,” he glanced at his watch as he stood, “twenty minutes.”
“I’ll clean up,” Liesl volunteered.
“Danke, Schatzi.” Her mother smiled and gave her a peck on the forehead. She didn’t call her sweetie very often. “You’ll be okay by yourself tonight? Neither of us will be home too late.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me.” Liesl did her best to sound breezy, maybe a little breezier than she should have. “I’ll be fine, really. Take your time.”
She still didn’t know whether she had the courage to go back to the church, though. Weren’t those kids doing something, though? Not just talking and talking about it.
Maybe she’d go just for a few minutes. Maybe they really thought she was sixteen.