Going Over by Beth Kephart Page A

an East German economist, his wife and their 9-year-old son swung themselves in a homemade cable harness from the roof of a heavily guarded Communist government building to the safety of West Berlin.
    They came down over the barbed wire-topped wall Wednesday night from the top of the five-story “House of Ministries” where East German Premier Willi Stoph has offices.
    â€œI was 80 percent certain that the plan would succeed, because everything had been well prepared and besides I had helpers in West Berlin.
    â€œOften I had occasion to visit the Ministries building on business but in the building itself I had no help.”
    Holzapfel took his family into the building Wednesday and at 5 P.M . they went into an attic room, where they stayed until 10 P.M .
    The boy slept most of the time, and when it was time to get ready the father woke him with these words, “Now we are going to uncle. There you will get the bicycle we promised you. But first you must show your courage, because until now you have earned only the [bicycle’s] turn signal and bell.”
    The boy remained quiet and “we went out of the room onto the roof. It was pouring rain. We wanted to be across by 11 P.M ., but it took much more time.”
    Holzapfel had a nylon-type cord about as thick as a tennis racket string tied to a hammer. His preparations were thorough. He had painted the hammer handle with phosphorous so that those waiting in West Berlin would see it when he threw it. So that it would make no noise when it landed, he had padded the hammer head.
    Those in the West fastened a heavy cable to the hammer and Heinz and Jutta pulled it to them, “taking all our strength.”
    â€œNow we were ready to begin the most dangerous part of our flight.”
    â€œWe were all very quiet. Guenter was sent over first.”
    Holzapfel explained he had made a pulley out of a bicycle wheel axle, with a shoulder and waist harness slung underneath. They hung on to an attachment and rolled down the cable.
    â€œYou see how easy it is,” Ada had said, when she was here the last time. Her weight in your arms. Her smell in your nose. Her hair tickling the soft parts of your neck, where the stubble still doesn’t grow. “Just a few parts and some string,” she said. “Just a wheel and a harness.”
    â€œThere’s nothing easy about it,” you said, and she said, “Like there’s anything easy about this.” Meaning her and us. Meaning stuck in time. But leaving is permanent, and failure lasts.
    â€œStefan,” Grossmutter calls, and you hear the shuffle of her slippered feet toward you.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYou’ll be late for the Eisfabrik,” she says. And studies you with the pinch of her eyes.

SO36

    I’m wearing black patent-leather boots with a zipper up each calf, gray cabled tights, a corduroy jumper, and a long leather coat I borrowed from Gretchen, who stopped by early with a bowl of oatmeal and molasses; news travels fast when you’re squatters. There’s cold in my eyes and winter in my lungs, and when I call for Savas his name scorches through me.
    Near the Landwehrkanal the vendor trucks are rutting the snow with their wide wheels, leaving grooves shellacked by the morning sun. Little girls in pink hats and boys with red mittens run the grooves—building speed with quick sprints then boot-tobogganing through. From behind, the mothers nag and warn, their heads wrapped twice in scarves, their jilbabs long over their stockinged feet and winter sandals. The smell is snow and sun but also pumpkin seeds and coffee,
gözleme
and boiled corn, used batteries and leather. I walk Oranienstrasse toward Heinrichplatz. I walk past buildings that are white, pink, yellow, old with bullet holes, beneath windows where spatulasscrape against pans. Iced sheets are being unclipped from lines above. Someone is crying, but it isn’t Savas. The chill is back in my bones.