When the Wall Fell - 1. When the Wall Fell

Most people know that the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, but those same people also believe that the wall came down in 1989. I know better, because I was there.

When Gorbatshov came to power in 1984, the world as we knew it changed, but I get ahead of myself.

In the late seventies, the Cold War was at its peak. Living behind the wall we didn't get the full story until much later, but bits and pieces sneaked through. One of those bits was something about a meteor and suddenly the world had super heroes. They called the first one Shining Star.

One of my father's friends could always somehow get news of the Outside, beyond the Wall, and we would go to their house after synagogue every week. We heard about Shining Star one day, how he was a vision of Aryan perfection, tall and muscular and blond-haired. He had a flaw, green eyes, but that only made him more perfect to me. Me, a short, pudgy child with dark hair and dark eyes would never reach that ideal, not given a lifetime.

I remember my parents tucking me into bed that night and whispering prayers I didn't understand then but do now. They thanked God for living in the times that we did and asked for help escaping the tyranny that was East Berlin.

My parents were children, the same age I was then, back during the reign of Nazi Germany. Every day they lived in fear, in basements and closets and secret rooms, dying their hair and pretending to be other than they were. Every day they wondered if the gestapo would come pounding on the door that day, or if one of their friends would disappear in the night. I didn't understand; I probably will never fully grasp the impact on their lives, but I will continue to remember and honor all they went through.

Grandfather moved his family back to Berlin after the war. He didn't want to go to the New Country being formed in the lands of our ancestors, because Berlin was his home, and he refused to let the Nazis take even that much of his life and history from him. They met up with other families and formed a small community, but they ended up on the wrong side of the wall at a crucial time. So, there we were: a small, close-knit band of Jews in a world that hated us.

We needed a hero, and we found one in Shining Star.

My eldest sister defected to West Berlin when I was ten. One day she just didn't come home. Years later my mother received a letter from her describing her flight to Britain, the man she married, and her new family. She was very happy.

My eldest brother tried to climb the wall and was shot and killed. We stopped going to our neighbor's after that, because Mother insisted that my siblings' foolishness stemmed from hearing tales of Shining Star. At the time I could not fathom a desire for freedom so powerful as to risk everything, but within a few short years I would.

We were desperate for heroes in those days. Our Communist overseers gave us one they called the Lurker, and he was more like me, a normal man with dark hair and dark eyes. He wore black, too, with a trench coat and wide-brimmed hat. When we played, I was always the Lurker, my blond friends were Shining Star, and we worked together to rid the world of evil.

Our back yards became wondrous places filled with flying cars and robots to battle. We led troops into the jungle and liberated slaves. We robbed the rich to give to the poor, foiled bank robbers and train hijackings, and fended off the alley cats as if they were dragons. Best of all, when we received word or smuggled newspaper clippings of our heroes, we re-enacted adventures in the real world in which the dingy streets turned into London or Paris or New York or Moscow, vibrant with all the power of our imaginations.

I will never forget the night I really saw them.

I was fifteen and almost a man, and I walked close by the wall to and from work with my father. It was summer, and a wealth of boyish dreams boiled in my head. My father would look at me and shake his head and say, "Remember your Mother. Remember your brother," and I would wait, foolishness restrained another day.

The stories all portrayed Shining Star as a very intelligent, well-educated man. He was a soldier, super-strong and fast. The Lurker, too, was educated and a match for Shining Star in every way. Their stories came with references to the Outside, of things far beyond my reckoning of the world, and not something I was likely to experience where I lived, with police patrolling the streets and arresting people that were never seen or heard from again.

I didn't know much, but I knew enough to know I wanted more. I wanted to be an artist and there were no opportunities for a young, Jewish man such as myself for the kind of life I dreamed about. Not in Berlin.

Those thoughts and wishes often propelled me to seek out the wall at odd times of the day or night, to stare out over no-man's land with its pot-holes and barbed wire, fierce dogs and gunfire, and wonder how I, too, might one day be free.

I sneaked out one night, slipping by the soldiers and police to perch at my usual vantage point. This was the burned out, bombed husk of a pre-war building on the very edge of no-man's land. I had my sketch book with its glued-together pages, and I let my hand wander while I stared out at the darkness of the wall.

I hadn't sat out there long before a swift, passing sound brushed by. I had often as a boy tied a blanket around my shoulders and pretended to a cape and the swish was exactly as I might have imagined it. I thought I was imagining this, too, but shortly after I heard voices. They were too low to discern and so I crept cautiously through the rubble until, suddenly, I could see them.

They stood on a pile of bricks and debris by the remains of a window just below where I sat on what used to be the building's second story. Outside, the moon broke through the overcast sky to shine on the barbed wire atop the wall.

