I sat down at the dinner table and reached out anxiously, grabbing my wife Elke’s hand, “I can’t do this anymore,” I exclaimed pointing down to the crossword I was doing. Her eyes fell to where my finger landed on the newspaper, as it read ‘EAST’. It was all bugged – the apartment, the car – everything. The Stasi surveilled every aspect of our daily lives, to make sure no one was disloyal. Anytime we needed to express our displeasure with the East we would have to talk in code to limit the risk of getting caught.
New line for a new speaker “Honey, you just have to keep doing the crossword, you can’t stop,” she replied metaphorically.
“We need to,” I whispered.
“We can’t Frank,”
“We can try.”
I like the way you've formatted this dialogue, back and forth, no verb. Really simple, really reflective of the angst and tight control. ***************************************************************************
I stepped off the plane in Australia for the 1956 Summer Olympic games with the United Team of Germany as the scorching sun joined hues of honeycomb yellow with a fierce orange. It glistened and warmed my skin, as I heard voices of friendly tones that spoke replacing ‘er’s with ‘ah’s. It was beautiful – a land of friendly people, and most admirably, freedom. It was the last time I had any contact with the West.
These people weren’t trapped by an iron curtain, they could live their lives free of surveillance. The Australians treated us strangers with kindness, a trait that we forgot existed back where we had come from.
Back in my motherland, Olympic athletes were pampered. We were treated much better than everyone else because the government did not want any talent leaving to the West. Though even with this status, threats of nuclear weaponry and mass destruction across the world was enough to destroy any sense of safety. Uncertainty in the world was frightening enough, but we were more afraid of the powers within our nation.
I opened the door to what we hollowly called home, because our habitation was at the very most a shelter. We lived on the second floor, the paint of the apartment building peeled, revealing the muck that lay trapped from neglect. We were fortunate to live in a place that had windows that were attached to their frames. It was the first time I had been home since leaving for the Games.
Elke sat on the couch with our four-year-old son Wolfgang in her arms. Her blonde hair was pinned back, with the strands that lay loose placed behind her ear. Her cobalt eyes sparkled as they fixed on me walking through the door. Wolfgang’s eyes as blue as the ocean were following a toy plane he had in his hand, and his hair was the same colour as the snow white sand I saw in Australia.
They were the only reason I had any pull to come back to East Berlin. Elke gave me a gentle hug resting her head on my shoulder as our blonde hair faded into one another’s, whilst Wolfgang wrapped his short arms around my leg.
I sat with Elke on the couch and told her stories of Australia and the Games – the water polo bloodbath that was Hungary against the USSR, the way my delayed start caused me to finish fourth in my race, and the land of the free that was the incredible country I had set foot on. I told her that we needed to go. We needed to escape. We began to bicker, Elke demanded taking the risk was too great, I agreed – indeed, the risk would be ‘great’. Elke pulled at her hair shouting that it is too selfish for us to do, I argued back saying it was selfish of us not to escape, whilst Wolfgang remained in a deep sleep through his afternoon nap. “We are lucky enough, Frank,” she quietly said, caressing my chin after calming down.
I'd put this on it's own line so it really stands out as a calm movement after the chaos.Slowly I stood up out of the chair that was withering away, looking out through window that sat tilted noticeably too far to its left. The streets were dreary, buildings stood wrecked from negligence and soldiers were on almost every corner, especially the closer to the Wall you got. They walked side by side in uniforms that could not be described using any colour but ‘dull’. East Berlin had not changed much since I was a child, except for the fact that smoke clouds from the projection of nuclear weapons being tested had been exchanged for flashing from the projection of bullets across the Wall - it was in ruins in every meaning of the word possible.
Elke joined a line that formed in front of the store, only a block away from the apartment. Just like the Wall, forming lines had become a part of daily life. We weren’t always sure of what exactly we were lining up for, but we knew we would probably need it. Elke cradled the treasure in her hands like it was our own child, ensuring she would not drop it.
Its colour flashed vividly, almost as if the sun was reflecting golden rays off it. It was the only colour other than red that I had seen in a while. It was a banana.
These last three sentences aren't clear - the "it" that begins each of the second two sentences seems to refer to different things? Is the first one the banana "it", the second is the sun being the only colour? and then the banana again? The succession of "its' is confusing They were sparse, and getting your hands on one was as about as exciting as daily life would get in Mitte.
Elke went to sleep that night staring out at the sky where the moon beamed brightly through the curtains of the bedroom. It was almost as if it was sitting in the West, too afraid to venture into the East. I drifted off, but awoke turbulently as Elke sprung up from where she lay as the clock struck three. Gasping for air, she cried “I can’t do the crossword anymore, Frank”. I stared into her eyes in shock from hearing her say those words, as well as being dazed. I never found out whether she had been dreaming of soft fields of green grass meeting with radiant shades of yellow, red and blue, or if instead it was a nightmare full of red, but she knew we had to be with the moon. We had to go.
We spent the next week talking in puzzle by using the newspaper to point out words of ‘Monday’, ‘car’ and ‘Charlie’, to make plans of the escape ensuring we would not get caught. We decided it would be too hard for the three of us to go together – I was escaping first. We lived in Tieckstraße, only 800m from the Wall and just under 3km from Checkpoint Charlie.
(Side note: I went to Checkpoint Charlie a few months ago and it's stupidly Americanised for tourists) I knocked on an old Austrian man named Martin’s door, who lived in our building. After an hour of asking him about his car and his family on the other side, he finally understood on what I was attempting to communicate, and agreed to smuggle me over in his car when he was heading to see one of his brothers in the West.
On the day of escape my wife and son walked out the front of the apartment block with me where Martin was going to pick me up. I gave Wolfgang a kiss on the cheek and ensuring I remembered his smiling, innocent face. I then turned to Elke and lightly pressed my lips onto her forehead and shakily told her I loved her before it was time to go.
Martin had a compartment at the bottom of the back seat of his car which he would use to store anything his brother’s in the West gave him that he knew he would not be allowed in the East. I was going to hide in there, with a blanket on top in case the guards had any suspicion of the compartment. As the car rolled closer to Checkpoint Charlie I hid, curling up every inch of my body to avoid being seen. Its wheels made a cracking noise as they slowly went over the gravel that lay underneath. My heart began to race and palms became sweaty as I heard Martin talking to the guard, but there was only one word on my mind – freedom. The car began to move again, but this time it was much faster than before. I couldn’t see anything but I presumed we had made it to the West. The corners of my mouth went up, as did the butterflies that had laid at the pit of my stomach, dormant for years – I had not smiled like this since the day Wolfgang was born, or the day I stepped off the plane into Australia.
My eyes would soon be filled with vibrant colour of blue, pink, red, orange, green, yellow and purples. I rose from my hiding place, full of excitement, faith and – everything turned black. Where was the colour? There was no flashing of a burning gun anymore, no dull soldier uniforms, no shades of Communism red. Freedom was only an illusion. There was nothing.