Chapter Text
January 1973
If I had only been older. The mantra roots itself in Gilbert’s thoughts and rises to the surface whenever someone mentions the wall. If only I had been older when I noticed the upstairs neighbors had vanished and left behind their furniture. He should have recognized the empty apartment as suspicious. But he hadn’t. He’d been too young.
He is on the top of his apartment building with his little brother’s telescope, the one he’d received for Christmas the year before the Wall went up, the one that had been left behind when Frau Beilschmidt had received a tip-off that the border would be sealed that night and had presumably picked Ludwig up from kindergarten and crossed straight into West Berlin.
She hadn’t had time to come home to warn Gilbert or her father-in-law. That has to be the only reason they had been left behind. Gilbert reminds himself of this when he feels lonely.
From the top of the snow-covered roof Gilbert can see the wall, a grey scar torn through the city. The telescope is a toy but remarkably well-made, and peering through it he can see past the Wall into West Berlin, where his brother and mother live. Even in January, the apartments look more colorful. Someone has yet to remove a Christmas star from their window.
If Gilbert becomes a better mechanic, he’ll be able to build something that will get him past the wall. With a proper goal to work towards, he can distract himself from his current situation. Gilbert collapses the telescope and stows it in his coat pocket, retracing his snowy footprints across the cold roof to the door that will let him inside.
February 1976
The auto repair shop smells like grease and dust. For all of the ice and snow on the roads this time of year, business has been remarkably slow. His grandfather, the owner proper and best mechanic, is holed up in the warmer back room with a bottle of liquor, leaving Gilbert alone at the old front desk, with the kerosene heater rattling nearby. The wooden veneer on the desk had started to peel. Gilbert picks at it until another chunk breaks off, trying to turn the abstract hole into a star.
The front door squeaks open and lets in a gust of freezing air along with a customer bundled in a heavy brown coat. Shivering, Gilbert reaches for the heater and wrenches the dial angrily, only to find that the machine has already been set at high. Through gritted teeth, he manages to ask, “How can I help you?”
His visitor is the Soviet bastard.
Three weeks ago, the Soviet bastard moved into the Beilschmidts’ apartment building quickly and quietly. Everyone suspects he is Secret Police or a Soviet spy, because he is frighteningly tall and built like a wrestler and his smiles do not reach his strange violet eyes. He is a pale ghost in the hallways and stairwells. The bugging devices the residents know are hidden in their kitchens and bedrooms have a less ominous presence.
Gilbert hates him.
“I need some help with my car,” the Soviet bastard speaks, wearing one of his false smiles on his fair face. The hard edges of consonants poke holes in his careful German speech. If he’s a spy, Gilbert reasons, he’s a bad one, but that was to be expected: everything that came from the Soviet Union was poor quality. Glancing past the man through the front window of the shop, he can see the street is empty.
“Where’s your car?”
“It’s parked around the back.”
“Oh,” Gilbert replies. “You live in the building above this shop, don’t you?”
He receives a nod of confirmation.
“Then you can drive your car around to the front of the garage like everyone else.”
The Soviet bastard scowls.
“You have very poor manners.”
“Do I?” Gilbert spits back, rising from his chair. “We don’t make house calls. So you can drive your car around to the front of the garage like everyone else, comrade, or we can’t fix it.”
For a moment, there is a flash of something like hurt in the other man’s eyes before his expression hardens. As he moves to leave the shop, Gilbert hears the door behind him open and someone cuffs him hard over the ear. Painful fireworks go off behind his eyes.
“I apologize for my grandson,” he hears his grandfather speak. “He’s young and bored. I’ll make sure to teach him some manners.”
The fireworks in his vision slowly clear, and Gilbert can see the Soviet bastard regarding him with a skeptical look. “He’s not that young,” he observes.
Gilbert’s grandfather is on the other side of the desk, stoic as ever, his gaze focused on the customer, and he answers, “He’s young enough to still make stupid decisions. Gilbert, go upstairs.”
“I don’t want to--“
“Go upstairs now, or I won’t teach you how to weld.”
The threat touches a nerve; Gilbert needs to know more about repairing machines or he’ll never be able to build something to help him escape. Not that he’d ever share that information with his grandfather: he had lied and told him he simply wanted to learn to fix cars.
“You’re a stupid old man,” he spits, and in the end, Gilbert is the one that storms out of the garage in disgust. He sits on the freezing roof watching West Berlin with Ludwig’s telescope until the cloudy sky turns black and the yellow streetlights wink on in place of stars.
