Free Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything by Daniela Krien, Jamie Bulloch Page A

department store and then headed for the marketplace. “We are the people! We are the people!” the masses shouted, and it felt the same as it had when I was in Pioneer Camp, except that there the feeling had been even stronger, perhaps because of the torches and songs.
    Katja and I were exhausted from all the chanting and were about to slip away to the ice cream parlor when suddenly we noticed a water cannon just a few meters away. People started screaming, others kept chanting “We are the people!” and somehow I lost Katja and she lost me. A woman was pushing a pram alongside me. Police with machine guns were everywhere. Aiming at us. Then came the jet of water. The woman with the baby stumbled, the pram shot off sideways and rolled into the crowd. A man stopped it and took out the child. The baby was screaming its head off, the woman was on the ground, howling and howling, and when the man pulled her up, the baby almost slipped from his grasp. I put my hands in front of my face and didn’t move. Everyone was running all over the place, but nobody ran away. They’re going to shoot, I thought. They’re just going to take aim and whoever’s at the front is going to get it. I was at the front. Katja hadn’t reappeared. But now Johannes was beside me—we’d known each other since kindergarten—and he wrenched me away, through the crowd, then into a side street. We ran and ran, without knowing where we were going, and behind us there was a huge commotion. Somethinghad happened, but we couldn’t see anything anymore. He dragged me into a doorway, pushed the door open, and shoved me inside. And there he kissed me for the first time. It was October 1989. It felt as if we’d escaped with our lives, even though in hindsight it turned out that nothing serious had happened.
    Gisela is staring in astonishment, and also in slight disbelief, as if Johannes were recounting a fairy tale. She must think he’s been exaggerating. But she’s wrong. Johannes tends to play things down; he hasn’t even really captured the drama of the story. But it’s obviously enough for Gisela. Seeing how shocked she is by this makes me wonder whether Hartmut actually told her the truth about prison. Does she know that they left him for three days with a high temperature and pneumonia before fetching a doctor? That’s what he told Siegfried, who told Marianne, who told Johannes, and now I know, too. But I’m not sure about Gisela. Has Hartmut kept that from her? And if so, why?
    But then I think about my own secret and realize that there are things that can be said straightaway, others that need time, and some things that cannot be told at all.
    Of course there was more to this story. At some point we began our long journey home and found Katja at the station. When she saw us she burst into tears and threw her arms around me. We took the forty-five-minute train journey back and she walked back to the village. I went on with Johannes to the Brendels’, to the barn, where we spent hours kissing in the hay. Katja was given the task of telling my mother.
    A few days later we were summoned to the headmistress’s office, each of us in turn. I had to explain where I had been on the day of the demonstration, and ultimately what my reasons were for being there. I still don’t know who betrayed us, but Katja spent less time in the office than I did.
    It was a time when I often stood out from the crowd. I had decided not to take part in the state initiation ceremony and got confirmedinstead, putting a stain on my otherwise spotless CV. Siegfried was wrong when he said I had an unblemished record.
    There were several reasons for my refusal to attend the initiation ceremony along with everyone else from my class. Back then I was a regular at the parsonage. One of the pastor’s sons, David, came to our house quite often, too. He used to climb over the fence and bring me presents. The pastor’s family had frequent visitors from the West, and David was