When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg Page A

things. At night she was full of questions.
    â€œWhen exactly was it built?” she would ask Martin, who was sprawled on the mattress reading a medical textbook.
    â€œ Neunzehnhunderteinundsechzig .” He could never come up with numbers quickly in any language but German and had long since abandoned Hebrew for English as their mode of communication.
    Vivi paused to calculate. “ Sheeshim v’echad . That’s 1961. So what was happening until then? I mean, from the end of the war, did people just move back and forth or what?”
    â€œAaarrghhh,” said Martin, slamming shut his textbook. Vivi was certain she had derailed him and he would be angry. “I hate studying all these diseases, I learn the symptoms and start to imagine I have them.” He stood up from the bed and yawned, then turned his attention to Vivi. “What were you asking me?”
    â€œAbout the wall. About Berlin before the wall.”
    â€œJa, there were checkpoints and you needed an Interzonenpass to get around. It was far easier for Westerners to pass to the East than vice versa. The East Berliners wanted the exotic fruits we had in the markets, the women wanted seamless stockings. That’s why the Soviets built the wall.”
    Vivi thought about the KaDeWe department store, how close and tantalizing it must have seemed to the Germans east of the wall, and yet how impossibly distant. Like a high window to a blue sky in a prison cell.
    â€œThe signs,” she said to Martin. “There are so many different signs and I’m always trying to understand them: ‘ Verursacht durch die Schandsperre ,’ ” she quoted.
    â€œÂ â€˜This now dead-end street,’ ” he translated, “ ‘is the result of the barrier of shame.’ ”
    â€œAh,” she said. “And, ‘ Sektoren-Grenze in Gawässer Mitte ,’ what does that one mean?”
    Martin smiled. “That the border is in the middle of the lake or canal or river.”
    â€œOh yes,” she says, “I’ve seen buoys floating in the water marked GDR or FRG. It’s absurd!”
    â€œIt’s absurd, yes, but it’s the only logical solution for now.”
    She had heard him debate this at length at Zweiblfisch many times and had no desire to hear his arguments again. She had more questions, she was bubbling over with questions about the wall, but Martin had crossed the room and was pulling her to him. He wrapped her inside himself, hugged her with heavy arms.
    One morning well into January, as she stood gazing upward at a corner in the wall where Kommandantenstrasse met Springerstrasse, a tiny man appeared at her elbow from nowhere. “ Fünfundvierzig tausend ,” he said.
    Vivi was too startled and too curious to be afraid. She knew he had said a number but she could not figure which one, nor what it had to do with anything.
    â€œForty-five thousand,” he repeated in English. “The wall is made up of forty-five thousand of these segments, each one 3.6 meters tall and 1.2 meters wide. They’ve been rebuilt and refurbished four times, most recently in 1975. It seems they’ll be here for a very long time.”
    â€œWhat are they made of?” she asked, immediately at ease with this dwarf. In fact he looked quite powerful, in spite of his size, but she felt she could trust him.
    â€œThey’re concrete slabs between steel girders and concrete posts, with concrete sewage pipes on the top,” he said in precise, rehearsed English. “The new segments put up in the last few years are supposed to be more resistant than ever to breakthroughs.”
    She sized him up, trying to guess his age. “Can you tell me what it was like before they built the wall?” she asked.
    â€œCertainly,” he said quickly, “for a hot chocolate with whipped cream in the café over there.”
    Vivi did not glance over her shoulder to where he was