Edge of Eternity (21 page)

One roof led to another, eventually connecting with the empty buildings on Bernauer Strasse.

Now that Rebecca was closer, she was even more apprehensive.

They had planned their ascent by way of a low coal bunker, then an outhouse with a flat roof, and finally a gable end with a jutting windowsill. But all the heights had looked smaller from the cemetery. Close up, the climb appeared formidable.

They could not go inside the house. The occupants might raise the alarm: if they did not, they would be punished severely later.

The roofs were damp with mist, and would be slippery, but at least it was not raining.

Bernd said: “Are you ready?”

She was not. She was terrified. “Hell, yes,” she said.

“You're a tiger,” he said.

The coal bunker was chest height. They climbed onto 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 onto 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 onto 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 toward 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 upward 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 gray 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 toward 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 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 onto the higher roof of the apartment building, heading for the top.

Rebecca followed. She was breathing hard now. Her 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 upward, all would be lost. Both she and Bernd would be easy targets for their submachine guns.

But they were only a few steps from freedom.

She braced herself to wriggle onto 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 toward 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 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 clothesline 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 clothesline 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, toward the roof of the apartment building, and his jaw dropped in astonishment.

Rebecca was in no doubt about what he had seen. She and Bernd were perched on top of the roof, clear against the skyline.

The cop shouted and pointed, then broke into a run.

Rebecca rolled off the ridge and slowly slid down the slope of the roof until her sneakers touched the gutter at the front.

She heard a burst of machine-gun fire.

Bernd stood upright beside her, bracing himself with the rope tied to the chimney.

Rebecca felt him take her weight.

Here goes, she thought.

She rolled over the gutter and slid into thin air.

The rope pulled painfully around her chest, above her breasts. She dangled in the air for a moment, then Bernd played out the rope and she began to descend in short jerks.

They had practised this at her parents' house. Bernd had let her down from the highest window all the way to the backyard. It hurt his hands, he said, but he could do it, if he had good gloves. All the same, she was instructed to pause briefly any time she could rest her weight on a window surround to give him a moment's respite.

She heard shouts of encouragement, and guessed that a crowd had now gathered down on Bernauer Strasse, on the west side of the Wall.

Below her she could see the pavement and the barbed wire that ran along the façade of the building. Was she in West Berlin yet? The frontier police would shoot anyone on the east side, but they had strict instructions not to fire into the West, for the Soviets did not want any diplomatic incidents. But she was dangling immediately above the barbed wire, neither in one country nor the other.

She heard another burst of machine-gun fire. Where were the cops, and who were they shooting at? She guessed they would try to get up on the roof and shoot her and Bernd before it was too late. If they followed the same laborious route as their quarry they would not catch up in time. But they could probably save time by entering the building and simply running up the stairs.

She was almost there. Her feet touched the barbed wire. She pushed away from the building, but her legs did not quite clear the wire. She felt the barbs rip her trousers and tear her skin painfully. Then a crowd gathered around and helped her, taking her weight, disentangling her from the barbed wire, unwinding the rope around her chest, and setting her on the ground.

As soon as she was steady on her feet, she looked up. Bernd was on the edge of the roof, loosening the rope around his chest. She stepped backward across the road so that she could see better. The policemen had not yet reached the roof.

Bernd got the rope firmly in both hands, then stepped backward off the roof. He rappelled slowly down the wall, slipping the rope through his hands as he went. This was extremely difficult, because all his weight was supported by his grip on the rope. He had practised at home, walking down the back wall of the town house at night when he would not be seen. But this building was taller.

The crowd in the street cheered him.

Then a cop appeared on the roof.

Bernd came down faster, risking his grip on the rope for more speed.

Someone shouted: “Get a blanket!”

Rebecca knew there was not enough time for that.

The cop aimed his submachine gun at Bernd, but hesitated. He could not fire into West Germany. He might well hit people other than the escapers. It was the kind of incident that could start a war.

The man turned and looked at the rope around the chimney. He might have untied it, but Bernd would reach the ground first.

Did the cop have a knife?

Apparently not.

Then he was inspired. He put the barrel of his gun against the taut rope and fired a single round.