The one on the left wore white, and he glowed slightly, like a ghost as he was careful to remain in shadow. He was tall, taller than I had expected, and his muscles were more defined than any man I'd ever seen. I saw a girl once, drenched through with rain with her blouse plastered to her body, and this was what I imagined staring down at him.

The other was all but invisible but for the portions of his face and hands when he moved, or when the brim of his hat eased past the opening of the window. He was disappointingly small and plain-looking in comparison to Shining Star, and I reckoned he was far too much like me for my liking. The Lurker seemed larger in the stories.

My heart leaped in my chest the moment my brain finally recognized in those hidden figures the idols of my boyhood. I stared at them, mesmerized, and then quickly began to draw what I saw: Shining Star, like a statue of one of the Roman Emperors, and the Lurker, a hint of a dark figure in the shadows of the night.

My friends used to mock me for holding onto my fantasies for so long. I could not and did not wish to believe that my heroes might be enemies. Did they not both fight the Gray Lady? The Americans and Russians might be at war, with Berlin caught in-between, but heroes were still heroes in my eyes.

They appeared to be arguing, however, with the speed and energy of their gestures. Their voices rose and fell with passion, whispering heatedly in another language that was not one I knew. My pencil slowed as I watched, because there was something different about this night, something in the air that I was then too young to understand.

I covered my mouth over a gasp when Shining Star reached out and grabbed a fistful of shadows. As if from far away I heard the Lurker's hat scuff the dirt. My eyes were filled with the two men framed by the low light coming through the broken windows.

They kissed before my wide-open eyes and so startled was I that for long moments I could not feel the restriction in my own trousers. I knew I was different from other boys my age, but what I observed was far from anything I had ever considered, and to think it was my childhood idols to reveal this in me! At the same time I knew that my religion and family would never permit me to reveal this new realization.

But I could not tear my eyes away.

I spread my legs where I knelt, and reached back with one hand to release my cock to throb in my hand. I braced my other arm securely and pumped rapidly as I watched the two men below. My pants were loud in the night, too loud, though I did not know that then. I had never felt this way, so excited and eager, so aroused.

My penis was both soft and firm at the same time, sliding through my grip with ease as I forgot my inhibitions before this display. Fluid coated my fingers and I bit my lip in a moan.

Below I could make out the shape of the Lurker's body, framed by the white of Shining Star's uniform. I could not see their hands and their faces were hidden from me, but my imagination filled in the gaps, with all that a boy teetering on the brink of manhood yearned to know and was forbidden by God to experiment with, making it all the more alluring.

In that moment, I was the Lurker, and my hands worked the American's cock with all the energy of a young man who had never touched even himself in this manner. It was all new and exciting and powerful in a way that was transcendent.

Yes! I thought to myself.

Would I have come to this point if I had never stumbled upon this scene? Perhaps, but I think not. I might have even brushed it aside for fancy had I not the evidence upon my fingers and, looking up, two men's faces peering solemnly down at me.

"Oh!" I said, turning and thumping down on my backside. I attempted to close my trousers whilst still hiding my soiled hand. Caught! And with my heroes as witness! Was there ever a more humiliating experience for a teenage boy?

Shining star looked at me, and then to the Lurker standing at his side, and smiled. He reached up and tugged on the slightly-askew black mask. The other superhero shot him a nasty glare, and I held my breath.

"What are you doing here?" the Lurker demanded.

I knew he stared at me, though his eyes (and the majority of his body) were lost in shadows. I trembled beneath that gaze not unlike a mouse held transfixed by a cat.

"Look. Here." Shining Star captured our attention by bending down to pick up a thin, oblong shape that flopped loosely in his hands.

My sketchbook!

"No!" I said, scrambling to my feet, meaning to snatch it back out of his hands, but I only reached my knees before the man in white was beyond my grasp and the realization that I could no more take back my book from Shining Star than I could fly. My heart pounded uncomfortably and my throat tightened against further protests, though I felt sure each flip of the pages bared more and more of my soul.

"Lurk, take a look at this."

An irritated grumble sounded from the vicinity of the Lurker's chest, and I felt more than heard or saw him move away.

This gave me the courage I needed to stand. "Please," I said, wiping excess fluid on my pants and holding out both hands. "Please, give it back."

The two superheroes stood together and slightly illuminated by a stray moonbeam. I could almost discern the whites of the Lurker's eyes under his hat. His teeth showed briefly as he pointed to something, whispered something, and then silently laughed.

Shining Star's response was to grip the shorter man one-handed by the back of his neck and pull him into a kiss. For the second time that night the black hat tipped backwards and sailed to the ground.

For a moment I stared, my eyes following the hat's progress to the rocks just before my toes. Without thinking I bent down to pick it up. The hat was soft to the touch, smooth like felt but hard and not nearly as flexible as it seemed, as if the fabric covered up something. The brim was not at all easy to curl.

