Page 270 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"Of course."

"Can I take a shower? At the hostel we get hot water only once a week, and then we have to rush before it runs out."

They went upstairs.

Vasili was a long time in the bathroom. Tanya sat on the bed looking out at the grimy snow. She felt stunned. She knew, in a vague way, what labor camps were like, but seeing Vasili had brought it home to her in a devastatingly vivid way. Her imagination had not previously stretched to the extent of the prisoners' suffering. And yet, despite everything, Vasili had not succumbed to despair. In fact, he had summoned, from somewhere, the strength and courage to write about his experiences with passion and humor. She admired him more than ever.

When at last he emerged from the bathroom, they said good-bye. In the old days he would have made a pass at her, but today the thought did not seem to cross his mind.

She gave him all the money in her purse, a bar of chocolate, and two pairs of long underwear that would be too short but otherwise would fit him. "They might be better than what you've got," she said.

"They certainly are," he said. "I don't have any underwear."

After he left, she cried.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Every time they played "Love Is It" on Radio Luxembourg, Karolin cried.

Lili, now sixteen, thought she knew how Karolin felt. It was like having Walli back home, singing and playing in the next room, except that they could not walk in and see him and tell him how good it sounded.

If Alice was awake they would sit her close to the radio and say: "That's your daddy!" She did not understand, but she knew it was something exciting. Sometimes Karolin sang the song to her, and Lili accompanied her on the guitar and sang the harmony.

Lili's mission in life was to help Karolin and Alice emigrate to the West and be reunited with Walli.

Karolin was still living at the Franck family house in Berlin-Mitte. Her parents would have nothing to do with her. They said she had disgraced them by giving birth to an illegitimate child. But the truth was that the Stasi had told her father he would lose his job as a bus station supervisor because of Karolin's involvement with Walli. So they had thrown her out, and she had moved in with Walli's family.

Lili was glad to have her there. Karolin was like an older sister to replace Rebecca. And Lili adored the baby. Every day when she came home from school she watched Alice for a couple of hours, to give Karolin a break.

Today was Alice's first birthday, and Lili made a cake. Alice sat in her high chair and happily banged a bowl with a wooden spoon while Lili mixed a light sponge cake that the baby could eat.

Karolin was upstairs in her room, listening to Radio Luxembourg.

Alice's birthday was also the anniversary of the assassination. West German radio and television had programs about President Kennedy and the impact of his death. East German stations were playing it down.

Lyndon Johnson had been president by default for almost a year, but three weeks ago he had won an election by a landslide, defeating the Republican ultraconservative Barry Goldwater. Lili was glad. Although Hitler had died before she was born, she knew her country's history, and she was frightened by politicians who made excuses for racial hatred.

Johnson was not as inspiring as Kennedy, but he seemed equally determined to defend West Berlin, which was what mattered most to Germans on both sides of the Wall.

As Lili was taking the cake out of the oven, her mother arrived home from work. Carla had managed to keep her job as nursing manager in a large hospital, even though she was known to have been a Social Democrat. One time when a rumor had gone around that she was to be fired, the nurses had threatened to go on strike, and the hospital director had been obliged to avert trouble by reassuring them that Carla would continue to be their boss.

Lili's father had been forced to take a job, even though he was still trying to run his business in West Berlin by remote control. He had to work as an engineer in a state-owned factory in East Berlin, making televisions that were far inferior to the West German sets. At the outset he had made some suggestions for improving the product, but this was seen as a way of criticizing his superiors, so he stopped. This evening as soon as he arrived home from work he came into the kitchen and they all sang "Hoch Soll Sie Leben," the traditional German birthday song meaning: "Long may she live."

Then they sat around the kitchen table and talked about whether Alice would ever see her father.

Karolin had applied to emigrate. Escape was becoming more difficult every year: Karolin might have tried to cross, all the same, had she been alone; but she was not willing to risk Alice's life. Every year a few people were allowed out legally. No one could find out the grounds on which applications were judged, but it seemed that most of those allowed to leave were unproductive dependents, children and old people.

Karolin and Alice were unproductive dependents, but their application had been refused.

As always, no reason was given.

Naturally, the government would not say whether any appeal was possible. Once again, rumor filled the information gap. People said you could petition the country's leader, Walter Ulbricht.

He seemed an unlikely savior, a short man with a beard that imitated Lenin's, slavishly orthodox in everything. He was rumored to be happy about the coup in Moscow because he had thought Khrushchev insufficiently doctrinaire. All the same, Karolin had written him a personal letter, explaining that she needed to emigrate in order to marry the father of her child.

"They say he's a believer in old-fashioned family morality," Karolin said. "If that's true, he ought to help a woman who only wants her child to have a father."

People in East Germany spent half their lives trying to guess what the government planned or wanted or thought. The regime was unpredictable. They would allow a few rock-and-roll records to be played in youth clubs, then suddenly ban them altogether. For a while they would be tolerant about clothing, then they would start arresting boys in blue jeans. The country's constitution guaranteed the right to travel, but very few people got permission to visit their relatives in West Germany.

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