March 1973
An upstairs neighbor has a baby boy, and in a rare display of charity, Gilbert’s grandfather assembles a box of old children’s clothing, things Gilbert or Ludwig wore but have long since outgrown. Gilbert is given the task of carrying the box up the stairs, and he agrees to it in the hopes that his grateful neighbor will give him some kind of present in gratitude. He slips in a puddle as he’s daydreaming about food and falls, spilling himself and an avalanche of tiny socks and hats down the hard steps. Groaning, Gilbert sits up and rubs his aching neck. A moment later, a large hand seizes his arm and drags him to his feet.
“Ow-- watch it--“
Gilbert gets a good look at his helper and groans a second time.
“It’s dangerous to lie on the stairs,” the Soviet bastard informs him. “Someone could trip over you.”
What a shame someone didn’t, Gilbert thinks. “Next time I decide to nearly break my neck, I’ll keep that in mind,” he grumbles, bending over to pick up his scattered cargo.
“Did these belong to your brother?”
Gilbert freezes. The Soviet bastard is holding up a small pair of overalls, and he smiles before folding them up. When he holds them out to Gilbert, he seems a bit surprised that Gilbert doesn’t reach out to take them.
“You are a spy,” Gilbert hisses, and although he’s never liked the other man, this is the first he’s felt genuinely afraid.
“I’m a spy? Your grandfather mentioned him to me while he was fixing my car. He said he wanted to learn to fix cars too,” the other man answers. “That isn’t spying.”
“So you say,” Gilbert mutters back, snatching the overalls and stuffing them back in the box. “Don’t talk about my brother.”
“I have a little sister,” the other man goes on, smiling. The emotion does not match his weird sad eyes. “I cannot see her right now, so I miss her a lot. She is very lively.”
“I said don’t talk about my brother!” Gilbert snaps, pausing just long enough to fix the man with a glare.
“We weren’t, I thought. I was telling you about my little sister. Her name is Natalya.”
Narrowing his eyes in suspicion, Gilbert struggles to rationalize what the hell is going on. Is this some kind of a test?
“I have a big sister too.”
In response to Gilbert’s look of abject confusion, the man smiles again.
“She is Katrina, but we call her Katya. She gave me this scarf--”
“Look, I have no idea why you’ve been inflicted on me or what you are here for or why you are telling me all of this,” Gilbert blurts out. The taller man raises his eyebrows.
“I am sorry that you miss your family, but it is no reason for you to be unfriendly to your neighbors,” he chides. “I miss my family, but I am being friendly to you.”
Gilbert’s expression turns from perplexed to irritated.
“Thanks for setting such a perfect example,” he says, his words laced with venom. “The next time I build a wall between you and your sisters and surround it with barbed wire and armed guards, I hope you’ll follow your own advice.”
He stomps up the stairs with the box of disheveled clothing before the other man can reply. The neighbor is very grateful for the generous gift, but in the end Gilbert leaves her apartment empty-handed.
April 1973
His grandfather has finally started to teach him how to weld, and it is a lot easier than Gilbert anticipated. Welding turns out to be heavy work, however, which means he won’t be able to build any type of flying craft to get over the wall. Perhaps it is for the best. Planes are complicated and difficult to hide.
In between working shifts in the garage, Gilbert sketches designs for armored cars. Crossing the wall at one of the checkpoints would be risky due to the strength of the guard, but driving a car at solid concrete was suicidal. He tries to think of other solutions, and spends even more time up on the roof, watching West Berlin.
The Soviet bastard once catches him on the roof with the telescope, but Gilbert does not care.
“You could get in trouble for that,” he warns.
“Thank you, Herr Spy.”
“My name is Ivan and I am not a spy.”
“Prove it, then,” Gilbert challenges, “and don’t report me to your boss.”
“I don’t have a boss.” Ivan is still wearing his ugly scarf despite the warm weather, and he’s carrying a bucket of dirt.
“Whatever you say.” Gilbert stows the telescope safely away in his jacket. “What’s with the dirt?”
“I am going to plant sunflowers.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what this shithole needs. Sunflowers.”
Ivan smiles and nods with genuine enthusiasm, and Gilbert can’t resist a further jab.
“Moscow is missing its idiot,” he remarks, glancing again at the dirt.
“How do you know that? Do you read the papers in Russian?”
“I have my ways.”
“Maybe you are a spy instead.”
Gilbert rolls his eyes and leaves the rooftop. Each time he returns to his lookout spot, he’s tempted to toss Ivan’s bucket of dirt over the edge, but he never does. Ivan might retaliate for that, and Gilbert had enough problems in his life. But mostly, he's curious to see whether or not the sunflowers will even grow.