The Lurker's words made me jump.

"Leather shines too much." He smiled at me, and how I could tell this though shadows once more masked his face, I can't say, but my fear vanished completely and I was able to smile back.

"I love you," I said then as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Shining Star's chuckle flowed over my skin, making me feel warm and I relaxed even more because there was no menace in the tone.

"I thought it was me you loved." He held out the sketchbook, his mouth pursed in a pout, but his eyes merry.

I accepted the book, hugging the cheap, carefully hoarded paper to my chest. I nodded to him to say, 'yes, of course I do,' but could not form my lips into words. They were too dry, too trembly with the desire, the fear, of contact.

The two men looked at each other, Shining Star's eyebrow lifting over the top of his mask. The other sighed, shrugging slightly and turning away.

I could see there was more to their conversation, words I could not hear, a past that I would never know, winning, losing, a fight, compromise, agreement. I could say nothing, merely watching and waiting as the Lurker took two steps and disappeared.

Shining Star turned to me. I blinked, and then he stood right before me, my chin in his hands. He leaned down and I scarcely drew breath. Then he kissed me, the barest brushing of his lips to mine, and I knew no more.

Yes, I fainted. What would you have done?

I woke to the sounds of horse harness jangling, to dogs barking and children laughing, to soft singing and the puttering putter of a low, deep, grumbling car engine. I sat up and opened my eyes, blinking, staring in awe at the small but open farmhouse room. I lay in an over-sized white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up in a bed that could have fit four. A blue bowl rested on a table nearby next to a faded but perfectly folded towel. Curtains billowed in front of the window.

Climbing out, I moved to stand at the window, staring out at a completely foreign landscape. I recognized nothing.

I spun around, desperate for anything familiar, to find my clothes folded neatly on the chest at the foot of the bed, and on top the Lurker's black hat. My feet carried me there and I gathered up the perfectly normal hat, fingers turning the brim in my hands.

It had happened! It was real!

I touched my lips, warmed again by the memory of that kiss.

A knock, and then the door opened. The woman who entered was younger-seeming than my mother, though gray streaked through her hair. She smiled and said something which I did not understand, but I could see the tray in her hands and smiled back, shyly.

I climbed back into the bed at her beckoning and let the sheet and blanket be tucked around me once more. The tray in my lap gained my full attention as my stomach rumbled greedily.

The lady laughed brightly, ruffled my hair, said a few more words, and left.

Beside the bowl of porridge was a note, written on the back of a sack that used to hold sugar, evident from the brownish grains still clinging to the folds.

The words were few and simple, and poorly written in bad German, but the meaning was clear: "Welcome to freedom."

I cried then, I think. It would be many years before I would see my family again, but I had taken the first step. I was out of the city and in the countryside. Later I would determine I was in the Netherlands, and a short but uneventful ferry ride from Britain.

Reunited with my sister, I did indeed become the artist I dreamed of and traveled to many places, which is how I eventually made my way here, to stand upon the ruins of this place, to look at where the bestest men, the greatest of superheroes, saviors and, perhaps only to myself, the dearest of friends had met their ends. I wept for hours when I read the news in the papers.

My depictions of the two supers have earned me fame and fortune, but this last piece, begun so many years ago, could only have one home, and so I walked to the city's finest museum. I walk through the entrance and to the wing dedicated to the birth of a city. There on the walls I can trace the rise, and fall, of two superheroes and one super villain.

I stop before my painting, standing at the back of a tour group as they discuss the impact the two men had on the end of the Cold War.

"No one knows why," she says, "but Shining Star and the Lurker refused to take sides in Berlin. As you can see," she continues, gesturing to the echoing walls around them, "they were on opposite sides of the war, and Berlin was a key focal point. Many people have their opinions on the subject, and we in the museum allow our guests to come to their own conclusions."

I smile, for the group has paused in front of my painting and the tourists mumble to themselves, from the lowest murmur of awe to the loudest snort of disgust.

I have my own opinions of what happened in the city that night. Shining Star there for his cause; the Lurker for his. They left the place untouched, neutral in their regard for the city. Theorists might say one thing, but I believed that it wasn't that the two superheroes did not care about the fate of the people within but that they cared too much.

By refusing to intervene, they withheld support for their individual nations, and the first crack in the wall appeared. Though the wall would not physically be torn down for many years, the wall did fall that night. I know, because I was there. I will carry that moment with me for the rest of my life.

I move forward as the group continues on their tour, and I can remember that night as if it were yesterday. White costume in moonlight, black shadows hinting at more, the pose could be an embrace, a fight, a kiss, or all that and more. This is my masterpiece, and it is finally home where it belongs. As am I.